When Hitler’s “Butcher of Serbia” Paid For What He Did JJ

6 April 1941. Nazi Germany invades the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to secure its southern  flank before launching Operation Barbarossa, the planned invasion of the Soviet Union. Within  just eleven days, the Yugoslav army collapses, and the country is divided among the Axis powers and  their allies.

 In Serbia, one of the most important parts of the occupied kingdom, resistance against  the German occupation soon begins to grow, with guerrilla attacks becoming increasingly  frequent throughout the summer of 1941. Determined to crush the uprising, Adolf Hitler  orders the occupation authorities to restore control by any means necessary.

 German commanders  respond with a campaign of collective punishment in which civilians are taken hostage and  killed in retaliation for attacks carried out by resistance fighters. Entire towns and  villages soon find themselves caught in a cycle of violence that claims thousands of innocent lives. One of the men chosen to carry out this campaign is an Austrian general serving in the German Army,  whose policies during just three months in command of occupied Serbia, lead to the deaths of tens of  thousands of civilians. His name is Franz Böhme.

Franz Friedrich Böhme was born on 15 April 1885 in  the town of Zeltweg, then part of Austria-Hungary. After losing his father at the age of 17 and  his mother two years later, he chose a military career and joined the Austro-Hungarian Army as an  officer cadet in August 1904. Over the following years, he steadily rose through the ranks.

 When the First World War erupted in July 1914, Böhme fought on the Eastern Front against the  Russian Empire before being transferred to the Italian Front during the final years of the  conflict. For his military accomplishments he received several decorations,  including the Karl Troop Cross and both classes of Germany’s Iron Cross.

 Following the end of the First World War in November 1918 and the collapse  of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Böhme remained in military service and joined  the newly-established Austrian Army. Rather than commanding troops in the field, he spent much of  the interwar period in General Staff positions, steadily building a reputation as a capable staff  officer.

 In 1935, he was promoted to Generalmajor, a rank equivalent to Brigadier General in the  U.S. Army, and appointed head of the Austrian Army’s intelligence service, placing him among  the country’s most senior military leaders. In March 1938, Nazi Germany annexed  Austria in an event known as the Anschluss. Following the annexation, Böhme temporarily  found himself without a command, but in November, he was appointed garrison commander in the  German city of Brandenburg an der Havel.

In the summer of 1939, Böhme was appointed  to command the 32nd Infantry Division. On 1 September 1939, the Second World War  began when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Böhme led his division during the Polish  Campaign and later in the Battle of France, where German forces achieved a decisive victory  over the Western Allies.

 For his leadership during these campaigns, he received the Knight’s  Cross of the Iron Cross, one of Germany’s highest military decorations. On 1 August 1940,  he was promoted to General der Infanterie, a rank equivalent to lieutenant general in the  U.S. Army. In the autumn of 1940, he assumed command of the XVIII Mountain Corps, which later  participated in Germany’s campaign in the Balkans.

On 6 April 1941, German aircraft bombed Belgrade,  the Yugoslav capital, in a massive air raid that killed many civilians and destroyed large parts  of the city. Within days, German, Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian troops advanced from  all sides. The Yugoslav army, poorly prepared and ethnically divided, could not resist the  large-scale and coordinated assault and after only 11 days of fighting – on 17 April 1941, the  government signed an unconditional capitulation.

The state of Yugoslavia ceased to  exist, and its territory was divided among the Axis powers and their local allies. As resistance to the German occupation began to grow across the region, Berlin introduced  increasingly brutal measures to suppress it. On 16 September 1941, field marshal  Wilhelm Keitel – chief of the high command of Nazi Germany’s armed forces –  issued Hitler’s order regarding reprisals, requiring 100 hostages to be shot for every German  soldier killed and 50 for every soldier wounded.

3 days later, on 19 September, Hitler appointed  Böhme as the chief commander in Serbia, giving him direct authority to suppress the attacks against  the German forces in the occupied territory. He arrived with the staff of the XVIII Mountain  Corps and took control of German occupation forces already stationed there.

 Among the main  formations operating under his authority were the 704th, the 714th and the 717th  Infantry Divisions, units tasked with carrying out security operations and brutal  reprisals across German-occupied Serbia. This is where the work of our team of historians, researchers and editors  becomes the story you hear. I’m Marchand Steenkamp and since 2022, I’ve  had the privilege of being the voice behind World History.

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Now, let’s get into today’s story. Böhme openly encouraged vengeance against  the Serbian population and reminded his soldiers of the defeats Austria-Hungary  had suffered during the First World War. Addressing his troops, many of whom  were Austrian born, he declared: “Your objective is to be achieved in a land  where, in 1914, streams of German blood flowed because of the treachery of the Serbs, men and  women. You are the avengers of those dead.

” Böhme wasted no time putting Hitler’s orders into  effect. Following the reprisal policy laid down by Keitel, he instructed his troops to immediately  arrest all communists, men suspected of communist sympathies, all Jews, and a designated number  of nationalist and democratic-minded civilians to serve as hostages.

 These prisoners were to be  held ready for execution whenever German forces suffered casualties. Under Böhme’s command, the  German Armed Forces the Wehrmacht carried out these reprisals according to the fixed ratio of  100 hostages for every soldier killed and 50 for every soldier wounded. In late September 1941,  Böhme also ordered a large-scale anti-partisan operation in the Mačva region.

 Villages suspected  of supporting the resistance were burned, while men between the ages of 15 and 60 were  arrested as hostages. On 25 September, he instructed his troops to carry out the operation  with maximum severity in order to intimidate the rest of Serbia. Before long, his policy of  collective punishment would culminate in one of the largest mass executions of civilians committed  by the Wehrmacht during the Second World War.

The consequences of Böhme’s  policy soon became visible in the town of Gornji Milanovac in central Serbia. By late September 1941, the town had effectively  been cut off from the rest of German-occupied Serbia as resistance fighters repeatedly disrupted  road and rail transport in the surrounding area. Two major resistance movements operated in  the region.

 One was the Chetniks, a Serbian nationalist guerrilla force loyal to the Yugoslav  government-in-exile and the Serbian monarchy. The other was the Partisans, a communist-led  resistance movement under Josip Broz Tito. On 29 September 1941, fighters from both  resistance groups launched a joint attack against the German garrison in Gornji Milanovac, leaving  10 German soldiers dead and another 26 wounded.

Under the reprisal policy enforced by Böhme,  these losses immediately triggered plans for large-scale retaliation. German  commanders calculated that thousands of civilian hostages would be needed to  satisfy the required execution quota. German commanders ordered that the required  hostages be obtained in Kragujevac and the surrounding villages, setting in motion one of  the darkest chapters of the occupation of Serbia.

The first arrests began on the evening of 18  October 1941. German authorities ordered the detention of all male Jews in Kragujevac, together  with individuals suspected of communist activity. In total, only 70 men were taken into  custody. Because this number was far too small to satisfy the reprisal quota demanded  by the German command, occupation troops turned to the surrounding villages the following day.

 Soldiers entered the villages of Mečkovac, Maršić, Grošnica, and Milatovac, where men were rounded  up and executed on the spot. In these 4 villages alone, German troops executed 422 civilians, even  though no German soldiers had been killed there. Despite these executions, the Germans had still  not reached the number of hostages they required. German commanders therefore ordered  large-scale arrests throughout Kragujevac.

Soldiers moved through the city, arresting  men and boys between the ages of 16 and 60. People were seized in fields, factories, markets,  on the streets, and in their homes. Around 300 schoolchildren and teachers were arrested in  their classrooms. Roma children, most of whom worked as shoe shiners and had refused to polish  German soldiers’ boots, were rounded up as well.

The detainees were taken to army  barracks on the outskirts of the city, where each hostage was registered  and his belongings recorded. By the evening, several thousand men and  boys had been placed under armed guard, waiting through the night for the  decision that would determine their fate. Members of the Serbian fascist movement Zbor were  allowed to inspect the prisoners.

 More than 3,000 detainees identified as supporters of the movement  and described as “reliable patriots” or “genuine nationalists” were released and removed from the  execution lists. Those who remained were labelled communists, and for the German authorities, this  accusation was enough to justify their execution. On the morning of 21 October 1941, the prisoners  were marched from the city toward open fields on the outskirts of Kragujevac.

 Groups of between 50  and 120 men and boys were lined up before firing squads from the 717th Infantry Division. Heavy  machine guns were positioned in front of them, and the executions continued for about 7 hours. It is estimated that between 2,778 and 2,794  people were murdered during the massacre. Among them were 144 high school students, and 15  of the victims were only 12 years old.

 The victims included Serbs, Jews, Roma, Muslims, Macedonians,  Slovenes, and members of other nationalities. Böhme’s appointment in Serbia ended in December  1941. Official German records reported that during his three months in command, 160 German  soldiers had been killed and 278 wounded. In contrast, German authorities claimed that  3,562 partisans had been killed in combat and between 20,000 and 30,000 civilians  had been executed in reprisal operations.

Following his service in Serbia, Böhme continued  his military career. From May 1942 to December 1943, he commanded the XVIII Mountain Corps  in the Arctic before being transferred to the Austrian city of Salzburg as a military district  commander. In March 1944, his designation was changed from General der Infanterie to General  der Gebirgstruppe, or General of Mountain Troops.

A few months later, he briefly assumed command  of the 2nd Panzer Army in Yugoslavia, but after only several weeks he was seriously injured in an  aircraft crash. From January 1945 until Germany’s surrender in May of the same year, Böhme served  in Norway as commander of the 20th Mountain Army. After the war, he was captured by British  forces and indicted before the Hostages Trial, one of the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials,  for war crimes committed in Serbia.

On 29 May 1947, as it became increasingly likely  that he would be extradited to Yugoslavia, Franz Böhme committed suicide by jumping from the  fourth floor of a prison building in Nuremberg. He was 62 years old. Thanks for watching the World History  Channel. Be sure to like and subscribe, and click the bell notification icon, so you  don’t miss our next episodes.

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