In the summer of 1941, Serbian guerrillas launched an uprising in
central Serbia against the German occupation. The Serbian uprising
spread and increased in intensity threatening the German military
occupation of Serbia and endangering the German southern flank in
Europe. The Serbian uprising came at the time of the German invasion
of the USSR. Adolf Hitler immediately perceived the danger that the
Serbian insurrection posed to the stability of the Balkans region
and for German control. Swift action was taken. Hitler ordered that
brutal measures be taken to suppress the Serbian revolt. Hitler ordered
that the rebellion be quelled "by the most rigorous methods".
Pursuant to these instructions, Wilhelm Keitel ordered that for every
German occupation soldier killed in Serbia, a hundred Serbian civilians
would be executed, while fifty Serbian civilians would be killed for
every wounded German soldier. This unprecedented order, that 100 Serbs
would be shot for every German soldier killed, was given to quell
the Serbian insurgency. This order would result in one of the most
brutal massacres of civilians during World War II, the Kragujevac
Massacre, when an estimated 5,000 Serbian civilians were executed.
Serbia was a hotbed of opposition and resistance to the Nazi New Order
in Europe. The first organized resistance movement in Europe was launched
in Serbia under the command of Serbian Colonel Draza Mihailovic at
Ravna Gora. By the summer of 1941, the first major popular uprising
to German occupation occurred in Serbia. Hitler was appalled at this
unprecedented act of defiance to the New Order in Europe. To terrorize
the Serbian population and resistance, Hitler ordered that Serbian
civilians be rounded up and executed as reprisals for Serbian resistance.
Thousands of Serbian civilians would be executed. One of the most
brutal acts of reprisal occurred in the central Serbian town of Kragujevac,
where to fulfill the hundred to one quota, thousands of civilians
were killed. The Kragujevac Massacre became one of the most notorious
and tragic events of World War II. Like the massacres at Lidice, Babi
Yar, Oradour, and Nanking, Kragujevac symbolized the horrors of war
and occupation and the cost of resistance to military occupation.
Operation Punishment
Yugoslavian Prime Minister Dragisa Cvetkovic and Foreign Minister
Alexander Cincar-Markovic had signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany
on March 25, 1941. On March 27, Serbian military officers under Yugoslav
Air Force General Dusan Simovic overthrew the regime and established
Peter II as the titular ruler of Yugoslavia. The overthrow followed
violent Serbian anti-German demonstrations in Belgrade and wide-spread
popular antipathy towards a Yugoslav-German agreement. Hitler immediately
reacted. Hitler perceived the coup d’etat as an affront and insult
to Germany and as an unacceptable act of defiance. While the new Simovic
regime requested a dialogue, Hitler immediately decided on the total
destruction of Yugoslavia as a country.
Under Directive No. 25, Hitler ordered the invasion of Yugoslavia
on March 27, 1941 after the coup d’etat in Belgrade. The invasion
of Yugoslavia was known as Operation Punishment (Fall Strafe) while
the invasion of Greece was Operation Marita. Hitler ordered that Yugoslavia
"must be destroyed as quickly as possible". Hitler announced
his plans for the invasion of Yugoslavia as follows:
It is my intention to break into Yugoslavia in the general direction
of Belgrade and southward by a concentric operation from the area
of Rijeka-Graz on the one side and from the area around Sofia on the
other and to give the Yugoslav forces an annihilating blow. In addition
I intend to cut off the extreme southern part of Yugoslavia from the
rest of the country and seize it as a base for the continuation of
the German-Italian offensive against Greece… As soon as sufficient
forces stand ready and the weather situation permits, the ground organization
of the Yugoslav Air Force and Belgrade are to be destroyed by continuous
day and night attacks of the Luftwaffe.
Hitler also emphasized in this directive the plan to exploit the pro-German
Croats, formerly a part of German Austria-Hungary, who would be used
as a Fifth Column to destroy Yugoslavia. Hitler stated that "the
domestic political tensions in Yugoslavia will be sharpened by political
assurances to the Croats." This was the policy of divide and
conquer.
The Axis attack on Yugoslavia consisted of 24 German divisions and
1,500 aircraft, 23 Italian divisions and 670 aircraft and naval vessels
which attacked on the Adriatic, and 5 Hungarian divisions. The total
number of Axis divisions was 52 with a total of 2.300 aircraft. The
Yugoslav army could muster 30 under strength divisions that were poorly
trained, inadequately equipped, and demoralized.
Yugoslavia was to be attacked by Axis troops based in Austria, Hungary,
Romania, and Bulgaria. The Second Army, commanded by Maximilian von
Weichs, stationed in Klagenfurt, Austria and Barcs, Hungary was to
attack from the north. The second formation was the German 12th Army
stationed in Bulgaria under Field Marshal Sigmund Wilhelm List, one
element of which was to occupy Macedonia while another was to press
on to Belgrade. XLI Panzer Corps under the command of Georg-Hans Reinhardt
was stationed in bases in Romania and was to attack Belgrade. Attached
to the XLI Panzer Corps, was the 2nd Waffen SS Panzer Division "Das
Reich" which had been transferred from southern France. The Das
Reich Waffen SS Division was the spearhead of the attack on Belgrade.
Das Reich was an elite formation commanded by SS Oberstgruppenfuehrer
Paul Haussner, known as "Papa Haussner" because he was regarded
as the founder of the Waffen SS or Armed SS, the military wing of
the SS.
Belgrade was declared an open city which meant that it was not defended.
This allowed the Luftwaffe to bomb the city non-stop for three days,
destroying much of the center of the city and killing 17,000 Serbian
civilians, men, women, and children. As an open city, there was only
a garrison in Belgrade with hardly any front line troops. This led
to the tragic-comical and absurd "capture" of the city.
Nothing better illustrates the hollowness and emptiness of war than
the "capture" of Belgrade. The actual capture of Belgrade
has rarely been told. This was achieved by the commander of No.2 Company
of the SS Motorcycle Reconnaissance Battalion, SS Hauptsturmfuehrer
Fritz Klingenberg of the 2nd SS Panzer Division "Das Reich".
Klingenberg, along with one platoon leader, two sergeants, and five
privates of the SS motorcycle assault company, crossed the Danube
on a requisitioned motor boat. They rode their motor cycles through
the streets of Belgrade unopposed. They did not meet any military
forces or any resistance. They drove to the Yugoslav War Ministry
in Belgrade which they found abandoned. They raised a Nazi swastika
flag over the ministry building. They then went over to the German
Embassy where another Nazi swastika flag was raised. The mayor of
Belgrade then agreed to turn over the city to prevent further bombing
of the city and the killing of more civilians. Hitler awarded Klingenberg
a Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross for the "capture" of
Belgrade and Klingenberg became a celebrity and hero in Nazi Germany
as "the man who captured Belgrade." Klingenberg would himself
be killed in 1945 when Russian and US troops occupied Germany. Belgrade
would be occupied by the 1st Panzer Army under Generaloberst Ewald
von Kleist. Kleist was photographed in front of the Skupshtina or
Yugoslav Parliament building in Belgrade saluting a German tank commander
of a Panzer Kampfwagen IV Ausf D tank on April 14. The 11th Panzer
Division which had moved from Bulgaria seized Belgrade. The Germans
casualties in the invasion of Yugoslavia were 151 killed, 392 wounded,
and 15 missing. They captured 337,684 Yugoslav POWs, plus 6,028 officers.
But 300,000 Serbian troops escaped into the mountains and country-side.
They would continue the conflict as a guerrilla war.
German Occupation
Serbia was the only area of dismembered Yugoslavia in which an outright
German military government was established. Serbia was the only Balkan
country that Germany and the Axis countries occupied militarily throughout
World War II. Why was this so? The Germans could never control Serbia
and the Serbian population. Without direct German military occupation,
Serbia could not be militarily and politically subdued. On April 20,
1941, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, the Chief of the German
Army High Command (OKH), ordered the establishment of a German military
government in German-occupied Serbia. The office of the Military Commander
in Serbia was the chief of the occupation. He was subordinate to the
Quartermaster General of the Army High Command and to the commander
of the German 2nd Army which occupied Serbia. The main responsibilities
of the Military Commander in Serbia were enunciated as follows in
the Dienstanweisung or brief as follows: To safeguard the railroad
line between Belgrade and Salonika and the Danube shipping lanes,
to execute the economic orders of Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering who
was the Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan, and to establish and
to maintain law and order.
German Air Force General Helmuth Foerster was the First Military Commander
in Serbia. He was replaced in June, 1941 by Antiaircraft Artillery
General Ludwig von Schroeder. Air Force General Heinrich Danckelmann
replaced him when Schroeder was killed in a plane crash a month after
assuming command. In June, 1941, the Germans brought in four under-strength
divisions to occupy or garrison Serbia under the command of General
of Artillery Paul Bader: the 704th, 714th, 717th, and 718th divisions.
The German Second Army was deployed to the Russian Front. On June
9, under Directive No. 31, Hitler unified the command structure by
making Wilhelm List the Armed Forces Commander in Southeast Europe
who was directly subordinate to Hitler. List was responsible for the
security and the defense of Serbia and Greece and General Bader was
subordinated to him. List had his headquarters in Salonika.
Two Concepts of Guerrilla Resistance
Two rival guerrilla or resistance movements emerged in Serbia following
the German occupation. The Ravna Gora Chetnik Movement was headed
by Colonel Dragoljub-Draza Mihailovic which was based in the UK where
the Yugoslav Government-in-Exile fled. The guerrillas under Mihailovic
engaged in sabotage but opposed direct attacks on German troops because
such attacks were futile from a military standpoint and because the
goal or objective of the guerrilla movement was to lay the groundwork
for the Allied invasion of Yugoslavia which was to occur later in
the war. Mihailovic opposed attacks on German troops because he did
believe the sacrifice in Serbian lives was worth the cost. Mihailovic
maintained that it was not worth sacrificing fifty Serbs for "a
single German or a section of railway line." The Partisan or
Communist guerrillas began uprisings began in Serbia in July, following
the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa. On
July 3, 1941, Tito convened a meeting of the Politburo of the Communist
party of Yugoslavia in a suburb of Belgrade after Joseph Stalin had
made a call for Communist resistance in the the occupied countries.
The following day, Tito issued a proclamation calling for a general
uprising in Serbia. The Partisans managed to seize Uzice in western
Serbia and to set up a so-called Communist Republic. The Partisans
were internationalist in outlook and were not indigenous to Serbia.
Josip Broz Tito was a Croat-Slovene Roman Catholic born in Croatia
when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He spoke with a Croatian
accent and did not know the Serbian terrain. He was like a foreigner
in Serbia. He had been a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian Army during
World War I, had been captured by the Russians in 1915, and joined
the Red Army in 1918. He fought in the Red Army from 1918 to 1920
and became a Communist leader who would lead the Yugoslav Communist
Party. His wife was the Russian Pelagija Belousova, whom he married
in 1919 in Russia. The Partisans wanted to create as much bloodshed
and carnage and destruction as possible. This was their raison d’etre.
They wanted to destroy the pre-Communist foundations and to create
legitimacy for Communist rule by after the war by demonstrating that
they had liberated the country from German occupation. Thus the forces
under Mihailovic and Tito were fighting under two opposing concepts
of guerrilla resistance.
The Serbian population was anxious to drive out the German forces
from Serbia. The Serbian insurgency thus had overwhelming popular
support in Serbia. Both the forces under Mihailovic and Tito were
involved in the rebellion, even cooperating against the Germans and
engaging in joint actions. The German military occupation of Serbia
was threatened. The German combat troops had been redeployed to the
Russian Front so that Serbia was occupied by under-strength garrison
troops. The German police and the three German divisions were unable
to suppress the Serbian insurgency. On September 4, the 125 Infantry
Regiment was sent to Serbia from Greece.
On September 19, Tito and Mihailovic met for the first time at Struganik
following Mihailovic’s meeting with Partisan representatives in August.
They sought to organize their forces in a common front against German
troops. Mihailovic and Tito agreed not to attack each other. No real
agreement, however, was reached to cooperate because of conflicting
concepts of resistance. A second meeting between Tito and Mihailovic
took place on October 27 at Brajici located between Uzice and Ravna
Gora. Captain D.T. "Bill" Hudson of the British mission
to Draza Mihailovic came along to the Brajici meeting. Mihailovic
and Tito were unable to reach an agreement to cooperate against the
German forces.
Insurgency in Serbia
Following the German occupation of Yugoslavia and Greece, guerrilla
movements launched a massive resistance campaign against German occupation
forces. In Serbia, a large insurrection against German occupation
began in the summer of 1941. There were attacks and sabotage against
communication and transportation lines. German troops were tortured,
mutilated, and killed by Serbian resistance forces. The German response
to these guerrilla attacks was to attempt to suppress the resistance
by mass hangings and mass executions of Serbian civilians and hostages.
In June, 1941, Wilhelm List became the Wehrmacht Commander Southeast,
the supreme representative of the German Army in the Balkans and exercised
executive authority in Serbia which was occupied by German troops.
List had been the Commander-in-Chief of the 12th Army during the German
invasions of Yugoslavia and Greece. List was assigned the duty of
safeguarding of the unified defense of areas occupied by German troops
in Serbia against attacks and unrest. Hermann Foertsch, who had become
the Chief of Staff of 12th Army on May 10, remained List’s Chief of
Staff in his new position as Wehrmacht Commander Southeast.
By September 5, the uprising in Serbia was spreading rapidly and endangering
the stability of the German occupation. List issued an order on the
suppression of the revolt:
In regard to the above the following aspects are to be taken into
consideration: Ruthless and immediate measures against the insurgents,
against their accomplices and their families. (Hanging, burning down
of villages involved, seizure of more hostages, deportation of relatives,
etc., into concentration camps.)
On September 16, Hitler issued a personally signed directive, Directive
No. 31a, to List charging him with the suppression of the insurgency
in Serbia:
I assign to the Wehrmacht Commander…the task of crushing the insurrectionary
movement in the southeastern area. It is important first to secure
in the Serbian area the transportation routes and the objects important
for the German war economy, and then…to restore order…by the most
rigorous methods."
List then recommended and requested that General Franz Boehme, a pre-war
Austrian officer who then commanded the XVIIIth Army Corps in Greece,
be commissioned to handle military affairs in Serbia. The entire executive
authority for Serbia was subsequently transferred to Boehme. Boehme
was made the Plenipotentiary Commanding General. Boehme thus was delegated
supreme authority to suppress the insurgency in Serbia although he
remained subordinated to List. Boehme took command of all German troops
in Serbia and directed all actions against the Serbian insurgents
on September 19. Boehme was a veteran of the German Army military
campaigns in France and Poland. He would later be transferred to serve
with the 20th Gebirgsarmee in Norway as a General der Gebirgstruppen
and ended the war in Norway. The 342th Infantry Division was transferred
from France and deployed in Serbia to suppress the insurgency. The
100th Tank Brigade was also deployed to Serbia. Danckelmann was relieved
of command in Serbia while Boehme took over the command of Serbia.
Danckelmann was held responsible for letting the Serbian rebellion
get out of control and spread.
Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the supreme command of the
German armed forces, pursuant to Hitler’s directive, sent instructions
for the suppression of insurgency movements in the occupied territories,
which List issued to his subordinate commanders:
Measures taken up to now to counteract this general communist insurgent
movement have proven themselves to be inadequate. The Fuehrer now
has ordered that severest means are to be employed in order to break
down this movement in the shortest time possible. Only in this manner,
which has always been applied successfully in the history of the extension
of power of great peoples can quiet be restored.
The following directives are to be applied here: (a) Each incident
of insurrection against the German Wehrmacht, regardless of individual
circumstances, must be assumed to be of communist origin. (b) In order
to stop these intrigues at their inception, severest measures are
to be applied immediately at the first appearance, in order to demonstrate
the authority of the occupying power, and in order to prevent further,
progress. One must keep in mind that a human life frequently counts
for naught in the affected countries and a deterring effect can only
be achieved by unusual severity. In such as case the death penalty
for 50 to 100 communists must in general be deemed appropriate as
retaliation for the life of a German soldier. The manner of execution
must increase the deterrent effect. The reverse procedure to proceed
at first with relatively easy punishment and to be satisfied with
the threat of measures of increased severity as a deterrent does not
correspond with these principles and is not to be applied.
The German punitive expedition was headed by Franz Boehme and focused
on the Macva valley between the Sava and Drina rivers, Sabac. Boehme,
a Roman Catholic born in Steiermark, Austria and a former Austrian
military officer who was a veteran of World War I, focused on collective
punishment of the entire Serbian civilian population. Boehme rationalized
or justified the executions as revenge for the Serbian role in World
War I. The Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip had precipitated World War
I by the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand
in 1914. Austrian troops suffered high casualties against the Serbian
army during the first year of World War I. Boehme saw the mass executions
of Serbian civilians as retribution for Austrian deaths during the
Great War. Boehme issued orders to the military units under his command
on September 25 and October 10, 1941, in which he ordered that "the
whole population" of Serbia was to be hit severely. Boehme ordered
that for one German solider or Volksdeutsche killed, a hundred Serbs
were to be executed. Keitel had made a vague reference to "the
death penalty for 50 to 100 communists". Boehme now had ordered
that for every German soldier or ethnic German outside of the Reich,
a Volksdeutsche, killed, a hundred Serbs would be executed:
If losses of German soldiers or Volksdeutsche occur, the territorial
competent commanders up to the regiment commanders are to decree the
shooting of arrestees according to the following quotas: (a) For each
killed or murdered German soldier or Volksdeutsche (men, women or
children) one hundred prisoners or hostages, (b) For each wounded
German soldier or Volksdeutsche 50 prisoners or hostages.
Boehme ordered that: "In all commands in Serbia, all Communists,
male residents suspicious as such, all Jews, a certain number of nationalistic
and democratically inclined residents are to be arrested as hostages,
by means of sudden actions."
On October 4, List issued to following order to General Paul Bader
for treatment of the Serbian population:
The male population of the territories to be mopped up of bandits
is to be handled according to the following points of view: Men who
take part in combat are to be judged by court martial. Men in the
insurgent territories who were not encountered in battle, are to be
examined and, If a former participation in combat can be proven of
them to be judged by court martial.
If they are only suspected of having taken part in combat, of having
offered the bandits support of any sort, or of having acted against
the Wehrmacht in any way, to be held in a special collecting camp.
They are to serve as hostages in the event that bandits appear, or
anything against the Wehrmacht is undertaken in the territory mopped
up or in their home localities, and in such cases they are to be shot.
Following List’s order, the executions of Serbian civilians and hostages
increased and reprisals against the Serbian population were conducted
based on the ratio of "a hundred to one", the 100 to 1 ratio,
100 hundred Serbs killed for one German soldier killed. There was
a reprisal killing of Serbian civilians outside the Serbian town of
Topola. General Boehme ordered on October 4 and October 9 that Serbian
civilians be shot. Boehme sent List the following report of the executions
by shooting of about 2,000 Communists and Jews in reprisal for 22
murdered of the Second Battalion of the 421st Army Signal Communication
Regiment in progress." List also received reports of reprisal
shootings of Serbian civilians conducted by the Security Police and
S.D. The Topola mass shooting was mentioned in the War Crimes Judgment
at Nuremberg. List believed that the way to deal with the insurgency
in Serbia was to bring more troops to the area. Hitler and Keitel,
however, argued that terrorism and intimidation of the population
would suppress the resistance movement without significant additional
German occupation troops. List was thus not in agreement with many
of the pacification programs and policies of the German High Command.
Illness on October 15 forced the retirement of List from active service.
The Kragujevac Massacre, October 20-21, 1941
The central Serbian town of Kragujevac had a pre-war population of
27,249, located in the political, cultural, educational, and industrial
center of Serbia known as Shumadija at the Lepenica river, a tributary
of the Morava. Kragujevac was first mentioned in the Turkish Tapu
Defter as Kragujevdza in 1476 as a village with 32 houses. By 1822,
it had 283 houses with a population of 2,000. Kragujevac was the capital
of the Serbian Principality when Milos Obrenovic proclaimed it the
capital from 1818 to 1839. The first Serbian court was established
in Kragujevac in 1820, the first high school in 1833, the first theater
in 1835, the first Lycee in 1838, the first cannons in 1853, and the
first electric power station in 1884. By 1851, the town had become
the industrial center of Serbia. In 1853, the oldest Serbian military
plant was established with French assistance to produce cannons. The
military technical institute (Vojno Tehnicki Zavod) was established
in Kragujevac which oversaw Serbian military armaments and weapons
production. In 1929, a railroad line between Kragujevac and Kraljevo
was established. The town produced military vehicles. Ford trucks
were built in the late 1930s for the Yugoslav army.
On October 15, Mihailovic’s forces captured a German platoon. The
next day, the commander of the 920th German regiment in Kragujevac
sent his third battalion to free the platoon. This rescue regiment
was ambushed by both Mihailovic’s and Tito’s forces. Ten German soldiers
were killed and 26 wounded. On October 19, 300 civilians were executed
in three surrounding villages in retaliation or as reprisals. All
roads leading out of Kragujevac were blocked. All houses were searched.
All males between 16 and 60 were taken to district military headquarters
for identification, then to huts overlooking the town. Civil servants
were rounded up from offices and 300 students over 16 were taken from
the high school along with 18 teachers. The roundup continued into
the afternoon. 100 were shot on October 20. 10,000 were assembled.
On October 20, 2,300 were executed according to the official German
report by Boehme. Laza Pantelic, the headmaster of the First Boys
High School was shot. When he observed 35 of his students being led
away to execution, he asked the German soldier: "Where are they
being taken?" "To be shot" answered the German soldier.
"I’m their headmaster. Let them go, and take me instead."
"That’s impossible", replied the German soldier. "My
place is not here---it’s with my boys." He joined the students
where they embraced and faced the firing squad together. "Shoot,
I am still in class." The students from the Kragujevac high school
were reported to have said: "We are Serbian children. Shoot."
The Germans reportedly spared a few hundred townsmen so that the horror
could be spread to terrorize the population. Approximately 600 were
kept at the execution site in Shumarica where they buried the dead
for the next 4 days. The bodies were buried in shallow graves, which
allowed dogs unearthed the bodies and ate them. The graves were later
marked by Serbian Orthodox crosses which the Communist regime later
had removed.
An announcement from the local German command office in Kragujevac
on October 21, 1941, was as follows:
For every dead German soldier, 100 residents have been executed, and
for every wounded German soldier, 50 residents have been executed,
and before all others, Communists, bandits, and their assistants were
targeted, all totaling 2,300.
On October 29, Felix Benzler, sent this report to his ministry:
In the past week there have been executions of a large number of Serbs,
not only in Kraljevo but also in Kragujevac, as reprisals for the
killing of members of the Wehrmacht in the proportion of 100 Serbs
for one German. In Kraljevo 1,700 male Serbs were executed, in Kragujvac
2,300."
The town of Rudnik was subsequently razed. In Gornji Milanovac, the
town was systematically destroyed with incendiary bombs by the German
forces, 72 houses out of 464 were left standing. In Kraljevo, railway
and aircraft factory workers were executed and the Germans reportedly
shot one member of each family in the town.
In the villages of Meckovac, Grosnica, Milatovac, 427 civilians were
executed. In Draginac and Loznica, 2,950 hostages were killed, for
guerrilla activity around Kraljevo. In Kraljevo, 1,736 civilians were
killed.
A telegram between the Plenipotentiary of the German Foreign Ministry
and the military commander in Serbia explained the reason why civilians
from Kragujevac were chosen for execution:
"The executions in Kragujevac occurred although there had been
no attacks on members of the Wehrmacht in this city, for the reason
that not enough hostages could be found elsewhere."
The executions in Kragujevac were indiscriminate. Serbian civilians
were selected merely to fill the quota of 100 hundred Serbs for every
German soldier killed. The German military command in Serbia listed
the number of executed at Kragujevac at 2,300. The Communist regime
manipulated and inflated the figures to 7,000 killed after the war
for propaganda purposes. A more accurate and objective number for
the total number of Serbian civilians executed in Kragfujevac and
in the neighboring villages and towns for the entire period is approximately
5,000.
On October 24, Walter Kuntze was assigned Deputy Wehrmacht Commander
Southeast and Commander-in-Chief of the 12th Army. This was a temporary
or interim appointment to last until List could return to duty. On
October 31, Boehme submitted a report to Kuntze in which he detailed
the shootings in Serbia:
Shooting: 405 hostages in Belgrade (total up to now in Belgrade, 4,750).
90 Communists in Camp Sebac. 2,300 hostages in Kragujevac. 1,700 hostages
in Kraljevo."
Executions of Serbian civilians continued. Kuntze in a directive of
March 19, 1942:
The more unequivocal and the harder reprisal measures are applied
from the beginning the less it will become necessary to apply them
at a later date. No false sentimentalities! It is preferable that
50 suspects are liquidated than one German soldier lose his life….If
it is not possible to produce the people who have participated in
any way in the insurrection or to seize them, reprisal measures of
a general kind may be deemed advisable, for instance, the shooting
to death of all male inhabitants from the nearest villages, according
to a definite ratio (for instance, one German dead---100 Serbs, one
German wounded---50 Serbs).
The Kragujevac massacre had a profound effect on Mihailovic. The Kragujevac
Massacre convinced Mihailovic that he was correct in avoiding attacks
on the German occupation forces that would lead to executions of Serbian
civilians. He told British officer Christie Lawrence:
You have heard of the result of my revolution last autumn…? Of the
hundreds of villages burned and the terrible reprisals that the Germans
inflicted on our innocent people? … When it was over … I resolved
that I would never again bring such misery on the country, unless
it could result in our total liberation.
The Communist Partisans, by contrast, were indifferent to the losses
of the civilian population in Serbia. The Partisans were motivated
by an ideology that prevented them from seeing that German occupation
troops in Serbia were not Nazi party members but recruits who had
no choice but to serve in the German Army. The senseless murder of
German occupation troops would invite reprisals that would lead in
the loss of innocent civilian lives. The Partisans, however, were
also guided by a political agenda. Their goal was to control territory
and set the stage for a Communist takeover of the country. Edvard
Kardelj said: "Some comrades…have a fear of reprisals---destruction
of villages, executions, and so on….In war we must not be afraid of
whole villages being destroyed." Tito replied to Mihailovic’s
assertion that large-scale attacks against the Germans would result
in reprisals that would lead to the destruction of those units and
the loss of innocent civilian lives: "That’s of no importance.
I’m looking further ahead." The terror will unquestionably lead
to armed action…" Communist leaders reacted to the bewilderment
caused by their callousness toward suffering by saying that if the
Serbs perished in this war, there were enough Chinese to settle Serbian
lands. In other words, the goal was in achieving political power.
This was what the partisans wanted. They were not concerned if innocent
civilians were killed. The ends justified the means. So long as a
Communist dictatorship was created in Serbia and Yugoslavia, the cost
in human life was irrelevant.
The Nuremberg War Crimes Trials and the Kragujevac Massacre
Franz Boehme (1885-1947) was captured on May 9, 1945 in Norway. Boehme
was placed on trial by the U.S. Military Tribunal for war crimes and
crimes against humanity in Serbia for the mass executions of Serbian
civilians in Kragujevac and adjoining towns and villages. This trial
was the "Hostages Trial", Case No. 47, which was held from
July 8, 1947 to February 19, 1948. He committed suicide prior to his
arraignment on May 29, 1947 by jumping off the fourth floor of the
prison building in Nuremberg, Germany. The defendants in the Hostages
Trial were German military commanders who had ordered reprisal killings
against civilians or hostages in order to maintain order in occupied
territories under attack from guerrillas. Franz Boehme, Wilhelm List,
Walter Kundze, Maximilian von Weichs, Hermann Foertsch, Lothar Rendulic,
Helmuth Felmy, Hubert Lanz, Ernst Dehner, Ernst von Leyser, Wilhelm
Speidel, and Kurt von Geitner were charged with committing war crimes
and crimes against humanity in Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania, and Norway.
They were charged in a four count indictment that charged them with
will unlawfully, willfully and knowingly committing war crimes and
crimes against humanity under Article II of Control Council Law No.
10 "with being principals in and accessories to the murder of
thousands of persons from the civilian population of Greece, Yugoslavia,
Norway and Albania between September 1939 and May 1945 by the use
of troops of the German Armed Forces under the command of and acting
pursuant to orders issued, distributed and executed by the defendants."
They were further charged in participating in "a deliberate scheme
of terrorism and intimidation wholly unwarranted and unjustified by
military necessity by the murder, ill-treatment and deportation to
slave labour of prisoners of and the civilian populations."
Under the first count, they were charged with the murder of hundreds
of thousands of persons by mass executions of civilians, that they
"issued, distributed and executed orders for the execution of
100 ‘hostages’ in retaliation for each German soldier killed and ‘fifty’
hostages in retaliation for each German soldier wounded." Under
count two, they were charged with destroying cities, towns, and villages
by burning and leveling them. Under count three, they were charged
with the summary execution of POWs and the murder of relatives of
those combatants. Under the fourth count, they were charged with the
murder, torture, and systematic terrorization and imprisonment in
concentration camps of the civilian populations in the occupied territories.
These acts were held to violate the 1907 Hague Regulations, international
conventions, the laws and customs of war, general principles of criminal
law, and the internal penal laws of the occupied countries which were
"declared, recognized and defined as crimes" by Article
II of Control Council Law No. 10 which was promulgated by the US,
USSR, France, and the UK. The Nuremberg court found Wilhelm List guilty
on counts one and three and he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Walter Kuntze was found guilty on counts one, three, and four and
received a life sentence. Hermann Foertsch was acquitted and released.
Maximilian von Weichs was severed from the case due to illness. Generalfeldmarschall
Ewald von Kleist was extradited by Yugoslavia on August 16, 1946,
was tried for war crimes, convicted, and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment.
Kleist was extradited by the USSR in 1948 where he was found guilty
of war crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment. Kleist died in the
Vladimir POW camp in 1954 in the USSR.
The Nuremberg court found that hostages could not be taken and then
executed during a military occupation based on military expediency.
"Every available method to secure order" must be used before
hostages can be taken. The court found that the Serbian/Yugoslav guerrillas
were not entitled to be classed as "lawful belligerents."
The court found that the guerrillas were franc tireurs, from French
for "free shooters". Thus, they were not entitled to POW
status. As franc tireurs, upon capture the guerrillas could be "subjected
to the death penalty", that is, summarily shot. The court, however,
rejected the defendant’s defense of "superior orders". The
defendants argued that they were not responsible because they were
only following orders of those superior to them in rank and power.
In following superior orders, the court held that one must show "excusable
ignorance of the illegality" of the orders to be excused. If
one knows that the order is illegal and follows it, one cannot use
the defense. An order is illegal if it "violates International
Law and outrages fundamental concepts of justice." The court
held that following "superior orders" is not a defense in
the commission of a criminal act. The court found that Wilhelm List
and Walter Kuntze were following orders they knew to be illegal and
criminal because the orders from Hitler and Keitel violated international
law and fundamental concepts of justice. The executions of Serbian
civilians at Kragujevac were thus found by the Nuremberg Tribunal
to constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.
