BEN SHEPHERD. Terror in the Balkans: German Armies and Partisan Warfare.

Abstract

The title of Ben Shepherd's new monograph on German anti-partisan warfare is misleading. The book does not handle the entire Balkan region but rather the territories of former Yugoslavia, more specifically Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia. Shepherd demonstrates a clear understanding of the ethnic complexities of the region and provides the reader with an extremely detailed, blow-by-blow account of the counterinsurgency operations of German infantry divisions in Yugoslavia between spring 1941 and early 1943. In the opening three chapters Shepherd performs an effective juggling act in tracing the parallel development of mentalities within the Austrian and the German officer corps, respectively, from the late nineteenth century to World War II. The next seven chapters deal with the period from 1941 to 1943 and as such constitute the study's core. The author notes that 1943 saw the largest German anti-partisan operations in Yugoslavia, and it was not until this year that the Germans committed genuinely powerful forces to combating Josip Broz Tito's partisans. It was also in 1943 that the Western Allies formally switched their support from Draža Mihailović's Chetnik movement to the partisans. Despite this, only one of the seven chapters constituting the study's core actually focuses on 1943. This seems odd at first glance, yet it is never Shepherd's objective to provide a comprehensive treatment of German counterinsurgency operations in Yugoslavia. His main concern is not why the Wehrmacht's anti-partisan campaign there ultimately failed but rather to determine “what motivated German army commanders to conduct the campaign in the way that they did” (p. 236). To this end, Shepherd provides case studies of four different divisions between spring 1941 and early 1943: the 704th, the 342nd, the 718th, and the 369th Infantry Divisions.