Kraljevo massacre
Kraljevo massacre | |
---|---|
Part of World War II in Yugoslavia | |
Location | Kraljevo, German-occupied territory of Serbia |
Date | 15–20 October 1941 |
Target | Residents of Kraljevo, mostly Serbs |
Attack type | Mass murder by shooting |
Deaths | c. 2,000 |
Perpetrators | German Army |
Motive | Reprisal |
The Kraljevo massacre was the
The German Army initially responded by rounding up and executing 300 Serbian civilians, described in contemporary documents as "communists, nationalists, democrats and Jews." Over the following several days, all men between the ages of 14 and 60 were arrested and herded into a makeshift detention centre at the local rolling-stock factory. Once there, their papers were checked and their names entered into a ledger. When the camp was full, the German Army ordered groups of 100 prisoners to march to pre-dug mass graves, where they were executed with heavy machine guns. The bodies were then examined for any signs of life; victims that had survived the initial volley were dealt a single bullet to the head. Once the first group had been liquidated, the soldiers returned to the factory and collected the next 100 victims. This process continued until all the men that were rounded up had been killed. The reprisals lasted several days. Following the shooting of hostages from the rolling-stock factory, the German Army deployed through the surrounding villages, burning homes and killing indiscriminately. According to the 717th Infantry Division's own records, 1,736 men and 19 "communist" women from the city and its outskirts were executed, despite attempts by local collaborationists to mitigate the punishment. Twenty members of the 717th Infantry Division were later conferred Iron Crosses for their role in the killings.
The massacre at Kraljevo, as well as a similar and nearly concurrent
Background
Following the 1938
Yugoslavia was overwhelmed by the combined strength of the Axis powers and surrendered in less than two weeks. The government and royal family went into exile, and the country was occupied and dismembered by its neighbours. The
Two resistance movements emerged following the invasion: the
Prelude
On 29 August, the Germans replaced Aćimović with Yugoslavia's former
The strengthening of Germany's military presence in Serbia resulted in a new wave of mass executions and war crimes. The commanders who bore the most responsibility for these atrocities were primarily of Austrian origin and had served in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I.[18] Most were ardently anti-Serb, a prejudice that the historian Stevan K. Pavlowitch links to the Nazis' wider anti-Slavic racism.[19]
On 19 September,
Killings
Kraljevo is a city located about 150 kilometres (93 mi) south of Belgrade.[24] At the time of the massacre, it was situated along a vital transport route and was the seat of a German divisional command.[25] In mid-October 1941,[a] the Partisans and Chetniks laid siege (Siege of Kraljevo) to a 2,200-strong German garrison in the city.[27] Ten German soldiers were killed and 14 wounded in the attack.[24] "Not only will 100 Serbs be shot for each German," the garrison commander declared, "their families and property will also be destroyed."[28] He then gave orders for the arrest and summary execution of 300 Serbian civilians.[27] His orders were promptly carried out.[29] The victims were described in contemporary German military documents as "communists, nationalists, democrats and Jews".[30]
New orders were subsequently issued demanding further executions. According to eyewitness accounts, the German Army went from house to house over the next several days, arresting all males between the ages of 14 and 60. They were herded into a makeshift detention centre at a former rolling-stock factory.[27][b] Once there, their papers were checked and their names entered into a ledger. When the camp was full, the German Army ordered groups of 100 prisoners to march to pre-dug mass graves, where they were executed with heavy machine guns. The bodies were then examined for any signs of life; victims that had survived the initial volley were dealt a single bullet to the head.[27] Once the first group had been liquidated, the soldiers returned to the factory and collected the next 100 victims. This process continued until all the men that were rounded up had been killed.[32]
The reprisals lasted several days. Following the shooting of hostages from the rolling-stock factory, the German Army deployed through the surrounding villages, burning homes and killing indiscriminately.[32] According to the 717th Infantry Division's own records, by 17 or 20 October,[24][26] 1,736 men and 19 "communist" women from the city and its outskirts had been shot.[33][34][35] The executions were carried out despite attempts by local collaborationists to mitigate the punishment.[24] Most of those killed were ethnic Serbs, though 80 Roma (Gypsies) were also among the victims,[36] as were some Jews,[37][38] and several dozen Slovene refugees.[38] Among the dead was the entire Serbian workforce of an airplane factory producing armaments for the Germans.[39][40] The factory workers had been interned on suspicion of sabotage.[38] Forty members of the collaborationist Serbian Volunteer Command were also inadvertently killed.[41] Generalmajor (Brigadier General) Paul Hoffman, the commander of the 717th Infantry Division, personally oversaw the reprisals and praised his men for their "enthusiastic fulfillment of what was required of them".[42] Another officer lauded his men for demonstrating "great bravery in action".[43] Twenty members of the 717th Infantry Division were later conferred the Iron Cross, 2nd Class for their role in the massacre.[32]
Aftermath and legacy
The massacre at Kraljevo, as well as a similar and nearly concurrent massacre in nearby Kragujevac, was met with outrage by the Serbian puppet government, which responded with pleas, interventions and threats of resignation. The killings led German military commanders in Serbia to question the efficacy of mass reprisal shootings, as they pushed thousands of Serbs into the hands of anti-German guerrillas. The killing of airplane factory workers in Kraljevo convinced the OKW that arbitrary shootings of Serbs not only incurred a significant political cost but were also counterproductive.[40] The ratio of 100 executions for one soldier killed and 50 executions for one soldier wounded was reduced by half in February 1943, and removed altogether that autumn. Henceforth, each individual execution had to be approved by Special Envoy Hermann Neubacher.[44]
The killings exacerbated tensions between the Partisans and Chetniks.[24] They also convinced Mihailović that active resistance was futile for as long as the Germans held an unassailable military advantage in the Balkans, and that killing German troops would only result in the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Serbs. He therefore decided to scale back Chetnik guerrilla attacks and wait for an Allied landing in the Balkans.[15][45][46]
List and Böhme were both captured at the end of the war. On 10 May 1947, they were charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity as part of the
Like the massacre at Kragujevac, the Kraljevo massacre came to symbolise the brutality of the German occupation in Yugoslav popular memory.[28] The historian Jozo Tomasevich describes the killings as "the two most horrible outrages that the Germans committed in Serbia" on the basis of Hitler's decree.[44] The Kragujevac massacre remains better known than the one in Kraljevo, though both occurred around the same time and resulted in a similar number of deaths. This may be because schoolchildren were among the Kragujevac victims.[34] Following the war, it was widely accepted that 7,000 civilians had been executed in Kragujevac and 6,000 had been executed in Kraljevo.[54] The number of victims believed to have been killed in Kraljevo has since been reduced to around 2,000 by modern Serbian and German historians.[44][54] A similar re-examining has taken place with regard to the massacre at Kragujevac, where both Serbian and German scholars agree that more than 2,700 civilians were killed.[55] The total number of individuals killed in the two massacres is believed to be around 5,000.[44][56]
See also
Endnotes
- Christopher Browning writes that the incident occurred on 15–16 October,[26] while journalist Misha Glenny gives the date as 17 October.[27]
- ^ The Germans had dismantled the factory in August 1941 and expropriated its machinery and materials, shipping them off to the Reich for use in German factories.[31]
Citations
- ^ a b Roberts 1973, pp. 6–7.
- ^ Pavlowitch 2007, p. 8.
- ^ Roberts 1973, p. 12.
- ^ Pavlowitch 2007, pp. 10–13.
- ^ Roberts 1973, p. 15.
- ^ Pavlowitch 2007, p. 49.
- ^ Ramet & Lazić 2011, pp. 19–20.
- ^ a b Tomasevich 2001, pp. 177–178.
- ^ a b Pavlowitch 2007, pp. 59–60.
- ^ Shepherd 2016, p. 198.
- ^ Tomasevich 1975, pp. 118–123.
- ^ Lampe 2000, p. 217.
- ^ Ramet & Lazić 2011, p. 22.
- ^ Milazzo 1975, p. 28.
- ^ a b Tomasevich 1975, p. 146.
- ^ Tomasevich 1975, p. 140.
- ^ a b Pavlowitch 2007, p. 61.
- ^ Lampe 2000, p. 215.
- ^ Pavlowitch 2007, pp. 60–61.
- ^ Tomasevich 1975, pp. 97–98.
- ^ Tomasevich 1975, p. 96.
- ^ Shepherd 2016, p. 199.
- ^ Nuremberg Military Tribunals 1950, p. 977.
- ^ a b c d e Pavlowitch 2007, p. 62.
- ^ Tomasevich 2001, p. 198.
- ^ a b Browning 2007, p. 343.
- ^ a b c d e Glenny 2001, p. 490.
- ^ a b Benz 2006, p. 206.
- ^ Shepherd 2012, p. 306, note 109.
- ^ Manoschek 2000, p. 176.
- ^ Tomasevich 2001, pp. 624–625.
- ^ a b c Glenny 2001, p. 491.
- ^ Tomasevich 1975, p. 146, note 92.
- ^ a b Mojzes 2011, p. 86.
- ^ Levene 2013, p. 84.
- ^ Mojzes 2011, p. 100.
- ^ Tomasevich 2001, p. 587.
- ^ a b c Prusin 2017, p. 97.
- ^ a b Mazower 2004, p. 154.
- ^ a b Browning 2007, p. 344.
- ^ Manoschek 1995, p. 165.
- ^ a b Shepherd 2012, p. 140.
- ^ Lebel 2007, p. 317.
- ^ a b c d Tomasevich 2001, p. 69.
- ^ Milazzo 1975, p. 31.
- ^ Pavlowitch 2007, p. 63.
- ^ a b Nuremberg Military Tribunals 1950, p. 759.
- ^ Nuremberg Military Tribunals 1950, p. 767.
- ^ Nuremberg Military Tribunals 1950, p. 1274.
- ^ Nuremberg Military Tribunals 1950, p. 1318.
- ^ Wistrich 2013, p. 159.
- ^ Wistrich 2013, p. 137.
- ^ Browning 1985, p. 100, note 86.
- ^ a b Vujačić 2015, p. 230, note 283.
- ^ Pavlowitch 2007, p. 62, note 15.
- ^ Cooke & Shepherd 2013, p. 219.
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- Byford, Jovan (2011), "The Collaborationist Administration and the Treatment of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Serbia", in Ramet, Sabrina P.; Listhaug, Ola (eds.), Serbia and the Serbs in World War Two, London, England: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 109–127, ISBN 978-0-230-27830-1
- Cooke, Philip; Shepherd, Ben H. (2013). European Resistance in the Second World War. Barnsley, England: Praetorian Press. ISBN 978-1-47383-304-3.
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- Mazower, Mark (2004). "Military Violence and the National Socialist Consensus: The Wehrmacht in Greece, 1941–44". In Heer, Hannes; Naumann, Klaus (eds.). War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II. New York City: Berghahn Books. pp. 146–174. ISBN 978-1-57181-493-7.
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- Nuremberg Military Tribunals (1950). "The Hostage Case". Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (PDF). Vol. 11. Nuremberg, Allied-occupied Germany: Nuremberg Military Tribunals. OCLC 312464743.
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External links
- Media related to Kraljevo massacre at Wikimedia Commons