Terror in the Balkans (101 page)

that “(we) later receive a countless mass of bills. It can be months before

people receive payment. Such goings-on damage the image of the Ger-

man Wehrmacht.”4 And as with supply, so with clothing and equipment,

which the 718th judged totally inadequate for mountain warfare.5 Above

all, the division could not ignore the fact that most of the Partisans had

not been killed in its operations, but merely “expelled.” In other words,

they had been able to regroup and fi ght another day. And the 718th was

fully aware that, so execrable was the fi ghting power of the Croatian army

and the Ustasha, combating the Partisans effectively would in future be

down to itself alone.6

The 718th believed that the only viable long-term solution was its

wholesale conversion into a proper mountain division, a process already

begun but far from fi nished.7 But it would be months before the divi-

sion would receive resources and equipment to anything like that stan-

dard. Meanwhile, the chagrin it felt would begin to seriously erode the

restraint it had shown in its operations.

Furthermore, even though the clash between Chetniks and Partisans

might bring dividends to the occupiers, it was only one face of a myriad

interethnic confl ict that was growing ever more tortuous for the 718th to

negotiate. There were no fewer than four groups the division needed to

include in its calculations. The fi rst was the Chetniks, the second the

Partisans, the third the Bosnian Muslims. The fourth, principal root of

so many of the evils bedeviling the occupiers and, much more lethally,

the population, was the Ustasha. Now that Tito’s principal Partisan force

had retreated from eastern Bosnia, the Ustasha had been quick to rees-

tablish itself in the region.

As early as June 20, the 718th Infantry Division acknowledged that its

pacifi cation effort was still blighted by Ustasha outrages. “Undisciplined

Ustasha units robbed and murdered,” it reported. “The Ustasha believes

192
terror in the balk ans

it has the right to exterminate everything Pravoslavic. In several places

Serbs were bestially murdered. One Ustasha company, found guilty of

such attacks by the German Field Gendarmerie, was disarmed.”8 In July,

in an attempt to exercise greater control over the Croats, the 718th sought

for General Fortner to be granted power over all Croatian military courts

in the German operational area. But the NDH War Ministry was able to

block the move.9 By August, nothing had changed:

The question of a genuine pacifi cation of eastern Bosnia is, in the

division’s opinion, only possible via a German military adminis-

tration with many German police and gendarmerie. This must be

strong enough also to maintain a constant vigil over the Ustasha.

Our current strength is insuffi cient to prevent the constant fl aring

up of small-scale uprisings, and there can be no expectation of a

genuine resolution to the current situation.10

Here as elsewhere, Catholic priests were working hand in glove with the

Ustasha; “in the Brod district, Dr. Subolic´’s mob has unleashed a reli-

gious witch hunt . . . The Pravoslavic population are being forced on

pain of a concentration camp to convert to the Catholic faith.”11

Again, even though Wehrmacht expressions of detestation for the

Ustasha should be approached cautiously, the Ustasha undoubtedly had

played a central part in creating a horrendous state of affairs. The 718th’s

view was shared by Serbia Command, which in September 1942 reported

that “in Croatia, current conditions have led the function of state law and

administration to practically cease in many parts of the land. The Usta-

sha terror and the mass slaughter in Syrmia have heralded a new wave

of unrest which has thrown into question all attempts at pacifi cation.”12

The Chetniks made great propaganda play of the ongoing Ustasha

massacres. Serbia Command reported in October that “references to the

innocent victims of the Serb ethnic group will unleash a vengefulness

which can have an immensely powerful propagandistic effect upon the

population.”13 Yet Serbia Command soon recognized that, ultimately,

the Partisans stood to benefi t from this even more than the Chetniks:

“the cruel and unjust behavior of the Ustasha has turned the population

towards Communist mastery.”14

The Morass
193

By now the Ustasha’s depravities were increasingly rivaled by those

of the Bosnian Muslim militias. Muslims had sought to found an armed

movement for their own protection as early as autumn 1941. This was

despite the fact that the Ustasha, rhetorically at least, made much of Mus-

lim “equality” in the NDH. In fact, the Ustasha needed to depict the

Bosnian Muslims in such terms if the idea that Bosnia was a prime NDH

heartland was to have any credibility.15 The stress on Bosnia may also

have helped defl ect the Croatian population’s attention from the fact that

the NDH had been forced to relinquish Dalmatia to the Italians.16 Nev-

ertheless, such was the Ustasha’s fanaticism that many Muslims feared

that what the Ustasha was doing to the Serbs it might do to them next.17

Italian support for the Chetniks gave Muslims a further incentive to

look to their own protection. In August, the Chetniks entered Focˇa and

massacred one thousand members of the Muslim population and the sur-

viving Croatian garrison. It was unclear whether the Italians had simply

stood by or actually aided the Chetniks with artillery fi re. What was clear

was that an Italian relief column had fraternized with the Chetniks on its

arrival in the town.18 The massacre led to calls for an independent armed

Muslim force and Bosnian autonomy under the Reich. Neither would

be forthcoming. But Bosnian Muslim personnel would be employed by

Himmler in a Waffen-SS formation, the Handschar Division, in 1943.19

Meanwhile, particularly in the 718th Infantry Division’s jurisdiction,

the actions of Muslim militias were contributing to the ghastly reality

on the ground. Already in 1941, Muslims had sometimes participated in

Ustasha atrocities against Serbs.20 In May 1942 the 718th reported that

the militias were committing atrocities against Serbian villagers, women

and children included, east of Tuzla.21 By August the main Muslim

militia, the Muslim Legion, was plundering the area enthusiastically.

“Between 21 and 23 August,” it was reported, “Muslims in the vicinity of

Sapna, in cooperation with the local Ustasha and the (Muslim) Legion,

burned down 300 Serbian houses in Jovin Han. The Muslims—be they

the Legion, the Muslim militias, or just members of the general popu-

lation—were responsible for most of the low-level disturbances to the

peace of the land.”22

Navigating the mutual hatreds that animated these different ethnic

groups called for more subtlety than German army units on the ground

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terror in the balk ans

had hitherto demonstrated. “If we hadn’t arrived here in May of this

year, this pitiful country would have been completely devastated,” wrote

Lieutenant Geissler of the 714th Infantry Division. Refl ecting on the need

to read the ethnic situation with the utmost care, he remarked that “we’re

the real Croats here, and have become proper Balkan politicians. Every

division from Russia that was relocated here and tried to fi ght according

to its old method and experiences would in no time at all suffer heavy

losses, if not be destroyed altogether.”23

In the face of such chaos, co-opting the Chetniks for security duties

could seem an attractive solution. Yet its more enthusiastic advocates,

the Italians particularly, failed to recognize its perils. For the Chetniks,

of course, also actively participated in ethnic terror. Some of their actions

were directed against the Partisans, others against Croats in areas where

Serbs and Croats lived side by side and Serbs themselves were being mas-

sacred by the Ustasha. Others still were directed against Muslims in Bos-

nia and Herzegovina and in Sandjak. The worst massacres the Chetniks

perpetrated were at Focˇa in January, February, and August 1942, and in

Sandjak and southeast Bosnia in January and February 1943.24 Arming

the Chetniks, or excessively accommodating them in other ways, made

such massacres and the destabilization they brought all the more likely.

The 718th Infantry Division, though it had dabbled in cooperation

with the Chetniks, perceived the potential danger especially acutely.

Divisional command claimed to have obtained documents indicating that

the Chetnik leadership had ordered its people to cease fi ghting, hide their

weapons, and prepare themselves for renewed battle. The division was

deeply suspicious of the “sudden readiness for peace of Chetnik groups

probably in contact with Draza Mihailovic´, which is probably just a ploy

to buy time for reorganizing and equipping for a general uprising.”25

The 718th was also highly averse, again for fear of exacerbating inter-

ethnic mayhem, to arming villagers against attack. On May 13, 1942, it

requested of General Bader that it not be required to arm “so-called” vil-

lage protection groups and militias. Allowing the population to possess

weapons, divisional command argued, would destabilize the situation

further, not least because of “the strongly defi ned religious and ethnic

differences, the laws of blood vengeance which are still in force today,”

and also because of “the likelihood that arming people suffering from

The Morass
195

scarce provisions will prompt them to go ‘wandering’ into the forests to

seek subsistence there.”26

Divisional command also feared that, if it did arm civilians, those

arms would simply fall into the hands of the Partisans—particularly if

the Croatian gendarmerie was the only body there to prevent it.27 It only

partly got its wish. General Bader advised the division that, though he

did not intend to arm villagers across the board, the weakness of the

Croatian gendarmerie made some kind of “reliable” militia essential.28

By late September the 718th’s jurisdiction extended to the southwest.

This made matters worse because that jurisdiction now encompassed

more Partisan groups. Meanwhile, the Muslim Legion was creating

havoc as ever, and of the other three groups the 718th’s intelligence sec-

tion drily observed that “Ustasha, Partisans, and Chetniks are, as before,

competing to carry off the Strife Cup.”29 More generally the division

commented that “there is hardly a Serb, Croat, or Muslim in the whole

of eastern Bosnia, who does not have some kind of blood feud to settle

with another.”30

The idea of arming the Chetniks to counter the Serbs’ persecutors

remained one that the 718th regarded with consternation. It still believed

that, despite the increasingly mortal danger the Serbian population

faced from the Ustasha and the Muslim militias, arming the Chetniks

would only make matters worse—especially when the Italians seemed

to indulge them so much.31 More widely, there were even reports that

the Italians were buying off the Partisans with weapons, sometimes even

fi eld guns, in exchange for the return of Italian prisoners. Glaise von

Horstenau, the Wehrmacht’s General in Agram, believed this practice

too was being sanctioned from on high.32

The Chetniks in the 718th’s area, divisional command drily observed,

were essentially seeking to butter up the Germans to obtain peace and

quiet, the Italians to obtain weapons, and the Croats to obtain both.33 This

local-level Chetnik-Croat accommodation was replicated more widely

across the NDH during 1942, as both the Chetniks and the NDH regime

increasingly grasped the need for some degree of co-operation against the

burgeoning threat which the Partisans now posed to them both.34 But the

Chetniks within its jurisdiction, the 718th argued, were in a latent state

of war with the Croatian army, as well as in a real state of war with the

196
terror in the balk ans

Ustasha. The division argued that “the present, inconsistent treatment

of the Chetniks (as fi rm friends by the Italians, as comrades-in-arms by

the 714th Infantry Division, with refusal by the 718th Infantry Division, as

mortal enemies by the Ustasha, as partners in cooperation by Croatian

government representatives) holds massive dangers. Above all, it awak-

ens in the Chetnik leadership the impression that German, Italian, and

Croatian civil and military authorities are divided, and can be played off

against one another.” The 718th considered it essential that the Chetniks

be disarmed and suppressed, even though a unifi ed effort with the Italians

would be needed in order to achieve this.35 But the 718th also recognized

that it needed to be evenhanded. As it opined to General Bader, once the

Chetniks were disarmed, the Ustasha and the Muslim militias would need

disarming also. Failure to do this would only cause a resurgence of the kind

of chaos that would enable the Chetniks to renew themselves.36