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"Prinz
Eugen" SS Division, 1941-1945
by
Carl Kosta Savich
2001
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 Volunteer
Mountain Division, named after Prinz Eugen of Savoy-Carignan, one of the
greatest military commanders of the Austrian Habsburg 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 Himmler's Waffen SS.
The Prinz Eugen Division was formed between April and October, l942.
The staff of the Division was located in Pancevo and its 1st 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. Berger's 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 Habsburg 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, 17l7, 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, 17l8, gave the Banat, Belgrade, and most of Serbia to
the Austrian Habsburg 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:
‘Prinz 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 ... '
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 don't recognize ‘capitulation'. 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 initial 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 Stalin's 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 Mihailovic's 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 and Generalleutnant 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 Mihailovic's
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
Mihailovic's 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 1st German Mountain Division,
which had arrived from the Russian front, the German-Croatian 369th "Legion"
Infantry Division, the 118th 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 Mihailovic's
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, l943, 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, l944, SS Obergruppenfuehrer and General of the Waffen
SS Artur Phleps was believed to have been killed when en route from Montenegro
to Transylvania 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 Lohr's 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, Bajina Basta, 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, l945 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, l944, 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.
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