Terror in the Balkans: German Armies and Partisan Warfare, by Ben Shepherd.

Abstract

Terror in Balkans. German Armies and Partisan Warfare, by Ben Shepherd. Cambridge and London, Harvard University Press, 2012. vi, 342 pp. $48.80 Cdn (cloth). The German conquest Yugoslavia took less than two weeks, but invasion turned out to be a mere prelude to three years violence that tore apart Yugoslav state and society. German anti-partisan strategies proved vital in creating such a vicious atmosphere and investigation these policies and, more importantly, motivations behind them, forms basis Ben Shepherd's concise, yet provocative study. Shepherd attempts to discover latter by 'investigating how mind-set a particular group officers evolved during [the first half twentieth century], and how these officers went on to behave during its cataclysmic final years, (p 11). The book develops a collective biography German and Austrian divisional commanders deployed in Yugoslavia by examining their institutional and ideological socialization. The specialization armies during early twentieth century meant that officers increasingly focused on narrow technical matters: unfortunately, ideologies popular bourgeoisie, such as Social Darwinism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Slavism, simultaneously entered officers corps. These dual developments meant that officers be deprived of opportunity to develop societal awareness, political maturity, and general openness to world (p. 17) and therefore more readily accepted violence as a solution. The cataclysm First World War and its immediate aftermath: however, proved most important event in creation an officer corps with a harsher, more obdurate mentality (p. 55). For Austro-Hungarian officers, confrontation Serbia took centre stage, while wartime events only exacerbated anti-Serb feeling that already existed within much Imperial Army's officer corps. For German Army and, to a lesser extent, its Habsburg counterpart, it was Eastern Front that could certainly brutalize [officers] in particularly diverse ways (p. 39). Shepherd notes that terrain, climate, native population, and presence Bolshevism all served to make Eastern Front a transformative experience in these officers' lives. He in fact asserts that the officers who served in East during Great War would behave particularly ferociously, in certain circumstances, during World War II, (p. 253). In second section book, Shepherd places case studies four different Wehrmacht divisions within larger political and social contexts region. Drawing upon a solid selection secondary literature on wartime Yugoslavia, he paints a grim picture mass violence and ethnic rivalry. The Wehrmacht faced not only resistance from Chetniks, an organization looking to carve out a Greater Serbia, but also from what became greatest threat to its power: a Communist partisan movement that appealed to broad sections civilian population. Complicating these matters were Fascist Italy and Independent State Croatia. Italian and German interests clashed over competing economic and political goals in former Yugoslavia, frustrating all attempts at pacification. The Ustasha, however, proved to be biggest obstacle to stability as its murderous activities drove tens thousands Serbs, Muslims, and even Croats into arms various resistance movements. …