German Antiguerrilla Operations in the Balkans (1941-1944)/Part Four
RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS
A compilation of casualties sustained by the combatants in the Balkans during the period of the occupation would not present a true picture of the enormous loss in personnel and materiel, or of real property. Actually, operations in that area during the period from April of 1941 to the end of hostilities were a series of struggles within the framework of a major war. A large number of casualties were suffered by both EDES and ELAS in their intermittent conflicts and in the civil war that followed the German withdrawal. The same was also true of Yugoslavia, where Chetniks and Partisans fought one another and the Germans at the same time. The Yugoslav casualties were further compounded by the Croat-Serb strife, and the massacre of Serbs by the Ustascha, which occurred shortly after the establishment of the Croatian state. In Albania, the struggle between the nationalist and communist factions was no less bitter than the fight of both against the Italians and later the Germans.
In addition to the conflicts between nationalities within the same state and strife between political factions, there was also a determined attempt on the part of Serb Orthodox adherents of Mihailovitch to destroy the Mohammedan minority in Yugoslavia. The Germans added fuel to the flames of this fire by enlisting numerous Mohammedans in their forces and using them as occupation troops.
Finally, the occupation troops were composed of Italians, Bulgarians, and Hungarians, as well as Germans, and numerous foreign legionaries. While the Bulgarians were under German command, in large part, the situation was somewhat different with the Italians in that German units on coastal defense and in Italian-occupied areas were often under Italian command. Of the legionaries, some, such as the Russian Guard Corps, were integrated into the Wehrmacht, while others, for example the Serbian State Guard, were not. While the losses of the Russian Guard Corps would be counted among the German casualties, the personnel of the Serbian State Guard killed, wounded, and missing would not be, despite the fact they may have been fighting side by side.
Finally, German casualties from disease, chiefly typhoid, dysentery, and malaria, were unusually high, as were losses from direct physical exhaustion in the long marches and movements over rough terrain. The majority of the German personnel throughout the operations were of the older age groups and, except for the mountain units, had had little or no experience or conditioning for the type of warfare in which they had to engage.
On the basis of incomplete casualty figures, it can be said with some degree of accuracy that 1 out of 7 soldiers in German uniform, whether German or not, became a casualty by the close of operations. At the time of the capitulation, thousands more fell into Yugoslav hands, when they did not manage to get clear of the Balkans to surrender to Allied forces in Italy or Austria.
All three occupied countries were impoverished by the peninsula-wide fighting and reprisals. Greece, a maritime country, lost the bulk of the merchant fleet upon which it depended for its very existence. Yugoslavia, a grain-producing country that supplied food to much of southern Europe, could no longer even feed itself. Albania, the least developed of the three, lost a large part of the livestock upon which the national economy was based. In a 1-month period in mid-1944, a full quarter of all the locomotives in the Balkans were destroyed by Allied air attacks, a most serious loss in view of the inadequate road system and uneven distribution of food-producing areas. In Yugoslavia, the facilities of numerous mines were destroyed by sabotage, in the fighting to retake them, or demolished by the withdrawing occupation forces.
Perhaps the most significant results of the occupation were in the political field. Two kingdoms fell, if Albania is considered, and replaced by communist dictatorships; Greece was prevented from sharing their fate only by the prompt intervention of strong British ground forces, supported by air and naval units. As was to be expected, the assumption of power by the communists was followed shortly by the elimination of all political opposition and the establishment of one-party states.
The successes achieved by the guerrillas against the Germans, Italians, and Bulgarians in the Balkans during World War II strengthened considerably the tradition of resistance to foreign occupation forces. Communist indoctrination of large segments of the population, with stress placed on clandestine methods and guerrilla tactics, also played its part in awakening this sentiment. Thus there is little doubt that a foreign invader today, whether from East or West, would be confronted with a formidable task of pacification following a successful campaign against the regular forces of the Balkan nations.
The experience of the Germans in their Balkan occupation also offers a number of lessons in the administration of conquered enemy countries and is a measure of what a future occupier might expect in that area. Before launching into a consideration of the sound as well as the injudicious aspects of the German occupation proper, however, it might be well to visualize the situation in which the Wehrmacht found itself in relation to its allies in Greece and Yugoslavia following the surrender of those two countries.
Regarded as the chief architect of their defeat by the Greeks, the Wehrmacht turned over the bulk of the occupation responsibility to the Italians in 1941. Already smarting under defeats in Africa at the hands of the British and having made a poor showing in their own Balkan campaigns, the Italians undertook no appreciable measures to prevent the growth of a guerrilla movement. The few Italian attempts at suppression, harsh and arbitrary, only kindled the resentment of the Greek population and placed a further onus on the Germans. Even more resented was the German invitation to the Bulgarians to annex Thrace, won at the cost of so many thousands of Greek lives in 1922–24 and still fresh in the minds of the bulk of the Greek population.
Yugoslavia, to appease Italian, Bulgarian, and Hungarian ambitions, was partitioned and temporarily ceased to exist as a sovereign state. Even worse, one large minority, the Croats, were granted their independence and then accepted into the ranks of the German satellites. Italian and Bulgarian reprisals for guerrilla activities, often inflicted on the innocent, alienated still more the bulk of the population, which also attributed the excess of the Croat Ustascha to the Germans as well as the Italians.
In their own zones of the occupied countries, the Germans exploited the economy for as much as it could bear, leaving the civilian population at a scant subsistence level and in many cases at a level so low that the relief agencies of neutral powers had to be called upon to prevent widespread starvation. This, the raising of native collaborationist forces to augment their own, and the obvious fact that there would be no relief so long as the Germans remained, placed the occupiers in a position that could only be held with increasing force as time passed.
Shorn of allies by the defection of the Italians and Bulgarians, the Germans found themselves in possession of a rugged and largely mountain area seething with discontent, where even former collaborators were eager to join the winning side, well exemplified in the cases of EDES and a number of the Chetnik units.
In brief, this multinational suppression of the heterogeneous peoples of several national states was doomed to failure by the lack of central direction and the divergent aims of the Germans, Italians, and Bulgarians. Had one power alone administered the occupation and held out some hope of eventual relief to the conquered nations, better results might well have been achieved.
The system of parallel commands did not cease at the national level, in the German case, but extended down to the smallest units. While the Army, on the one side, was responsible to the Armed Forces High Command for the security of the Balkans, the SS was answerable to Himmler and his SS representatives except when engaged in field operations. Until the situation became critical and Marshal von Weichs was forced to assert his authority, SS units on occasion operated without Army control even in the field, and would cooperate in antiguerrilla operations only when it suited the individual commander and higher SS headquarters. Understandably, there was also considerable confusion and wasted effort in the operational and particularly in the clandestine intelligence field, with Wehrmacht and SS agencies trying to accomplish similar missions for their respective commands. This situation was further complicated by the activities of the German Foreign Office, which maintained its own version of a High Commissioner and was heavily staffed with personnel to accomplish political aims not always consonant with the directives given the military commanders. A single supreme authority representing the Reich, with clearly defined responsibilities, would have prevented much needless friction and waste of effort.
The German shortage of manpower reduced the forces made available for the Balkan occupation to the over-age and the physically limited, with the exception of a few units such as the 1st Mountain Division. Other measures taken to alleviate the manpower shortage were the employment of native troops and enlistment of foreign legionnaries, chiefly Russians and Caucasus Mountains peoples. While the first group was capable of but limited service, the other was considered not completely reliable and requiring close supervision by German officers and noncommissioned officers. In either case, the conduct of operations was limited to their restricted capabilities and extended pursuit of routed guerrilla forces was generally unsatisfactory. Moreover, the equipment, particularly armored and motor vehicles, was below the general Wehrmacht standard and resulted in numerous breakdowns that might otherwise not have occurred. Motor parts alone kept vehicles deadlined for extended periods of time, until similar vehicles could be cannibalized and a reduced number of trucks, armored cars, and tanks could again be put into operating condition. Both personnel and vehicle situations were made unavoidable by the heavy demands of the active theaters of war, but it can be presumed that with personnel fit for full field service, properly equipped and mounted in more serviceable vehicles, fewer men would have been necessary to maintain order, and the results of operations would have been more satisfactory.
The German occupiers were very much aware of the importance of security measures required in their situation. Yet it is quite apparent that such measures were not adequate and seldom enforced. One feature of this laxity may be seen in the large numbers of local civilians hired to work in German troop areas and military installations. With only a most cursory security investigation, these Yugoslavs and Greeks had access to areas in which they could observe troop movements and preparations preceding operations, storage facilities for such sensitive items as gasoline and ammunition, and routine measures for defense. Since these civilians were paid by their own governments and presented no burden to the Germans, already overtaxed to provide personnel for operations, it is not too surprising that the occupiers took advantage of the opportunity to secure a large labor force. However, this convenience was more than offset by the compromise of almost every antiguerrilla operation of significance.
Commanders were reluctant to separate the troops from the civilian population entirely, both for morale reasons and in conformance with the German policy of exploiting the conquered countries even to the extent of having the troops buy up consumer goods for shipment home. This made unavoidable still more violations of security. In substance, the policy of the Germans toward the outwardly cooperative portion of the population was far more lenient than security demanded.
The German tendency to underestimate the guerrillas also played its part in the undermining of the occupation. At first, commanders felt the suppression of the guerrillas to be a function of the police. Later, when it became obvious the police could not restore order, the military commanders were forced to take the field. However, even after guerrilla activities had turned the Balkans into a theater of war, only intelligence reports carried the designations of guerilla units; commanders still referred to these forces in their headquarters diaries as "bands." Not until 1944, when the guerrillas were threatening to drive him from the Balkans altogether, did Marshal von Weichs acknowledge their strength and direct that reference be made to the guerrilla units as divisions, corps and other designations, rather than as "bands." Too, many of the demolitions and other technical operations of the guerrillas were ineffective and aroused the contempt of the Germans, but these were offset by their great number and the total amount of damage done.
A feature of significance but one over which the Germans could exercise little influence was the nature of the Balkan peoples themselves. Composed of hardy Greeks and Slays, traditionally opposed to any occupier, they readily took up arms when it became apparent the conquerors intended to remain and to exploit their few resources; even the collaborationists often proved to be unreliable. Once started, the surge of the guerrilla movement could not be stopped even by the wholesale slaughter of hostages.
It is unlikely that German commanders will ever face these occupation problems in the Balkans again. However, a review of the mistakes these commanders made would undoubtedly cause them to urge any future occupier to begin his administration with a clear-cut statement of policy, including a promise of eventual withdrawal of occupation troops and self-determination for the people; a unified military command and distinct delineation of responsibility in the political and military fields; the assignment of trained, well-equipped combat troops in adequate numbers to the area; the taking of prompt and effective though not excessively harsh measures to quell disorders; and an extensive propaganda campaign to explain the purpose of the occupation and the benefits to accrue to the population with the maintenance of law and order. Finally, they would most certainly recommend the troops be supplied from outside the country and restrained from excesses. With perseverance, the occupation forces might then be able to avoid the Balkan chaos of 1941–44.