Harvard University Press
Terror in the Balkans: German Armies and Partisan Warfare
Key Metrics
- Ben H Shepherd
- Harvard University Press
- Hardcover
- 9780674048911
- 9.2 X 6.3 X 1.2 inches
- 1.5 pounds
- History > Military - World War II
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Germany's 1941 seizure of Yugoslavia led to an insurgency as bloody as any in World War II. The Wehrmacht waged a brutal counter-insurgency campaign in response, and by 1943 German troops in Yugoslavia were engaged in operations that ranked among the largest of the entire European war. Their actions encompassed massive reprisal shootings, the destruction of entire villages, and huge mobile operations unleashed not just against insurgents but also against the civilian population believed to be aiding them. Terror in the Balkans explores the reasons behind the Wehrmacht's extreme security measures in southern and eastern Europe.
Ben Shepherd focuses his study not on the high-ranking generals who oversaw the campaign but on lower-level units and their officers, a disproportionate number of whom were of Austrian origin. He uses Austro-Hungarian army records to consider how the personal experiences of many Austrian officers during the Great War played a role in brutalizing their behavior in Yugoslavia. A comparison of Wehrmacht counter-insurgency divisions allows Shepherd to analyze how a range of midlevel commanders and their units conducted themselves in different parts of Yugoslavia, and why. Shepherd concludes that the Wehrmacht campaign's violence was driven not just by National Socialist ideology but also by experience of the fratricidal infighting of Yugoslavia's ethnic groups, by conditions on the ground, and by doctrines that had shaped the military mindsets of both Germany and Austria since the late nineteenth century. He also considers why different Wehrmacht units exhibited different degrees of ruthlessness and restraint during the campaign.
Author Bio
I was awarded my PhD in German History by the University of Birmingham in December 2000. I was a teaching fellow in the School of History, University of Birmingham before beginning a lectureship in History at Glasgow Caledonian University in September 2002. I became a reader in 2009.
My most recent main research activity engaged with German and Austrian military history 1914-1945, with particular focus on the Third Reich, through a project designed with general as well as scholarly appeal: a general, single-authored work on the German army under the Third Reich, titled Hitler’s Soldiers: The German Army in the Third Reich (New Haven CT, London: Yale University Press, 2016).
With the encouragement of Yale University Press, I have started research for a companion study to Hitler’s Soldiers, this time focusing on the combat wing of the SS, the Waffen-SS. The resulting study will form the basis of a book provisionally titled The Waffen-SS: A New History, and of applications for related research grants.
Member of the Arbeitskreis Militärgeschichte, the German History Society and the German Studies Association.
Re Hitler’s Soldiers: from 11 July 2016, a list of clarifications and corrections, and scanned examples of primary sources cited in the book, will be available.
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