Following the occupation and dismemberment of Yugoslavia by Germany and her allies in April, 1941, four Waffen SS Divisions were formed by Germany during World War II: In Bosnia-Hercegovina, then part of the Nezavisna Drzava Hrvatska, NDH, two SS Divisions were formed, the 13th Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS "Handzar" or "Handschar" and the 23rd Waffen Gebrigs Division der SS "Kama"; in Kosovo-Metohija, the 21st Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS "Skanderbeg" was formed made up mostly of Kosovar Albanians and a second Kosovar SS Division was planned; in Vojvodina, the northern region of Serbia, the 7th SS Freiwilligen Gebirgs Division "Prinz Eugen" was formed, made up of ethnic Germans from Serbia, Croatia, and other regions of Yugoslavia and the Balkans.
On August 7,l940, Gottlob Berger, head of the SS Main Office (SS-FHA, SS-Furuhngshauptamt) and in charge of Waffen SS recruiting, sent Reichsfuehrer-SS Heinrich Himmler a memorandum outlining his plans for the recruitment of ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) from the Balkans into the Waffen SS.Following the invasion and occupation of Yugoslavia, the approximately 700,000 ethnic Germans,Volksdeutsche, living in Yugoslavia, were recruited by the Waffen SS.
The SS-FHA approved the formation of the Volunteer Mountain Division (Freiwilligen Gebirgs Division) on March 1,1942 to consist of Volksdeutsche from Serbia, the Banat region.The core upon which the Division was based around was the SS controlled Protection Force (Selbstschutz) made up of Volksdeutsche in Serbia and the Action Squadron (Einsatz Staffel) from Croatia. The final,official name for the Division would be the 7th SS-Freiwilligen Gebirgs Division "Prinz Eugen", the 7th SS Volunter Mountain Division, named after Prinz Eugen of Savoy-Carignan, one of the greatest military commanders of the Austrian Hapsburg Empire.In l943, Himmler introduced compulsory military service for the Volksdeutsche in German-occupied Serbia. Approximately 21,500 ethnic Germans from Serbia would see service in Himmlerís Waffen SS.
The Prinz Eugen Division was formed between April and October, l942. The staff of the Division was located in Pancevo and its lst Regiment at Weisskirchen,Austria. The leadership of the division was entrusted to SS Brigadefuehrer and Generalmajor of the Waffen SS, Artur Phleps, who on April 20,l942, was promoted to SS Gruppenfuehrer and Generalleutnant of the Waffen SS.Phleps, who had been a soldier in the Austrian Imperial Army, was a Volksdeutsche himself from Transylvania and commanded a Mountain Corps in the Romanian Army until l941.By December 31, 1942, the division would be made up of 21,102 men: 393 officers,2,010 NCOs, 18,699 troops. The officers and NCOs were almost entirely national Germans (Reichsdeutsche), Germans from Germany proper, while the enlisted men were Volksdeutsche, ethnic Germans outside the Reich, from Yugoslavia, Romania, and Hungary.
SS conscription in the former Yugoslavia produced 42,000 Waffen SS and police troops.In Romania, 54,000 ethnic Germans were conscripted into the freiwilligen(volunteer) divisions.The Reichsdeutsche had a low opinion of the fighting ability of the Volksdeutsche, whom they dismissed as Mussulmaenner, Muslims, a term used by concentration camp guards to describe prisoners with little chance of survival.Nevertheless, Himmler and Berger were staunchly committed to exploit the manpower of ethnic Germans outside the Reich.Bergerís son-in-law, Andreas Schmidt, was the Volksgruppenfuehrer of the ethnic German Volksgruppe in Romania, where ethnic Germans were conscripted into the SS.
On April 23, 1943, in a speech to SS troops in Kharkov in the Societ Union, Himmler declared: "One day we shall incorporate the millions of Germans living in America." Before World War II, the total German population was estimated at over 100 million. One out of every three Germans lived outside the German Reich: 20 million Germans lived in Europe and 13 million in the Americas.In Yugoslavia, the total ethnic German population was over 700,000.Himmler and Berger perceived this manpower pool as ideally suited for recruitment into the Waffen SS. Moreover, they also sought to recruit non-Germans and non-Aryans into the SS.
The Prinz Eugen SS Division was named after Prince Eugene of Savoy, whose name in German is rendered Franz-Eugen,Prinz von Savoyen-Carignan; in French, Francois-Eugene, Prince de Savoie-Carignan. Prinz Eugen was born in l663 in Paris,France, of the Italian House of Savoy. Frederick II, the Great of Prussia, who was tutored by Eugen, called him "the greatest war hero of our century" and Napolean regarded him as one of the seven greatest military commanders in history.
Prinz Eugen made his first important contribution to military history at the Ottoman Turkish siege of Vienna in July, 1683. Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa, the "scourge of humanity", had advanced with a large army from bases in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina to encircle Vienna, the capital of the Hapsburg Holy Roman Empire.Austrian Emperor Leopold I fled to Passau. Eugen was made a colonel of a cavalry regiment. German troops and 16,000 Polish Hussars led by King John Sobieski marched to relieve the city. On September 12, the Polish cavalry descended from the hills around Vienna and defeated the Turkish forces, leaving 10,000 Turks captured or killed. Eugen distinguished himself in this battle.
In 1687, Eugen advanced into Serbia to pursue the retreating Turkish Army and was wounded in l688 at the siege of Belgrade,which was taken from the Turks.
The Serbian people and nation united with the Austrian government and military forces under Prinz Eugen in a joint effort to free Serbia from the Ottoman Turks. But this Serbian-Austrian offensive failed and in l690 the Turks retook Belgrade. The Serbian Patriarch Arsenius Cernoevitch led an exodus of 37,000 Serbian families out of Stara Srbija (Old or Ancient Serbia) to settle lands in what was then under Hungarian rule.This forced migration,or ethnic cleansing, left Stara Serbia depopulated of Serbs. Ethnic Albanians (Shqiptari) would settle this cleansed area, Kosovo-Metohija, Kosmet. The cleansed Serbs would settle in Vojvodina and Krajina.
Eugen routed the Turks at Zenta, present-day Crna Gora (Montenegro), and then launched a cavalry raid into Bosnia-Hercegovina,capturing Sarajevo. The Treaty of Karlowitz of l699 resulted.
Eugen again battled the Ottoman Turks when he attacked them at the Sava River. At the Battle of Peterwardein, outside Belgrade, 30,000 Turks were killed by forces under the command of Eugen. Eugen then invaded the Banat and captured Temesevar in October.
In June, l7l7, Eugen attacked Belgrade, held by the Turks.Eugen vowed: "Either I take Belgrade, or the Turks will take me." On August 15, the Turks sent a relief army which was destroyed allowing Eugen to take Belgrade, one of his greatest military campaigns.The Treaty of Passarowitz, signed in July,l7l8, gave the Banat, Belgrade, and most of Serbia to the Austrian Hapsburg Empire under Charles VI.
The ethnic German population of Vojvodina was settled during the reign of Austrian archduchess and queen of Hungary and Bohemia, Maria Theresa, who ruled from l740 to l780. The Volksdeutsche were settlers from the Black Forest region of southwestern Germany, known as Swabia, or Schwaben, from the Suebi or Suevi,the Germanic tribes that settled the area. The German settlers were mostly farmers who cleared and cultivated the land once the Ottoman Turks had been driven out by Prinz Eugen.Vojvodina was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 19l8 when it became part of Serbia and Yugoslavia.
Before World War II, the ethnic German population of Yugoslavia numbered approximately 700,000,most of whom resided in the Serbian Banat.During the interwar years, ethnic Germans enjoyed full civil and cultural rights,had their own schools and representatives in the federal and local governments. Since 1920, the Volskdeutsche formed a national organization, Schwaebisch-Deutscher Kulturbund, the Swabian-German Cultural Union. Before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg it was alleged that even before the war, the German Government had organized the German minority in Yugoslavia:
The Government of the Third Reich and the Hitlerite Party secretly organized the German minority.Settled in Yugoslavia by the Austrian emperors over a century ago...they had their mass organization...And out of this very organization and through it,as well as out of all the Germans in Yugoslavia, the Nazi Party created a political and military organ for the destruction of Yugoslavia.
Jacob Awender, an ethnic German surgeon from Pancevo, was accused of advocating the "fullest and complete Nazification" of the Kulturbund in his paper Pantschewoer Post. Awender was further accused of leading the "Active" Youth, later adopting the name, Erneuerer (Rebuilders). In 1938, he was supposed to have transformed the Kulturbund into a Nazi organization on orders from Nazi officials in Stuttgart,Germany.Moreover, Nazi gaus were alleged to have been secretly formed in Yugoslavia and gauleiters were appointed. "Para-military Hitlerite organizations" were alleged to have been formed in the Serbian Banat and that Nazi organizers and instructors have inflitrated Yugoslavia to create the Volksdeutsche Fifth Column.
At the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, a branch of the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth), Hitler Youth on Duty, was accused by the Prosecution of organizing the Volksdeutsche of the Serbian Banat as a Fifth Column. The leader of the Hitler Youth, Baldur von Schirach, denied that the Volksdeutsche were organized from and by the Third Reich: "The Hitler Youth was never active in the Fifth Column either in Yugoslavia or anywhere else."The Prosecution submitted into evidence a book by Sepp Janko,stated to be the youth leader in Yugoslavia in which the following excepts appeared:"I put at the disposal of the Fuehrer almost the entire German national group in the former State of Yugoslavia and gave him so many volunteers as soldiers." An article by the Volksdeutsche Otto Kohler from the Bacska(Bachka) region was submitted into evidence,who wrote that: "Ninety percent of our youth are members of the Hitler Youth,the youth organization for Germans abroad."Schirach admitted,however,the following: "I know that there were young people among the German minority in Yugoslavia...This German youth felt that it belonged to the Hitler Youth, and...these young people welcomed the German troops on their arrival."
Immediately before the German attack on Yugoslavia on April 6,l941, Adolf Hitler declared: "The German people harbor no hatred towards the Serbian people...It wants nothing from them." Ten days before, Reich Minister for Foreign Affairs Joachim von Ribbentrop stated: "Germany itself-I declare here solemnly-has in this area neither territorial nor political interests."
In October,1942, the 7. SS-Freiwilligen Gebirgs Division "Prinz Eugen" (7. SS Divizija "Princ Eugen") was completed and was transferred to the Uzice-Cacak region of western Serbia.In November, l942, the division was under the control of the 12th German Army, a component of the Army Group Southeast.
The "backbone of the division" was made up of Volksdeutsche from the Serbian Banat, ethnic Germans known as Schwabian Germans who had formerly been officers and NCOs in the Yugoslav Army.Members of the division understood that they would be fighting Serbian guerillas as is evident from a song the members of the division sang, as related by SS Hauptsturmfuehrer of the Prinz Eugen Division Sepp Krombholz:
ëPrinz Eugen, the noble troop,
it must scuffle with Serbs,
our trash division!
And many Serbian skulls
and many Serbian maids
will I soon see fallen ...í
On April 6,1941, Nazi Germany and the Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia. On April 17, 1941, the Yugoslav High Command surrendered at Sarajevo,Bosnia-Hercegovina.But at Doboj in northern Bosnia,General Staff Colonel Dragoljub-Draza Mihailovic,who was then Deputy Chief of Staff of the Yugoslav Second Army,refused to surrender and gathered around him a group of officers who would continue the struggle as a gurrilla war.Mihailovic stated: "I donít recognize ëcapitulationí.That word does not exist in the Serbian language."On May 13,1941,Mihailovic and his group reached Ravna Gora on the western slopes of the Suvobor Mountains in Serbia,where Mihailovic established his headquarters.Mihailovic established the first guerilla resistance movement not only in Yugoslavia and the Balkans, but in all of occupied Europe.This resistance movement was called the Ravna Gora Movement, Ravnogorski pokret.
The Prinz Eugen SS Division was formed to engage the Yugoslav guerrilla and resistance movement. The Allied-supported forces led by General Dragoljub-Draza Mihailovic,the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, Homeland Army, or the Free Yugoslav Army, referred to as Chetnici,(Chetniks).The resistance movements were overwhelmingly made up of ethnic Serbs, who dominated the guerrilla movements.The guerrilla movements relied on the Serbian tradition and history of resistance to the Ottoman Turks.During the First Serbian Revolution of 1804 against the Ottoman Turks, the revolt was begun by hajduchke chete, or companies of guerillas led by Djordje Petrovic.During the Second Serbian Revolution of 1815 led by Milosh Obrenovic, Serbian guerilla warfare was engaged. Serbian guerilla operations continued during the Balkan Wars, 1912-13, and during World War I.
Josip Broz, a Croat-Slovene, known first as "Walter", then as "Tito", had been a stabsfeldwebel (staff sergeant) in the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Army and fought against the Serbian Army during World War I. Broz became a POW in Russia where he adopted the policies of the Boshevik regime under Vladimir Lenin and returned to Yugoslavia a staunch Communist.Since l937, Broz was the Secretary General of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.
Mihailovic, who was a Colonel in the Yugoslav Army,fought in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 and was a noncommissioned officer of the Serbian Army during World War I,when he first fought against Broz in the Austrian Imperial Army. Mihailovic was promoted to General and made minister of war by the Yugoslav government-in-exile in London. Contrary to the assertions of Communist apologists and propagandists, the Yugoslav Communists did nothing during the intitial German invasion of Yugoslavia because of the accord between Nazism and Communism reached in August, 1939 between Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov, the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact.Moreover,under Communist ideology and theory, the Second World War was perceived as a "capitalist war" between capitalist nations, as an imperialistic stage of global capitalism.Thus,under Communistic theory,the capitalist war should be allowed to continue as it would lead to the next stage, communism. It was only when Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, l941, when the Soviet Communist regime was threatened, that the Communists of Yugoslavia mobilized to resist the "fascist aggressor". The Yugoslav Communists under Josip Broz were armed and supported by Joseph Stalinís Soviet Union who through the Cominform had influence over the Communist Yugoslav Partisans.
In October,1942, the Prinz Eugen SS Division engaged in its first large-scale military operation, against Serbian forces under Mihailovicís commander Major Dragutin Keserovic in the Kopaonik Mountains in the region of Kriva Reka.On October 5, 1942, Phleps issued his first commitment order for the attack on the Kriva Reka area:
1.The organization center of the senior rebel commander of middle-Serbia,Major Keserovic, is located in the Kopaonik Mountains (center of Kriva Reka).Its strength cannot be determined.However, the entire population of this area must be considered rebel sympathizers.
2. SS Division "Prinz Eugen," in cooperation with elements of the Bulgarian 9th Infantry Division, has to destroy this enemy under my command....
12. ...Every man in Division "Prinz Eugen" will fight victoriously wherever the combt takes them.We now lay the groudwork for future operations.The division must fight to destroy our enemy,eliminate his headquarters and maintain the peace. "Forward, Prinz Eugen!"
The Division Commander
A.Phleps
SS Gruppenfuehrer andGeneralleutnant of the Waffen SS
According to Otto Kumm in his history of the division, this first military engagement of the Prinz Eugen SS Division against General Draza Mihailovicís guerilla forces was a failure:
The operation brought the troops untold difficulties and ended...without any success.
The Chetniks had their spies in every town and were warned long beforehand.
From October 15 to 18 Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler visited the Prinz Eugen Division.According to Kumm, Himmler "was pleased by the attitude and state of training and,besides stating his recognition, promoted several of its soldiers."
During the latter part of October, the Prinz Eugen Division attacked Mihailovicís guerilla forces in Gorni Milanovac and Cacak.The II Battalion of the 2nd Regiment of Prinz Eugen was transferred to Topola.
In preparation for Operation White (Unternehmen Weiss), the Prinz Eugen SS Division was transferred by road and rail to the Karlovac-Zagreb area, from where it attacked east of Bihac with the launching of the Operation on January 8,l943.
In May,l943, Prinz Eugen would be part of Operation Black (Unternehmen Schwarz), a plan to destroy the Serbian guerilla forces under General Draza Mihailovic , in Hercegovina and Montenegro:
....It soon became obvious that the situation would not be improved by such measures as the expansion of the demoralized Croatian police and military forces.Large concentrations of Chetniks formed a constant threat to German forces in the event of an Allied landing, and the Commander-in-Chief, Southeast, directed that Operation Schwarz, under the Commander of Troops in Croatia, be undertaken in May and June to destroy the Chetniks in Herzegovina and Montenegro.
The German Commander of Troops in Croatia,General Rudolf Lueters, assembled the following formations for the offensive: the lst German Mountain Division, which had arrived from the Russian front, the German-Croatian 369th "Legion" Infantry Division, the ll8th Jaeger Division, the lst Motorized Regiment of the Brandenburg commando formation, and the 7th SS Mountain Divis ion "Prinz Eugen".The Italians assembled the "Taurinense" Infantry Division, the 23rd Infantry Division "Ferrara", and the l9th Infantry Division "Venezia".Other Axis forces available for this offensive included the Croat 4th Jaeger Brigade and the Bulgarian 6lst and 63rd Infantry Regiments.
Operation Black began on May 2, l943, concentrating on destroying Mihailovicís Serbian guerilla forces in Herzegovina and Montenegro.During the first two weeks of the Operation, Serbian casualties were high.Major Pavle Djurisic was captured by the German forces.General Mihailovich was forced to retreat to Serbia with the remnants of his command.
The SS troops in Prinz Eugen massacred Serbian civilians as collective punishment for supporting the resistance movements.Entire Serbian Orthodox villages were burned down and the inhabitants,men,women, and children, massacred in punitive raids.
The two German divisions then attacked Foca and Sarajevo, the Italians attacked Cetinje, the two Bulgarian regiments attacked Prijepolje, while the Prinz Eugen Division attacked Mostar in Hercegovina.The Prinz Eugen Division also deployed battalion strength elements northwest of Sarajevo.
In August,l943, Prinz Eugen came under the control of the German Wehrmacht Xvth Mountain Corps (XV. Gebirgs-Korps), of the 2nd Panzer Army, Army Group F,when the Division occupied Brac,Hvar and Korcula.On July 3, 1943, SS Brigadefuehrer and Generalmajor of the Waffen SS Carl Reichsritter von Oberkamp assumed command of Prinz Eugen,holding the post until January 20,1945,when he was replaced by SS Brigadefuehrer and Generalmajor of the Waffen SS Otto Kumm.SS Brigadefuehrer and Generalmajor of the Waffen SS August Schmidhuber commanded Prinz Eugen from January 20,1945 to May, 1945.Schmidhuber had commanded the Albanian 21st Waffen Gebrirgs Division der SS "Skanderbeg" in 1944.
In November, 1943,Prinz Eugen was placed in the Vth SS Mountain Corps (V. SS-Gebirgs-Korps).
In December, Prinz Eugen fought with the Vth Mountain Corps in the area northest of Sarajevo and south to Gorazde.
On September 21, 1944, SS Obergruppenfuehrer and General of the Waffen SS Artur Phleps was believed to have been killed when en route from Montenegro to Transyvania where he was to form a front against the Red Army.
In October, l944,Prinz Eugen was made a part of the Group Muller of Army Group E and it was redeployed to the Belgrade area to assist in the evacuation of 350,000 German troops of Army Group Lohr,retreating from Greece and the Aegean Islands.
Prinz Eugen linked up with its "sister division", the Bosnian Muslim 13th Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS "Handzar" (Handschar) , and the remnants of the Bosnian Muslim 23rd Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS "Kama and the 2lst Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS "Skanderbeg" (Albanische No. 1), made up of Albanians (Shqiptari) from Kosovo-Metohija.
Prinz Eugen created a bridgehead in the Vardar corridor in Macedonia which allowed Alexander Lohrís men to escape. Eugen engaged Russian and Bulgarian troops, the Division suffering heavy casualties.
On October 20, the Red Army captured Belgrade. Prinz Eugen retreated through Cacak,Uzice, Banja Bosta,Ljubovija,Zvornik,Bijeljina, to Brcko.
In January, 1945,Eugen, along with remnants of the Skanderbeg Division, fought the Russian and Bulgarian forces around Vukovar.
The end of the Prinz Eugen SS Division came in May, 1945 with its surrender.
The Prinz Eugen SS Division was accused of "committing some of the worst atrocities attributable to any soldiers during the Second World War." The Division murdered unarmed civilians, burned and looted homes and entire villages and districts and tortured and massacred men,women, and children.
In May,l943, during Operation Black, Prinz Eugen invaded Montenegro from Hercegovina and occupied the Niksic district.The SS troops took punitive measures against the civilian population,burning down entire villages,torturing and burning civilians in their houses.Pregnant women,infants with their mothers,the frail and the elderly were brutally massacred.Entire families were massacred or burned alive in their houses: 121 persons, mostly women, were massacred,which included 29 children between the ages of 6 months and 14 years, and 30 persons between the ages of 60 and 92.
On March 27, 1944,Prinz Eugen launched a "purge action" from Sinj.On March 28,l944, Eugen overran the villages of Otok,Conji,Ruda, Dolac Dolnji,where all 834 inhabitants were massacred and their bodies burned.Over 500 houses were set on fire and looted.
The 7th SS Prinz Eugen Division would be remembered for its war crimes and atrocities by posterity.