Terror in the Balkans (109 page)

1918. It may also be attributed to an ideological harshness forged by the

personal indignities and hardships he had suffered as a captive of the

Bolsheviks. It could be further attributed, fi nally, to a personal belief in

driving the troops as hard as possible—a legacy, perhaps, of the extreme

infantry training to which General Conrad had subjected the men of the

Royal-Imperial Army before the Great War.

The hapless state of the 369th Infantry Division’s manpower helps to

explain why that division’s propensity for brutality during Operation

White I was so strong. It did, after all, have to contend with such a situ-

ation while also contending with severe overstretch, vast tracts of dif-

fi cult terrain, and an at best ambivalent population. These conditions,

as the 718th Infantry Division had discovered in 1942, might have been

avoided had the Reich’s military and political leadership resourced the

anti-Partisan campaign properly from the start, asserted itself with the

Italians, and above all taken a much fi rmer line against the Ustasha.

Nevertheless, the 369th’s epidemic discipline problems indicate that its

poor fi ghting power was to some degree self-infl icted. Yet it also becomes

clear, by comparing the 369th with the 373d Infantry Division, that for-

mations that possessed
different
levels of fi ghting power could respond

to their situation in similarly extreme ways. That the two divisions were

newcomers to the business of counterinsurgency warfare, whether in

Yugoslavia or elsewhere, may have contributed to this. So too may the

combat theaters in which both divisional commanders, and indeed two

of their regimental commanders, saw service during the Great War. And

in Bosnia in 1943, the effect for some commanders may well have been

reinforced by their Austrian origins. This may also explain why the lan-

guage employed by the 373d, commanded by the Austrian Zellner, was

more ideological than that of the 369th under the German Neidholt. Both

commanders, however, shared common ground with the 714th Infantry

The Devil’s Division
235

Division’s General Eglseer. And all three differ sharply from the more

restrained divisional commanders whom this chapter has considered.

Operation White I itself was a failure. Not only did the forewarned Par-

tisans resist with surprising ferocity; it eventually became clear to the

Axis that the largest body of Partisans was located further south anyway.

Sensing that the Axis were themselves about to realize this, Tito ordered

his main force to move to the southeast, across the River Neretva, to

escape encirclement. As the Partisans advanced on the Neretva during

the fi rst half of February, they also threatened the bauxite mines in the

Mostar area. General Lüters canceled White I accordingly on February

15. Six days later, in an effort to destroy the main Partisan group, he initi-

ated White II. A subsidiary Axis operation was also launched to protect

the mines. The Italians barred the Partisans’ way to the Neretva. And

now Mihailovicópportunistically threw his Chetniks into the struggle

also. He committed between twenty thousand and twenty-six thousand

Chetniks—the exact fi gures are unclear—with the aim of fi nishing off

the Partisans once and for all.89

But Tito then destroyed the Neretva bridges and turned his forces

around to attack the Germans advancing on his rear. This not only bought

time in which to protect the Partisan wounded, but also made the Axis

believe that the Partisans were not planning to cross the Neretva anyway.

Thus, when Tito’s forces eventually turned to face the Neretva again, suc-

cessfully crossing it by makeshift means, only Mihailovic´’s Chetniks stood

in their way. Between March 9 and 15, 1943, the Partisans conclusively

demonstrated their military superiority over the MihailovicĆhetniks by

routing them in a decisive battle from which they never recovered.90

During the months that followed, so badly did the Axis position

against the Partisans deteriorate that all prospect of success for any kind

of anti-Partisan campaign progressively dwindled to nothing.

Conclusion

The white operations had shown how formidable a prospect the

Yugoslav Partisans were becoming by early 1943. The operations

the Axis conducted against them during the rest of 1943, and into 1944,

increasingly demonstrated that defeating them decisively with the forces

available was impossible. This book’s main concern has not been why

the Wehrmacht’s counterinsurgency campaign in Yugoslavia ultimately

failed, or whether it might have succeeded had it acted differently. Its

main concern has been with what motivated German army commanders

to conduct the campaign in the way that they did. But before return-

ing to that central question, it is important to consider the main military

and political reasons why ultimate success eluded the Wehrmacht’s cam-

paign during the period examined in this book, and the consequences

during the period that followed from spring 1943 onward.1

There were manifold reasons why the Wehrmacht failed to destroy the

Partisans before their strength reached its level of early 1943. The Wehr-

macht, due primarily to the manpower demands of the eastern front and

the rest of occupied Europe, never committed enough troops to enable

it to pacify Yugoslavia enduringly. Even during 1943, when German

236

Conclusion
237

military commitment to the Yugoslav theater peaked in response to

fears of an Allied landing in south-east Europe, few of the divisions on

the ground were of full frontline quality.2- Similarly parsimonious was

higher command’s commitment of airpower to the campaign.

With the Germans’ paucity of strength, the actions of the non-German

Axis players acquired greater importance. Perhaps none were more

important than the actions of the Pavelicŕegime. The ethnic chaos

unleashed by the Ustasha’s anti-Serb persecutions guaranteed a fl ood

of support for both Partisans and Chetniks. Senior German command-

ers realized this too late, and even then, whether for political reasons or

personal ones, they failed to act on the knowledge decisively. The Ger-

mans’ consistent failure to take fi rmer action against the Pavelicŕegime,

combined with their own minimal commitment to security on the

ground, rendered it impossible for them to check the Ustasha’s savagery

decisively. Instead, the Germans’ extensive reliance on NDH forces to

provide longer-term “security” in regions recently cleansed of insurgents

only made it more likely that such savagery would be visited upon the

ethnic Serb populations of those regions. Nor, save a few exceptions,

were the NDH forces themselves equal to the task of combating or sup-

pressing Partisan groups.

Nor could the Germans rely upon their Italian allies to check the

groundswell of insurgent support. The Italians persistently failed to

prosecute the counterinsurgency campaign with the necessary rigor,

and the Germans, too sensitive to Italy’s great power pretensions in the

region, failed to cajole them into doing so. Thus on different occasions

the Italians conducted anti-Partisan operations with the utmost inepti-

tude, dragged their feet over committing to such operations in the fi rst

place, or failed to commit to them at all. Instead, they relied excessively

upon the Chetniks to provide “security.”3 But in empowering that par-

ticular group, they ultimately made it even harder for the Axis to exercise

control on the ground.

Co-opting the Chetniks might have yielded tangible long-term ben-

efi ts had it been done in the right way. A fundamental political settle-

ment that decisively curtailed the reach of the NDH’s power and raised

the status of the Serbian rump state might have provided a way forward.

Such an arrangement might have strengthened the Nedicŕegime, and

238
terror in the balk ans

thus drawn more non-Communist Serbs to that surer base of Axis sup-

port, instead of to the Mihailovic´ movement. But such a scenario was

never a serious prospect: Hitler’s support for the Pavelicŕegime, which

abated too little and too late, and his thoroughly unabated Serbophobia

both saw to that. So too did the failure of German diplomatic and mili-

tary fi gures to argue with the Führer more assertively over such matters.4

In the absence of fundamental political reorganization, the Chetniks

aggravated the chaos on the ground. At the same time, they disappointed

as an effective bulwark against the Partisans. The Partisans’ readiness to

take on the occupiers, their improving fi ghting power, and their ability

to appeal to all ethnic groups, all enabled them to achieve increasingly

formidable levels of support and strength at the expense of the prevari-

cating, disorganized, and chauvinistic Chetniks.

Had the Germans appreciated the true extent of the Partisan threat

sooner, and committed more fully against it, they might yet have

largely destroyed the movement by early 1943. Even then, however, the

NDH’s weakness and the Ustasha’s resurgent depravity might well have

spawned a Partisan revival anyway. In the event, however, the Germans

failed to appreciate the threat sooner. In particular, disputes with their

Italian allies in early 1942 stopped them from acting against the Partisan

movement more decisively. This, together with the Italians’ withdrawal

from Zone III in summer 1942, gave the movement vital time in which to

recover following the Serbian debacle of 1941. 5

Yet even when the Partisans were the principal target, the Germans

could not entirely pin the blame for failure upon their Croatian and Ital-

ian allies. Nor could they pin it upon the elusiveness of their enemy.

Granted, the Partisans used classic irregular tactics whenever they could.

However, particularly in autumn 1941’s Operation Užice and again from

1943 onward, the Partisans also fought more as a conventional opponent

would, and it was as a conventional opponent that the Germans so often

failed to defeat them decisively.6

Too many German commanders, weaned on the long-standing prac-

tices of the military establishment to which they belonged, were exces-

sively enamored of brutal reprisals and big encirclements. Here, they

ignored the facts. Firstly, massive reprisals became increasingly unwork-

able as the counterinsurgency campaign in Yugoslavia unfolded. In

Conclusion
239

Serbia in 1941, they faced running out of victims. In the purportedly

“allied” state of the NDH, they were politically impossible. Secondly,

although a big encirclement had worked in Operation Užice, the Ger-

mans forgot that that operation had also succeeded because of particular

environmental and political circumstances. Such encirclements repeat-

edly failed, even if they occasionally came close to success, amid the

much more rugged terrain of Bosnia. Yet between January 1942’s Opera-

tion Southeast Croatia and January 1943’s Operation White I, German

commanders drew none of the right lessons regarding either the harsh-

ness of the terrain, or what they might reasonably have expected of their

so often substandard troops in the face of it.7

Conversely, many German commanders relied too little upon mobile,

well-equipped hunter groups deployed in operations conducted on the

insurgents’ own terms.8 Even when the Germans did employ them effec-

tively, hunter groups were a local-level solution that could not have defeated

the insurgency on their own. Had the Germans committed more troops

on the ground generally, established a proper, permanent presence among

the population, and shown a more imaginative political approach, hunter

groups employed on a larger scale might yet have proved an effective ele-

ment of a potentially winning, four-way combination. There is no way of

knowing for sure, however, because the Germans did far too little to give

such a combination of measures a decent prospect of success.9 Such were

the minimal troop numbers the high command was prepared to commit

to Yugoslavia that few of the already small number of units operating in

the NDH possessed the mobility, equipment, or resilience necessary for

successful hunter group–type operations.10 That same lack of manpower

prevented the Germans from providing a stable long-term troop presence,

partly to reassure and partly to coerce, among the civilian population.

German army units similarly failed to impose such a permanent, predict-

able presence in the anti-partisan campaign in the Soviet Union.11 Finally,

most higher- and middle-level commanders alike failed to fully realize that

force and terror needed balancing with, or even downgrading in favor of,

an effective political approach. Had they realized it sooner, the senior-

most among them might yet have sought more forcefully to check not only

the destructive free rein granted the Pavelicŕegime, but also the increas-

ingly rapacious Axis exploitation of the NDH economy.