The tide of war was soon to bring about still another departure from orthodox German military structure. The German terror had not brought peace and order in southeastern Europe; Serbia was as restless as ever, and the partisan forces in Croatia and Greece were growing stronger all the time. On the 10th of July, 1943 the Allies landed in Sicily, and it became apparent that soon they would be on the Italian mainland, and in a. much better position to bring material assistance to the national armies of liberation in Greece and Yugoslavia. Faced with these new and unfavorable developments, in August 1943 the Germans reorganized the entire command structure in southeastern Europe. New faces appeared and a familiar face reappeared. We will now turn to the story of this last and most important occupational period.
THE OCCUPATION: VON WEICHS AND RENDULIC (After August, 1943) The year 1943 was known to the American public as the "end of the beginning". To the German Army, reeling under the heavy blows of Allied military might, it was indeed the " beginning of the end". The invasion of North Africa and Montgomery's advance from Egypt in November, 1942 were followed by the crushing surrender of von Paulus' crack Sixth Army before Stalingrad.
Rommel's retreat and defeat in Libya and Tunisia was followed by the invasion and rapid conquest of Sicily. Finally it was Italy's turn. With the invasion of the Italian mainland, the long-despised and very tired Italian accomplice collapsed in thankful relief.
A. Reorganization of the Southeast Command.
Reorganization of the command structure was the first step taken towards meeting the new challenge in southeastern Europe. From the Russian front where, as commander of an army group he had won promotion to the rank of Fieldmarshal, Hitler called Maximilian von Weichs.
A new army group headquarters - Army Group "F" -- was established in Belgrade, as the vehicle for von Weichs' supreme command over southeastern Europe. The defendant Foertsch, the veteran of service as Chief of Staff under List, Kuntze and Loehr, now came to Serbia as Chief of Staff to von Weichs.
The new command structure which von Weichs headed is shown in the chart on the wall. Loehr remained in Greece, and his headquarters continued to be called Army Group "E", thus creating the double anomaly of an army group with no "army" beneath it, and which was itself subordinated to another army group. From this time on, Loehr's headquarters concerned itself exclusively with Greece and the Aegean Islands, and Loehr reported to von Weichs. The two corps commanders under Loehr were the defendant Felmy, who had returned to Greece in July, and the defendant Lanzz, who had been a divisional commander during the original invasion of southern Yugoslavia, and who arrived in Greece in August.
Although von Weichs maintained his headquarters in Belgrade, so far as military operations against the partisans were concerned, the center of gravity was shifting toward Croatia. To cope with Tito's partisans and to protect the long Dalmatian coastline, exposed as it was to an Allied invasion or raids from nearby Italy, the headquarters of the Second Panzer Army, which had been engaged on the Russian front, was moved to Croatia. To command this army, and to carry out the difficult mission of re-establishing order in Croatia and safeguarding it against enemy attacks, the German High Command selected the defendant Lothar Rendulic. An Austrian, whose mother was Croatian, Rendulic had learned much about the Balkans by the sheer process of growing up under the Hapsburgs and living in the center of their sprawling empire. He had joined the Austrian Nazi Party in the early thirties at a time when it had been declared illegal, and was regarded on all sides as a "Nazi General."
In 1938, he was the Austrian Military Attache at Paris, in which his rise was phenomanally rapid. At the outbreak of the war in 1939. he held the rank of Colonel. He participated in the Polish campaign as chief of staff of an infantry corps, and thereafter was given command of a division during the campaign against the Low Countries and France. He commanded another infantry division in Russia, and in 1942 he was given command of a corps; in the same year, he reached the rank of General der Infanterie (equivalent to a Lieutenant General in the American Army). His outstanding combat record, which had won him the highest German decorations, brought him to Hitler's attention and undoubtedly lead to his appointment as Commander of the Second Panzer Army. In the spring of 1944 he was promoted to Generaloberst. Two more of the defendants, Leyser and Dehner, now appear for the first time in this case as corps commanders under Rendulic.
In Serbia another new face was introduced. General Hans Felber had led troops in battle and seen occupation duty in France. Weichs and Rendulic thought Bader too old and routine--minded for the requirements of the new situation; he was relieved as Military Commander of Serbia and replaced by Felber. The defendant Geitner, however, carried on as Felber's Chief of Staff.
Felber's jurisdiction, however, was broader than that which had been exercized by Bader. Just as von Weichs, as commander of all the armed forces in the southeast was the superior of Loehr in Greece and. Rendulic in Croatia, so Felber, with the title of Military Commander Southeast, was now made the superior of the German Military Commanders in Greece and Montenegro and. of the "Plenipotentiary Generals" in Croatia and Albania. The Military Commanders in Greece, beginning in August 1943, was the defendant Speidel. Accordingly, in this final phase of the case, all of the defendants except two (List and Kuntze) are involved.
Von Weichs, of course, had supreme authority over the entire organization - over Rendulic and Loehr as tactical commanders, and over Felber and his subordinate "Military Commanders". Geographically speaking his responsibilities were far greater than those which had been borne by List, Kuntze, and Loehr before him. He had barely arrived in the Balkans when the Italian capitulation occurred, and he was immediately confronted with the task of disarming and rendering harmless the Italian forces in Croatia, Montenegro, Albania and Greece. At the same time, he had to take over occupational responsibility for the areas which the Italians had theretofore controlled.
B. The Italian Surrender.
The new leadership was on the defensive from the start. Sicily had been invaded by the combined British and American forces in July. A fortnight later Mussolini was deposed and the King appointed Marshal Badoglio to conduct the war as new head of the Italian Government. But in six more weeks, on September 8, 1943, the Italian armed forces surrendered unconditionally. Under the terms of the armistice all of the Italian armed forces were to cease hostilities of any kind against the forces of the United Nations and to withdraw to Italy immediately from all areas in which they were currently engaged.
The German High Command was not caught unawares by this development. Italy's defection had been anticipated, and when it actually occurred, the Germans proceeded with synchronized swiftness to attack and disarm their one-time colleague. The orders from Berlin were clear and precise. Italian soldiers who wished to continue fighting on the German side were to retain their arms, to be accorded treatment "completely consistent with their honor", and to receive rations " based on those of the Germans". Indeed, they even were to receive 50% of the German pay corresponding to their ranks.
German gratitude and generosity to the "faithful" was boundless. Those Italians who did not wish to continue fighting for the Germans were to be disarmed and made prisoners-of-war. They, however, would not have to endure the long, boring days of waiting in the barbed-wire enclosures that is the legal fate of prisoners-of-war. Instead they were to be turned over to the Plenipotentiary for Labor Employment and the Reichsminister for War Production and Armament, so that their strength and skill might be fully utilized in the German war production.
For those Italian soldiers who dared to obey the orders of their own Supreme Commander and resisted German forces either actively or passively, a mere select fate was in store - the officers of all Italian troop units who let their arms fall into the hands of insurgents or in any way made common cause with insurgents were to be shot to death after summary court martial; the non-commissioned officers and men of such units were to be taken away for labor employment.
The Fuehrer's order was put into savage execution. In a matter of hours von Weichs had ordered its distribution to all tactical commanders in the theater. In some cases the order was passed on in expanded form. Rendulic, for example, gave more detailed instructions to his troops: Should an incorrigible Italian division destroy its arms and supplies, besides the individual "culprits", one officer of the Divisional Staff and 50 men of the division should be shot to death; any individual Italian soldier selling or giving away his arms to civilians or destroying them without explicit orders would be shot to death; any Italian soldier arriving at his embarkation station without his weapon was to be shot to death together with his responsible unit leader; for every motorized vehicle made useless, one officer and 10 men would be executed.
In a matter of days, fiftyone hesitant Italian divisions had been totally disarmed by but seventeen German divisions. However, at least two whole Italian divisions resisted, while thousands of individual Italian soldiers, noting the treatment meted out by the Germans to resisters and surrendered alike, took to the hills to join the partisans.
The reports poured in - from the division to the corps, the corps to the army, the army to the army group, and the army group to OKW in Berlin:
On 27 Sept. 1943, from Split on the Dalmatian coast: "city and port occupied, 3 generals, 300 officers, 9,000 men of the Italian "Bergamo " Division taken prisoners; officers to be shot to death according to the Fuehrer order."
30 Sept. and 1 Oct. 1943: "3 generals shot in Split after summary court martial; 45 more guilty Italian officers shot in Split."
From the 7th SS Division on the 29th Sept. 1943: "The Italian General Fulgowi has been convicted for delivering arms to the partisans and sentenced to death."
From the XXIst Mtn. Corps on the 9th Oct. 1943: "Operations against the Italian 'Taurinesse' Division concluded in the main, reprisal measures carried out against 18 officers."
From the XXIInd Mtn. Corps on the 23rd Sept. 1943: "Gen. Gandini and all his staff captured, special treatment according to Fuehrer order. The following day "Gen. Gandini and all officers have been shot."
From the 100th Inf. Div. on the 1st Nov. 1943: "Reprisal measures are being taken against the 2 Italian colonels (the Ia and IIa of the 9th Italian Army) captured near '505'".
On 13 Oct. 1943, from Von Weichs the Supreme Commander Southeast: "Execution of general Roncaglis, Commander of the Italian XVth Army Corps, ordered in case of further opposition".
This calculated slaughter of captured or surrendered Italian Officers is one of the most lawless and dishonorable actions in the long history of armed combat. For these men were fully uniformed. They bore their arms openly and followed the rules and customs of war.
They were led by responsible leaders who in repelling attack were obeying the orders of Marshal Badoglio, their Military Commander in Chief and the duly authorized political head of their nation. They were regular soldiers entitled to respect, humane consideration, and chivalrous treatment.
C. Croatia With the disarming and liquidation of the Italians complete, the Southeast Command returned to the continued prosecution of its principal mission of pacification.
In Croatia the task of defeating the guerrillas was alone a big order. To do that and quiet the civilian population in addition was far more difficult.
To begin with, the puppet Croatian Government of Ante Pavelic was of no help whatever. Its inefficient and poorly organized national militia, led by Kvaternik, was unable to maintain order within the country, let alone protect the vital German supply lines running from the Reich through Croatia to Serbia and Greece. Even for the German troops of the Second Panzer Army, it was a full-time job to keep the supply and communication routes open. In an earlier period, the enemy had waged guerrilla warfare; it was the only way he could fight, and the way which suited him, his resources, and the topography of the country best. He staged surprise raids on lonely German outposts or under-manned garrisons, he mined bridges, derailed trains, cut telegraph wires, fired supply depots, and exploded ammunition dumps. That sufficed in an earlier time. Now after two years in the hills he was experienced and well trained; the Allies were on the offensive and had supplied him with weapons, ammunition, food and clothing; he was expertly led and efficiently organized. Now he was a real enemy, a belligerent of major proportions, and a foe to be reckoned with in terms of largescale operations and overall strategy.
To meet the challenge of the big and the new, the Germans had only the small and the old. From the day in 1941 when the campaigns against Greece and Yugoslavia had been declared ended and the front line troops redeployed to the East, the Southeastern commanders had begged for replacements and reinforcements. The Southeast theater was continuously under strength throughout the war. Yet always the same answer came -additional troops cannot be spared from the decisive Russian front. But not only were the troops in the Southeast too few; they were also of inferior quality.
They included many reserve troops who were over-age and jaded. Insufficient and inferior troops had been the German problem from the beginning. In 1941 and 1942 they had met it the only way the heavy-handed Germans knew how to meet any resistance -- by terror. In 1943 and 1944, as unimaginative and blindly cruel as ever, they would meet it in the same way.
The practice of seizing scores of hostages in each village in which German troops were stationed or in the vicinity of which German troops were operating was continued. In 1941 the Germans had taken democrats, nationalists, and Jews as their hostage victims. Now that most of those had been liquidated they were choosing "communists", "bandit suspects", "bandid helpers", or relatives of "bandits" as security pawns against attacks. How did one distinguish a "communist" from the rest of the population? Only the SD, the Croatian police, or the village quislings could answer that. If men thereby were victimized by spiteful and gossiping neighbors, it was just unfortunate.
The pattern of terror and intimidation was simple. After the Germans had entered a village, all of the inhabitants -- old men, women and young children alike -- were summoned to the central square or market place. From a sound truck a German officer would announce to the assemblage that there were partisan bands operating in the vicinity. The Germans wanted information concerning the size, location and leadership of those bands, the number of men missing from the village, and the names of strangers presently living in the village. Unless the inhabitants came forward voluntarily with the desired information, other and mere drastic steps would be taken to procure it. When there were no volunteers, priests, school teachers, small shopkeepers or farmers -sometimes just every third, fifth or tenth man -- were called out of ranks and loaded in lorries for shipment to the division's hostage camp at some distant central collecting point. Whether to save one's husband, father or son by revealing that a neighbor's brother had joined the bands or was absent from the village was a difficult choice for those who remained.
Sometimes men or women weakened. More often they just stood there -- some passive, others weeping, all hating.
The basic pattern cf burning homes and villages was also continued. Partisan bands moved from village to village, changing their bases of supply and operations as the Germans advanced or retreated. As the Germans advanced on a village there might be an exchange of fire, perhaps a few shots by retreating guerrillas. That the villagers had not asked the partisans to come, had given them food and supplies only under protest, or were powerless to resist their intrusion was of no moment to the Germans. The inhabitants would be evaluated, on foot to the rear. Some of the aged would die en route; cf the others some would be executed as "bandit suspects" or "bandit helpers" after screening by the SD; the remainder would be sent to the Reich for labor; the village would be reduced to rubble and ashes.
These severe retaliation measures served only to defeat the Germans' own purpose. Glasie-Herstenau in Croatia knew it, the defendants know or should have known it. After a few months in the Balkans anyone with the slightest objectivity would have known it. Those measures were military suicide, not military necessity. In spite of the hangings and burnings -- indeed because cf them -- the resistance continued. With his home and village destroyed, his means cf livelihood cut off, his family and friends executed, in concentration or hostage camps, or slaving in Germany, there was little else for a man to do but take to the woods. Completely without roots, immunized, against fear and nursing a bitter hate, he was excellent material for the partisan forces.
By mid-1943, after the influx of thousands of lonely, angry, and displaced men, the guerrillas numbered in the tens cf thousands. His attention drawn to the tremendous labor needs cf the Reich, Hitler, on 27 July 1943, issued a new order finally recognizing the magnitude, importance and regular military nature of the warfare in the Southeast. In order that more human material might be imported into the Reich to insure the necessary supply of coal, all "bandits" captured in combat were no longer to be executed.
Henceforth they were to be deported to Germany by way of prisoner collecting points. Prisoners were to be executed no longer -- not because it was thought illegal or inhuman to execute prisoners, but simply because their labor was now necessary for the Nazi war machine.
In order to clear up any doubts concerning this unusually humane Hitler order, the OKW issued a clarifying order, dated August 18, 1943. Paragraph 3 of the succeeding order empowered any commander having the rank of at least a Divisional Commander, "in cases of particularly malicious procedure on the part of the bandits or their accomplices", to issue precautionary directives not to take any prisoners, or to shoot prisoners and the population captured in the combat areas. In his order of 15 Sept. 1943, passing on this clarifying order, Rendulic said -- and for this he deserves the dubious honor of having "improved" on a Fuehrer order:
1) All operations against collective bands or against individual bandits are to be executed with ruthless severity. The unit employed in band combat is not to be satisfied merely to chase away the bands, but it must attempt again and again to exterminate bands or at least parts of them.....
2) The severity of the fights against the cunning enemy often makes it impossible to bring in prisoners without endangering one's own men. The precautionary directives under No. 3 of the OKW's order below, not to take prisoners, will frequently become necessary against the bands in the Serbo-Croatian area. Should the individual bandits nevertheless be captured alive by our own troops, they are to be treated in accordance with the attached order of the OKW/WFST secret, dated 18.8.43.
What a thinly veiled invitation to the wholesale murder of defenseless prisoners of war, of men who satisfied all the criteria prerequisite to full belligerent status. Small wonder, then, that brutalized by such orders, the common German soldier lost all sense of chivalry, all regard for decency. As inexorably as night follows day, the issuance of these criminal orders was followed by the reports of their enforcements:
Captured 31 partisans -- 27 of them were shot;
2 partisans, captured during an attack on Bijela, refused to tell the name of the Brigade or Division to which they were attached. After their interrogation, they were shot;
18 captured partisans shot;
4 partisans captured -- shot;
Communist courier hanged alter interrogation;
100 bandits hanged for railway sabotage and for a surprise attack on police;
20 partisans hanged for an attempt to blow up a railroad.
You will read these and scores of similar reports until numbed by the monotony of their tragic sameness, your emotions may well be incapable of registering further horror and pite.
Although a critical manpower situation in the Reich was responsible for modification of existing orders respecting the treatment of captured partisans, there was no similar practical excuse for a change in the basic orders governing reprisal measures. The consistency of the German retaliation rules runs like a steady red thread throughout this case. These rules, like the physical presence of Foertsch, lend consistent if appalling unity to the periods of List, Kuntze, Loehr and ven Weichs.
The already mentioned Rendulic order of 15 Sept. 1943 is as revealing on the subject of reprisal measures as it was on the treatment of captured partisans. It is not an exceptional order. It is, unfortunately, thoroughly representative of every single man in the defendants' dock.
The order states:
Attacks on German members of the Wehrmacht and damages to warimportant installations are to be answered in every case by the shooting or hanging of hostages and the destruction of surrounding villages, which latter is to take place, if possible, after the arrest of the male population which is capable of bearing arms. Only then will the population, in order to avoid reprisal measures, inform the German authorities if bands collect.
Unless in individual cases different orders are issued, the rule for reprisal measures is:
1 German killed 50 hostages 1 German wounded 25 hostages Kidnapping of a German will be considered equal to killing a German unless the kidnapped person does not return within a definite period.
According to the severity of the attack, 100 hostages may be hanged or shot for each attack against war essential installations.
These reprisal measures are to be executed if the culprit is not caught within 48 hours.
With orders cf this nature outstanding, there could have been only satisfaction, not surprise, as the routing, matter-of-fact reports came in:
20 hostages hanged and 26 shot for railway sabotage;
As a retaliatory measure for an attack on an armored column 27 Chetnik hostages hanged;
Arrest of a woman teacher in Kapela as a hostage, whose husband, a Croatian captain, deserted to the bands;
Relatives of track attendant Petric, who left his post at 1800 hours, will be shot if he fails to return;
The mass of the population of the villages of Paklenica and Vocarica arrested as hostages and the villages burned down in reprisal for a band surprise attack on Novska;
One village burned and 100 bandits shot as a measure cf retaliation for raid on railway southeast of Gracenica;
In retaliation for a raid on a freight train southeast of Vinkovci 21 bandit suspects taken from near the place of the raid and executed there.
Von Weichs knew of this and other of Rendulic's orders. He knew, too, of their precise execution -- he was Rendulic's commander, it was his business to know. Dehner and Leyser knew of them also -- it was they who saw to it that the orders were carried rut. It was their divisions, regiments and battalions who did the shooting.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will be in recess at this time until 1:30 this afternoon at which time this Tribunal will reconvene in Court Room No. 2.
(A Recess was taken until 1330 hours).
AFTERNOON SESSION (The Tribunal reconvened at 1330 hours, 15 July 1947)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
THE PRESIDENT: Counsel may proceed.
MR. FENSTERMACHER: If the Tribunal please, prior to the recess, you will remember, we were discussing the final occupational period, the period August 1943 to October 1944. We were particularly concerned with the basic orders issued by Weichs for the whole theater, and with their execution by Rendulic, Dehner and Leyser in Croatia.
Not until late December 1943, four months after the inaugeration of the new Southeast command, did a major reorientation in theater policy take place. Minister Plenipotentiary Neubacher, Ribbentrop's top political advisor for southeaster Europe, had long worried over the boomerang effect of the German occupational terror. After conferences with Weichs and his army commanders, it was agreed that "the reprisal, penal and revenge measures practed up to now must in the future, take into account the new political objectives." In cases of attacks or acts of sabotage, the new principle was "to seize the perpetrator himself and to take reprisal measures only as a second course, if through reprisal measures the prevention of future attacks is to be expected." Up until now the hangings and burning admittedly had occurred first, and the search for the guilty only later. A reversal in technique was a tribute, not to justice, but to military expediency.
This order of the Supreme Command Southeast, dated 22 December 1943, is a remarkable document in many ways. It rescinded all previous orders concerning hostage quotas. But though reprisal quotas were no longer to be fixed, they were not at all prohibited. Rather the extent of the reprisal measures was to be "established in advance in each individual case." The order is unique also because of this twisted and inconsistent language. It reads in part as follows:
The procedure of carrying out reprisal measures, after a surprise attack or an act of sabotage, at random on persons and dwellings in the vicinity, close to the seen of the deed, shakes the confidence in the justice of the occupying power and also drives the loyal part of the population into the woods. This form of execution of reprisal measures is accordingly forbidden. If, however, the investigation on the spot reveals open or concealed collaboration or a conscientiously passive attitude of certain persons concerning the perpetrators, then these persons above all are to be shot as bandit helpers and their dwellings destroyed....
If such people as are guilty can not be found, those persons must be resorted to who, without being connected with the actual deed, nevertheless are to be regarded as co-responsible.
Why should persons not connected with the actual deed "nevertheless be regarded as co-responsible"? When superior orders are so incomprehensible and so in need of lower-level clarification, it is not surprising to find one of Rendulic's Division commanders, writing to his troops in the following simple, straightforward, understandable language:
All is right which leads to success. After three full years of war in the Balkans each commander knows what is best.
Not because of the new policy directive, but rather because of tactical considerations arising out of the regular military nature of the current war in the Southeast, there was a noticeable change in the Croatian picture in the early months of 1944. The change was not so much a decline in the quantum of crime committed by the German troops there as it was a shift in emphasis from one type of crime to another. The number of hostage hangings may have decreased, but in their place were the many raids on partisan concentrations, followed, after all military operations were ended, by the deliberate burning of partisan hospitals and medical supplies and, on occasion, by the merciless execution of their sick and wounded patients. With periodical "purge actions" and "punitive expeditions" throughout 1944, for example, units of the "Prinz Eugen" and "Devil's" Divisions, both subordinate to Rendulic, went on a rampage of blood and cruelty that can only be duplicated in history by the orgies of Genghis Khan. A dozen or more inoffensive Dalmatian villages were burned and plundered. Three villages were destroyed and more than 800 of their inhabitants massacred on a single day The troops machine-gunned crowds which they, themselves, had assembled, they looted the dead and then half burned the bodies on giant funeral pyres, they poured gasoline on live victims and then set them on fire, they raped and they pillaged and they slaughtered.
What else could be expected of men brutalized and incited to crime by the ruthless orders of ruthless commanders?
Then there were the deportations to slave labor in the Reich. Worried by the threat of an Allied invasion across the Adriatic Sea, but more anxious about the continuous thrusts of Tito's National Army of Liberation and by the labor needs at home, scores of islands and thousands of square miles of Dalmatia and Croatia were completely evacuated of all their inhabitants by the Second Panzer Army. Mixed Croate-German ---
THE PRESIDENT: May I interrupt just a minute. We need a short recess in order to fix the sound system.
(Short recess taken)
THE PRESIDENT: I am informed that the English was coming over Channel 3 and the other language over another channel. The English is now coming over 2, so you will kindly watch and see that you are getting it on your right dial. And the German is on 3.
MR. FENSTERMACHER: Mixed Croate-German commissions rounded up all able-bodied men between 17 and 40 and gave them their choice of being drafted into the Croatian Army or joining strongly guarded labor battalions building fortifications, and coastal defenses, both alter natives which meant fighting on the side of those who would keep them in bondage. Altogether, between 150,000 and 200,000 Croates were up-rooted from their homes and villages and transported to district and regional collecting camps from which they were later screened -- the weak to remain in local concentration camps and all the strong to labor in Germany. In one single action alone, Operation "Panther", more than 6,000 persons were deported to the Reich for labor. Old men, women, nursing children, all had to go, wearing only the clothes they had on and taking with them only what they could carry.
And always, as an area was combed, several groups of the SD were asked to accompany the army to "clean up " in its rear. To "clean up " -- a polite expression for political, racial and ideological murder. So widespread were the evacuations, and so wholesale the deportations, that even the supine Croatian Government protested in their quick and arbitrary manner that the Germans were deporting hundreds whose loyalty to the Pavelic Government and the German occupation was above suspicion.
Hangings -- of hostages, "communists", "bandit helpers", "suspects"; executions - of prisoners, civilians, "anti-Germans", "unreliables"; burnings -- of homes, villages and towns; punitive expeditions and "purge actions"; mass evacuations and deportations to slave labor-that was the answer of Rendulic, Dehner and Leyser to the problem of Croatian pacification.
If Croatia under the aegis of Randulic was an operational channel house, then Serbia under Felber and Geitner was an administrative extermination camp. In no other country did the machinery for murder operate with such chain-like precision.
With impartial ruthlessness and severity, Felber and Geitner liquidated both D.M's and Partisans, depending upon the political affiliation of the group to which the Germans believed the perpetrators of the hostile acts belonged. They hanged and shot in incrediable quantities, reflected in their daily and monthly reports to von Weichs:
2 September 1943: "450 communist suspects ordered to be shot in course of operation in area of Leskovac";
29 September 1943: " 10 D.M. hostages and shot to death in Jagodina for the murder of the district supervisor";
4 October 1943: "283 D.M. hostages and 42 communists shot to death in Cacak on 1 October in reprisal for a number of attacks in the area of F.K. 610 during which German and Bulgarian members of the Wehrmacht were killed.";
17 October 1943: "In retaliation for attack on German customs and police patrol, 100 D.M. in the district of F.K. 810 and 150 communist hostages in Belgrade shot to death;"
29 October 1943: "In reprisal for the attack on two German soldiers by D.M. Chetniks near Tejika on 17 October, for a further attack on 21 October near Gr. Milanovac, and for the attack on barges on the Danube near Izlaz on 26 October, 150 D.M. followers were shot;"
29 October 1943: "As revenge for the surprise attack on a cattle purchasing detachment at Sljivar 100 D.M. followers and 200 communists were shot in Belgrade";
29 October 1943: "As revenge for the surprise attack on the collecting detachment of the 8th Auxiliary Police Battalion at Lelasnica 100 D.M. followers were shot";
1 December 1943: "27 communist hostages shot in retaliation for the attack on the train Negotin-Nisch".
Even after the order of December 1943 rescinding all hostage quotas and decreeing a policy change in reprisal measures, Felber and Geitner continued to execute in arithmetical ratio:
22 January 1944: "50 communist hostages shot to death for the murder of a German police captain in Kragujevac";
24 January 1944: "10 communists shot to death in Pozarevac in reprisal for the murder of the mayor";
On 24 March 1944 in a memorandum addressed to F.A. 610, Felber approved the execution of 10 "communists hostages at the Krusevac airport, and as late as 30 May 1944, he ordered the execution of 50 "communists" in retaliation for the death of two German soldiers.
Such was the record of crime which Felber and Geitner compiled in Serbia.
Von Weichs knew the effect these massacres had on the Serbian state of mind, and he knew that they were directly related tot the problem of pacification of the whole Southeast. He knew, too, that in a theater of war without the usual operational zones and rear areas tactical security and administrative security were one and the same thing. Von Weichs was law in Serbia as he was law in all the Southeast. He knew of Felber's and Geitner's blooky work--he knew, he condoned, he consented, and he approved.
For reasons of convenience and clarity in the statement of this case, we have postponed our description of the German occupation of Greece in order to treat it all together. Greece had been stunned almost into quiescence during the first half of the joint GermanItalian occupation. Always a heavy food-importing country, Greece, with her outside sources of supply cut off and her food stocks pu plundered by the Italian and German occupiers, faced national starvation. Hundreds died in the streets of Athens daily, children with the bloated bellies of undernourishment could be seen everywhere, and between August 1943 and October 1944, the drachma declined from one--three hundredth to one trillionth of its pre-war value. With a population of slightly over seven million people, Greece lost an estimated 300,000 of its inhabitants because of the food shortage.
To a people accustomed to horses and carts, German mechanized night was overwhelming. The military end had come with such speed that it took some tine before the Greeks could even entertain the thought of rebelling against half-tracks, panzers and airplanes.
"But", as Lord Dunsany says, "in three thousand years, freedon grows so hard that it is like a piece of rock at the core of a mountain, that cannot be broken or ground away, and cannot disappear ever." In the latter part of 1942, at the time of Stalingrad and the Allied victories in North Africa, the Greek resistance movement began to gather strength. In Crete, an all too familiar note was heard as early as November 1942, when the German commander General Brauer, instructed his commanders to educate the troops "to show no mercy whatsoever to the civilian population."
As had been observed, up to August 1943 the greater part of Greece was occupied by the Italians. But in November and December 1942 and January 1943, Loehr's reports to CKH began to contain an increasing number of references to retaliation measures against sabotage and guerrilla attacks in the German-occupied portions of Greece.
By June and July 1943, the situation in Greece had become increasingly similar to that in Yugoslavia. Loehr's reports to OKH are an accurate barometer of the terroristic pattern:
3 June 1943: "10 communists from a concentration camp shot in Larissa as a retaliation measure."
2 July 1943: "4 villages burned down and 50 communists shot near Litochoron for attack on German sergeant and blasting of railroad tracks."
4 July 1943: "87 suspects shot while trying to escape".
5 July 1943: "50 Greeks shot in Melaxa for sabotage of cable lines."
Just as in Yugoslavia, literally dozens of separate resistance groups at first arose in Greece. But after a period of merger and consolidation, two organizations of major importance were discernibleGeneral Zervas and his approximately 10,000. EDES troops in the Epirus section of western Greece, and the ELAS units, 15,000 strong, in eastern Greece, the Peloponnessus peninsula, Crete and the islands.