Lienz Cossack tragedy
As a Lienz Cossack tragedy or tragedy on the Drava are called events in the spring and summer of 1945, when military Cossack associations after their surrender before the British army at Lienz in East Tyrol camped that forced repatriation to the Soviet Union threatened. An undetermined number of soldiers and family members in the convoy had followed the Cossack associations and on new settlement areas in Friuli had hoped, died by suicide , extended suicide and violence by British soldiers.
prehistory
Before World War II
At the Russian Civil War , much of the Cossacks took part on the side of Tsarist " Whites ". Under Lenin (1920) and then Stalin, the majority of the Cossacks were therefore collectively persecuted as "anti- Bolsheviks ". But there were also Cossacks on the side of the Bolsheviks and many who often switched sides.
Cossacks in the Wehrmacht
As during the revolution, the Cossacks found themselves on both sides during the war , with a large number, due to their anti-Bolshevik attitude, harboring open sympathy for National Socialist Germany , which they viewed as a bulwark against Stalin.
In the advance of the Wehrmacht , it was believed that there was a possibility of regaining old rights and privileges or of being able to openly celebrate the Orthodox religion again. That is why some of the Cossacks offered their services to Hitler. At first, he did not meet their wishes.
The first security and cavalry formations of the Cossacks, which were deployed on the German side, emerged in autumn 1941 and initially served to fight partisans . During the Wehrmacht's summer offensive in 1942, Hitler approved the use of Cossack units not only in fighting partisans, but also at the front.
Because there were concerns that the Cossacks might not fight reliably against their compatriots, Cossack units were later deployed, especially in Yugoslavia . The mobility of the mounted Cossack units proved itself in the fight against the Titopartisans . At the same time, the 1st Cossack Cavalry Division fell into disrepute in the Yugoslavian insurrection area due to a large number of looting , rape and shooting .
Relocation
Due to the withdrawal of the Wehrmacht in the east from 1943, the families of the Cossacks were also forced to leave their homeland. The Cossack Stans under their leaders who were famous from the tsarist times , such as the atamans and generals Krasnow , Kulakoff , Shkuro , the Sultan Klych , or Vasilieff and Domanow , became new settlement areas in the northern Italian province of Friuli , in the area of Tolmezzo in Carnia , as a new "Kosakia" or "Cossack country in northern Italy", assigned by the German government. In the summer of 1944 around 35,000 Cossacks were evacuated from the east in 50 railway trains and settled in this area. In Tolmezzo resided a staff with 2,800 officers and 20,000 soldiers who were used to fight partisans. At an All Cossack congress called in Virovitica (Croatia), General Helmuth von Pannwitz , commander of the XV, was presided over by Colonel Ivan Kononov on March 29, 1945 . Cossack cavalry corps, elected Supreme Feldataman of all Cossack armies and assigned the function that was only reserved for the Tsarevich at the time.
Under the pressure of Italian partisan movements and in order to unite with the Cossack units of the Cossack Cavalry Corps, which were evading to Austria, the Cossack Stans fled in huge treks with horse and cart north to the area of Upper Carinthia and East Tyrol , where they were affected by the collapse of the German Reich were overtaken. According to an agreement between the Allies to transfer prisoners of war to their countries of origin, the Cossacks were extradited by the British troops to the Soviet Union, where many deported and sentenced to forced labor. General Helmuth von Pannwitz was sentenced to death in the Soviet Union and executed in Moscow on January 16, 1947 .
The Cossacks in Lienz
The impending defeat of Germany brought the Cossacks as fighters on Germany's side in dire straits. Stalin viewed them as Nazi collaborators and traitors and threatened them with death. In order not to be captured by the Red Army or Tito Army , the Cossack Stans fled at the beginning of May 1945 under the command of General Domanow over the Plöcken Pass , where they were received by SS functionary Odilo Globocnik and escorted to Kötschach-Mauthen. The Cossacks reached the area of Upper Carinthia and East Tyrol . In Lienz that was headquarters pitched and in the meadows and forests around the Dolomites town camped around 25,000 men, women and children, the majority of them consisted of members of combat units. In addition, there were more than 5000 horses that ate the meadows bare within a short time. This explains u. a. the reserved and fearful reception by the locals, who often felt threatened by the presence of the Cossacks.
Contrary to promises to the contrary , after the Cossack officers had been separated from the rest of Stan a few days earlier by a fictitious conference in Spittal an der Drau , the British forcibly loaded the Cossacks and Caucasians onto trucks and railroad cars. The Yalta Treaty was invoked , in which, among other things, the return to the Soviet Union of all Soviet citizens who were in Allied captivity at the end of the war (forced repatriation) had been agreed. The British government feared that Stalin might withhold the British prisoners of war freed by the Soviet troops as bargaining chips as long as the Cossack units had not been repatriated . The same was true for tens of thousands of Yugoslav citizens and soldiers in the Bleiburg massacre , who - mainly in the ranks of the fascist Croatian Ustaša associations - had stood on the German side.
In the camps around Lienz and Oberdrauburg , in the course of the extradition, mothers and their children jumped into the high-water and ice-cold Drau with suicidal intent . Men shot or hanged themselves. The events went down in history as the "tragedy on the Drava".
Most of the Cossacks and Caucasians were handed over to the Soviet troops in Judenburg . Many no longer survived the summer of 1945. For fear of persecution by the Soviet authorities, they either committed suicide or killed their children and relatives or did not survive the transports to the prison camps. Officers were usually executed after short trials; General von Pannwitz was executed on January 16, 1947 in Moscow with five other Cossack generals and atamans. On April 23, 1996, he was rehabilitated by the Russian Attorney General, but this was reversed on June 28, 2001 as a misjudgment by the Supreme Military Public Prosecutor's Office. Today it is assumed that another reason for the extradition of the Cossacks could have been the repatriation of the SS division "Galicia" , because Churchill had expected advantages from their deployment in the emerging Cold War .
Traces and reception
In Lienz today remember the Cossack cemetery in the Peggetz and a memorial stone for General Helmuth von Pannwitz and the XV. Cossack cavalry corps in Tristach to the tragic events of the time. Every year there are memorial services for the survivors and their descendants. In Judenburg, the so-called "Cossack Stone" is a memorial next to the Mur Bridge to commemorate what happened at the handover.
With a hint in the James Bond film " GoldenEye ", the events of Lienz also found their way into popular culture: Bonds' opponent declares himself to be the son of a Lienz Cossack (the German version incorrectly speaks of "Linz Cossack") and thus glowing Haters of Britain.
While the extradition of the Cossacks in 1945 plays an important role in the extreme right-wing historical discourse ( revisionism ), others criticize the fact that the emphasis on the role of victim deliberately ignores the aspect that the fight of the Cossacks on the side of the German armed forces meant that they took part in Hitler's war of extermination . Regardless of the question of their original motivation, since from Stalin's point of view they have been considered enemies of the Soviet system since the October Revolution and the majority of them were persecuted as anti-Bolsheviks. According to their account, they had no choice but to turn against Stalin together with the Germans, although in reality only a very small part defected to the German troops, while the vast majority of the Cossacks opposed the Wehrmacht in the Red Army units.
literature
- Nikolai Tolstoy : The betrayed of Yalta: England's guilt before history, Langen-Mueller Verlag, ISBN 3-7844-1719-1 .
- Stefan Karner : On the extradition of the Cossacks to the Soviets in Judenburg in 1945 , in: Johann Andritsch (ed.): Judenburg 1945 in eyewitness reports. Judenburg Museum Writings XII. Judenburg 1994, pp. 243-259.
- Erich Kern: General von Pannwitz and his Cossacks , Göttingen 1964.
- Christian Koller : "Not exactly our finest hour": History and Memoria of the Cossacks in the Balkans in World War II, in: Portal Military History, May 27, 2013
- James D. Sanders; Mark A. Sauter; R. Cort Kirkwood: Soldiers of Misfortune. The Cold War Betrayal and Sacrifice of American POWs. New York 1994, p. 86 f. and p. 92 f.
- Harald Stadler, Martin Kofler, Karl C. Berger: Escape into hopelessness. The Cossacks in East Tyrol. StudienVerlag, Innsbruck-Vienna-Bozen 2005 ISBN 3-7065-4152-1 .
- Harald Stadler, Rolf Steininger, Karl C. Berger (eds.): The Cossacks in the First and Second World War. StudienVerlag, Innsbruck-Vienna-Bozen 2008 ISBN 978-3-7065-4623-2 .
- Andreas Hilger / G. Wagenlehner: Soviet military tribunals . Böhlau, Cologne 2001.
- Gertraud Patterer (prose text and poetry) and Adi Holzer (collages, drawings and glass sculptures): The Cossack Tragedy in Carinthia and East Tyrol. Storm Tryk Publishing House, Denmark 2007. ISBN 978-87-90170-29-5 .
- Philip Longworth: The Cossacks. Legend and history , Fischer paperback, Frankfurt am Main 1977, ISBN 3-436-02478-3 .
- Józef Mackiewicz : Tragedy on the Drava or Freedom betrayed . (“Contra”). Translation: Armin Droß. Munich (Bergstadtverlag) 1957. Munich (Universitas) 1988.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lt. Contemporary witness report in Henry Bernhard: The Lienz Cossacks . Feature, posted in Ö1 on November 30, 2013, 9:00 am
- ↑ Military History Research Office (ed.): The German Reich and the Second World War , Vol. 5/2: Organization and mobilization of the German sphere of influence , Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-421-06499-7 , p. 160.
- ↑ Erwein Karl Graf Eltz's war diary, self-published 1970, p. 205.
- ↑ Chronicle of the Cossack Tragedy by Josef Kiniger, in: Osttiroler Heimatblätter, 2001.
- ↑ Tobias Sauer: Lienz Cossack tragedy: Escape without a chance . Ed .: G history. tape 11/2018 , p. 58-59 .
- ^ Karl-Peter Schwarz: A shameful operation In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 1, 2015, p. 6.
- ↑ Lit .: Sanders et al., Pp. 86f. and p. 92f.