German president to atone for Nazi massacre on trip to Italy

[MaPen]

Most German forces in Italy were involved in fighting Allied forces. The combatting of partisans was left mainly to Mussolini's forces.

Where the article refers to SS, it most probably means German police formations, which by 1944 had largely been absorbed into the SS.

Unit responsible for the Marzabotto massacre was Aufklärungs-Abteilung 16 of 16. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Reichsführer-SS under the command of SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Walter Reder.

[AndyW]

In my opinion when civilians fight another army from the back they stop being civilians, they are soldiers without a uniform.

Problem is:

What if a group of ten civilians (partisans) ambush one platoon of soldiers who INVADED your country, killing 33 soldiers and run away? The military admin didn't get those ten so they decide to use retatitation.

Is it O.K. to kill 33, or 165 (1:5 in early France), or, let's say 330 (1:10 in Italy) or 3300 (1:100, in Serbia) INNOCENT civilians as retalitation?

How would you react if your daughter would be under those 330 randomly choosen executed or your 18-year old boy would be under the 33 killed soldiers?

Any easy answers?

[michael mills]

AndyW wrote:

What if a group of ten civilians (partisans) ambush one platoon of soldiers who INVADED your country, killing 33 soldiers and run away? The military admin didn't get those ten so they decide to use retatitation.

Is it O.K. to kill 33, or 165 (1:5 in early France), or, let's say 330 (1:10 in Italy) or 3300 (1:100, in Serbia) INNOCENT civilians as retalitation?

I think you have misunderstood the nature of official German retaliations, ie those that were ordered by German authorities in response to an act of violence (what we would now call "terrorism") committed against German forces.

In Western Europe at least, hostages were not innocent civilians rounded up at random in the streets. Usually specific groups were targeted to provide the hostages; persons already in prison, petty criminals, known members of the Communist Party or other proscribed organisations, persons arrested for resistance and various offences against the German occupation authorities, and of course Jews.

Take the case of the Ardeatine Caves massacre at Rome. There the Security Police was ordered to execute a specific number of hostages in retaliation for an attack on a German police detachment in the streets of Rome, in the ratio of 10:1 I think. The Security Police found it very difficult to find enough persons in the eligible categories to make up the number, and had to scour the jails. They simply could not snatch people off the streets.

Throughout most of the German occupation of Western Europe, the average citizen was in very little danger of being selected as a hostage for a retaliatory action. On the other hand, if he was in jail for such things as posting resistance placards, or hoarding, or smuggling, then he was in danger of being selected.

The situation changed when the German forces began to retreat. At that time there was a number of indiscriminate massacres, apparently carried out on the initiative of the soldiers involved, without orders having been given from higher up. In many case, perhaps most, the massacres were perpetrated by units recently arrived from the Eastern Front, where they had undergone a process of barbarisation. The archetypical massacre of this sort was the one at Oradour-sur-Glane. Usually the massacres were a sign of frustration at constant partisan attacks.

In the East the situation was different. There German retaliatory actions were less discriminate. Nevertheless, there was still a policy of targeting particular minority groups, so as not to turn the majority population against the German occupiers. In Serbia, apart from the Kragujevac massacre, it was mainly Jewish men who were executed in retaliation for attacks on German troops by Serb resisters. Although Serbs were massively victimised, the perpetrators were Croats and Bosnian Muslims rather than Germans.

[AndyW]

In Western Europe at least, hostages were not innocent civilians rounded up at random in the streets. Usually specific groups were targeted to provide the hostages; persons already in prison, petty criminals, known members of the Communist Party or other proscribed organisations, persons arrested for resistance and various offences against the German occupation authorities, and of course Jews.

I fail to t understand how a Jew, a member of the Communist party, a criminal etc. who is in prison at the time of a crime, should not be considered as being "innocent" on this crime. The fact that German authorities declared them as "death worthy" (without trail, of course) doesn't make them criminals.

Take the case of the Ardeatine Caves massacre at Rome. There the Security Police was ordered to execute a specific number of hostages in retaliation for an attack on a German police detachment in the streets of Rome, in the ratio of 10:1 I think. The Security Police found it very difficult to find enough persons in the eligible categories to make up the number, and had to scour the jails. They simply could not snatch people off the streets.

Let's get this straight:

After the attack in the Via Rasalla in Rome, killing 33 German Police members, local SD and the Chief of 14th Army (Gen. von Mackensen) ordered a reprisal execution of 1: 10.

The following were assiged for execution :

154 inmates of Gestapo-prisons (including 5 Italian Generals and 11 Officers)
43 inmates of Wehrmacht-prisons (only 3 of those had a death sentence anyway, 1 was even found innocent in his trail!)
10 people arrested at Via Rasalla because they were "suspected of being pro-communist"; in fact those 10 had been arrested randomly.
50 inmates out of Italian prisons
75 Jews who had the "bad luck" to be in prison. If they hadn't been in prision SD "would have had to arrest the same number of innocent (!) Roman citizens"
10 Jews who had been arrested _after_ the partisan attack, to fill up the quota

Of this 342 men and women, 335 (actually 15 more than ordered!) of them were executed by a shot through the base of the skull.

In Serbia, apart from the Kragujevac massacre, it was mainly Jewish men who were executed in retaliation for attacks on German troops by Serb resisters.

Not exactely right. Pls. check, the Kraljevo massacre as another example for indiscrimiate, random arrestings, and the huge part of Gypsies and s.c. "Communists" in the overall number of victims.

Wehrmacht General Franz Boehme defined the potential victims of reprisal executions:

"All Communists, all male residents who are suspected to be so, all Jews, a certain number of nationalistic or democratic-mindend resisents."

Not mentioned in this order are the gypsies, who also fell victim to mass execution (quota: 1:100 for every killed German, 1:50 for every wounded).

German Wehrmacht and SiPo killed something between 20,000 and 30,000 civilists between September and December 1941, including all male Jews and Gypsies.

Although Serbs were massively victimised, the perpetrators were Croats and Bosnian Muslims rather than Germans.

Are you saying that those Croats and Bosnian Muslims shot Serbs in retaliation without being ordered by Wehrmacht and SS authorities to do so?

[Roberto]

In the East the situation was different. There German retaliatory actions were less discriminate. Nevertheless, there was still a policy of targeting particular minority groups, so as not to turn the majority population against the German occupiers. In Serbia, apart from the Kragujevac massacre, it was mainly Jewish men who were executed in retaliation for attacks on German troops by Serb resisters. Although Serbs were massively victimised, the perpetrators were Croats and Bosnian Muslims rather than Germans.

Croats and Bosnian Muslims were Nazi Germany’s allies, of course. And the Germans also did a considerable part of the killing, which was by no means restricted to Jews – especially after they had run out of them:

Germans and Serbs: The Emergence of Nazi Antipartisan Policies in 1941
Christopher R. Browning

During World War II, roughly 1.5 million Yugoslavs - 10 percent of the population - lost their lives. The demographic catastrophe occurred in many forms, but three were most prominent: (1) the genocidal massacres of the Nazi-sponsored Ustash regime in Croatia, (2) the veritable civil war between various ethnic groups and political movements in Yugoslavia unleashed by the German dismemberment of the country, and (3) the occupation policies of the German military itself aimed at crushing partisan resistance. If the German occupiers were indirectly responsible for the first two forms of bloodletting, they were directly responsible for the third.
This essay will focus on the third factor, and in particular on the question of the emergence of Germany’s antipartisan policy in response to the uprising in Serbia in the summer and fall of 1941. I will argue that this response was not simply a programmatic deduction from Hitler’s racial ideology but was produced by a more complex combination of causes: (1) the negative stereotype of Serbs that permeated German society; (2) the political culture of the Nazi regime, which spread other racial stereotypes and set a premium on ruthlessness; and (3) the occupiers’ shifting perceptions of political expediency and military necessity.
How in general were Serbs perceived by Germans? Several anecdotes are illustrative. On July 24, 1914, British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey informed the German ambassador in London that if Serbia accepted the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum, it “would really cease to count as an independent nation.” Upon reading the report of his ambassador, Kaiser Wilhelm II scribbled one of his famous marginal comments: “This would be very desirable. It is not a nation in the European sense, but a band of robbers.” Field Marshal Wilhelm List, a deeply religious and culturally refined Bavarian who served as the first German occupation commander of the Balkans in 1941, was asked at his postwar trial in Nuremberg if the Serbs were actually different from other people. He replied that the Serbs were “far more passionate, hot blooded and more cruel” because of the prominent non-European aspect of their history. “The individual in Serbia is obviously like every other peasant under normal conditions, but as soon as differences arise, then, caused by the hot blood in their veins, the cruelty caused by hundreds of years of Turkish domination erupts.”
Neither Kaiser Wilhelm nor Field Marshal List were Nazis expressing the doctrinaire racial views of a Hitler-inspired ideology. Rather their comments, separated by more than 30 years and two world wars, reflected a negative stereotype that was pervasive in German society, namely that European civilization ended with the boundaries of the old Austro-Hungarian empire and that the Orient began in Serbia. According to this negative stereotype, a special “Balkan mentality” prevailed in this region. Balkan peoples in general and Serbs in particular could not really be considered true members of the European community of civilized nations.
This stereotype was only reinforced by Yugoslavia’s rejection of its alliance with Nazi Germany in March 1941 and the partisan uprising against German occupation in the following June. Both of these actions - like the Sarajevo assassination in 1914 - were viewed as typical examples of Serbian “treachery”. The Waldheim affais all too clearly indicates that the ensuing anti-partisan policies of the German occupiers in the Balkans are even today viewed by most Germans and Austrians as having been legitimate or at least understandable military measures provoked by the insidious tactics of a particularly cruel and brutal population - thus quite distinct from Nazi crimes by racial ideology. Therefore, the treatment of the inhabitants of Serbia under German occupation must be seen, at least in part, as a manifestation not of National Socialism but of a negative stereotype far more widespread and enduringly held in German, and perhaps even more, in Austrian society.
Of course, that is only part of the explanation. Many of the Germans and Austrians who served in the Balkans in World War II were ardent Nazis and devoted followers of a man who considered all the Slavic peoples of eastern Europe to inhabit a relatively low position in his imagined hierarchy of races. However, this belief in Slavic inferiority did not inhibit Hitler from allying with Slovaks, Bulgarians, and later Croatians when it suited him, nor did it deter him from initially offering both the despised Poles and the Serbian - dominated Yugoslav state the privileges of junior partnership with the Third Reich.
It was the spurning of these offers that exposed first Poland and then Yugoslavia to the full fury of German aggression and occupation, exemplified in the latter case above all by the terror bombing of defenseless Belgrade followed by the total dismemberment of the country.
If the fate of the Yugoslav state was sealed, the future of the Serbian remnant was not. Were the Serbs Balkan Untermenschen whose anti-German attitude from Sarajevo to the Belgrade Putsch proved them so unreliable that only a vengeful policy of population decimation and total subjection held out the prospect of eventual pacification? Or did at least some Serbs, if properly cultivated and offered the prospect of a future role in the New Order, have the potential to become useful junior partners and collaborators, facilitating political control and economic exploitation of Serbia on behalf of the German war effort? Hitler’s emotional and ideological inclination tended toward the former alternative, but the priority given the eastern front and the resulting German manpower shortage in Serbia required pragmatic toleration of some Serbs. Without a definitive decision from Hitler, this question of the future position of Serbia in the New Order continued to divide the German occupiers of all stripes - diplomats, bureaucrats, military professionals, party loyalists, and even SS men - throughout the war.
If Nazi ideology provided no explicit program for the fate of Serbia, how did it most influence German behavior there? I would suggest that its impact was felt most importantly in two ways. First, the Nazi proclivity for racial stereotyping proved quite contagious. From the beginning of the German occupation, the widely held negative stereotype of the Serbs was quickly intermingled with other racial stereotypes. Of course, the Jews were assumed to be Communists and would hence bear the brunt of the Germans’ anti-partisan policies even before the Final Solution as a specifically anti-Jewish policy was initiated. Gypsies in turn were equated with Jews in the basic racial legislation decreed in Serbia. When the Communist partisans were characterized as “outlaw bands”, the Gypsies faced double jeopardy, for they were also seen as criminally inclined nomadic bands. When the partisan resistance reached its peak in 1941 and was perceived as a “national uprising” involving the entire population, then all Serbs faced the same fate as Communists, Jews, and Gypsies. One stereotype merged into another, creating a widening circle of victims.
Intensifying the potential for havoc was a second Nazi contribution to the German occupation regime in Serbia, namely a political culture that placed a premium on ruthless behavior free of traditional moral norms and inhibitions. Hitler’s punitive terror bombing of Belgrade set the tone even before the partisan uprising, and thereafter the German documents are filled with shrill exhortations for policies and measures that were “ruthless, harsh and draconic”. In such an atmosphere, only violence and brutality, not moderation and restraint, could flourish.
We must now see how these factors - the pervasive negative stereotypes and the Nazi cult of ruthlessness - shaped German anti-partisan policy in the face of the outbreak of a Communist-led uprising in Serbia after June 22, 1941. Initially, the Germans were inclined to avoid using army troops, for the three divisions in Serbia were the dregs of the German army – under-strength, overage, poorly equipped and still in training. Instead the Germans intended to use police measures and terror. The former involved the use of not only German but also Serbian police. The latter meant above all reprisal shootings of arrested “communists and Jews”. The identity of the two was assumed from the beginning, and the number of reprisal victims in these two categories totaled 111 by July 22. At that point the German commander formulated new guidelines for reprisal executions, which also permitted measures against the local population if they made themselves “co-responsible” by passively resisting the investigation of by offering fertile soil to anti-German activity. In addition to suspected Communists and Jews, all Serbs found in the vicinity of partisan activity and deemed co-responsible were vulnerable to German reprisal measures.
Neither police measures nor reprisal terror stemmed the rising tide of the insurgency. The German occupiers, however, could not agree on countermeasures. The High Command of the Armed Forces (OKW) exhorted even more drastic terror, especially hanging rather than shooting so-called saboteurs; Field Marshal List, visiting his headquarters in Saloniki, wanted the army troops to take a more active role; and a number of local occupation officials advocated a strengthened and better-armed Serbian police.
All three policies in fact failed. By August the collaborating Serbian police force was demoralized and disintegrating – a process accelerated no doubt by the practice of forcing Serbian policemen at gunpoint to carry out reprisal shootings of their own countrymen. The organization of army pursuit commandos was ineffective, for the troops were too few and too immobile to cover the territory assigned. Reprisals, which increased nearly tenfold in August, proved to be not only ineffective but also counterproductive. As one German report noted, “Even with the most unrestricted reprisal measures – up until the end of August a total of approximately 1,000 communists and Jews had been shot or publicly hanged and the houses of the guilty burned down – it was not possible to restrain the growth of the armed revolt.” Many German observers frankly concluded that rather than deterring resistance, reprisal policy was driving hitherto peaceful and politically indifferent Serbs into the arms of the partisans.
For the Germans the situation in Serbia reached crisis proportions in early September. They had just installed a new collaboration regime under General Nedic in the hope that he would have the prestige and popularity to mobilize anti-Communist sentiment against the partisans. But the Nedic experiment produced no immediate dividends; in the first test case after the installation of the new government, 450 Serbian police sent to Sabac refused to fight. More disastrous for the Germans was the growing threat to their own troops. In all of August the German army in Serbia had suffered 30 dead, 23 wounded, and 1 missing. Suddenly, on the first of September, 100 men were captured at Losnica, and three days later another 175 were captured in a breakout from Krupanj. The thinly stretched German troops in Serbia were therefore not only unable to suppress sabotage and ambush but were not threatened with piecemeal defeat and capture by increasingly large and emboldened partisan units. Thus, the partisan uprising was not only an embarrassment to the professional pride of the German army; if not checked, the increasing display of German military impotence and vulnerability would hearten Germany’s enemies and stimulate yet further resistance that could snowball into disaster. In this crisis-ridden atmosphere, the Germans formulated new measures.
List’s chief of staff, Hermann Förtsch, concluded quite simply: “Downright violence still remains the last resort.” His boss concurred and issued blistering directives from Saloniki not only for “ruthless and immediate measures against the insurgents” but also for “increased pressure upon the population” because he was convinced the entire population was implicated in the uprising.
List also dispatched frontline units, capable of going on the offensive, for a punitive expedition into the partisan-controlled Sava Bend region around Sabac. The guiding principle of this expedition was simple: “The entire population had to be punished, not only the men.” All men between the ages of fourteen and seventy were to be interned in a concentration camp; all inhabitants who participated in resistance or who attempted to flee were to be shot and their houses burned down; all women and children were to be driven off the land and into the mountains. Once cut off from their food supplies from the valley and faced with feeding the women and children, the insurgents would it was hoped experience a “food catastrophe.” The new commanding general in Serbia, Franz Böhme, exhorted his troops as follows: “Your mission lies in … the country in which German blood flowed in 1914 through the treachery of Serbs, women and children. You are the avengers of these dead. An intimidating example must be created for the whole of Serbia, which must hit the whole population most severely.”
Between September 23 and October 2, troops of the 342nd division cut a swath of destruction through the Sabac region, executind 1,126 suspected Communists, interning over 20,000 men, burning villages considered sympathetic to the partisans, and relenting from driving off the women and children only at the last moment when it became clear that no one would be left to take care of the cattle and harvest.
Rather than deter resistance, the expedition merely provoked counter-atrocities. The Germans knew that the partisans held more than 300 German prisoners, and military intelligence eagerly tracked their whereabouts in the hopes of rescue. On October 2, however, the partisans ambushed a communications unit near Topola and executed by machine-gun fire at close range the troops who had surrendered, killing a total of 21 men. Though this was a small fraction of what the Germans had just done at Sabac, Böhme immediately responded by escalating his terror policy another quantum leap. The head of the OKW, Wilhelm Keitel, had recently ordered that for every German soldier killed by insurgents in occupied territories, 50 to 100 “Communists” were to be executed in retaliation. He justified this order on the grounds that “a human life in these countries often counts for nothing and a deterrent effect can be achieved only through unusual harshness.” Keitel’s view struck a responsive chord among the Germans in Serbia, where it was considered axiomatic that “with the people of the Balkans, the life of others means nothing, one’s own life only very little.” Thus, Böhme immediately grasped the maximum ratio of 100:1, expanded the order to cover Jews as well as Communists, and let loose his firing squads on 2,100 “Communists and Jews” interned in camps at Belgrade and Sabac. At the latter camp these executions were particularly absurd and grotesque, in that predominantly Austrian troops gunned down central European Jewish refugees mostly from Vienna in retaliation for Serbian partisan attacks on the German army.
The 100:1 reprisal ratio was then established as standard operating procedure for all subsequent casualties. When the 717th Division of Major General Hoffmann, operating south of Belgrade, suffered losses in mid-October, it had no access to a convenient reprisal pool of interned Jews. Instead the Germans conducted roundups in Kraljevo and Kragujevac, shooting 1,755 people in the first city and 2,300 in the second. In Kragujevac the victims included the students of the local high school and the workers of an airplane factory producing for the German war effort, though the Germans had never suffered a single casualty within the city. This random roundup and massacre of over 4,000 Serbs in Kraljevo and Kragujevac between October 17 and 21 was criticized by various German occupation authorities, by Nedic, and even by the OKW, causing Böhme to reconsider his reprisal policy. “Arbitrary arrests and shootings of Serbs are driving to the insurgents circles of the population which up to now did not participate in the insurrection,” Böhme’s new order explained. “It must be … avoided, that precisely those elements of the population are seized and shot as hostages who, being non-participants in the insurrection, did not flee before the German punitive expedition.” Thus the Germans reverted to what might be called the proximity principle, and henceforth reprisal victims were to be taken from those found in the vicinity of partisan attacks or from villages considered focal points of the insurgency. If Serbs in the countryside were still at high risk, those living in urban areas that remained peaceful were relatively more secure.
While the Serbs received a partial reprieve from German terror, this was no help to the Jews and Gypsies. If the Germans could conceive that not all Serbs were Communists and that the random shooting of innocent Serbs would damage German interests, they had no doubt at all that Jews were anti-German and that the Gypsies were no different from the Jews. And if more care had to be exercised in selecting Serbian hostages, the pressure to find hostages elsewhere to meet the 100:1 quota was that much greater. The new German policy stated succintly: “As a matter of principle it must be said that Jews and Gypsies in general represent an element of insecurity and thus a danger to public order and safety … That is why it is a matter of principle in each case to put all Jewish men and all male Gypsies at the disposal of the troops as hostages.” The fate of the male Jews and Gypsies in Serbia was sealed, and their execution by army firing squad was completed by early November.
At the same time the tide of battle in Serbia turned in the Germans’ favor, and by December the partisans had retreated to the mountainous regions of Bosnia and Croatia beyond the Serbian border. They would continue their struggle against the Germans elsewhere but would not return in force to Serbia until 1944. With the first phase of the partisan war in Serbia at an end, the reprisal body count stood at about 15,000, of which some 4,500 – 5,000 were Jews and Gypsies. In contrast, on December 1, 1941, the Germans rescued 319 prisoners whom the partisans had held since September but not executed.
The Germans were convinced that the reprisal measures had made a major contribution to their success. The anti-partisan policies developed in Serbia – mass shootings as well as mass internment and deportation of the population in insurgent areas – would therefore be expanded upon elsewhere in Yugoslavia in the following years. Although the partisan war became increasingly vicious on both sides, this cannot alter the historical record that the deadly escalation was initiated by the Germans in Serbia in 1941. In doing so, the Germans were not reacting in kind to atrocities committed by savage partisans, as their postwar apologists would have it. Rather the Germans perceived the local population through a series of negative stereotypes and formulated policy in accordance with a political culture that exulted in violence and brutality. In doing so, they drowned their initial opposition in a sea of blood but ultimately provoked an unrelenting resistance that plagued them for the rest of the war.

The above essay was published in: A Mosaic of Victims. Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis. Edited by Michael Berenbaum. New York University Press, 1990. Emphasis is mine.

The theater I’m most interested in, however, is the Eastern Front. There orders such as Keitel’s order of 16 September 1941 called for ruthless and indiscriminate repression of resistance from the very start. Excerpt from an online translation:

To nip the plots in the bud the most drastic means are to be employed immediately at the first provocation in order to make the authority of the occupation force prevail and to prevent further spreading. Attention should be paid to the fact that a human life in the countries concerned often means nothing and only by unusual severity can a deterrent effect be achieved. In these cases the life of one German soldier must be atoned for by the death sentence for 50 to 100 communists, as a rule. The manner of execution shall further increase the deterrent effect.

Source of quote:

http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/USSR4.htm

Keitel became even more explicit in his order of 16.12.1942:

1.) Der Feind setzt im Bandenkampf fanatische, kommunistisch geschulte Kämpfer ein, die vor keiner Gewalttat zurückschrecken. Es geht hier mehr denn je um Sein oder Nichtsein. Mit soldatischer Ritterlichkeit oder mit den Vereinbarungen der Genfer Konvention hat dieser Kampf nichts mehr zu tun.
Wenn dieser Kampf gegen die Banden sowohl im Osten wie auf dem Balkan nicht mit den allerbrutalsten Mitteln geführt wird, so reichen in absehbarer Zeit die verfügbaren Kräfte nicht mehr aus, um dieser Pest Herr zu werden.
Die Truppe ist daher berechtigt und verpflichtet, in diesem Kampf ohne Einschränkung auch gegen Frauen und Kinder jeder Mittel anzuwenden, wenn es nur zum Erfolg führt.
Rücksichten, gleich welcher Art, sind ein Verbrechen gegen das deutsche Volk und den Soldaten an der Front, der die Folgen der Bandenanschläge zu tragen hat und keinerlei Verständnis für irgendwelche Schonung der Banden oder ihrer Mitläufer haben kann.
Diese Grundsätze müssen auch die Anwendung des “Kampfanweisung für die Bandenbekämpfung im Osten” beherrschen.
2.) Kein in der Bandenbekämpfung angesetzter Deutscher darf wegen seines Verhaltens im Kampf gegen die Banden und ihre Mitläufer disziplinarisch oder kriegsgerichtlich zur Rechenschaft gezogen werden.
Die Befehlshaber der im Bandenkampf eingesetzten Truppen sind dafür verantwortlich, daß
sämtliche Offiziere der ihnen unterstellten Einheiten über diesen Befehl umgehend in der eindringlichsten Form belehrt werden,
ihre Rechtsberater von diesem Befehl sofort Kenntnis erhalten,
keine Urteile bestätigt werden, die diesem Befehl widersprechen.

Source of quote: Ernst Klee/Willi Dressen, ”Gott mit uns”: Der deutsche Vernichtungskrieg im Osten 1939-1945, 1989 S. Fischer Verlag GmbH Frankfurt am Main, page 68. Reference of quote: Verfahren Js 4/65 GstA Ffm, Freiburger Bände Bd. III.

My translation:

1.) In the bandit fighting the enemy uses fanatical fighters with communist training who shrink from no act of violence. The issue here is more an ever one of to be or not to be. With soldierly chivalry or the agreements of the Geneva Convention this fight no longer has anything to do.
If this fight against the bandits both in the East and on the Balkans is not conducted by the most brutal means, the forces available will in a foreseeable time no longer be sufficient to control this plague.
The troops are thus authorized and obliged to employ in this fight any means, also against women and children, if only they lead to success.
Considerations of whatever nature are a crime against the German people and the soldier at the front, who must bear the consequences of the bandits’ attacks and thus can have no understanding for any mercy granted to the bandits or their followers.
There principles must also govern the application of the “Combat Instructions for the Fight Against Bandits in the East”.
2.) No German employed in the fight against the bandits may be taken to reckoning disciplinarily or by court martial on account of his behavior in the fight against the bandits and their followers.
The commanders of the troops employed in the fight against the bandits are responsible for seeing to it that
all officers of the units subordinated to them are notified of this order immediately and in the most thorough form,
their legal consultants obtain knowledge of this order immediately,
no verdicts contradicting this order are confirmed.

[MaPen]

Croats and Bosnian Muslims were Nazi Germany’s allies, of course.

Actually the situation in Yugoslavia was far more complex. Croats and Bosnian Muslims joined different sides. Some joined SS, some Wehrmacht, some Ustasha and the LARGEST number of them joined partisans. But it's the truth that the state they lived in (NDH - Independent State of Croatia) was Axis ally. So, NDH was indeed Nazi Germany ally but this doesn't hold true for the majority of the people who lived there.

medorjurgen, I enjoy very much reading your posts because I share a lot of your viewpoints. But I had to correct you on this one, so no offence

MaPen

[Roberto]

Croats and Bosnian Muslims were Nazi Germany’s allies, of course.

Actually the situation in Yugoslavia was far more complex. Croats and Bosnian Muslims joined different sides. Some joined SS, some Wehrmacht, some Ustasha and the LARGEST number of them joined partisans. But it's the truth that the state they lived in (NDH - Independent State of Croatia) was Axis ally. So, NDH was indeed Nazi Germany ally but this doesn't hold true for the majority of the people who lived there.

medorjurgen, I enjoy very much reading your posts because I share a lot of your viewpoints. But I had to correct you on this one, so no offence

MaPen

By no means. I meant the Croats and Bosnian Muslims that Michael Mills was referring to, i.e. those on the German side. That these were not all or even a majority I am aware of and apologize for not having expressed myself more clearly. Tito himself was a Croat, if I well remember.

[michael mills]

AndW wrote:

I fail to t understand how a Jew, a member of the Communist party, a criminal etc. who is in prison at the time of a crime, should not be considered as being "innocent" on this crime. The fact that German authorities declared them as "death worthy" (without trail, of course) doesn't make them criminals.

I think you are missing the point, which is that the German authorities did not round up and execute civilian inhabitants of occupied countries at random, but rather that retaliatory measures were TARGETED at groups considered "criminal" by the German authorities. WE might consider the persons selected for execution as innocent, but from the German point of view they belonged to criminal groups.

The list you have given of the persons selected for execution as a reprisal for the Via Rasella (note spelling) resistance (or "terrorist"; take your pick) attack bears out my point. The SD had to find persons from within the target groups, not at random, and it was difficult for it to find the required number.

Are you saying that those Croats and Bosnian Muslims shot Serbs in retaliation without being ordered by Wehrmacht and SS authorities to do so?

No, I am saying that Croats and Bosnian Muslims waged a war of extermination against the ethnic Serbs living in Croatia and Bosnia, in order to make those territories ethnically "pure". I am saying that war of extermination was waged solely at the initiative of the Croat and Bosnian Muslim leadership, and was approved of by most Croats and Bosnian Muslims, who hated and despised Serbs and regarded them as a foreign element living in their territories. I am saying that that war was waged against the will of the German and Italian occupiers, who saw it as making their task of pacifying the country all the more difficult.

[michael mills]

MaPen wrote:

Actually the situation in Yugoslavia was far more complex. Croats and Bosnian Muslims joined different sides. Some joined SS, some Wehrmacht, some Ustasha and the LARGEST number of them joined partisans. But it's the truth that the state they lived in (NDH - Independent State of Croatia) was Axis ally. So, NDH was indeed Nazi Germany ally but this doesn't hold true for the majority of the people who lived there.

Erroneous. The majority of Tito's Partisan Army consisted of ethnic Serbs from Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. They joined Tito because they were being massacred by the Ustasha (which included Bosnian Muslims as well as Croats), and the partisans offered their only hope of survival. There were not many ethnic Croat Partisans, and even fewer Bosnian Muslims.

It is true that the Ustasha was a minority party within Croatia. Nevertheless, the Croatian and Bosnian Muslim peoples as a whole fully approved of its attempts to remove the minority ethnic Serb population within the Nezavisima Drzava Hrvatska, and did nothing to stop it, even though some of them (eg the Catholic Church leadership) disapproved of the brutality with which it was being carried out.

[Roberto]

I am saying that that war was waged against the will of the German and Italian occupiers, who saw it as making their task of pacifying the country all the more difficult.

The above is likely to be correct. In a book called Genocide in Satellite Croatia, 1941-1945: A Record of Racial and Religious Persecutions and Massacres, by Edmond Paris, translated by Lois Perkins, published by The American Institute for Balkan Affairs, Chicago, in 1961, Nazi general Lothar Rendulic is quoted as having said the following about the massacre of Serbs by the Ustase:

While German troops were still in several places in Croatia, the Croatians began a beastly persecution of the Orthodox (Serbs). At this time at least a half million people were killed. An unbelievable governing mentality was responsible, as I learned in August 1943 when I received the answer to a question of mine from a govenment functionary in the circle of the chief of state. When I said that I could not at all understand how it was possible, in spite of all the hatred, to kill half a million people, he answered: ‘Half a million is libelous. No more than 200,000 were killed.’ Against this type of thinking ... one can do nothing with arguments. During the period of my command, signs appeared of a new persecution of the Orthodox. That persecution caused me no end of trouble and I finally had to put a stop to it with energetic measures and threats of force.

[MaPen]

MaPen wrote:

Actually the situation in Yugoslavia was far more complex. Croats and Bosnian Muslims joined different sides. Some joined SS, some Wehrmacht, some Ustasha and the LARGEST number of them joined partisans. But it's the truth that the state they lived in (NDH - Independent State of Croatia) was Axis ally. So, NDH was indeed Nazi Germany ally but this doesn't hold true for the majority of the people who lived there.

Erroneous. The majority of Tito's Partisan Army consisted of ethnic Serbs from Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. They joined Tito because they were being massacred by the Ustasha (which included Bosnian Muslims as well as Croats), and the partisans offered their only hope of survival. There were not many ethnic Croat Partisans, and even fewer Bosnian Muslims.

It is true that the Ustasha was a minority party within Croatia. Nevertheless, the Croatian and Bosnian Muslim peoples as a whole fully approved of its attempts to remove the minority ethnic Serb population within the Nezavisima Drzava Hrvatska, and did nothing to stop it, even though some of them (eg the Catholic Church leadership) disapproved of the brutality with which it was being carried out.

First, let me say that it is indesputable that Ustasha forces commited appaling attrocities against Serb civil population, particulary in Lika region, eastern Hercegovina (part of Bosnia) and of course in Jasenovac concentration camp.

But, claiming that majority of Tito's Partisans were ethnic Serbs from Bosnia and Croatia and that there were not many ethnic Croat Partisans, and even fewer Bosnian Muslims, is simply not true.

Partisan force was organised mainly on regional basis, because they couldn't control communications and were unable to transfer units very quickly. It is true however, that Serbs rappresented almost half of Tito's forces but this is because Serbs rappresented almost half of Yugoslavia population.

Now lets see some numbers. In 1942-1943 there were 150.000 partisans in Yugoslavia and were composed: 44 % Serbs (not only Bosnian Serbs but also Serbs from Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro), 30 % Croats, 10 % Slovenes plus the others (Montenegrins, Bosnian Muslims, Jews, Gipsies et al.). There were 96 partisan brigades, from them 38 Croat, 23 were mixed Bosnian brigades (formed from different etnicities) and 17 were Slovene. Axis forces numbered as follows: 160.000 Germans, 350.000 Italians, NDH forces (Ustashas and Domobrans) 150.000 and 80.000 Drazha Mihailovich Chetniks.

The decisive battles were fought from January 1943 (Operations WEISS I, II and III) to June 1943 (Operation SCHWARTZ). The main result from Operations Weiss for partisans was that they survived as effective combat force although they suffered heavy casulties. They also succeded in destroing Chetnik forces from which they couldn't recover. In those battles one third of partisans died, nearly half of them were Croats.

MaPen

[michael mills]

The material posted by MaPen reads very much like the official Croatian version of history that is being propagated today. It is based largely on the works of the late Franjo Tudjman, and has the purpose of countering the Titoist version of history that was propagated from 1945 until the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

Now, the Titoist version of history was a distortion containing many falsehoods and exaggerations, particularly in relation to the number of ethnic Serbs killed. However, the official Croatian version is equally false.

This official Croatian version of history tries to do two things. On the one hand, it tries to sanitise the role of the Croat people during the Second World War by on the one hand downplaying the role of the Ustasha, claiming that it did not represent the will of the Croatian people and was imposed on it from outside, and on the other magnifying the role of ethnic Croats in the anti-German resistance, giving the impression that most Croats supported the Allied side.

The other thing it tries to do is to downplay the role of ethnic Serbs in the anti-German resistance, and to give the impression that a very large number of Serbs, perhaps the majority, collaborated with the German and Italian occupiers. To do that it has taken over one of the main planks of the Titoist version of history, namely that the Chetniks were a Serb collaborationist force, a distortion that MaPen appears to have accepted.

In fact, the Chetniks under Mihailovic were not collaborationist, certainly not in the sense that the armed forces of the Nezavisima Drzava Hrvatska were. Mihailovic led a Chetnik uprising against the German occupation very soon after the invasion, but it was crushed by the ruthless retaliatiory measures of the German Army (eg the Kragujevac massacre). Thereafter Mihailovic ordered the forces under his command not to attack the Germans, so as not to cause any more retaliation against the Serb civilian population.

Tito's partisan movement did not get off the ground until after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Its main purpose was not to liberate territory, but rather to create a diversion that would take pressure off the Red Army by forcing Germany to keep large forces in Yugoslavia. For that reason, Tito did not care that attacks on the German and Italian occupiers would result in retaliation against the civilian population; in fact, he probably welcomed it, since that would create more recruits for his partisan army.

It is true that the Chetniks from time to time entered into negotiations with the German and Italian occupiers, and had an unofficial ceasefire in place. But Tito himself also negotiated with the German Army from time to time; the negotiations were only broken off because Hitler himself ordered his generals not to do business with a "Communist bandit".

It is also true that the Yugoslav Communist Party was stronger in Croatia than in Serbia, and had more Croat members than Serb. Many of those ethnic Croat Communists joined Tito's partisan army, and provided its Croat component. However, the bulk of Tito's army did not consist of committed Communists, but rather of apolitical civilians fleeing persecution. Most of such people were ethnic Serbs from Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina who had experienced the vicious persecution at the hands of the forces of the Croatian Government in 1941. Ethnic Croats were not subject to persecution by anyone, hence there was no need for them to flee to the partisans. While most Croats were not fanatical supporters of Pavelic, they did not oppose him either, and generally tried to stay out of the fighting.

There was a lot of fighting between Tito's partisans and Mihailovic's Chetniks, but it is a distortion to present that as part of a resistance against the German and Italian occupiers. In fact, it was a civil war between two factions, with both jockeying to be in a position of greater power so as to be able to take over after the inevitable defeat of the Axis. It would be true to say that both Partisans and Chetniks tried to avoid fighting the Germans as much as possible, since that would just lead to the attrition of their forces, and in fact preferred to fight each other, since that affect the outcome at the end of the war. Essentially, both Partisans and Chetniks left the defeat of the Axis to the Allied forces, and concentrated on trying to destroy each other.

Curiously, there are today some Jewish historians who support this new official Croatian version of history (eg Philip Cohen). I say curious, since the Jews of Croatia and Bosnia were destroyed largely by Croatian forces acting to some degree on their own initiative, more so than by German actions.

[viriato]

To Mr.Mills:

Curiously, there are today some Jewish historians who support this new official Croatian version of history (eg Philip Cohen). I say curious, since the Jews of Croatia and Bosnia were destroyed largely by Croatian forces acting to some degree on their own initiative, more so than by German actions.

And why do they do it? What is in your opinion the ideological rationale behind those authors?

We should also not forget that a serbian government was formed under general Niditch, and that this government was not truly opposed by the partisans at least during the first years of the war and was only mildy opposed by the chetniks (in fact there was some collaboration between them).

And for the support the communist party, if I remeber well, it had more votes in Serbia than in Croatia, at least when they could face an election.

[MaPen]

Mr. Mills,

I agree with almost EVERYTHING you wrote, apart for the accusation that this is official Croatian version of history. I never did any reading of Franjo Tudjman's works, because I considered him to be a nationalist and responsible for many attrocities that happened in Croatia and Bosnia in 90's.

So could you please explain me two things:

1. Since you accused me to propagate official Croatian version of history I'm interested in the source that proves that this is in fact OFFICIAL Croation version of history.

and

2. could you please direct me to a source that proves that majority of Tito's partisans were Bosnian or Croat Serbs (after all, this is apparently the only subject we disagree ).

And, if you allow, a well-intentioned suggestion. If you use the original name of NDH use it right. It is Nezavisna Država Hrvatska and not Nezavisima Drzava Hrvatska.

all the best,

MaPen

[michael mills]

To Mr.Mills:

Quote:
Curiously, there are today some Jewish historians who support this new official Croatian version of history (eg Philip Cohen). I say curious, since the Jews of Croatia and Bosnia were destroyed largely by Croatian forces acting to some degree on their own initiative, more so than by German actions.

And why do they do it? What is in your opinion the ideological rationale behind those authors?

I do not know. Perhaps they just want to be on the winning side. Perhaps it is useful to have the Serbs identified in the public mind as the "bad guys", rather than the Israelis (although that is no longer working).

Philip Cohen in particular, in his book "Serbia' Secret War", accuses the Serb ruling class of mass collaboration in the destruction of the Jews of Serbia. That is a distortion of history, since the destruction was carried out entirely by the Wehrmacht, with minimal input by forces of the Nedic puppet regime.

By contrast, in Croatia, the destruction of Jews was carried out within the country by forces of the collaborationist Croatian Government, largely at camps like Jasenovac. Only a very small minority of Croatian Jews survived to be deported later by the German authorities.