Terror in the Balkans (34 page)

any long-term impact.105

But while the German forces in western Bosnia seem not to have fully

grasped some of the fundamentals of successful counterinsurgency, the

718th Infantry Division’s grasp of them was altogether surer.

For one thing, the 718th favored fl exible hunter group tactics. In moun-

tainous Bosnia such tactics could be more effective than large-scale oper-

ations that, though they might infl ict mass butchery, failed to deal the

Partisans decisive blows. The division employed hunter groups particu-

larly prominently in June 1942. Between June 3 and 22 the 718th, supported

again by Croatian units, sought to winkle out and destroy the Partisan

group in the mountain forests east of Zenica and south of Zavidovicí.

The group was reportedly disrupting the railway line between Sarajevo

and Brod, and terrorizing and plundering the local population.106 The

division was able to commit only four infantry battalions and one of its

batteries to the operation. The remaining forces—four battalions and

four batteries of various types—were provided by the Croatian army.107

Experience had taught the 718th that it lacked enough troops for a com-

prehensive encirclement, something the terrain in the Zenica-Zavidovicí

region rendered harder still. Lieutenant Peter Geissler, now serving with

the 714th Infantry Division, knew this situation only too well. “With us,

sadly, it’s usually a question of wearing down the Partisans and scattering

them, not exterminating them,” he wrote in July 1942. “In these loath-

some mountains it’s hard to do anything else.”108

But the 718th aimed to overcome this hurdle by ordering hunter

groups into the area in a series of speedy, direct, independently operating

182
terror in the balk ans

attacks. The division hoped among other things that this would confuse

the Partisans so much that they would think they were facing more Ger-

man troops than they actually were.109

The division later judged such tactics vindicated, particularly when

the units taking part also distributed propaganda material. “At present,”

the division declared, “such a hunter group stands ready within every

company of the 718th Infantry Division. They stand ready for every

eventuality. They will naturally be strengthened according to each even-

tuality.”110 A further advantage of the hunter group was that, small as it

was, it was easier to equip more formidably.

The 718th Infantry Division submitted a fairly upbeat report at the

close of the Zenica-Zavidovicí operation. It declared that, though the

insurgents, particularly the Partisans, were gaining ever more recruits and

increasingly unsettling hitherto undisturbed areas elsewhere in the NDH,

insurgent activity had fallen in its own operational area signifi cantly.111

Mutual hatred between Partisans and Chetniks aided German paci-

fi cation efforts considerably. The two movements’ totally incompatible

aims, and numerous truces struck between Chetnik and Ustasha units

during 1942,112 had now led the Partisans to identify the Chetniks as

their principal enemy. Where the Partisans lacked the organization on

the ground to properly dominate the country, they simply terrorized

the Chetniks and their settlements as far as they could.113 “The Chet-

niks are fi ghting (in Bosnia as elsewhere) for Greater Serbia, the Parti-

sans for Bolshevik Russia,” the 718th reported. “But Draza Mihailovic´

depicts Communism as being as great an enemy of the Serbian idea as

the occupiers.”114 Following bloody fi ghting between the two groups in

the Majevica and Ozren regions, many Partisans had withdrawn over

the River Sava, or southward into Italian-administered territory. Some

Chetnik groups in the division’s area had agreed to aid the Croatian

authorities against the Partisans.115 One German offi cer approvingly

reported of one such agreement that “the Chetnik group in the Majevica

region is in every respect committed to complying with the necessary

terms as precisely as possible, and has ruthlessly eliminated those of its

own people who have not complied.”116

Yet there was no room whatsoever for complacency. For the Partisans’

partial defeat in Operation Kozara left many areas, including Syrmia,

Glimmers of Sanity
183

Samarica, and northern Herzegovina, where they remained active. In

eastern Bosnia, the 718th Infantry Division’s area of operations, a rela-

tive quiet descended, but it did not last.117 During July and early August,

the 718th tried to engage Partisan groups moving northwest from Mon-

tenegro, but were prevented by the failure of the Ustasha troops serving

alongside them.118 In early August, together with troops from the 714th

and 717th Infantry Divisions, it was assigned to intensive border patrol-

ling. The aim was to prevent the battle between the Chetniks and Usta-

sha from spilling over into Serbia, and also to prevent Chetnik groups

from both sides of the Drina from linking up. Meanwhile, conditions

across the NDH grew ever more alarming. On August 21 Serbia Com-

mand reported that the NDH administration had lost all infl uence north

of the River Sava.119

But the 718th Infantry Division still sought to engage the popula-

tion; indeed, it was striving to this end more than ever. In addition to

the directives it had already issued, it now forbade its troops to burn

down houses and farms from which shots had been fi red or in which

ammunition had been found. For, according to the 718th, this had led

in the past to “sometimes pointless destruction on the greatest scale,

and to the burning of all elements, including those who may have been

innocent, in the troops’ rear.”120 The division also stressed, in capi-

tal letters, that “THESE ORDERS ARE TO BE MADE CLEAR TO

THE TROOPS BEFORE THE OPERATION BEGINS.”121 This

directive illuminates the barbarism many rank-and-fi le troops must

still have been practicing, despite their commanders’ exhortations to

the contrary. But it also highlights how conscientiously the division

was seeking to rein in such barbarism.

Throughout the fi nal week of August the 750th Infantry Regiment,

with Croatian backup, conducted Operation S in the Šekovicí region.

This too was a small-scale affair. Few Partisans were killed or captured,

and the Germans lost more men to illness than to the enemy.122 The oper-

ation’s only signifi cant military effect was that heavy grenade launchers

showed their worth during its course, boosting the men’s morale partic-

ularly strongly when they were fi red in unison. “For the Partisan war in

eastern Bosnia it is our best weapon—we cannot have too many of them,”

the division declared.123

184
terror in the balk ans

Operation S was more important for demonstrating the 718th’s ongo-

ing commitment to engaging the population. “Every opportunity must

be taken,” it declared on August 17,

to make clear to the population, in word and deed, that this action

is directed entirely against the Partisans, and that those who are

willing to work will enjoy the protection of German and Croatian

arms. It is therefore forbidden to burn down houses unless the battle

makes it unavoidable, and also forbidden to deprive the population

of its livestock or food supply.124

The 718th ordered the use of Chetniks who, before the fi ghting began,

had declared themselves willing to fi ght the Partisans. It even ordered

its troops to make use of those captured Partisans willing to help guide

efforts to winkle out their former comrades.125 Finally, in Operation S’s

aftermath, Battle Group Faninger embarked on a “propaganda march,”

aided by willing Majevica Chetniks who helped guard the propaganda

troops against both Partisans and a hostile Chetnik group from Serbia.126

The 718th observed in a report of August 2 that:

although the inhabitants of Bosnia seem to lead a disinterested and

lethargic life, they are very receptive to propaganda. Rumor propa-

ganda has a particularly strong effect on them. With their own ten-

dency to exaggerate, bad news and rumors are cultivated, blown out

of proportion and disseminated in fantastical forms. The only way

to combat this is through clear, simple, and insistent propaganda.127

The division also wanted the population to be granted the oppor-

tunity to listen to Wehrmacht reports and read placards in the Croa-

tian language, view weekly German fi lm newsreels, and have access to

simple maps displaying the situation on the eastern front. Furthermore,

specially appointed units should distribute both propaganda and food

to the poor from fi eld kitchens.128 In the Rogatica area, the Field Gen-

darmerie distributed provisions to the population, and reported that

it “soon enjoyed incredible trust in the eyes of the population . . . All

Glimmers of Sanity
185

were treated equally, be they Muslims, Pravoslavs or Catholics.”129 The

718th’s rank-and-fi le troops played their part in these efforts also. “The

sharp discipline and exemplary conduct of individual soldiers, and of

units as a whole, strengthens and maintains the trust and regard which

the German Wehrmacht enjoys,” the division declared.130

With Operation Kozara heralding a hardening of the German coun-

terinsurgency campaign in the NDH, then, the 718th Infantry Division’s

constructive engagement effort was now ahead of that of the campaign in

general. Indeed, it seems clear from a number of divisional reports that

General Fortner was actively seeking to promote hearts and minds mea-

sures not just within his division’s jurisdiction, but also to his superiors.

The irregular warfare that convulsed much of the NDH during the fi rst

eight months of 1942, like the Serbian national uprising before it, pitted

overstretched, often substandard German troops against an increasingly

adroit insurgent enemy. The troops had good reason to blame the highest

leadership levels of the Axis for this state of affairs. While the Nazi leader-

ship, including senior generals, had effectively allowed the Ustasha free

rein, its Italian counterparts had granted even freer and more murderous

rein to the Bosnian Chetniks. The chaos both groups had unleashed had

primarily benefi ted the Partisans, a group destined to eventually triumph

over its rivals, and one that in the meantime proved a growing source of

diffi culty for German troops on the ground. Pressured as they were, and

disposed to anti-Slavic ideology and harsh counterinsurgency doctrine, it

would have been little surprise if German troops had resorted to unbri-

dled terror as surely as their comrades had in Serbia in 1941.

Many indeed did. But there were differences with the Serbian situation

that led some German army units, if only for a limited period, to tem-

per their predilection for terror. That predilection was clearly on show

during these months, in the directives for the 718th Infantry Division’s

operations as well as more widely. But those directives, and the 718th, also

displayed restraint. The 718th’s was not an enlightened, comprehensive

campaign of constructive engagement. But from the start of 1942, the mea-

sures it practiced were less severe than the terrible extremes to which the

186
terror in the balk ans

Wehrmacht had gone in Serbia in autumn 1941. The populations of the

areas affected would certainly have appreciated the difference.

That a division might conduct itself more moderately was made more

likely by key differences between the situation in the NDH in 1942 and

the situation in Serbia the previous year. One, which German command-

ers stressed from the start, was that the NDH was an “allied” state. This,

of course, overlooked the fact that the Nedicŕegime in Serbia was sup-

posedly an ally also. But by fostering this perception among their units

more actively, some German commanders undoubtedly helped to dilute

the savagery with which their men might otherwise have conducted

themselves towards the population. A very grim corollary to this is the

fact that, whether because they had been murdered or incarcerated, or

had escaped to the Italian occupation zone or to the Partisans, there were

very few Jews on the ground for the Germans to kill.131

A second key difference was the situation in the fi eld. In Serbia in

autumn 1941 the Germans had been seeking desperately to regain ground

against an opponent who, in the western part of the country at least, had

threatened to overwhelm them. The fear this had engendered was one

of the factors, albeit only one, that had spurred them to such terrible

reprisals. But in the NDH in early 1942, neither Partisans nor Chetniks

constituted the same level of mortal threat. There was no cause yet, then,

for German troops to feel the degrees of fear and desperation that had

assailed their comrades in Serbia. This too was likely to make some Ger-

man army units conduct themselves somewhat less ferociously, at least

for a time.

Bosnia’s mountainous environment, meanwhile, was more remote