7th SS volunteer mountain division "Prinz Eugen"
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7th SS volunteer mountain division "Prinz Eugen" |
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|---|---|
 Troop registration |
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| active | April 15, 1941 to May 9, 1945 |
| Country |
.svg){kind=small} German Empire
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| Armed forces |
 Armed SS
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| Branch of service | Mountaineer |
| Type | Mountain Division |
| Strength | 22,659 (February 20, 1944) |
| Butcher | Partisan war in Yugoslavia |
| commander | |
| list of | Commanders |
The 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division “Prinz Eugen” was a division of the Waffen-SS , which was mainly set up in the northern Serbian Banat from ethnic Germans . She was best known for her war crimes in the partisan war in Yugoslavia . In this way she shaped the historical image of the war of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in Yugoslavia.
history
The creation of the division
At the urging of the head of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VoMi), Werner Lorenz , all ethnic German Yugoslav prisoners of war were released on April 15, 1941 with the approval of the Reich Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and the OKW . After the Volksdeutsche had been "liberated", they were to be sent to the Waffen SS. In April, SS-Gruppenführer Paul Hausser , who commanded the SS division “ Das Reich ”, provided SS-Untersturmführer Gustav Halwax , staff leader of the German ethnic group in Yugoslavia, with four acceptance commissions, which carried out muster in the German communities of the Banat. The resulting volunteers were trained by the SS division “Das Reich”.
The Operation Barbarossa (invasion of the Soviet Union) was after a quick advance of the German troops in the Battle of Moscow came in the winter of 1941-42 to a halt. The Soviet counteroffensive led to heavy losses in the Wehrmacht, which could not be satisfactorily replaced. At the same time as the first setbacks in the Soviet Union, the resistance movement in Yugoslavia had intensified. Despite the harshest retaliatory measures, the deployed Imperial German divisions did not succeed in stopping the partisans ; on the other hand, they were absent from the Eastern Front.
On November 6, 1941, in a conversation with Reichsführer SS Himmler in Berlin , the ethnic group leader Sepp Janko suggested setting up an ethnic German homeland security in the Banat. At the end of December, Adolf Hitler approved the establishment of ethnic German associations in Serbia , and in the spring of 1942 the establishment of a new SS division. In the implementation of the plans for the establishment of the 7th SS division “Prinz Eugen”, attempts were made to follow old traditions of colonization . When naming the division, at the suggestion of the first division commander, SS-Gruppenführer Artur Phleps , they resorted to Prince Eugene of Savoy , who in 17/18 Century drove the Ottomans from the Balkans and thus made the settlement of ethnic Germans possible. As the later division commander Otto Kumm pointed out, this was "consciously linked to the centuries-old tradition of the Grenzer regiments." The appointment of Phleps was also significant in this context. The SS leadership promised him, the officer from Transylvania , that he would also volunteer from Romania .
Installation and use
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Although the designation 7th SS-Freiwilligen-Gebirgs-Division was introduced and continued to be used in the first phase of the establishment (spring 1942) , it was soon drawn up across the board. By January 1944, around 22,000 men had been drafted from the Banat and Serbia, of which only about 600 served in the Wehrmacht and more than 15,000 in the Waffen SS, while a number that cannot be precisely determined belonged to the Banat police. Since this was not enough, volunteers were also recruited in Croatia , the Hungarian Batschka and the Romanian part of the Banat. That was not without problems, since the Germans in Romania had to serve in the Romanian army . It was not until October 1942 that the division had its first mission, still as part of its training, in Serbia. Until the end of the war, it was used exclusively in Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina , Montenegro and Croatia. Between the “companies” the division was mainly used to fight partisans , rarely closed, mostly in combat groups of regimental or battalion strength .
The end of the division
In mid-January 1945, the last units of the “Prinz Eugen” division withdrew across the Croatian border. On January 20, 1945, SS Brigade Leader August Schmidhuber took over command of the division, which reached the Austrian border in early May 1945 after heavy fighting. It was not until May 12, four days after the end of the war, that she laid down her arms. While some of the ethnic Germans managed to escape to Austria, the majority of those who remained were captured by partisan units. So far there are no independent results of investigations into the fate of the prisoners. On May 22, 1945, probably 2000 Danube Swabians from the "Prinz Eugen" near Brežice (Rann) were executed by partisans after their capture.
In autumn 2010 a mass grave from shortly after May 8, 1945 was found in a former anti-tank ditch near the village of Mostec near Brežice. The chairman of the Slovenian government commission for post-war mass graves, Jože Dežman , suspects about 2000–3000 victims, including Croatian and Slovenian refugees, members of the SS division “Prinz Eugen”, but also older ethnic Germans from the region ( Slovenian Germans ) should have acted.
War crimes
Even on its first missions, the mountain division Prinz Eugen attracted attention through disproportionate measures against the civilian population. At that time it was operating in southern Serbia, in a relatively quiet area with no partisan activities worth mentioning. For example, the division commander, SS-Obergruppenführer Artur Phleps, shot two youths for a minor offense, despite the protest of a member of the German embassy who was present.
In another incident, SS men from the division shot dead a group of 60 fleeing civilians in the Petrovac area . They had not warned the SS men of a partisan position nearby. After the partisans opened fire, the refugees were caught again and a body search was carried out, which only revealed a possible connection to the partisans in three people. Nevertheless, the entire group of refugees was shot without exception.
At around the same time, over 100 Croatian workers were forcibly dug out to tackle the snow. When there was no use for them, they were shot.
On March 28, 1944, the SS division "Prinz Eugen" killed the inhabitants of several villages in the Knin area , including Otok near Sinj . In April 1944, the Croatian general Franjo Šimić investigated this massacre on behalf of the Croatian War Ministry and reported to the German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop that 22 villages had been destroyed and a total of around 1,000 residents had been killed. In some cases, the inhabitants of the affected villages were herded into the houses and shot through the windows with machine guns. After that there was looting and the houses were burned along with the bodies. Because it was almost exclusively Croatians, the Croatian Foreign Minister Stijepo Perić protested in Berlin. After a sharp exchange of notes, he was dismissed. At the 7th Nuremberg trial of the war criminals , the number of victims on March 28, 1944 was put at 2,014 deaths in 22 villages. Men, women and children were then downright slaughtered and the villages plundered.
After the SS division "Prinz Eugen" burned down entire districts and closed towns several times in 1943 and shot their residents, their commander, the SS brigade leader and major general of the Waffen SS, Carl von Oberkamp , ordered that children under the age of 14 and women only to be shot in combat or in court. In a post-war report by the Yugoslav State Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes committed by the occupiers and their helpers on the events of May 1943 it says:
“The 7th SS Division 'Prinz Eugen' is famous for its cruelty. Wherever she went - through Serbia, through Bosnia and Herzegovina , through Lika and Bania or through Dalmatia . Everywhere it has left arrows and devastation, corpses of innocent men, women and children who were burned in homes. At the end of May 1943, the 'Prinz Eugen' division came to Montenegro in the area of Nikšić to attack peaceful villages with Italian fascist troops. Immediately after their invasion this force opened fire of all weapons for no reason and began to commit outrageous crimes in the villages. Everything it encountered was burned, murdered and looted. The officers and men of the SS division 'Prinz Eugen' committed crimes of incredible cruelty on this occasion. The victims were shot, slaughtered, tortured and burned in burning houses.
If a victim was not found in the house but away from it on the road or in the field, it was murdered and burned there. Children with their mothers, pregnant women and frail old people were also murdered; in short, every civilian encountered by these troops in these villages has been murdered. The investigations carried out have established that 121 people, mostly women, including 30 people between the ages of 60 and 92, were executed in the above-mentioned cruel manner. The villages were burned down and razed to the ground. "
A photo is attached to the report showing the beheading of an alleged partisan by members of the 7th SS Division with an ax.
composition
On February 20, 1944, a report was made about the composition of the division. After that were:
- 8.5% Reich Germans
- 91.5% ethnic Germans
At that time the division had 392 officers, 1,901 NCOs, 18,985 men and 1,381 men in economic battalions , a total of 22,659 men.
structure
- SS-Freiwilligen-Gebirgs-Jäger-Regiment 13 "Artur Phleps"
- SS-Freiwilligen-Gebirgs-Jäger-Regiment 14 "Skanderbeg" (remnants of the 21st Waffen-Gebirgs-Division of the SS "Skanderbeg" )
- SS Volunteer Mountain Artillery Regiment 7
- SS Panzer Division 7
- SS mountain tank destroyer division 7
- SS assault gun division 7
- SS Cavalry Division 7
- SS motorcycle battalion 7
- SS Volunteer Mountain Reconnaissance Department 7
- SS tank reconnaissance train
- SS-Radfahr-Battalion 7
- SS cycling education department 7
- SS Mountain Pioneer Battalion 7
- SS Flak Department 7
- SS Mountain News Department 7
- SS Economic Battalion 7
- SS supply company 7
- SS medical department 7
- SS Volunteer Mountain Veterinary Company 1/7 and 2/7
- SS volunteer mountain war reporter train 7
- SS propaganda train
- SS-Feldgendarmerie-Troop 7
- SS repair department 7
- SS military geological battalion
- Division troops 7
- SS Field Replacement Battalion 7
Commanders
- 30 January 1942 to July 1943 SS-Gruppenführer and Lieutenant General of the Waffen-SS Artur Phleps
- July 1943 to January 30, 1944 SS brigade leader and major general of the Waffen SS Carl Reichsritter von Oberkamp
- January 30, 1944 to January 20, 1945 SS brigade leader and major general of the Waffen SS Otto Kumm
- January 20 to May 8, 1945 SS Brigadefuhrer and Major General of the Waffen SS August Schmidhuber
literature
- Federal Archives (Ed.): The occupation policy of German fascism in Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania, Italy and Hungary (1941–1945). Europe under the swastika. The occupation policy of German fascism (1938–1945). Volume 6. Hüthig Verlag, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-8226-1892-6 .
- Thomas Casagrande: The Volksdeutsche SS-Division "Prinz Eugen". The Banat Swabians and the National Socialist war crimes. Campus, Frankfurt 2003 ISBN 3-593-37234-7 .
- Klaus Schmider : A detour to a war of extermination? The partisan war in Yugoslavia, 1941–1944 . In: RD Müller, HE Volkmann (Ed. On behalf of MGFA ): The Wehrmacht: Myth and Reality . Oldenbourg, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-486-56383-1 , p. 910 ff.
- Karl-Volker Neugebauer , Ernst W. Hansen, Gerhard P. Gross: Basic Course in German Military History: Basic Course in German Military History 2. The Age of World Wars 1914 and 1945: Peoples in Arms , Volume 2. Oldenbourg 2007, ISBN 3-486-58099-X .
- Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II 1939–1945. Volume 3: The Land Forces 6-14 . 2nd Edition. Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 1974, ISBN 3-7648-0942-6 .
Web links
- Wolf Oschlies : Volksdeutsche manipulation mass in the SS division "Prinz Eugen". In: Shoa.de . Retrieved May 23, 2015 .
- Online finding aid of the Federal Archives for the holdings RS 3–7 7th SS-Freiwilligen-Gebirgs-Division Prinz Eugen
Individual evidence
- ↑ Thomas Casagrande: The Volksdeutsche SS Division “Prinz Eugen”: The Banat Swabians and the National Socialist war crimes. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-593-37234-7 . P. 211.
- ↑ Schmider, p. 910.
- ↑ Heinz Höhne: The order under the skull. The history of the SS. Original edition 1967, here Munich 2002, ISBN 978-3-572-01342-5 , p. 437.
- ^ Thomas Casagrande : The Volksdeutsche SS-Division "Prinz Eugen": The Banat Swabians and the National Socialist War Crimes , Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 2003, ISBN 3-593-37234-7 . P. 196.
- ↑ Thomas Casagrande: The Volksdeutsche SS Division "Prinz Eugen": The Banat Swabians and the National Socialist War Crimes , Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 2003, ISBN 3-593-37234-7 . P. 296.
- ↑ Donauschwäbische Kulturstiftung (Timeline) ( Memento from June 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Društvo za srpsko-nemačku saradnju / Society for Serbian-German Cooperation: Chronological history of the Danube Germans in the Vojvodina ( Memento from August 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 64 kB)
- ^ Karl-Peter Schwarz: mass grave discovered in Slovenia. A five-foot-thick layer of skeletons. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 11, 2010
- ^ Thomas Roser: Slovenia. Largest mass grave from World War II. The press, November 9, 2010.
- ↑ a b c Schmider, p. 911.
- ↑ Schmider, p. 917.
- ↑ Klaus Schmider: The Yugoslav Theater of War (January 1943 to May 1945) in: Karl-Heinz Frieser (Ed.): The Eastern Front 1943/44 - The War in the East and on the Secondary Fronts , Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978 -3-421-06235-2 , p. 1030.
- ^ Martin Seckendorf; Günter Keber; u. a .; Federal Archives (Ed.): The Occupation Policy of German Fascism in Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania, Italy and Hungary (1941–1945) Hüthig, Berlin 1992; Decker / Müller, Heidelberg 2000. Series: Europa unterm Hakenkreuz Volume 6, ISBN 3-8226-1892-6 , pp. 59, 320 f.
- ^ Martin Seckendorf; Günter Keber; u. a .; Federal Archives (Ed.): The Occupation Policy of German Fascism in Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania, Italy and Hungary (1941–1945) Hüthig, Berlin 1992; Decker / Müller, Heidelberg 2000. Series: Europa unterm Hakenkreuz Volume 6, ISBN 3-8226-1892-6 , p. 59, p. 241 f.
- ^ Neugebauer, Hansen, Groß: Basic Course in German Military History , p. 357.