Waffen-SS
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Throughout the spring and summer of 1942, Gruppenführer Artur Phleps attempted to train his division to an acceptable standard. In October 1942 Phleps considered Prinz Eugen ready to take part in a combined arms exercise under combat conditions. The operation consisted of an advance against a Chetnik band led by Major Keserović in mountainous terrain near Kriva Reka. In what was an inconclusive action, the troops of Prinz Eugen proved themselves under fire, although were unable to catch the enemy.
The harsh, mountainous topography of Yugoslavia—its limestone rock carved through with deep gullies—made off-road travel painfully slow. Such terrain inevitably favored defenders who knew the country well and were unencumbered by heavy equipment. For the men of Prinz Eugen, it meant a great deal of hard marching. According to Romanian Volksdeutsche infantrymen Fred Umbrich, “We often covered 20, 30, 40 or 50 kilometers within 24 hours—and this over rock and bush, carrying our food, weapons and ammunition.”2
During the winter of 1942–1943, the Axis high command in Yugoslavia made plans for an ambitious encirclement action intended to destroy the partisans as a military force. Operation White would involve 90,000 Axis troops (with a further 60,000 in support), dispersed over a wide area in readiness to ensnare Tito’s main force (roughly 45,000 strong) centered around Bihac. The Axis force included not only Germans, Italians, and Croatians but also units of Chetniks who had decided that Tito’s communists were their major threat. Great effort had been invested in the operation, which began at the end of January 1943 and continued into March.3
The Germans pushed the partisans back with ease and managed to kill substantial numbers when enemy units were trapped in combat. But this happened only rarely, as Tito and his commanders were becoming veterans in guerrilla warfare and knew when to disengage from open confrontation with better-armed opponents. The encircling Axis forces were supposed to provide an ever-constricting steel ring around the partisans to prevent any breakout, but the poorly trained and motivated Italian and Chetnik forces had little interest in the operation and allowed the vast bulk of the partisans to slip away unharmed. The Germans claimed a total of around 5,000 partisans killed, wounded, or captured, but even this modest figure was almost certainly an overestimate.4
Operation White was followed by Operation Black during May and June, a more limited action that netted another haul of enemy dead but still failed to eradicate the partisan threat. These operations revealed to the Germans the enormous difficulties of fighting a well-disciplined and highly motivated guerrilla force operating in terrain of its own choosing—as well as the depressing fact that they could expect little help from their erstwhile allies. The Germans had no Plan B to deal with Tito’s partisans, so throughout 1943 and most of 1944, they would launch similar operations in a fruitless attempt to capture their elusive enemy.
The fighting in the Balkans was arguably the most vicious that took place in any theater of war in Europe. The bitter ethnic differences that lay below the surface in prewar Yugoslavia reemerged after the German invasion of April 1941, made immeasurably worse by the presence of the foreign invaders. In October 1941, General Franz Böhme, the German plenipotentiary general in Serbia, set the tone with this directive: “In the future, for every fallen German soldier, 100, and for every wounded soldier, 50 prisoners or hostages are to be shot.”5
Murder, rape, and torture became commonplace during military actions. This account from a letter written by a Danish soldier from the Nordland Division—briefly deployed in Croatia in 1943—provided lurid details of common atrocities:
Every day we fight the partisans, and we burn their houses down over their heads, and we take everything away from them from clothing to cows and horses. Yesterday we burned four towns the size of F (700 inhabitants). One day 20 of my pals were captured. And when we found them, their noses and ears were gone and their eyes had been cut out and were tied behind their necks . . . but that town was also punished, I tell you; every female had their breasts cut off and we were allowed to take aim at them until they all lay dead on the fields and in the streets, and the men were put up against a wall and shot.6
The scale of the killings began to worry the German military administration. Edmund von Glaise-Horstenau, the German plenipotentiary in Croatia, wrote, “The SS acted as if they were in enemy territory, led by the bad example of their commanders. Robbing and looting were widespread. No action was taken against any offender. The example of the SS and Cossacks also had its influence on the regular Wehrmacht troops, who wondered why they could not have the same privileges.”7
Such was the mania for atrocity and counteratrocity that Axis forces even massacred those ostensibly on their own side. In July 1943 the Prinz Eugen Division discovered a dead SS soldier in the village of Kosticuta and without hesitation assembled the remaining inhabitants in the village square and gunned them down, killing forty old men, women, and children. Among the dead were close relatives of soldiers in the SS Handschar Division then training in France—one of the factors behind its mutiny in September. Himmler briefly admonished Phleps for this action, but this did not prevent the Prinz Eugen commander from continuing his rampage along the Dalmatian coast that led to a further 3,000 civilian deaths during the summer of 1943.8
Himmler held Phleps in high regard and nominated him to lead a new SS corps being formed in 1943. Designated as the V SS Mountain Corps, it would comprise the Prinz Eugen Division and a floating number of German Army and Croatian formations and, eventually, the SS Handschar Division. Phleps’s replacement was the commander of Prinz Eugen’s 13th Infantry Regiment, Karl von Oberkamp, a Waffen-SS staff officer who had also briefly led the “Germania” Regiment. Having served in both the elite Reich and Wiking Divisions, Oberkamp seemed a suitable choice to lead Prinz Eugen, but he was to prove a weak commander, vacillating in moments of crisis.
On 8 September 1943 Prinz Eugen’s antipartisan campaign was transformed by the shock announcement that Italy had signed an armistice with the Allies. The German high command ordered that all Italian troops in Yugoslavia must be immediately disarmed and placed under their control. The Italians themselves were also in a state of shock, their officers unsure what their response should be. Some units accepted the German terms, while others refused, prepared to fight their former ally if necessary. On an individual level, many Italians soldiers walked away from their regiments in the hope of returning to Italy as soon as possible; some continued to support the fascist cause, while a few crossed over to join the partisans.
The Prinz Eugen Division was dispatched to the Adriatic coast to supervise the disarmament and soon found itself fighting both Italians and partisans. A German war correspondent described the febrile atmosphere of the time as the division marched toward the Croatian port of Split: “Thousands of Bolshevik partisans, deserters and [pro-Allied Italian] Badoglio units had assembled around Split during the chaotic days right after the collapse of Italian authority. The latest news called for the establishment of a Bolshevik republic in Split. Reconnaissance aircraft provided air photographs of fires in the major Dalmatian cities. Fleeing Italian soldiers reported uprisings, disarmament, murder and drunken fraternization between Badoglio soldiers, British agents and partisan leaders. We were marching against chaos.”9
As the SS division closed on Split, some units became isolated and were surrounded by partisan and antifascist Italians. Initial relief efforts came to nothing, and in the ensuing confusion Oberkamp ordered a general withdrawal on 17 September. Although the cutoff units were eventually rescued, Prinz Eugen had suffered a reverse. The divisional history made this muted yet telling criticism: “The failure influenced the mood of the division and considerably damaged the prestige of the divisional commander.”10 The attack on Split was renewed a few days later by Prinz Eugen and an army division, the city falling to the Germans on the twenty-sixth. More than 9,000 Italians were captured in the operation.
By November 1943—with the threat of anti-German Italian intervention over—the Pri
nz Eugen Division returned to its antipartisan war, advancing toward Mostar. The strain of campaigning was beginning to tell on the division, the commander of II Battalion of the 14th Regiment noting in his diary that his unit was “completely exhausted and shredded.” On 26 November, as Prinz Eugen prepared for a new operation, Oberkamp suddenly asked for leave. The divisional history recorded that he “was no longer physically or emotionally able to take any more. He was granted leave.”11 An apparently recovered Oberkamp subsequently returned to the division, but he had lost the confidence of his officers and left for good on 11 January 1944. His permanent replacement was the able Otto Kumm, a former commander of the “Der Führer” Regiment, then acting as a staff officer in the V SS Mountain Corps.
The fighting during the winter of 1943–1944 further exposed weaknesses within the division. During Operation Waldrausch in January, the 13th Regiment’s I Battalion broke and ran from the battlefield. The divisional history was forced to admit, “It was no longer the division of the summer of 1943.”12 Phleps agreed to Kumm’s request to take it out of the line for a period of extensive retraining with a special emphasis on improving morale. By April Kumm felt sufficiently confident to return Prinz Eugen to offensive operations.
IN FEBRUARY 1944 units of the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar began to arrive in Yugoslavia. After a preliminary toughening-up operation in the Syrmia region—complete with a massacre of local Serb civilians—the division was ordered to cross the Sava River into Bosnia on 15 March. The Handschar commander, Brigadeführer Karl-Gustav Sauberzweig, exhorted his men to action with a rather bizarre open letter that concluded, “Before long, each of you shall be standing in the place that you call home, as a soldier and a gentleman; standing firm as a defender of the idea of saving the culture of Europe—the idea of Adolf Hitler.” As the troops forded the river, each man was handed a photograph of Hitler and informed that this was a “personal gift” from the Führer.13 What the ordinary Handschar soldiers made of this, one can only guess.
Once across the Sava, the Handschar units drove away the partisans to establish a defensive zone in preparation for Operation Easter Egg (Osterei) in April, intended to gain access to local coal mines vital for the German war effort. The operation went well, sufficiently so for an excited Himmler to withdraw an infantry battalion to form the nucleus of another Muslim formation, the predominantly Albanian 21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg. Later in the month, Handschar was included in the German spring offensive, Operation Maypole (Maibaum), where it fought alongside Prinz Eugen for the first time. Although the operation failed in its intended mission to encircle and destroy a partisan force, it, at least, disrupted their activities and was considered a success by the Germans.
The Handschar Division then adopted a largely defensive role, with a small group of soldiers being detached from the division in June to provide a cadre for another Croatian Muslim formation, the 23rd Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Kama. As with the Albanian Skanderbeg Division, Kama was a division in name only and was dissolved in October without making a military contribution to the war in the Balkans.
DESPITE THEIR BEST efforts in two years of hard fighting, the Germans had failed to defeat Tito’s partisans, and the prospect of victory was as elusive as ever. The Germans’ exploitation of race and ethnicity had served them well in previous antipartisan operations, but they had been trumped by Tito, who refused to play their game. While Tito’s core support was Serbian, his appeal was always based on broad multiethnic and class-based lines. As a result, he was able to draw upon an array of diverse support denied his opponents, and his vision of a communist “better world” was more attractive to the people of Yugoslavia than anything proposed by Nazi Germany.
As the Germans were ideologically unable to change their political strategy, in Yugoslavia they looked to the skies for a tactical solution. Germany had pioneered airborne operations, but Hitler had been shocked at the heavy casualties suffered by his paratroopers and glider-borne infantry during the seizure of Crete in 1941. As a result, airborne operations had been put on hold. Himmler, however, held no such reservations and had encouraged the development of his own, albeit modest, paratroop force for special operations.
The 500th SS Parachute Battalion was formed in October 1943, its manpower drawn on a fifty-fifty basis between volunteers from existing Waffen-SS formations and from Waffen-SS disciplinary units. Training by the Luftwaffe began in Yugoslavia and then in Hungary, the battalion considered combat ready by early 1944. In previous operations against the partisans, Tito and his staff had always had time to slip away from the advancing German columns. The appropriately named Operation Knight’s Move (Rösselsprung) was an attempt to catch Tito unawares through a combined parachute and glider assault directly onto his headquarters.
German intelligence was aware that Tito had set up a semipermanent base in the Unac Valley around the town of Drvar. He had been joined there by British, U.S., and Soviet military missions, who were providing the partisans with increasing levels of material support. A force of between 12,000 and 15,000 partisans was stationed in the valley and hills around Drvar. The Germans believed Tito to be staying in Drvar itself, although he was in fact hiding out in nearby caves, partly a result of British intelligence advice that some form of German action was in prospect. The German plan was for the airborne troops to kill or capture Tito and then await the arrival of a combined German and Croatian force, including Prinz Eugen, driving overland toward Drvar.
The operation began on the morning of 25 May with a heavy Luftwaffe air strike on Drvar and the surrounding area.14 The airborne force—commanded by Hauptsturmführer Kurt Rybka—landed immediately after the aerial bombardment: 314 soldiers by parachute and 340 by glider (with a second wave of 220 paratroopers due around midday). Good weather and the skill of the Luftwaffe ensured a concentrated landing, and after a short, intense fight the SS paratroopers captured Drvar. Valuable documents were captured, but there seemed no sign of Tito. Initially, it was thought he might be among the many dead strewn around the town, but the inability to make a positive identification suggested he was elsewhere. This was confirmed by one partisan group mounting a determined defense of a cave in the nearby hills, while elsewhere they had swiftly fallen back from the initial German attack.
As the SS paras advanced toward the cave, they came under heavy fire from the partisans. Although the Germans received reinforcements and extra supplies from the second-wave parachute drop, they were now outnumbered and facing the full wrath of the partisans, converging on Drvar in growing numbers. Meanwhile, the German overland relief force was held up by partisan resistance along the mountainous roads leading to the battle site.
By late afternoon the paratroopers were sustaining increasing numbers of casualties, including Rybka, who was badly wounded and evacuated in a Fieseler Storch. With the battle turning in the partisans’ favor, the paratroopers retreated to a central position on high ground around the local cemetery. There they would wait for rescue by the German ground forces.
While it was still daylight the beleaguered paratroopers were provided with fire support from the Luftwaffe, but as darkness fell they were on their own. The partisans redoubled their efforts to break into the German defenses established along the cemetery walls. A German war correspondent described one of their attacks: “Around 2200 [hours] the song and dance starts again. The Bolsheviks shoot at the cemetery with phosphorous rounds. Mortars take over and place the cemetery under fire, putting us into one situation after another. Holding onto tombstones, behind the wall, and behind the graves, the men press behind these for dear life. Despite the seemingly hopeless situation, there is a lot of fire discipline.”15
The paratroopers fended off repeated attacks during the night. As dawn broke the Luftwaffe returned to overfly the area, the partisans withdrawing from their exposed positions by the cemetery. Later in the morning the paratroopers heard the distinctive ripping sound of MG42s in the distan
ce, heralding the arrival of the German relief force that included Prinz Eugen’s reconnaissance battalion. By midday the whole area was under German control, including the cave used as Tito’s headquarters.
Tito had escaped from the cave as the paratroopers began their landings, whisked away to safety by a pilot from the Soviet mission who flew him to British-occupied Italy. The men of Prinz Eugen’s 13th Regiment discovered a U.S. jeep and Tito’s marshal’s uniform hanging over a chair. Among other booty was a rucksack belonging to Randolph Churchill, the British prime minister’s son, who was a member of the British military mission (but not in the area at the time). After destroying the partisan headquarters, the Germans withdrew in the face of mounting Allied air attacks.
Although the Germans had inflicted casualties on the partisans, the mission had obviously failed in its prime mission of eliminating Tito, primarily as a result of inadequate intelligence that failed to locate the exact position of their target. The German paratroopers had fought with great tenacity and had paid a heavy price. In twenty-four hours of fighting, the original force of 874 men had suffered 624 casualties.16 What was left of the battalion was withdrawn from the battle zone for rest and rebuilding, while Prinz Eugen continued in its Sisyphean task of hunting the partisans.