With the Devil in Titoland:

A Wehrmacht Anti-Partisan
Division in Bosnia-
Herzegovina, 1943
Ben Shepherd

This article contributes to greater understanding of the forces that shaped

the prosecution of Wehrmacht anti-partisan warfare at the level of divisions
in the field. The article explains the approach to anti-partisan warfare of the
divisional command of the 369th Infantry Division and compares it with the
approach of other divisional commands which operated in the same region
of Y ugoslavia during early 1943. In doing so, it highlights the particular
importance of the troops’ level of fighting power, and of the formative life
experiences of divisional commanders during the First World War, in shap-
ing conduct.

A nuanced debate is now emerging over how far the lower levels of
the Wehrmacht were involved in the ideologically coloured, ruth-
less, and exploitative National Socialist policies which higher-level
directives conveyed; how far, conversely, those lower levels sought to
ameliorate the worst effects of those policies; and the various reasons
for this differentiated behaviour. In the process, a picture of lower-
level Wehrmacht conduct is emerging which is considerably more
nuanced than those earlier accounts which tended to depict the
Wehrmacht in blanket terms, and exonerate or condemn it wholesale.1
A fruitful focus has been the Wehrmacht’s middle level – divisions,
regiments, and medium-sized occupation jurisdictions. This level of
analysis is sufficiently far down the command chain for the historian to
investigate the interaction of forces which shaped the motivation and
conduct of individual officers and their units on the ground. At the

1
T.J. Schulte, The German Army and Nazi Policies in Occupied Russia (Oxford, 1989);
R.D. Müller, ‘Die Wehrmacht: Historische Last und Verantwortung’, in R.D. Müller and
H.-E. Volkmann, eds, Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realität (Munich, 1999).

War in History 2009 16 (1) 77–97 10.1177/0968344508097618 © 2009 SAGE Publications

78 Ben Shepherd

same time, it is sufficiently high up that chain to enable the historian

to access source material considerably more comprehensive and
meaningful than the ‘shards’ which often are all that is available for
analysis of the rank and file.2
Most middle-level study that has emerged so far has focused upon
Wehrmacht units in the Soviet Union.3 Given the ideological under-
pinnings of the German war in the east, the ferocity of the campaign it
unleashed, and the sheer scale and impact of Wehrmacht involvement
in Nazi crimes during its course, this emphasis is unsurprising. In order
to form a truly comprehensive, representative picture of Wehrmacht
behaviour, however, there is a need for case studies of other campaigns
also.
The Wehrmacht’s 1941–44 counter-insurgency campaign in
Yugoslavia is a significant example. In this campaign, the combination
of ideology and ruthless military necessity which characterized much
of Wehrmacht anti-partisan warfare unleashed a degree of brutality
exceeded only in the Soviet Union. During 1941 and early 1942, it gen-
erated an extraordinarily severe, ideologically based reprisal policy
which targeted groupings of the Reich’s ‘ideological enemies’ – Jews,
Gypsies, and communists – as scapegoats for any sabotage act or other
insurgent attack in occupied territory. During 1942 and particularly
1943, meanwhile, it unleashed a series of large-scale cleansing oper-
ations which inflicted a scale of killing upon ‘bandits and bandit
accomplices’ going far beyond the dictates of military necessity, and
swept up tens of thousands of non-combatants as victims.
The odium with which the Wehrmacht at institutional level
regarded irregular warfare went beyond the usual degree of abhor-
rence felt by conventional armies. It was founded not only upon the
usual fear of a foe who avoided open combat, was indistinguishable
from the wider civilian population, exploited hostile terrain to his
advantage, and employed indirect and ruthless methods against occu-
pying troops. It was founded also upon a long-standing institutional

2
Schulte, German Army, pp. 28–40. Some rank-and-file studies do have great merit. See
for instance O. Bartov, Hitler’s Army (Oxford, 1992); C. Rass, Menschenmaterial: deutsche
Soldaten an der Ostfront (Paderborn, 2003).
3
Schulte, German Army; T.O. Anderson, ‘Incident at Baranivka: German Reprisals and the
Soviet Partisan Movement in Ukraine, October–December 1941’, Journal of Modern
History LXXI (1999), pp. 585–623; K.J. Arnold, ‘Die Eroberung und Behandlung der
Stadt Kiew durch die Wehrmacht im September 1941: Zur Radikalisierung der
Besatzungspolitik’, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen LVIII (1999), pp. 23–63; J. Hürter,
‘Die Wehrmacht vor Leningrad: Krieg und Besatzungspolitik der 18. Armee im Herbst
und Winter 1941/42’, Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte XLIX (2001), pp. 377–440;
C. Hartmann, ‘Massensterben oder Massenvernichtung? Sowjetische Kriegsgefangene
im “Unternehmen Barbarossa”: Aus dem Tagebuch eines deutschen
Lagerkommandanten’, Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte XLIX (2001), pp. 97–158;
P. Lieb, ‘Täter aus Überzeugung? Oberst Carl von Andrian und die Judenmorde der 707.
Infanteriedivision 1941/42’, Vierteljahrehefte für Zeitgeschichte L (2002), pp. 523–57;
B. Shepherd, War in the Wild East (Cambridge, MA, 2004); A. Hill, The War behind the
Eastern Front (London, 2005).

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 With the Devil in Titoland: A Wehrmacht Anti-Partisan Division 79

mindset, stretching back to the Franco-Prussian War if not before,

which regarded terror, not engagement, as the best means of control-
ing an occupied population. While this mindset was not necessarily
entirely unique to the German military, it was certainly very pro-
nounced within it.4 This view would come to correspond closely with
Nazi ideological doctrine, which both regarded terroristic security pol-
icy with a similar degree of approval,5 and used it as an excuse to scape-
goat and murder the Reich’s ‘racial and ideological enemies’.6
Indeed, in the occupied Soviet Union, the injection of ideology into
security policy reached its apogee, as the SS sought to utilize it as a tool
of a ruthless, racially based (de)population policy.7
There is, however, a second, contrasting reason why the
Wehrmacht’s counter-insurgency campaign in Yugoslavia is such an
important focus of middle-level study. The campaign’s conduct was
marked, perhaps more than any other Wehrmacht counter-insurgency
campaign of the Second World War, by the inherent, massive tension
between a terror-based approach to security and the need for a much
more imaginative policy. This second type of policy, which any occu-
pation regime with any sense would practise, sees not terror but con-
structive engagement as a vital means of achieving a successful security
policy. The measures involved include enticing deserters from the
insurgents and, even more importantly, encouraging the population’s
active and willing participation in the counter-insurgency effort.8
If such policies are to be truly effective, of course, they must be
implemented within the wider context of a sensible, constructive gen-
eral occupation policy. Such an occupation policy will seek, through
measures such as land redistribution, maintenance of schools and
other public facilities, and the support of indigenous culture, to give

4
M. Howard, The Franco-Prussian War (London, 1961), pp. 250–51; T. von Trotha, ‘“The
Fellows Can Just Starve”: On Wars of “Pacification” in the African Colonies of Imperial
Germany and the Concept of “Total War”’, in M.F. Boemke, R. Chickering and S. Förster,
eds, Anticipating Total War: The German and American Experiences, 1871–1914 (Cambridge,
1999); S. Dabringhaus, ‘An Army on Vacation? The German War in China’, in Boemke
et al., Anticipating Total War; J. Horne and A. Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914 (New Haven,
2001). For wider context and examples of terroristic counter-insurgency campaigns
conducted by other colonial powers, see J. Ellis, From the Barrel of a Gun: A History of
Guerrilla, Revolutionary, and Civil Warfare from the Romans to the Present (London, 1995);
B. Vandervort, Wars of Imperial Conquest in Africa, 1830–1914 (London, 1998);
I.F.W. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies (London, 2001).
5
As exemplified by a December 1942 conversation between Hitler and General Jodl,
cited in M. Mazower, ‘Military Violence and the National Socialist Consensus: The
Wehrmacht in Greece, 1941–44’, in H. Heer and K. Naumann, eds, War of Extermination
(Oxford, 2000), pp. 146–74, quotation from p. 156.
6
In July 1941, as Jürgen Förster writes, Hitler ‘openly declared that the partisan war
behind the front offered the possibility of “exterminating all that stands against us.” To
pacify such a vast area as quickly as possible, “anyone who even looks at us askance” was
to be shot.’ J. Förster, ‘Die Sicherung des “Lebensraumes”’, in H. Boog et al., Der Angriff
auf die Sowjetunion (Frankfurt am Main, 1991), p. 1233.
7
P. Blood, Hitler’s Bandit Hunters (Dulles, VA, 2006).
8
Ellis, From the Barrel of a Gun; Beckett, Modern Insurgencies.

War in History 2009 16 (1)

80 Ben Shepherd

the occupied population a genuine stake in the occupying power’s vic-

tory. Even though overall German policy in Yugoslavia was predom-
inantly geared away from this form of occupation, this did not stop a
number of relatively sane Wehrmacht officers seeking to promote the
more restrained kind of security policy which was consistent with such
a form of occupation.
The particular importance of bringing the civilian population
onside in the context of occupied Yugoslavia was due to the bloody
political and ethnic conflicts that beset the country during the Second
World War. The communist partisans, the Serb nationalist Chetniks,
and the fascist Ustasha movement, which had seized power in Croatia
in 1941, were only the most prominent examples of an array of ethno-
political groupings that increasingly lent the conflict in Yugoslavia the
character not just of an insurgency, but of a civil war also.9 In such a
chaotic context, keeping as much of the occupied population as possi-
ble willingly onside was the only way in which the Wehrmacht’s over-
stretched security forces could hope, from late 1942 onwards at any
rate, to keep the degree of order needed for the smooth running of
the occupation regime.
An examination of how and why the tension between terror and cul-
tivation was reflected in the actions of the middle-level units that were
prosecuting the Wehrmacht’s counter-insurgency campaign on the
ground, then, will contribute significantly to an understanding of how
successfully such units negotiated these tensions. Moreover, while a
recent study by Klaus Schmider has provided a superb, extensive
overview of German counter-insurgency warfare in Yugoslavia,10 such
middle-level studies of the campaign as have so far been conducted
have focused almost exclusively upon 1941 only. This focus is entirely
understandable, since it was in 1941 that, in response to a national
uprising across much of Yugoslavia, but particularly Serbia, the
Wehrmacht initiated a reprisal campaign of immense ferocity and
ideological intensity against Jews, communists, and other purported
‘dangerous elements’.11 It is important, however, to extend focus to
the campaign’s later years, not least because it was then that the afore-
mentioned tension between the impetus to terror and the need for
restraint became most apparent.12

9
For the most comprehensive English-language treatments of the war in Yugoslavia, see
J. Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: The Chetniks (Stanford,
1975), and War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration
(Stanford, 2001).
10
K. Schmider, Partisanenkrieg in Jugoslawien 1941–1944 (Hamburg, 2002).
11
W. Manoschek, ‘Serbien ist Judenfrei’, 2nd edn (Munich, 1995); W. Manoschek and
H. Safrian, ‘717/117 ID: eine Infanterie-Division auf dem Balkan’, in H. Heer and
K. Naumann, eds, Vernichtungskrieg (Hamburg, 1995), pp. 359–73.
12
A partial exception to the emphasis on 1941 is Hermann Frank Meyer’s work on the
717th/117th Infantry/Light Division, Von Wien nach Kalavryta (Mannheim, 2002). That
said, Meyer considers the division’s 1942–43 record in Yugoslavia only as secondary to
his primary focus upon the division’s conduct in Greece in late 1943.

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 With the Devil in Titoland: A Wehrmacht Anti-Partisan Division 81

This article investigates the behaviour of a particular Wehrmacht

formation, the 369th Infantry Division – nicknamed the ‘Devil’s
Division’ – from January to March 1943, the first three months of its
duties in Bosnia and Herzegovina.13 During the Second World War
this region was part of the Ustasha-governed Independent State of
Croatia (or NDH), and was, for much of the war, the most fiercely con-
tested region of the entire Yugoslav campaign. The period of early
1943 is an important focus in the context of this region; it was then
that the Germans began to prosecute a series of vast, bloody mobile
operations against the main strongholds of Marshal Tito’s communist
partisans in Bosnia and Herzegovina – a region declared the
‘Liberated Zone’ by the partisans, and known in Axis circles as
‘Titoland’. The major anti-partisan operations that took place within
this region during January to March 1943 yielded enormous recorded
partisan body counts, often far in excess both of Axis losses and of the
recorded amounts of partisan weapons captured.14 These body counts,
then, almost certainly included large numbers of non-combatants –
civilians who either had been assisting the partisans or were suspected
of doing so, or who had merely had the misfortune to live in areas con-
trolled by them. At the same time, however, there was growing recog-
nition by some anti-partisan divisions, as well as by the regional
command to which they were subordinate, of the need for less indis-
criminate terror and greater restraint.
The conduct of the 369th and other Wehrmacht divisions operating
in this region was fostered in part by higher-level directives. These
were issued at the highest level by Hitler himself through the OKW, at
theatre level by the Wehrmachtbefehlshaber South-East, and at regional
level by the Befehlshaber der deutschen Truppen in Kroatien (hereafter
referred to as Croatia Command), under Lieutenant-General Rudolf
Lüters.15 Divisional conduct was also fostered, however, by the initia-
tives of individual divisions on the ground, initiatives which they took
in response to the conditions they faced, and in accordance with the
attitudes of their individual commanders.
As far as concrete conditions are concerned, early 1943 proved an
extremely testing time for the Wehrmacht anti-partisan formations in the
NDH. By this stage, partisan forces had swelled to well over 150 000 and,
to some extent at least, were assuming an increasingly professionalized,

13
The epithet ‘Devil’s Division’ was coined by the Axis themselves. Tomasevich, Occupation
and Collaboration, p. 267.
14
Operations Weis I and Weis II, which took place between January and March 1943,
yielded an ‘enemy dead’ figure of 11 915 against only 47 machine-guns and 589 rifles
captured. Though some of this discrepancy is due to the fact that, by this stage, partisan
units were often able to retrieve the weapons of their dead and wounded before they
retreated, it is clear that much of it is due to the shooting of non-combatants of whom
co-operation with or membership of the partisans was only suspected. Schmider,
Partisanenkrieg, pp. 253–54.
15
On the changing structure of Wehrmacht regional command in Yugoslavia, see op. cit.,
pp. 573–75.

War in History 2009 16 (1)

82 Ben Shepherd

military character. Indeed, it was during this period that the western
Allies eventually recognized the partisan movement, in preference to
Draza Mihajlovic’s Chetniks, as the horse they should back against the
Axis occupation.16 In mountainous Bosnia and Herzegovina, the par-
tisans had chosen the perfect setting to wage the kind of warfare which
suited them. Facing them was an array of understrength, inferior-quality
Wehrmacht infantry divisions – the details of whose condition are elab-
orated upon below – together with a Waffen SS division, and Croatian,
Italian, and pro-Axis Chetnik forces of varying reliability.
As already pointed out, however, how Wehrmacht commanders
chose to react to these conditions could be determined not only by the
conditions themselves, but also by the attitudes they brought with
them into the campaign – attitudes which in turn could be shaped by
such factors as social and regional background, potentially brutalizing
combat experience during the First World War, and experience of the
internecine violence, political chaos, and economic weakness that
beset both Germany and Austria at various points from 1918 through
to the 1930s.17 It should be noted, incidentally, that disproportionately
large numbers of Wehrmacht officers serving in Yugoslavia were actu-
ally Austrian. Lack of space prevents this article from elaborating at
great length on the role these influences played in shaping officers’
attitudes to Nazi ideology, and to warfare generally and anti-partisan
warfare in particular. It will, however, give attention to the individual-
level influences that were particularly relevant in shaping the actions
of the divisions scrutinized here.
Analysis is deepened by systematically comparing the 369th with
other divisions serving in the NDH during this period, but which dif-
fered from the 369th in some important respects, and behaved differ-
ently accordingly. The main body of source material consists of
documents from the unit files both of the divisions themselves and of
Croatia Command, housed in the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv (BA-
MA) in Freiburg-im-Breisgau. For the purpose of investigating the atti-
tudes of individual officers, individual-level sources such as
Wehrmacht personnel files and identity cards, also located largely in
the BA-MA but in the Österreichisches Staatsarchiv (ÖSta) in Vienna
too, are incorporated as well.18

16
On the partisans during 1943, and growing Allied involvement with them, see
F.W.D. Deakin, The Embattled Mountain (New York, 1971); M. Djilas, Wartime (London,
1977); M. McConville, A Small War in the Balkans (London, 1986); R. West, Tito
(London, 1994); F. Lindsay, Beacons in the Night (Stanford, 1995).
17
On the effect of prior life experiences and influences, see B.R. Kroener, ‘Strukturelle
Veränderungen in der Militärischen Gesellschaft des Dritten Reiches’, in M. Prinz and
R. Zitelmann, eds, Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung (Darmstadt, 1994),
pp. 267–96; J. Hürter, Hitlers Heerführer (Munich, 2006).
18
This article utilizes part of the source base for a wider study, currently being conducted,
of divisional-level and regimental-level officers of Wehrmacht anti-partisan units in
Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. Grateful thanks to the staff of the BA-MA and the
ÖSta for their extensive assistance.

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 With the Devil in Titoland: A Wehrmacht Anti-Partisan Division 83

II
Before investigating the 369th Infantry Division’s behaviour during
the first three months of 1943, it is necessary to provide further back-
ground on the division itself, the situation in which it found itself in
Bosnia and Herzegovina during this period, and the higher-level anti-
partisan directives with which it was issued at the period’s outset.
The 369th Infantry Division, commanded by the Thuringian
Brigadier-General Fritz Neidholt, had been formed in 1942, arriving in
Yugoslavia at the end of that year. The 369th itself was a replacement
for a forerunner unit destroyed at Stalingrad.19 It held a peculiar sta-
tus, together with the 373rd and 392nd Infantry Divisions, and in con-
trast with other Wehrmacht divisions in the region, in that its senior
officers, and some of its junior officers and NCOs also, were German
or Austrian, but its rank-and-file personnel consisted of Croatian
troops. The formation of such ‘legionnaire divisions’ had been insti-
gated by the Axis during 1942 as a means of compensating for the lack
of suitable officer personnel in the Croatian Army itself.20 Such were
the low levels of morale, discipline, and general fighting quality of the
369th’s troops that they would have significant implications for the div-
ision’s fighting power and, consequently, for its conduct also.
More impressive were the four Wehrmacht security divisions – the
704th, 714th, 717th, and 718th – that had been serving in Yugoslavia
since 1941. These were upgraded in early 1943 to the status of Jäger-
Divisionen (light divisions), and received improved equipment and
weaponry and an influx of younger personnel accordingly.21 Like most
of those that the Wehrmacht designated to long-term security duty,
they were hardly the last word in military excellence themselves; even
after their upgrading, the majority of the men who served in them
were over 30,22 their state of training and equipment was inferior to
those of front-line infantry divisions, and their numbers would prove
increasingly inadequate in combating the burgeoning partisan threat.
Nevertheless, as shown below, whether before or after their upgrading,
they would prove superior to the 369th Infantry Division, a fact which,
at least in the case of the 718th Infantry Division, may well have influ-
enced its contrasting behaviour.
Bosnia and Herzegovina had become part of the NDH when the
Ustasha had seized power in Croatia during the final days of the

19
Tomasevich, Occupation and Collaboration, p. 267.
20
Op. cit., pp. 267–68.
21
BA-MA, film MFB4/56160, file 34404/3, frame 743. 718. Inf.-Div. Ia/Org, 13 February
1943. Betr.: Umgliederung der Div. in Jägerdivision.
22
In April 1943, for instance, 55% of the 718th Infantry Division’s troops were aged 30 or
over. BA-MA, film MFB5/42177, file 37733/2, frame 402. Anlage I zu 118. Jäg.-Div. Ia
Nr. 43, 17 April 1943. On their upgrading to light-division status, all four divisions
received re-designated numbers as the 104th, 114th, 117th, and 118th Light Divisions.
For the purpose of this article, so as to avoid confusion, all such divisions are referred to
by their original numbers.

War in History 2009 16 (1)

84 Ben Shepherd

German invasion of 1941. The Ustasha regime’s astonishing levels of

brutality against Jews and Serbs was matched only by its haplessness,
incompetence, and failure to maintain an effective working economic
and political structure within its territory.23 The Ustasha state’s image
among its own people was also to be tarnished by its image as an impo-
tent tool of the Axis, and by the occupiers’ increasingly rapacious
wartime economic exploitation of the country.24 The communist par-
tisans, able as they were to appeal across ethnic lines in a way that their
main rival grouping, the Serb Chetniks, were unable to do, skilfully
exploited the chaos that resulted so as to garner support across the
NDH’s Croat, Serb, and Muslim populations.25 And as already pointed
out, it was the particularly mountainous region of Bosnia and
Herzegovina which, of all the territory within the NDH, was by 1943
providing the partisans with their safest haven and main stronghold.
The major operations which the Germans executed in the region dur-
ing the first half of 1943 were ambitious in conception, aimed as they
were at the stage-by-stage conquest of this region, in western Bosnia,
central Bosnia, and then finally Herzegovina, and the destruction of the
partisan forces within it. At the outset of this period, true to the trad-
itional character of German counter-insurgency warfare, higher-level
directives for the destruction of the partisan concentrations in this
region assumed a harsh and ruthless tenor. To some extent, the harsh-
ness was probably a response to an exceptionally severe anti-partisan
directive issued by Hitler personally through the OKW on 16 December
1942, which had ordered ‘the most brutal means … against women and
children also’, and declared that any scruples in this matter were trea-
sonous to the German people.26 Coupled with this initiative was Hitler’s
particular displeasure at what he saw as the excessively high numbers of
prisoners taken in anti-partisan operations in the NDH during 1942.27
Two directives were issued by Croatia Command as a precursor to
Operation Weis I, which ran from 20 January to 15 February 1943 and
was the first of the mobile operations envisaged for the first half of
1943. The directives convey the extreme severity of purpose clearly.
One, issued on 12 January, stated that ‘Every measure that ensures the
security of the troops and appears to serve the purpose of pacification
is justifiable … No one should be held to account for conducting
themselves with excessive harshness.’28 The order then stipulated that

23
On the NDH, see Tomasevich, Occupation and Collaboration, chs. 6–11; Schmider,
Partisanenkrieg, pp. 162–88.
24
Tomasevich, Occupation and Collaboration, pp. 658–60. On general Axis economic policy
in Yugoslavia, see op. cit., chs. 14 and 15.
25
Op. cit., pp. 506–10.
26
Reproduced in N. Müller, ed., Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in der UdSSR 1941–1944:
Dokumente (Cologne, 1980), pp. 138–39.
27
Schmider, Partisanenkrieg, p. 166.
28
BA-MA, film MFB4/56160, file 34404/2, frames 407–09. Befehlshaber der deutschen
Truppen in Kroatien, 12 January 1943. Befehl für die Kampfführung im kroatischen
Raum. Emphasis in original.

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 With the Devil in Titoland: A Wehrmacht Anti-Partisan Division 85

anyone who took up arms against the occupying forces was to be shot
or hanged, and that ‘villages which are difficult to enter, as other
places which have been identified as partisan strong-points or would
suitably serve as such … are to be destroyed’.29
Yet the implications of an earlier Croatia Command directive, of
7 January, are perhaps even more significant. It was on that day that
Croatia Command stipulated the following further provisions for the
conduct of Weis I:

(a) In unreliable areas, the male population between 15 and 50 is to

be concentrated in transit camps, with a view to transportation to
Germany.
(b) Partisans and partisan suspects, together with civilians in whose
homes weapons and munitions are found, are to be summarily shot
or hanged and their homes burned down.
(c) The Ortskommandanturen … can set curfews for the general
population.
(d) Contravention of German orders to be dealt with ruthlessly and
extensively with an armed response.
(e) Functionaries of the Croatian state who fail to co-operate suffi-
ciently to be arrested for sabotage.30
Admittedly this directive seems to have been watered down somewhat
in time for the operation; orders of a few days later which appear in
the files of the divisions earmarked for the operation make no men-
tion of the mass deportations stipulated in point (a).31 The directive’s
greatest significance, however, lies in points (b) and (d). Point (b)
makes clear that mere suspicion, not proof, was sufficient to invite
ruthless retaliation. Point (d), meanwhile, is not so much an order as
a ruthless yet open-ended guideline intended, in line with the model
of the National Socialist leadership principle, both to encourage ruth-
lessness and to give the directive’s recipients a free hand in exercising
it.32 ‘Merely following orders’, then, is neither an explanation nor a
justification for the brutal conduct that so often resulted.
Such then was the tenor of the higher-level directives with which the
369th Infantry Division was issued at the outset of 1943.

29
Op. cit.
30
BA-MA, film MFB4/56160, file 34404/2, frames 396–97. Befehlshaber der deutschen
Truppen in Kroatien, 7 January 1943. Betr.: Ausübung der vollziehenden Gewalt.
31
Schmider, Partisanenkrieg, pp. 206–07.
32
On the leadership principle as applied to domestic policy, see I. Kershaw, The Nazi
Dictatorship, 4th edn (London, 2000), ch. 4. On anti-partisan directives as guidelines
rather than clear orders, see H. Heer, ‘The Logic of the War of Extermination: The
Wehrmacht and the Anti-Partisan War’, in Heer and Naumann, eds, War of
Extermination, pp. 92–126, here pp. 99–103. Heer arguably overstates the actual degree
to which ‘leadership principle’-type directives brutalized the Wehrmacht anti-partisan
campaign, but his observations as to how they worked are illuminating.

War in History 2009 16 (1)

86 Ben Shepherd

III
The spirit of the anti-partisan directives which the 369th Infantry
Division itself issued at this time very much corresponds to that of the
directives cited above. A directive issued by the 369th at the end of
1942 shows for instance that, at this point in the campaign, it made no
distinction between captured partisans and civilians merely suspected
of being partisans; with regard to the handing over of non-residents in
villages, dated 29 December 1942, the division’s operations section
ordered that ‘all people denounced as partisans are to be arrested and
thoroughly interrogated. If it becomes clear that those denounced
may be suspected of being partisans, they are to be hanged or shot.’33
In other words, mere suspicion, without proof, was sufficient to merit
a bullet or a noose. This sentiment was echoed in the intelligence sec-
tion’s report for January 1943, which recorded that during the course
of that month, in addition to 300 partisan suspects being sent to a con-
centration camp, a further 50 had been shot merely on suspicion of co-
operating with partisans.34 Finally, a proclamation to the population
around the same time required civilians to hand weapons in by a cer-
tain time, and proclaimed an automatic death penalty for anyone aid-
ing or sheltering non-residents – regardless, presumably, of whether
such non-residents were partisans or not.35
The fear of partisans that lay behind such directives is vividly illus-
trated in an announcement issued by the intelligence section around
the same time:
Anyone approaching from the enemy’s direction is always suspect and
therefore to be arrested. The partisans have mastered the art of infil-
trating our lines disguised as harmless farmers, forest workers … etc.
Another of their techniques is for men and women to hide themselves
in snowholes near villages … After the troops have passed by, they
return to retrieve their weapons from their hiding place and form
up again in the troops’ rear to attack communications and supply
columns. Later, they form large groups which undermine the entire
transport and supply network and attack the troops in the rear.
The intelligence section concluded from all this that
There is no place for sympathy for partisans, partisan suspects,
etc … It is the duty of all units, supply troops and columns to comb
these areas and seize all men of this age group [15 to 50]. At all
costs, the whereabouts of the partisans’ hiding places must be
prised out of the inhabitants they have left behind.36

33
BA-MA, film MFB4/72341, file 30581/3, frames 515–16. 369. (kroat.) Inf.-Div. Ia,
29 December 1942. Divisionsbefehl Nr. 11.
34
Op. cit., frames 674–77. 369. (kroat.) Inf.-Div. Ic. Tätigkeitsbericht, January 1943, p. 3.
Date unreadable.
35
Op. cit., frames 678–79. Aufruf an die Bevölkerung!
36
Op. cit., frame 583. 369. (kroat.) Inf.-Div. Ic, 22.1.43. Nachrichtenblatt Nr. 2.

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 With the Devil in Titoland: A Wehrmacht Anti-Partisan Division 87

Weis I gave the 369th its baptism of fire. Its task was to advance north
into the region of western Bosnia targeted for the operation and link
up with the left wing of the SS Prinz Eugen Division which, together
with the 717th Infantry Division and three Italian divisions, made up
the other Axis formations committed to the operation.37 In prepar-
ation for the operation, the division issued a directive on 6 January
1943 which urged ‘ruthless measures against the partisans and the
population who pact with them’.38 Three weeks later, at the height of
Weis I, the division ordered that ‘villages, houses either side of the
roads are to be burned down so as to deny the partisans shelter’.39
Collectively, such orders may well have encouraged, or at least been
no hindrance to, the brutalization of rank-and-file troops. It comes as
no surprise, then, that a report on the division’s activities between 9
January and 15 February recorded a loss to the division of 36 dead as
opposed to 834 dead partisans counted, and another 455 dead parti-
sans estimated. From this total of nigh-on 1300 claimed partisan dead,
only 256 weapons were recovered.40 This was the kind of massive short-
fall indicative of the killing of large numbers of non-combatants.
Whether over the directives it issued or the numbers of ‘partisan
dead’ that its troops inflicted, the files of the 718th Infantry Division
during the first three months of 1943 provide a marked contrast with
those of the 369th. This division, under the command of Major-
General Hans Fortner, had been serving in the NDH since 1941. Not
only are ruthless directives of the kind just cited absent from the
718th’s files during the same period: the division also showed a greater
awareness of the population’s sensibilities, of the real reasons why it
felt compelled to support the partisans, and of the need for the occu-
pying forces to cultivate the population. On 6 January 1943, for ex-
ample, the 718th’s operations section compiled a highly insightful
report on popular attitudes within its jurisdiction. It excoriated the
policies of the Ustasha regime, and blamed it directly for driving the
region’s Serbs, through its attempts essentially to exterminate them,
into the arms of the partisans.41 Such an attitude permeated further
down the 718th’s command structure in a way which, likewise, is not
apparent in the 369th’s files. In February 1943 Task Force Annacker,
serving under the 718th, requested ‘the formation of propaganda
units which will follow the troops and explain and justify their conduct
to the population through the spoken and written word’.42 Because

37
The 714th Infantry Division was also involved, but only in a ‘mopping up’ capacity.
38
BA-MA, film MFB4/72341, file 30581/3, frame 531. 369. (kroat.) Inf.-Div. Ia, 6 January
1943. Divisionsbefehl Nr. 14.
39
Op. cit., frame 585. 369. (kroat.) Inf.-Div. Ia, 29 January 1943. Divisionsbefehl Nr. 20.
40
Op. cit., frames 652–58. 369. (kroat.) Inf.-Div. Ia, 12 March 1943. Einsatz der 369.
(kroat.) Inf.-Div., 9 January – 15 February 1943.
41
BA-MA, film MFB4/56160, file 34404/2, frames 351–56. 718. Inf.-Div. Ia, 6 January
1943. Betr.: Lagebeurteilung.
42
Op. cit., frames 496–98. Kampfgruppe Annacker, 14 February 1943. Betr.:
Erfahrungsbericht zum Einsatz Teslic.

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88 Ben Shepherd

leaflets alone would have little effect upon the illiterate sections of the
population, the task force urged ‘skilful spoken propaganda, as prac-
tised lately by the partisans’.43 It also recognized that ‘The propaganda
troops must not consist of Ustasha people, for the population views the
Ustasha and everything it stands for with hate and distrust, but rather
of members of the Croatian army or civilians.’44
Perhaps the most striking way in which the 718th Infantry Division
differed from the 369th – one it shared with the 717th Infantry
Division – was its readiness, immediately after the two Weis operations,
to contemplate prisoner exchanges with the partisans. The negoti-
ations took place against a background in which officers higher up the
command chain were also seeing the wisdom of reining in brutality;
among other things, Lieutenant-General Lüters himself now approved
measures to place hostages in reserves rather than shoot them imme-
diately.45 The divisions’ readiness to enter into negotiations seems also
to have been founded in part on a belief, which a number of senior
officers within the region seem to have been sharing by 1943, that the
partisans should actually be granted proper combatant status. Major-
General Benignus Dippold, commander of the 717th, conveyed this
view when he argued, with apparent admiration for the partisans’
fighting qualities, that ‘one must view the enemy as poorly equipped
troops, but not as bandits’.46 There is no indication, however, that the
369th either shared similar sentiments or contemplated similar meas-
ures during this period.
The 718th’s more restrained approach is also reflected in the body
counts its troops were inflicting at this time. Compared with the 834
reported partisan dead which the 369th recorded – against a loss to
itself of 36 dead – between 9 January and 15 February 1943, two sets of
figures for the 718th indicate relative restraint: for the whole
of January 1943 it recorded the killing of 204 partisans at a loss to itself
of 38 dead.47 Admittedly, the significance of these contrasting figures
needs qualifying: first, the relative nature of such ‘restraint’ cannot be
stressed enough – this was still a massive contrast, suggesting that the
division’s rank-and-file troops were to a large extent ignoring the exhor-
tations to restraint issued by their commanders, and killing large num-
bers of non-combatants accordingly. Secondly, these figures were
recorded in the context not of the major Weis operations, but of general
security duties, and as such would not have recorded such high body
counts anyway. A key point, however, is one of proportion: the 369th
and 718th themselves suffered comparable losses during the periods in
question, but the 369th’s troops inflicted at least four times the number

43
Op. cit.
44
Op. cit.
45
Schmider, Partisanenkrieg, p. 255.
46
Op. cit., pp. 255–56.
47
BA-MA, film MFB4/56160, file 34404/3, frames 670–73. 718. Inf.-Div. Ia, 6 February
1943. Lagebericht, 27 January – 6 February 1943.

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 With the Devil in Titoland: A Wehrmacht Anti-Partisan Division 89

of ‘partisan’ dead. The difference is probably partly due to the fact that,
while the 718th seems to have been discouraging its troops from indis-
criminate brutality and killing, the 369th was if anything encouraging its
own troops.
That divisions under the same regional command could display such
contrasting approaches to anti-partisan warfare, then, clearly was not
down to a blanket need to ‘follow orders’. Three alternative explan-
ations, relating both to the conditions the divisions faced and the atti-
tudes of the individual officers commanding them, suggest themselves.

IV
As well as the commonplace frustration felt by substandard units fac-
ing a resourceful, elusive partisan enemy in difficult terrain, one par-
ticularly likely ‘situational’ explanation for the brutal harshness the
369th’s divisional command exhibited lies in the exceptionally poor
quality of its troops. An anti-partisan unit of poor quality – as so many
in the Wehrmacht were – was more likely to resort to the kind of anti-
partisan warfare that relied on harsher measures. This might be for
reasons of sheer frustration, or out of a more calculated desire to com-
pensate for its failings so as to find favour in the eyes of the superiors
pressuring it for results. This phenomenon is certainly apparent at
regimental and battalion level; numerous studies, including the
author’s previous research on Wehrmacht security divisions of Army
Group Centre in the Soviet Union, have provided examples of this.48
Given that lower-level formations such as regiments and battalions
experienced the partisan war at the sharp end more than the divi-
sional level did, it is perhaps unsurprising that a tendency to ‘lash out’
in frustrated impotence was particularly apparent at these lower levels.
However, given the dire state of the 369th’s own manpower – a state
that will now be elaborated upon – it would be similarly unsurprising if
such a malaise affected division-level mentalities also.
A welter of reports issued during January and February 1943 testifies
to the 369th’s extremely low standard of manpower. On 23 January, for
instance, the divisional commander reported that ‘Through borrow-
ing and requisitioning the troops have acquired a huge amount of bag-
gage. They make for an extremely unmilitary looking picture on the
roads … the troops are completely out of control.’49 Throughout
February the situation grew worse: troops and non-commissioned offi-
cers ‘lie about uninterested on the trucks and give no salute’.50 The
‘morale reports show that a large number of the Croatian troops are

48
Shepherd, War in the Wild East, ch. 7.
49
BA-MA, film MFB4/72341, file 30581/3, frame 584. 369. (kroat.) Inf.-Div.
Kommandeur, 23 January 1943.
50
Op. cit., frames 591–92. 369. (kroat.) Inf. Div. Kommandeur, 1 February 1943.

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90 Ben Shepherd

just fellow travellers without any understanding of the necessity of the

battle against the partisans’.51 Desertion became endemic.52 In August
1943 the 369th’s intelligence section dragged itself out of its despond-
ency over the matter sufficiently to articulate some explanation for the
troops’ singularly poor quality: it identified a host of reasons concern-
ing national character, the country’s political and economic conditions,
and the leadership, use, and treatment of the troops themselves – at
the hands, presumably, of the division’s German and Austrian junior
officers and non-commissioned officers.53 A more likely reason is that
the 369th does not seem to have recognized and moved against the
symptoms of plummeting morale quickly enough; this contrasts, as
shown below, with another formation largely comprising Croatian vol-
unteers, the 373rd Infantry Division.
Whatever the reason, troops of this quality clearly were not equal to
the challenge of effective anti-partisan warfare. Moreover, the frustra-
tion this situation caused can only have been heightened by the failure
of the Weis operations overall. Tito received ten days’ advance warning
of Weis I, a window of opportunity which he used to hinder the
advance of the Axis troops by destroying roads and bridges in the
region and decisively hindering their attempts to achieve a successful
major encirclement. The delay this created helped enable Tito and
large numbers of partisans to escape once more, albeit under heavy
Axis pressure, across the River Neretva.54
With respect to the quality of its troops also, the 718th Infantry
Division contrasts with the 369th. Admittedly, the 718th’s substandard
equipment and manpower did bring its share of the problems experi-
enced by all the core Wehrmacht anti-partisan divisions in Yugoslavia.55
Nevertheless, like its fellow ‘700-number’ divisions, the 718th benefited
in early 1943 from being upgraded to the status of a light division.
Divisional command reported on the results in February, describing
the division’s fighting power as being ‘extremely good given its current
combat strength’, commenting positively on the division’s state of train-
ing, artillery, pioneer companies, supply, and troop morale. Overall, it
described the division’s ability to carry out its tasks as ‘limitless’.56

51
Op. cit., frames 615–16. 369. (kroat.) Inf.-Div. Ia, 13 February 1943. Divisionsbefehl Nr. 27.
52
BA-MA, film MFB4/72341, file 30581/2, frames 674–77. 369. (kroat.) Inf.-Div. Ic.
Tätigkeitsbericht, January 1943, p. 2; film MFB4/72342, file 45652/1, frames 4–5. 396.
(kroat.) Inf. Div. IIa. Tätigkeitsbericht, 1 July – 31 December 1943, p. 1.
53
BA-MA, film MFB4/72342, file 45652/1, frames 37–41. 369. (kroat.) Inf.-Div. Ic, 22
August 1943. Betr.: Unerlaubte Entfernungen. This tallies with causes of poor morale
and desertion among Croatian Army units generally, as identified in Tomasevich,
Occupation and Collaboration, pp. 425–28.
54
Schmider, Partisanenkrieg, pp. 218, 229, 234.
55
In particular, numerous divisional reports point to the fact that its levels of weaponry
were frequently below full strength. BA-MA, film MFB5/42177, file 37733/2, frame 398.
118. Jäg.-Div. Ia, 17 April 1943; op. cit., frames 672–76. 118. Jäg.-Div. Ia, 18 May 1943.
Betr.: Ausbau der 718. Inf.-Div. zur Jäger-Division.
56
BA-MA, film MFB4/56160, file 34404/3, frame 743. 718. Inf.-Div. Ia/Org, 13 February
1943. Betr.: Umgliederung der Div. in Jägerdivision.

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 With the Devil in Titoland: A Wehrmacht Anti-Partisan Division 91

Although subsequent reports talked down the rosy picture somewhat,57

there can be no doubt that the 718th’s fighting power remained signifi-
cantly more impressive than the 369th’s.
And just as poorer fighting power may have contributed to the
369th’s greater display of harshness, so may the 718th’s more
favourable level of fighting power have helped ensure that that div-
ision felt less of the frustration and pressure for results that might have
brutalized it to a similar degree.
In other words, there is good reason to believe that the particularly
poor quality of the 369th Infantry Division’s troops was one of the rea-
sons behind its particularly harsh approach to anti-partisan warfare. At
the same time, however, this does not by itself explain such harshness.
For one thing, as will be shown, the 718th Infantry Division’s more
enlightened approach to anti-partisan warfare had been apparent well
before its upgrading to the status of light division in early 1943. In
other words, divisions possessing poorer fighting power were not
necessarily going to conduct themselves with greater ruthlessness.
Conversely, divisions enjoying greater fighting power were not neces-
sarily going to conduct themselves with greater restraint. A compari-
son between the 369th and 373rd Infantry Divisions demonstrates this.
Scrutiny of the 373rd’s files for its first three months of active anti-
partisan duty in the NDH, from May to July 1943, reveals a similarly
harsh attitude to anti-partisan warfare, yet one the 373rd harboured
despite the fact that the condition of its troops was considerably less
debilitated than that of the 369th’s. Granted, the 373rd’s assessment of
its troops’ fighting power in mid-June 1943 highlighted a number of
severe defects in its fighting power, including lack of specialist clothing
and artillery for mountain warfare, pack animals, suitable trucks, and
interpreters.58 When it came to the morale, motivation, and discipline
of its rank-and-file troops, however, the 373rd painted a more positive
picture than did the 369th. An after-action report of one of the 373rd’s
subordinate units, Pioneer Battalion 373, commented on the ‘excel-
lent’ combat performance, and willingness to fight to the end, of many
of its men when they had come up against partisan forces.59 Nor was
this an isolated incident: a divisional report issued at the end of June
was similarly upbeat about the mood of the troops.60 It seems the
373rd could thank itself for this state of affairs; a report it issued on
10 June explained that – unlike the 369th, it seems – it had spotted the

57
BA-MA, film MFB5/42178, file 37733/4, frames 513–14. 118. Jäg.-Div. Ia, 19 June 1943.
Betr.: Ausbau der 718. Inf.-Div. zur Jäger-Division. Bericht Nr. 7 über den Stand der
Aufstockung der 118. Jäg.-Div.; op. cit., frames 549–52. 118. Jäg.-Div. Ia, 25 June 1943.
Betr.: Ausbau der 718. Inf.-Div. zur Jäger-Division. Bericht Nr. 8 über den Stand der
Aufstockung der 118. Jäger-Division.
58
BA-MA, film MFB4/72346, file 37165/1, frames 123–30. 373. (kroat.) Inf.-Div. Ia,
14 June 1943. Betr.: Lagebeurteilung, p. 8.
59
Op. cit., frames 91–92. 373. (kroat.) Inf.-Div. Ia, 21 June 1943. Betr.: Pioneer-Bataillon 373.
60
Op. cit., frame 61. 373. (kroat.) Inf.-Div. Ia, 30 June 1943. Tagesmeldung.

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92 Ben Shepherd

danger of sinking troop morale and taken immediate measures to

combat it: ‘A noticeable deterioration in discipline … was countered
with appropriate measures. The troops’ self-confidence has risen, par-
ticularly in comparison with Croatian [Army] units.’61 The 373rd’s
troops benefited not only from good morale, but also healthy num-
bers, a report by the operations section dated 25 March recording that
the division’s roster of 10730 men was actually 56 more than it was sup-
posed to have.62
Yet although the 373rd seems to have benefited from better troop
quality than the 369th, this more favourable state did not translate into
anti-partisan attitudes that were any less harsh than the 369th’s.
Indicative of this are two documents which the 373rd issued in July
1943. For an operation of early July in the Cardaci region, the division
ordered that ‘Suspect persons are to be arrested. Those found with a
weapon in their hands are to be shot … Settlements which have aided
the partisans … are to be razed to the ground. The bandits must be
combated with ruthless harshness.’63 The second directive, issued by
the divisional commander Major-General Zellner himself, comes from
15 July: ‘I hope that all units under me or co-operating with me con-
tinue to conduct themselves with such ruthlessness against the parti-
sans in the cause of pacifying the land … Our common struggle is
against the disruption of order and the Bolshevik-infected bandits!’64
The language of this directive contrasts greatly with the attitude the
717th and 718th Infantry Divisions displayed towards the partisans.
Indeed, nor is language of such a crude ideological flavour, with its
talk of ‘Bolshevik infection’, to be found in the 369th Infantry
Division’s files by this time either. That Zellner was expressing himself
in such terms suggests that particular strength of ideological feeling
that was all too likely to translate into an excessively severe approach to
anti-partisan warfare.65
Despite the difference in their conditions, then, there was little dif-
ference in the markedly ruthless attitude to anti-partisan warfare
which the divisional commands of both the 369th and 373rd dis-
played. In other words, while conditions may help to explain the
369th’s approach, they do not explain it on their own; a fuller explan-
ation needs to consider the personal attitudes of senior commanders
also. Two particular points can be made with respect to this.

61
Op. cit., frames 142–43. 373. (kroat.) Inf.-Div. Ia, 10 June 1943. Betr.: Stimmung und
Haltung der Truppe, Mai 1943.
62
Op. cit., frame 343. 373. (kroat.) Inf.-Div. Ia, 25 March 1943. Anlage 1 zu Ia Nr 55/43.
63
Op. cit., frame 678. 373. (kroat.) Inf.-Div. Ia, 2 July 1943. Divisionsbefehl für das
Unternehmen im Raum Cardaci, p. 2.
64
Op. cit., frame 615. 373. (kroat.) Inf.-Div. Kommandeur, 15 July 1943. Zellner was
promoted to the rank of Major-General on 1 April 1943. BA-MA, RH7, file on Emil
Zellner.
65
A similarly extreme example, one which again contrasts with its neighbouring units, is
the 45th Security Regiment, which fought under the 221st Security Division in the rear
area of Army Group Centre during 1943. Shepherd, War in the Wild East, pp. 208–16.

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 With the Devil in Titoland: A Wehrmacht Anti-Partisan Division 93

The first is that, unlike the 718th and 717th Infantry Divisions, the
officers of both the 369th and 373rd Infantry Divisions were new to the
jurisdiction of the NDH, to Bosnia and Herzegovina specifically, and
also – most significantly – to Yugoslavia and counter-insurgency war-
fare generally. This author’s previous research has shown that such
lack of experience of the complex realities of anti-partisan warfare was
likely to lead to an initial failure to appreciate the need for restraint
and constructive engagement in such warfare. Such, after all, is the
loathing with which regular forces have traditionally regarded irregu-
lar forces, that the subtleties of needing to cultivate a population that
found itself caught between partisans and Germans were likely, at least
initially, to be lost on an anti-partisan unit that was ‘new to the scene’.
This could be just as true of an anti-partisan unit in Yugoslavia as one
in the Soviet Union. Equally, a unit stationed in a particular region for
a longer period stood a greater chance of appreciating the importance
of such cultivation.66
Indeed, in the NDH, the 718th Infantry Division displayed just such
behaviour; its experiences in the region during 1942 seem to have lent
it a particular appreciation of a more considered, restrained approach
to anti-partisan warfare, even if its troops did not always follow its lead.
On one occasion, for example, the 718th’s divisional command
ordered the disarming and then releasing of partisan deserters –
something that went considerably beyond the ‘measured’ call by the
then Wehrmachtbefehlshaber South-East, Lieutenant-General Walter
Kuntze, for partisan deserters to be deported to Norway for forced
labour rather than shot.67
Impetus to this more thoughtful approach to anti-partisan warfare
may have come from the fact that, during 1942, the division realized
that it actually needed to use whatever measures necessary to protect
the Serb and Muslim sections of the population from the ravages of
Ustasha units if order in the region were to be maintained.68 Such an
experience inevitably would lend the 718th’s divisional command a
greater appreciation of the wartime pressures the occupied popula-
tion was facing, and the role these played – rather than any ‘Bolshevik
infection’ – in compelling many of its number to join the partisans.69
The 369th Infantry Division, by contrast, was perhaps too new to the
region in early 1943 for it to have learned these lessons effectively.
As well as being new both to the NDH and to anti-partisan warfare
in Yugoslavia, the 369th and 373rd Infantry Divisions possessed a sec-
ond important common characteristic. Both were commanded by
men who, during the First World War, had served on the Eastern

66
Op. cit., pp. 160–61.
67
Schmider, Partisanenkrieg, pp. 131–32.
68
Op. cit., p. 153.
69
There were signs later in 1943 that the 369th Infantry Division was starting to appreciate
such lessons itself, for instance. BA-MA, film MFB4/72341, file 37319/2, frames 1389–90.
369. (kroat.) Inf.-Div. IVa, 13 April 1943. Betr.: Kommandeurbesprechung.

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94 Ben Shepherd

Front.70 So also had two regimental commanders on whom data was

located for this article – Colonel Nikolaus Boicetta of the 384th
Croatian Grenadier Regiment, subordinate to the 369th, and Colonel
Alois Windisch, who commanded the 383rd Croatian Infantry
Regiment, subordinate to the 373rd.71 By contrast, the relatively more
restrained Major-General Dippold of the 717th and Major-General
Fortner of the 718th had both seen action exclusively on the Western
Front.72 It is interesting to note, incidentally, that Dippold’s approach
to anti-partisan warfare presents a very different spectacle from that of
one of his predecessors, Brigadier-General Paul Hofmann, and that of
his immediate successor, Lieutenant-General Karl le Suire; under each
of these men, the 717th carried out what were arguably the two most
infamous massacres that the Wehrmacht perpetrated in south-east
Europe.73
The potential significance of this difference in experience is consid-
erable. Johannes Hürter’s recent exhaustive study of 25 Wehrmacht
army and army group commanders on the Eastern Front during 1941
places importance upon, among other things, their personal experi-
ence of the Eastern Front during the First World War. While brutal
fighting was common to both Eastern and Western Fronts during the
First World War, experience of war on the Eastern Front also exposed
officers and men, at a formative time of their lives, to the ‘primitive’ liv-
ing conditions of eastern Slavs and eastern Jews, the ‘bestial’ conduct
of Russian troops during their invasion of eastern Prussia in August
1914, and, following the 1917 Russian Revolution, violent conflict
with the Bolsheviks.74 In other words, service on the Eastern Front dur-
ing the First World War could imbue officers with formative experi-
ences that incubated the tendency to ideological radicalization which
influenced the Wehrmacht’s conduct of anti-partisan warfare during
the Second World War.
This is of particular importance in the context of the campaign in
Yugoslavia, because disproportionate numbers of Wehrmacht officers

70
BA-MA, RH7, file on Emil Zellner; BA-MA, MsG 109, entry on Fritz Neidholt; E. Glaise
von Horstenau et al., Österreich-Ungarns letzter Krieg, vols 1–7 (Vienna, 1930–48), orders
of battle and indexes. Neidholt’s First World War service on the Eastern Front was on
the staff of the German 9th Army during 1915.
71
Österreichisches Staatsarchiv (Archiv der Republik) [hereafter referred to as
ÖSta/AdR], Bundesheer personal files on Nikolaus Boicetta, Alois Windisch
(Lebenslauf); Glaise von Horstenau et al., Österreich-Ungarns letzter Krieg, vols 1–7, orders
of battle and indexes.
72
BA-MA, RH7, file on Benignus Dippold; BA-MA, MsG 109, entry on Hans Fortner.
Corresponding data for regimental commanders in the 717th and 718th during the
relevant period could not be located.
73
On the massacres perpetrated at Kraljevo in Serbia in October 1941, and at Kalavryta in
Greece in December 1943, see Manoschek and Safrian, ‘717/117 ID’; Meyer, Von Wien
nach Kalavryta. The wider project from which the material for this article was drawn will,
among other things, make more systematic comparisons between Dippold and
Hofmann.
74
Hürter, Hitlers Heerführer, pp. 80–83.

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 With the Devil in Titoland: A Wehrmacht Anti-Partisan Division 95

serving in Yugoslavia during the Second World War had served exten-
sively on the Eastern Front during the First. The main reason for this
lies in the fact that disproportionate numbers of them were Austrian,
and Austrian Wehrmacht officers who had fought in the First World
War were more likely than their German equivalents to have fought on
the Eastern Front at some point.75
Moreover, Colonel Boicetta and Major-General Zellner of the 369th
and 373rd Infantry Divisions respectively, both Austrian-born, had also
seen action in Serbia during the Austro-Hungarian invasion of that
country in 1914.76 As Walter Manoschek has indicated, this campaign
too can be seen to have acted as an incubator of radical attitudes that
came to the fore decades later. The most infamous example of this
comes from 1941, when, in response to the Serb national uprising of
summer and autumn, the plenipotentiary commanding general in
Serbia, Lieutenant-General Hans Böhme, urged his troops – a dispro-
portionate number of whom were Austrian – to employ vengefully bru-
tal methods in order to terrorize the occupied population into
obedience, and avenge themselves for the Austrian blood spilt as a
result of Serb ‘treachery’ during the 1914–18 war.77 Of course, Bosnia
and Herzegovina in 1943 were not Serbia in 1941, and neither the

75
At time of writing, 17 divisional-level and regimental-level commanders who served in
Wehrmacht anti-partisan formations in Yugoslavia, and who also served during the First
World War, have been identified. Of these, 13 served at some point on the Eastern
Front during the First World War, and only 4 served exclusively on the Western Front.
Sixteen divisional-level and regimental-level commanders who served in Wehrmacht
anti-partisan formations in the Soviet Union, and who also served during the First
World War, have been identified also. Here the balance is more even: nine served at
some point on the Eastern Front during the First World War, seven exclusively on the
Western Front. BA-MA, RH7, files on Gustav Adolph-Auffenberg-Komarow, Benignus
Dippold, Karl Eglseer, Walter Hinghofer, Paul Hofmann, Alfred Jacobi, Hans Juppe,
Hubert Lendle, Adalbert Lontschar, Johann Pflugbeil, Johann Richert, Theodor
Scherer, August Wittmann, Emil Zellner; BA-MA Pers 6, files on Gottfried Barton,
Friedrich Bayer, Joachim von Geldern-Crispendorff, Karl Hegedüs, Werner Henn,
Wilhelm Hensel, Alfred Jacobi, Hubert Lendle, Alois Luckmann, Julius Lyncker, Johann
Pflugbeil, Johann Richert, Alfred Rüling, Hans Wiemann (Lebenslauf); BA-MA, MsG
109, entries on Heinrich Borowski, Hans Fortner, Josef Kübler, Fritz Neidholt;
ÖSta/AdR, Bundesheer personal files on Eduard Aldrian, Nikolaus Boicetta, Albert
Getzner, Alois Windisch, Rudolf Wutte (Lebenslauf); Glaise von Horstenau et al.,
Österreich-Ungarns letzter Krieg, vols 1–7, orders of battle and indexes. Official Imperial
German Army regimental histories, 1914–18: Geschichte des 1. Feldartillerie-Regiments Prinz-
Regent Luitpold. IV. Band 1911 bis 1920 (Munich, 1931); Das K.B. 5. Infanterie-Regiment
(Munich, 1929); Das Infanterie-Regiment von Courbière im Weltkriege 1914–1919 (Görlitz,
1935); Das Infanterie-Regiment Keith (1. Oberschlesisches) Nr. 22 im Kriege 1914–1918 (Berlin,
no date); Das Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 43 (Berlin, 1923); Geschichte des Infanterie-Regiments
Herzog Friedrich Wilhelm von Braunschweig (ostfriesischen) Nr. 78 im Weltkriege (Berlin, 1924);
Das 8. Württembergische Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 126, Großherzog Friedrich von Baden im
Weltkrieg 1914–1918 (Stuttgart, 1929); Das Kgl. Sächs. 15. Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 181
(Dresden, 1923).
76
BA-MA, RH7, file on Emil Zellner; ÖSta/AdR, Bundesheer personal file on Nikolaus
Boicetta (Lebenslauf); Glaise von Horstenau et al., Österreich-Ungarns letzter Krieg, vols
1–7, orders of battle and indexes.
77
Manoschek, ‘Serbien ist Judenfrei’; W. Manoschek, ‘The Extermination of the Jews in
Serbia’, in U. Herbert, ed., National Socialist Extermination Policies (New York, 2000),
pp. 163–85; Manoschek and Safrian, ‘717/117 ID’.

War in History 2009 16 (1)

96 Ben Shepherd

369th nor the 373rd Infantry Divisions had even been formed at that
earlier point. However, the clear receptivity of Böhme’s subordinate
formations to this directive during 1941 indicates the resonance of
such an exhortation in the context of anti-partisan warfare in
Yugoslavia. Officers who had themselves fought in and experienced
that region during the First World War may well have been particularly
receptive.
In other words, Neidholt and Zellner, together with two of their regi-
mental commanders, had during the First World War seen action in
theatres that were particularly likely incubators of the kinds of
extreme, ideologically coloured attitudes and behaviour that were one
of the sources of brutality in the anti-partisan campaign in Yugoslavia
during the Second World War. By contrast, the two divisional com-
manders who exercised a somewhat milder approach during the first
three months of 1943 had seen service in 1914–18 on the Western
Front only. This distinction tallies with Hürter’s arguments about the
role of Eastern Front experience between 1914 and 1918, with
Manoschek’s observations as to the resonance of appeals to vengeful
memory – at group or individual level – and with this author’s findings
as to the role Eastern Front experience played in the development of
attitudes and behaviour among Wehrmacht security division officers
operating in the Soviet Union.78

V
This article has sought to demonstrate that the conduct of the
Wehrmacht in its Yugoslav anti-partisan campaign, as in its anti-partisan
campaign in the Soviet Union, presents a nuanced, complex picture
which cannot be explained alone by the need to ‘obey orders’. The
369th Infantry Division, like the other Wehrmacht anti-partisan divi-
sions examined here, behaved not just according to directives from
above, but also according to the conditions it found itself facing and
the attitudes of its commanders. These in turn were shaped, it seems,
by the experiences and influences to which those commanders had
been subjected earlier in life.
The particularly hapless state of the 369th Infantry Division’s
manpower – even if it was a state which, through the division’s own
neglect, was self-inflicted – may well be a key factor in explaining the
division’s particular propensity for harshness. It did after all come on

78
Shepherd, War in the Wild East, p. 213. A further example which fits this pattern is that
of the 203rd and 221st Security Divisions, which operated in the rear area of Army
Group Centre in the Soviet Union during the second half of 1942. Both experienced
similar conditions, yet the 203rd responded with greater harshness. Op. cit., ch. 5. The
203rd’s commander, Brigadier-General Gottfried Barton, had seen action on the
Eastern Front during the First World War; the 221st’s commander, Major-General
Hubert Lendle, had not. BA-MA, RH 7, files on Gottfried Barton and Hubert Lendle;
BA-MA, Pers 6, files on Gottfried Barton and Hubert Lendle.

War in History 2009 16 (1)

 With the Devil in Titoland: A Wehrmacht Anti-Partisan Division 97

top of a situation in which the division already had to contend with the
overstretch, vast tracts of hostile terrain, and at best ambivalent civilian
population which was the usual lot of Wehrmacht anti-partisan units.
Thus the division fits the widely identifiable pattern of under-strength,
inferior-quality anti-partisan units favouring a terroristic response to
the fear, frustration, pressure from above for results, or sheer practical
desperation that they felt at their situation. While such a phenomenon
may be observed particularly strongly at regimental and battalion
level, the 369th’s case demonstrates that it could be present at div-
isional level also.
Yet comparison with the 373rd Security Division shows that a further
important determinant of an excessively severe approach to anti-parti-
san warfare was not just the conditions either division faced, but also
how their commanders chose, in line with their pre-existing attitudes,
to respond to those conditions. Though the rank-and-file personnel of
both divisions were characterized by markedly different levels of
morale and discipline, the two divisions responded to their situation in
a similarly extreme, ideologically tainted way. One factor which may
well have played a role here – and one which, again, fits a pattern
which has already been emerging in recent research – is the fact that
the two divisions were newcomers to the business of anti-partisan war-
fare, in Yugoslavia or elsewhere.
Yet examination of the two divisions’ senior commanders suggests a
further individual-level factor at work: the fact that, during the First
World War, both divisional commanders, and for that matter one regi-
mental commander apiece, all saw service in theatres of war which
were particularly strong incubators of the ideologically coloured, rad-
icalized attitudes that fuelled excessively severe anti-partisan warfare in
Yugoslavia, as elsewhere in occupied Europe, during the Second World
War. With respect to their unfamiliarity with the complexities of anti-
partisan warfare, to the formative life experiences their commanders
had undergone, and to the levels of harshness they subsequently dis-
played in their approach to anti-partisan warfare, both the 369th and
373rd differ sharply from the other two divisions which have been
scrutinized here, the 717th and 718th.
The wider study of which the research presented here is only a part
will in due course examine a considerably larger sample of divisions,
regiments, and their officers. It will thereby attain a still clearer, more
generalizable picture of the part that was played by orders from above,
the situation on the ground, and the ‘conditioning’ of officers earlier
in life in shaping the conduct of the Wehrmacht anti-partisan cam-
paign in the field both in Yugoslavia and in the Soviet Union.79

79
The full study incorporates eight anti-partisan divisions that operated in Yugoslavia and
nine in the Soviet Union, together with circa 80 of the division-level and regimental
officers that served within them. A research note on the sources and methodology for
this study is in progress, with a view to submission for publication.

War in History 2009 16 (1)