Failed Counterinsurgency in Wartime Yugoslavia: An Answer

First of all, I would like to thank Mr. Schmider for his comments on my article. Being a newcomer to the world of scholarly writing, drawing the attention of a renowned an expert on WW2-Yugoslavia such as himself does me credit indeed. Now I shall try to address the issues Mr. Schmider raised in his letter. I believe a somewhat unfortunate choice of the title I’ve chosen for the article is responsible for at least one of them. I concur with Mr. Schmider completely on the deeper reasons for the failure of German operations in winter and spring of 1943—inadequacy of Italian anti-partisan efforts and suicidal internal policy of the Ustasha. Then as now, politics lay in the heart of every counterinsurgency—achieving victory with military means alone has been proven nigh impossible on countless occasions in history. In Yugoslav terms the political problem boiled down to two words: Ustasha regime. For no matter how many large operations the Axis launched and no matter how close they came to destroying a large part of Partisan Movement (as in the Operation ‘Schwarz’), Serb peasants from the Independent State of Croatia would certainly not lay down their arms without comprehensive political reform in Croatia. As General Warlimont correctly observed, by 1943 the lines were firmly drawn and no amount of promises or propaganda would convince them that 1941 would not be repeated once more. This problem was recognized by the German commands in the field, from divisional level onwards as well, but their reports and suggestions fell on deaf ears. The regime in Zagreb had only one ally but that was all it needed: Adolf Hitler wasn’t willing to swap horses in the middle of the race.