Kraljevo and Kragujevac massacres
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The massacres in Kraljevo and Kragujevac ( Serbian Масакр у Краљеву и Крагујевцу Masakr u Kragujevcu ) were war crimes of the German armed forces in occupied Serbia . More than 4,000 civilians were killed in the two largest shootings in Serbia in October 1941. Members of the 717th Infantry Division shot dead 2,300 citizens of the city of Kragujevac in retaliation for an ambush in which a German company was caught. At the same time, 1,700 residents of neighboring Kraljevo fell victim to a similar “expiatory act”. Units of the collaborating Serbian Volunteer Command and the Serbian State Guard were involved in the massacres .
prehistory
In April 1941, with the air raid on Belgrade, the armies of the National Socialist German Reich and its allies, fascist Italy and Hungary , attacked Yugoslavia without prior declaration of war and occupied the country within a few weeks. In the summer of 1941, in Serbia, which was subordinate to a German military administration, a widespread insurrection emerged, consisting of only four infantry divisions ( 704th Infantry Division , 714th Infantry Division , 717th Infantry Division and 718th Infantry Division ). with inferior equipment faced existing German occupying forces. Two of the divisions were set up in Austria: the 717th Infantry Division and the 718th Infantry Division in Military District XVII (Vienna) . The 717th Infantry Division numbered about 6,000 men and consisted of outdated crews and officers with no combat experience. The 717th ID formed mobile hunting squads of 25 to 30 men to "fight gangs".
The insurrection should be met with unprecedented severity and deterrence. On October 10, 1941, the authorized commanding general in Serbia, General of the Infantry Franz Böhme , ordered the shooting of 100 civilians for every soldier killed and 50 civilians for every wounded Wehrmacht soldier.
The Kraljevo massacre
In the first days of October the 717th Infantry Division shot 105 civilians and burned numerous villages during "purges" in the vicinity of Kraljevo. In combat she had only been able to kill six opponents, including twelve of her own dead and a few wounded. On October 13, the partisans succeeded in enclosing the city of Kraljevo and the 717th Infantry Division stationed there and attacking them with artillery fire. This then took hostages in the city . The continued attacks by the insurgent Serbian units could only be repulsed by the Wehrmacht on October 15 with considerable losses. After shots rang out inside the city towards evening, Wehrmacht units killed 300 Serb civilians in retaliation. The next day the German losses in the fighting around Kraljevo were "atoned for". To this end, the 717th Infantry Division rounded up the town's male population in the courtyard of the wagon factory and registered them. In retaliation for the 14 killed and 20 wounded soldiers in the artillery skirmishes on October 15, a total of 1,736 men and 19 communist women were shot according to information in the war diary . On the same day members of the 717th Infantry Division received twenty iron crosses, 2nd class . The executions continued over the next few days, killing at least 4,000 to 5,000 civilians, and between 7,000 and 8,000 civilians according to Yugoslavian figures in Kraljevo and the surrounding area.
The Kragujevac mass shooting
Wehrmacht units proceeded similarly in Kragujevac to the north . Ten Wehrmacht soldiers were killed and 26 wounded in a battle with partisans in a village near the small town. As a counter-reaction, soldiers from the 749th and 727th Infantry Regiments led by Major Paul König rounded up Serbian civilians at random and shot a total of 2,323 people, including 300 students and 18 local teachers, near the city on October 21, 1941, according to the hostage quota set High school. The teachers had the opportunity to avoid being shot, but they decided not to leave the students alone to give them company and support in their fear and degradation. So they too were killed.
In the telegram from ambassador Felix Benzler to the Foreign Office of October 29, 1941, there is the information: “The shootings in Kragujevac took place although there was no attack on German Wehrmacht members in this city because not enough hostages could be found elsewhere. "
Wehrmacht and hostage shootings
The two massacres in Serbia are part of the hostage shootings by the Wehrmacht during World War II , which in their dimensions exceeded even the war crimes of the SS and the Gestapo in Lidice in today's Czech Republic and Oradour-sur-Glane in France.
Between April and the beginning of December 1941, a total of 20,000 to 30,000 Serbian civilians were shot by Wehrmacht units in retaliation for partisan attacks. By the end of the occupation of the former Yugoslavia in 1944, the Wehrmacht would have killed around 80,000 hostages. Racist criteria were applied in the selection of the hostages: According to Boehme's instructions on October 10, 1941, the hostages to be selected were "Communists [...], all Jews, [and] a certain number of nationalist and democratically-minded residents."
Processing and commemoration
The judicial punishment followed in 1948 in the Nuremberg follow-up trial against eleven generals . Field Marshal General Wilhelm List was sentenced to life imprisonment for illegal "atonement" measures, but was pardoned and released early in the early 1950s. Franz Böhme committed suicide while in custody . A preliminary investigation initiated at the end of the 1960s against the site commander Major Paul König and the commander of the 749th Infantry Regiment Otto Desch was set.
The mass crimes committed in Yugoslavia have no place in the collective memory of Germans and Austrians; presumably the crimes have remained almost unknown in both countries “due to scandalous suspensions of criminal investigations”. The mass murder in Kragujevac remained unforgotten in the post-war memory of Yugoslavia : memorials were erected in every neighboring village where victims were shot on October 19, 1941. In the village itself, a monumental memorial complex was built on 352 hectares with the Šumarice memorial park ; The event is documented in the attached museum. Up to 80,000 people attended the annual commemorative events on October 21. After the collapse of Yugoslavia , the memorial, which previously stood for the crimes of the National Socialists throughout Yugoslavia, is only used as a Serbian memorial.
Memorial to the students and teachers murdered in the massacre
Monument on the site of one of the mass graves
Monument on the site of one of the mass graves
Memorial to a murdered 15-year-old Roma boy
“Pain and Disregard” memorial for the only woman Nada Naumović killed in the massacre
literature
- Crimes of the Wehrmacht. Dimensions of the War of Extermination 1941–1944. Exhibition catalog, Hamburg 2002, pp. 550–557.
- Frank Hermann Meyer: From Vienna to Kalavryta. The bloody trail of the 117th Jäger Division through Serbia and Greece . Peleus. Studies in the archeology and history of Greece and Cyprus; Volume 12. Bibliopolis, Mannheim / Möhnesee 2002, ISBN 3-933925-22-3 . Review for sight points .
- Walter Manoschek : Kragujevac. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (Ed.): Places of horror. Crimes in World War II. Primus, Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-89678-232-0 , pp. 114-125.
- Walter Manoschek: The massacres in Pancevo and Kragujecvac. In: Oliver von Wrochem (Ed.): Repressalien und Terror. Paderborn 2017, ISBN 978-3-506-78721-7 , pp. 89-102
Web links
- Kragujevac on the memorial portal to places of remembrance in Europe
Individual evidence
- ↑ Klaus Schmieder: 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 , pp. 901-922
- ↑ Stevan K. Pavlowitch: Hitler's New Disorder: The Second World War in Yugoslavia . Columbia University Press, New York 2008, ISBN 1-85065-895-1 , pp. 62 .
- ^ John R. Lampe: Yugoslavia As History: Twice There Was a Country . Cambridge University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-521-46705-5 , pp. 215-217 .
- ↑ Wolfgang Benz : History of the Third Reich . 6th edition. dtv, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-423-30882-3 , p. 158.
- ↑ Files on German Foreign Policy, Series D, Vol. XIII.2, No. 432, digi20.digitale-sammlungen.de
- ^ Walter Manoschek: The massacres in Pancevo and Kragujecvac. In: Oliver von Wrochem (Ed.): Repressalien und Terror. Paderborn 2017, ISBN 978-3-506-78721-7 , p. 97.
- ^ Walter Manoschek: The massacres in Pancevo and Kragujecvac. In: Oliver von Wrochem (Ed.): Repressalien und Terror. Paderborn 2017, ISBN 978-3-506-78721-7 , p. 101.