Download Himmler's Bosnian Division: The Waffen-SS Handschar Division 1943-1945 fb2

good book

The work reviews the history of the Muslims troops in the Balkans during the last two years of the WWII. It examines the efforts of the Grand Mufti's involvement in the creation of the unit. The author brings to light the ineffectiveness of the formation in the fighting in the Balkans for the Nazi regime.

great background history to today's strategic events in Middle East

One of the paradoxical aspects of Hitler's "elite" Waffen-SS was that more than half of the estimated 900,000 men that served in its units were not full-blooded Germans, and this fact interested me enough while attending university to write a paper on the subject. It was, therefore, while doing the research on these non-German "volunteers" that I came across George Lepre's Himmler's Bosnian Division, which documents the story of the 13th Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS "Handschar" (hereafter Handschar). In its original form as a thesis, this work was awarded the Sydney Zebel History Award from Rutgers University.
The first divisions of the Waffen-SS were essentially purely German in manpower, but starting with the 5th SS Panzer Division "Wiking," the Germans began to draw on foreign volunteers from occupied countries. Initially, only Nordic volunteers were accepted, but as the war progressed, and manpower shortages became more acute, the Germans began to broaden their definition of "acceptable races" to encompass just about every race except Africans and Jews.
The Head of the SS, Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler, was, in fact, fascinated by the fighting capabilities of certain non-German peoples, and this included the "Islamic faith, which he believed fostered fearless soldiers". He envisioned the creation of a Bosnian SS division constituted solely of Bosnian Muslims in a manner similar to the Bosnian divisions of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. Hitler, however, does not appear to have been so enthusiastic about such an undertaking, and it took some time before he finally permitted the division to be created.
The approval came in February 1943. By mid-April, approximately 8,000 men had volunteered for service with Handschar and three months later the number had only risen to 15,000. As this was still far short of the number required for a full division, recruiting of ethnic Albanians was begun, and finally the incorporation of Croatians--approximately 3,000--was permitted.
Training continued until mid-February 1944. Handschar was then returned to Bosnia where it was assigned the task of securing the northeastern region of Bosnia bordered by the Sava, Bosna, Spreca and Dvina Rivers. Anti-partisan operations commenced almost immediately, and these were carried out successfully. One of the largest was Maibaum, which was conducted in late-April against the Partisan III Bosnia Corp. After several days of fighting, one German report claimed that close to 1,000 partisans had been killed.
As was always the case, however, the setbacks that the partisans faced was not permanent. While successful, Maibaum did not fully rid the northeastern section of Bosnia from partisan activity in general, and by early June the partisans had regrouped and were on the offensive again. Heavy fighting took place at Lopare on June 8, 1944 and units from Handschar positioned there were overrun. In total, the division sustained just over 200 dead and a further 600 injured--the most serious losses to date.
For the rest of the summer, Handschar conducted further anti-partisan operations and by the end of the summer it was worn down and the morale among the men beginning to decline. During this time there were plans to form another Bosnian SS division (23rd Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS "Kama"), and officers and men were transferred from Handschar to facilitate this.
At about this same time, Handschar began to experience organizational and morale problems that were instigated by rumours that the unit would soon be leaving Bosnia. During the autumn of 1944, therefore, Handschar was plagued by desertions, and so Himmler decided that it and the still-forming Kama would be reorganized into two "small" divisions of 10,000 men each. However, on October 17, shortly after Handschar had been transferred to Zagreb (which resulted in more desertions), the men of Kama mutinied and shortly afterward it was disbanded.
It was now becoming quite evident that to the Germans that their Bosnian volunteers were becoming unreliable and as a result many were disarmed. To compensate for the loss of manpower, local Croatians were pressed into service, but this did little to enhance the fighting capabilities of Handschar, which, in mid-November, finally left Bosnia for Hungary, where it fought against the advancing Soviets.
For the rest of the winter, Handschar occupied three defensive positions--Margarethestellung, Dorotheastellung, and the Reichsschutzstellung--and were successful at slowing the Soviet advance in mid-April. It was all, of course, for no purpose as the war ended several weeks later.
Lepre relied almost entirely on primary sources in order to write Himmler's Bosnian Division and, as he explains in the preface, even these were scarce, and those that were available are "notoriously inaccurate". One has to wonder what information is not available and the implications that this has for our understanding of the true conduct of Handschar in its prosecution of its anti-partisan operations. But in terms of the book being a "chronicle of the birth, life, and ultimate death" of Handschar, the author has done an excellent job, and one hopes that it will lead to a better understanding of the paradoxical "volunteer" aspect of the Waffen-SS and the nature of the war in the Balkan Theater.

An interesting history of the 13th SS Mountain Division that was formed by the Germans from Bosnian Muslims in 1942. The division was initially well-armed and quite strong for a mid-war formation: about 20,000 troops. Lepre outlines how troops were recruited for the division and trained in France and Germany. However the Germnan selection process did not weed out all malcontents and consequently, a mutiny broke out during training in France and several German officers were murdered before the ringleaders were caught. Unfortunately, Lepre never gives us a complete breakdown of the organization and equipment of the division, particularly in comparison to other German mountain units. Nor does Lepre discuss the German occupation in Bosnia prior to 1942 or Muslim cooperation with the Germans in 1941. Another weakness is inadequate maps. The division did well in initially fighting against partisans when first committed to Bosnia in early 1943, but losses and declining morale ate at the unit by late summer 1943. By September 1943 the unit began to disintegrate with heavy desertions and fell apart completely when exposed to real combat in 1944. A core of German officers and NCOs, as well as some Bosnians, fought on as a battle group to the end of the war. The best part of the book is the first six months of the Handschar division's deployment into Bosnia and the depiction of SS methods in attempting to suppress insurgency in the region. Since the SS Handschar division occupied roughly the same area as currently occupied by US forces in Bosnia, this book is an interesting historical introduction into the wartime complicity of Bosnian Muslims with the Third Reich.