Kosovo During World War II, 1941-1945...
Genocide
in Kosovo: The Skenderbeg SS Division
by Carl Savich
November 28, 2000
Historical evidence demonstrates that genocide and ethnic cleansing
were perpetrated upon the Serbian population of Kosovo and Metohija,
first by theY Ottoman Turks, by Albanian leaders and the populace
, then during the occupation by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany by
Albanian fascists and Nazis, and continued throughout the Communist
period , during which periods the ethnic Serbian population was forced
to emigrate...
The historical and political precedent for the creation of a Greater
Albania or Greater ShqiperiaY was set during World War II when the
Kosovo and Metohija regions, along with territory southwest of Lake
Scutari from Montenegro and the western region of Macedonia,, which
was then southern Serbia, or Juzna Srbija, were annexed to Albania
by the Axis powers, led by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, under a
plan devised by Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler which sought to
dismemberY the Serbian nation and people, which the Germans and Italians
perceived as the main threat to the Axis powers and to the Third Reich
in the Balkans.
On April 7, 1939, Italian troops invaded and occupied Albania, forcing
the Albanian ruler King Zog I, Ahmed Bey Zogu, to flee to Greece.Italy
next formally annexed Albania into the Kingdom of Italy under the
Italian King Victor Immanuel and established a military government
and Viceroy.The Italians began a program to colonize the country when
thousands of settlers emigrated to Albania.An Albanian Fascist Party
was established with Albanian Blackshirts basedY on the Italian models.The
Albanian army consisted of three infantry brigades of 12,000 men.
On October 28, 1940, Italy invaded Greece from Albania with 10 Italian
divisions and the Albanian army but were driven back.
Germany sought to assist the Italian-Albanian offensive by Operation
Alpine Violet, a plan to move a corps of three German mountain divisions
to Albania by air and sea. Instead, the Germans built up a heavy concentration
of the German Twelfth Army on the northwest Greek border with Bulgaria,
from where the German invasion was launched.
On April 6, l941, Nazi Germany and the Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia,
Operation Punishment, and Greece, forcing the capitulation of Yugoslavia
on the 17th and Greece on the 23rd.Yugoslavia was subsequently occupied
and dismembered.The Axis powers established a Greater Albania or Greater
Shqiperia at the expense of Serbia and Montenegro. Territory from
Montenegro was annexed to Greater Albania. From Serbia, the Kosovo
and Metohija regions were ceded to Greater Albania, along with the
western part of southern Serbia (Juzna Srbija), now part of Macedonia,
an area which was part of Stara Srbija (Ancient or Old Serbia).This
Kosovo-Metohija region and the durrounding territory annexed to Greater
Albania was called iNew Albaniai.
To create an ethnically pure Albanian Kosovo, which the Albanians
called iKosovai,theY Albanians (Shqiptari) launched a widescale campaigns
of ethnic cleansing and genocide.Ethnic Serbs in the Kosovo-Metohija
regions were massacred, and their homes were burned, and the survivors
were brutally driven out and expelled in a policy of ethnic cleansing
and genocide.
The Balli Kombetar (BK or National Union) was an Albanian nationalist
group led by Midhat Frasheri and Ali Klissura whose political objective
was to incorporate Kosovo-Metohija into a Greater Albania and to ethnically
cleanse the region of Orthodox Serbs.
The Albanian Committee of Kosovo organized massive campaigns of ethnic
cleansing and genocide against the Orthodox Serbian inhabitants of
Kosovo-Metohija.A contemporary report described the ethnic cleansing
and genocide of Serbs as follows:
Armed with material supplied by the Italians, the Albanians hurled
themselves against the helpless settlers in their homes and villages.
Accoring to the most reliables sources the Albanians burned many Serbian
settlements, killing some of the people and driving out others who
escaped to the mountains. At present other Serbian settlements are
being attacked and the property of indviduals and of communities is
either being confiscated or destroyed. It is not possible to ascertain
at the present the exact number of victims of those atrocities, but
it may be estimated that at least between 30,000 and 50,000 perished.
Bedri Pejani, the Muslim leader of the Albanian National Committee,
called for the extermination of Orthodox Serbian Christians in Kosovo-Metohija
and for a union of a Greater Albania with Bosnia-Hercegovina and the
Rashka (Sandzak) region of Serbia into a Greater Islamic State. The
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini, was presented the
Pejani plan which he approved as being in the interest of Islam. The
Germans,however, rejected the plan.
On September 3, 1943, Italy capitulated by signing an armistice with
the Allies. The Germans were then forced to occupy Albania with the
collapse of the Italian forces.The Germans sent he 100th Jaeger Division
from Greece and the 297th Infantry Division from Serbia and the German
1st Mountain Division to occupy Albania.Y These troops were organized
into the XXI Mountain Corps, which was under the command of General
Paul Bader.
Bedri Pejani organized and headed the Second Albanian League of Prizren
in 1943, which sought to revive the goals of the First League of Prizren
in 1878, whiich were to unite all the lands where Albanians lived
into a single, unified Greater Albania. The Second Albanian League,like
the First, was reactionary, anti-democratic, racist, authoritarian,
and allied with Nazi Germany. Pejani found an ardent supporter of
the Second League in Heinrich Himmler, the iarchitect of genocidei
and the person who oversaw the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem.
The Second League fit perfectly into Hitleris New Order in Europe.
Moreover, Italian anthropological research had revealed that the Ghegs
were Aryans or Nordic, the herrenvolk or master race like the Germans.Pejani
and the Second League opposed democracy and human rights but sought
to create a Greater Albania through genocide and ethnic cleansing.
The 21st Waffen SS Division Skanderbeg resulted from the efforts of
the Second League of Prizren.
Germany re-occupied Albania and Kosovo in 1943. Additional security
forces for the interior were needed,however, to free up German troops
for defense of the coastline. The decision was made to form an Albanian
SS mountain division for this purpose. In April, 1944, recruitment
for the Albanian SS Division began under the direction of the newly
formed Albanian Nazi Party, which had been formed through the efforts
of Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Acting upon the instructions of Reichsfuehrer
SS Heinrich Himmler, the SS Main Office ordered the formation of an
Albanian Volunteer mountain Division on April 17,1944. Himmler planned
to create two Albanian SS divisions. SS Brigadefuehrer and Generalmajor
of the Waffen SS Josef Fitzhum, who headed the Higher SS and Police
Command in Albania, oversaw the formation and training of the division.
The SS High Command planned to create a mountain division of 10,000
men. The Higher SS and Police Command in Albania, in conjunction with
the Albanian National Committee, listed 11,398 possible recruits for
the Waffen SS mountain division. Most of these recruits, roughly two-thirds
were Kosovars, Albanian (Shqiptar) Ghegs from Kosovo-Metohija in Serbia.
The Shqiptar Tosks were found mainly in southern Albania. Most of
the Shqiptar collaborators with the Nazi forces were the so-called
Kosovars, ethnic Shqiptars from the Kosmet of Serbia. The Albanian
gendarmes, special police, and para-military units were Kosovars.
The Kosovars were under the direct control of the Albanian Interior
Minister, Xhafer Deva.
The Skanderbeg Division was formed and trained in Kosovo and was made
up mostly of Muslim Shqiptar Kosovars.There were only a small number
of Albanians from Albania proper in the division, about one-third.Y
The Skanderbeg Mountain Division of the Waffen SS was thus essentially
a Kosovo or Kosmet division. The division was stationed and operated
in Kosovo and other Serbian regions almost exclusively.
Of the 11,398 recruits listed for the division, 9,275 were ascertained
to be suitable to draft in the Waffen SS. Of those suitable to be
drafted, 6,491 Albanians were chosen and inducted into the Skanderbeg
Division. To this Albanian core were added veteran German troops,
primarily Reichdeutsche from Austria and Volkdeutsche officers, NCOs,
and enlisted men, transferred from the 7th SS Mountain Division iPrinz
Eugeni which was stationed in Bosnia-Hercegovina.The Kosovo Albanian
21st Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS iSkanderbegi consisted in total
of 8,500-9,000 men of all ranks.The 6,491 Albanian recruits were assembled
at depots in Kosovo where the formation and the training of the division
began.
The official designation for the division was 21. Waffen Gebirgs Division
der SS iSkanderbegi (Albanische Nr.1).The SS Main Office designed
a distinctive arm patch for the division, consisting of a black, double-headed
eagle on a red background, the national symbol for Albania. The word
iSkanderbegi , embroidered in white, appeared above the eagle and
was worn on the left sleeve.The left collar patch consisted of a helmet
with a goatis head on the top, the helmet supposedly worn by George
Kastrioti, Skanderbeg, after whom the division was named. The Shqiptar
recruits in the division wore a white skullcap, the national attire
of the Shqiptar Ghegs. The SS Main Office also issued gray skullcaps
with the Totenkopf (Deathis Head) insignia sewn on the front below
the Hoheitzeichen (the national symbol of Nazi Germany, consisting
of a white eagle over a Nazi swastika).
The division was named after George Kastrioti, or Gjergj Kastriota,
also as Kastriotis (1405-1468), a national hero of Albania, who fought
against the Ottoman Turks.As a child, Kastrioti was given as a hostage
to Sultan Murad II to be brought us as a Muslim at Adrianople (Edirne).Kastrioti
became an officer in the Ottoman Turkish army and led the Turkish
forces in many victories over Christian troops.Murad II was impressed
with his valor and bravery in his battles for Islam and gave him the
name Iskander Bey in Turkish, from iIskanderi, Alexander the Great,
or Prince Alexander, and iBeyi, master.
The nameY was shortened to Skanderbeg, beg being the local variant
of beg.Later, Kastrioti renounced Islam and converted to Christianity
and attacking his former Ottoman Turkish masters. He captured the
Albanian capital Kruja from the Turkish governor and proclaimed a
revolt against the Turks in 1442.Sultan Mohammed II sent Turkish armies
to defeat the renegade Kastrioti, but he was able to defeat the Turkish
forces, which besieged Kruja but could not capture it. Kastrioti died
in 1468. Kruja surrendered in 1479 and the Turks occupied Albania.
The Albanians in the Skanderbeg Division were mostly Muslims, of the
Bektashi and Sunni sects of IslamThe division contained several hundred
Albanian Catholics, followers of Jon Marko Joni.
The first commander of the Skanderbeg division was SS Brigadefuehrer
and Generalmajor of the Waffen SS Josef Fitzhum, who commanded the
division from April to June, 1944. After the July 20, 1944 assassination
plot against Hitler, Fitzhum was appointed supreme commander in Albania.
In June, SS Standartenfuehrer August Schmidhuber, who had been a member
of the 7th SS Mountain Division iPrinz Eugeni, was appointed commander
of the division, a post he would hold until August, 1944. On June
21, 1944, Schmidhuber was promoted to SS Oberfuehrer, and later in
the war, he would be promoted to SS Brigadefuehrer. SS Obersturmbannfuehrer
Alfred Graf commanded the reorganized remnants of the Skanderbeg Division
from August, 1944, to May, 1945.
The Schutzstaffel or SS was created in the period 1923-1925 and was
initially known as the Stosstrupp (Shock Troop) iAdolf Hitleri. On
January 16, 1929, Hitler appointed Heinrich Himmler leader of the
SS, Reichsfuehrer SS. The SS was envisioned as an elite troop of the
Party, a Praetorian bodyguard to Hitler and the Nazi leadership. The
SS was a formation icomposed of the best physically, the most dependable,
and the most faithful men in the Nazi movement.i In 1940, combat units
of the SS were formed, collectively termed the Waffen SS. Approximately
30-40 Waffen SS divisions were formed during the war,divided into
three groupings, Waffen SS divisions made up of Germans, those made
up of ethnic Germans outside the Reich, and those made up of non-Germans,
iDivisions der SS, Divisions of the SS.
On September 27, 1939, Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler as Chief
of German Police consolidated the Gestapo, Kripo, and SD under an
SS Main Office of Reich Security, or the RSHA. The RSHA was the actual
body entrusted with the overall administration of the Final Solution
of the Jewish Problem, what became known as the Holocaust. The SS
Economic and Administrative Main Office, or WVHA, ran the concentration
camp system. Nazi concentration camp personnel and guards, although
not under the command of the Army or the Kommandoamt der Waffen SS,
nevertheless, wore Waffen SS uniforms and received Waffen SS paybooks.
Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler oversaw a program that resulted
in the extermination of millions of men, women, and children. Himmler
was the architect of genocide and of the Holocaust and the Waffen
SS was his iprivate armyi, the iblack angelsi. As part of the Skanderbeg
Waffen SS Division, Kosovar Albanians would play a role in the Final
Solution, the Holocaust. Kosovo Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies would be
victims.
In June, 1944, the Skanderbeg Waffen SS Mountain Division engaged
in large-scale field maneuvers in the area between the towns of Berane
and Andrijevica in Montenegro ( Crna Gora). Garrisons of the Skanderbeg
division were established in the Kosovo towns of Pec, Djakovica, Prizren,
and Pristina. Further training of the divisionY continued in August
as new recruits were inducted in the division. An artillery battalion
of the division, consisting of two batteries, was located in Gnjilane.
The first major action of the division occurred in August, 1944 in
Kosovo. In September, 1944, the Skanderbeg Division occupied Macedonia,
then denoted as southern Serbia, and helped to garrison the region.
The Skanderbeg Division was ordered into the areas surrounding the
towns of Skopje, Kumanovo, Presevo, and Bujanovac. Skanderbeg operated
in the Stara Srbija (Old Serbia) region, in the Kosovo-Metohija towns
of Pec, Gnjilane, Djakovica, Kosovska Mitrovica, and the Macedonian
towns of Tetovo and Gostivar. The city of Tetovo was a major base
for the Skanderbeg Division.
In November, 1944, when the German armies in the Balkans were retreating
from Yugoslavia and Greece, the Skanderbeg Division remnants were
reorganized into Regimentgruppe 21. SS Gebirgs iSkanderbegi and was
transferred to Skopje, according to an account of the movements of
the Battle Group. This SS Kampfgruppe iSkanderbegi, along with the
Prinz Eugen Division, defended the Vardar valley. The Battle Group
iSkanderbegi and Prinz Eugen held the Vardar area because it was the
sole corridor of escape for the retreating German armies in Alexander
Loehris Army Group E, which was then retreating from Greece and the
Aegean Islands.
The Skanderbeg Battle Group along with the Prinz Eugen Division retreated
to the Brcko region of Bosnia-Hercegovina by mid-January, 1945. At
this time, the remaining Skanderbeg personnel were incorporated into
the 14th SS Volunteer Mountain infantry Regiment of the 7th SS Division
Prinz Eugen. The remnants of the Skanderbeg division fought in this
formation until the end of the war, retreating to Austria in May,
1945.
The Skanderbeg Division engaged in a policy of ethnic cleansing and
genocide against the Serbian Orthodox population of the regions under
occupation by the division in Kosovo-Metohija, Montenegro, and Macedonia.
Balkan historian Robert Lee Wolff, in The Balkans in Our Time, described
the genocide committed against Kosovo Serbs by the Albanian 21st Waffen
Gebirgs Division der SS iSkanderbegi as follows:
In the regions annexed by the Albanians, their so-called Skanderbeg
division, made up of members of the Albanian minority in Yugoslavia,
massacred Serbs with impunity..
Historian L.S. Stavrianos, in The Balkans Since 1453, described the
genocide committed against Orthodox Kosovo Serbs by the Skanderbeg
Division in these terms:
Yugoslav Albanians, organized in their fascist Skanderbeg Division,
conducted an indiscriminate massacre of Serbians.
The Skanderbeg Division played a role in the Holocaust, the genocide
of European Jewry. In Kosovo: A Short History, Noel Malcolm noted
that in the Djakovica region of Kosovo-Metohija, the Skanderbeg Division
engaged in ithe round-up and deportation of 281 Jewsi to the concentration-extermination
camps in May, 1944. According to Malcolm, ithey took part in the most
shameful episode of Kosovois wartime history.i p310 Skanderbeg rounded
up scores of Jews in a group of approximately 500 Kosovans deemed
enemies of the Third Reich when the Division occupied Prizren in Kosovo-Metohija.
The division sought to create an ethnically pure Kosovo, ethnically
cleansed of Orthodox Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies,Y the untermenschen
(subhumans), not part of the so-called West, who were targeted for
extermination.
According to Miranda Vickers in Between Serb and Albanian: A History
of Kosovo, the Kosovo Albanian Skanderbeg SS Division ethnically cleansed
an estimated 10,000 Kosovo Serbian families, most of whom fled as
refugees to Serbia while Albanian colonists from Albania entered Kosovo
and took over their lands and homes:
Until the first months of 1944 there were continued waves of migration
from Kosovo of Serbs and Montenegrins,forced to flee following intimidation....TheY
21stSS eSkanderbeg Divisioni (consisting, as already mentioned, of
two battalions) formed out of Albanian volunteers in the spring of
1944, indiscriminately killed Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo. This
led to the emigration of an estimated 10,000 Slav families, most of
whom went to Serbia...replaced by new colonists from the poorer regions
of northern Albania.
The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal declared the Schutzstaffel or SS
a criminal organization and every individual member of the SS was
found to be a war criminal guilty of iplanning and carrying out crimes
against humanity.i The Albanian Kosovars in the 21st Waffen Gebirgs
Division der SS iSkanderbegi committed war crimes, crimes against
humanity, and ethnic cleansing, and genocide against the Orthodox
Serbian population of Kosovo.This genocide would contribute to the
Kosovar goal and policy to create an ethnically pure Kosova, in a
attempt to create a Greater Albania.
During World War II, the Axis powers dismembered and occupied Yugoslavia
and created a Greater Albania by annexing Kosovo-Metohija to Albania.
During the occupation of Kosovo-Metohija by Nazi Germany, Germany
formed an Albanian Kosovar Waffen SS Division, the 21st Waffen Gebirgs
Division der SS iSkanderbegi which engaged in a policy of ethnic cleansing
and genocide against the Orthodox Serbian population of Kosovo. The
result was that with the Albanians, with the help of Germany, were
able to either kill or drive out entire Serbian families and to round
up and deport Kosovo Jews to the extermination camps, thereby creating
during World War II an ethnically pure, Nazi German-sponsored Greater
Albania.
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rights reserved, ¿ÞÓÛÕÔØ - 2003.
