21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg (1st Albanian)
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| 21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg (1st Albanian) | |
|---|---|
| Active | 1944-1945 |
| Country | Germany |
| Branch | Waffen SS |
| Type | Mountain |
| Size | about 9,000 |
| Nickname | Skanderbeg |
The 21st SS Division Skanderbeg was a Waffen SS Mountain division set up by Heinrich Himmler in March 1944, officially under the title of the 21st Waffen-Gebirgs Division der SS Skanderbeg (albanische Nr. 1). It was named after George Kastrioti Skanderbeg, a national hero of Albanians who resisted Ottoman invasion for 25 years.
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[edit] Formation
The names of 11,398 recruits were submitted to Berlin. Of these, 9,275 were deemed suitable for drafting, and 6,491 were actually drafted into the Waffen SS. The final division was formed up by these recruits, three hundred ethnic Albanians transferred from the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar and some German veterans from Austria and Volksdeutsche officers, NCOs and enlisted men. The final total strength of the division was at 8,500 to 9,000 men, consisting of two infantry regiments, a single artillery regiment, a reconnaissance battalion, a mountain combat engineer battalion, a signals battalion and an anti-tank battalion.
Many Albanians in Kosovo saw the invasion of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia by Axis Powers as an opportunity to secede from the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (who treated Albanians as second class citizens in the kingdom), and eventually merge with Albania. In 1941 Albania, Western Macedonia, and majority of Kosovo were under Italian control. Following the surrender of Fascist Italy in 1943, the territories under discussion, inhabited largely by Albanians were occupied by Nazi Germany. The 21st Waffen SS Mountain Division was the only fully ethnic Albanian division to be recruited during the Second World War. It was established originally to combat partisans with the promise that the territories with a majority Albanian population were to become an independent and unified state to include Albania, Kosovo and Western Macedonia or what Albanian nationalists called “natural Albania” or "Great Albania".
The division was placed under the command of SS-Standartenfuhrer August Schmidhuber, later promoted to SS-Oberfuhrer. It fought partisans who were on the increase and consolidating their actions, both in Albania and Yugoslavia as the Second World War was drawing to an end. In Kosovo, the division embarked on ethnic cleansing of the Serbs, especially those who were previously settled in Kosovo through agrarian reform and colonization of Kosovo with Serbs and Montenegrins, through the program the Kingdom of Yugoslavia implemented from 1918-1941. At least 75,000 Serbs fled Kosovo during the pursecution while around 10,000 Serbs lost their lives during the ethnic cleansing.
In Kosovo, Albanian families worked to save Jews [citation needed], although not all Jews survived. On the eve of World War II there were 520 Jews living in Kosovo, but during WWII, the Albanian Waffen SS Skanderbeg division were responsible for turning over some 210 Jews in Kosovo to the Gestapo, who shipped them to concentration camps. Nevertheless, the highest Jewish survival rate in ex-Yugoslavia during WWII was in Kosovo, with some 62% percent of Jews surviving.
The life of SS Skanderbeg since its establishment to surrender and dissolution was approximately one year (March 1944 – March 1945). The division began disintegrating as early as October 1944 when the Germans began withdrawing from the area and partisans were closing in. By the end of November, 3,500 members of the division had deserted from its ranks. Whatever remained of the division was reorganized into the 21st SS Mountain Skanderbeg Division, concentrated at Skopje, leading to its defense, alongside the Prinz Eugen Division, of the Vardar River valley in Macedonia, allowing German General Alexander Lohr's Army Group E to retreat from Greece. By January 1945, a group of the Skanderbeg Division retreated to Kosovka Mitrovica in Kosovo and then to Brcko in Bosnia-Herzegovina. They finally reached Austria in May, 1945, and fought until Germany's surrender. The division surrendered to Western Allied personnel. The remainders were scattered in many directions. A small number went into hiding and melted away with the population and survived. Some managed to emigrate as civilians to Western countries and a few reached even Australia. Many of the remainders, however, were executed by the partisans (communists).
SS-Brigadefűhrer August Schmidthuber, one of the commanders of the 21st SS Mountain Division "Skanderbeg”, was captured in 1945 and turned over to Yugoslav authorities. He was put on trail in February 1947 by a Yugoslav military tribunal at Belgrade, on charges of participating in massacres, deportations and atrocities against civilians. The tribunal sentenced him to death by hanging. He was executed on February, 27th 1947. (History of the United Nations War Crimes Commission and the Development of the Laws of War p. 528, United Nations War Crimes Commission, London: HMSO, 1948).
The division arm patch consisted of a black double-headed eagle on a red background. Albanian recruits wore a white fez-style cap, and later the SS issued grey headgear in the same style, with the Totenkopf sewn on the front.
[edit] Order of Battle
[edit] See also
[edit] Further reading
- Hermann Neubacher, Sonderauftrag Sudost (1953)
- Milovan Obradovič, Agrarna Reforma i Kolonizacija na Kosovu 1918-1941, Institut za Istoriju Kosova, Priština (1981).
- Haroey Samer, Rescue In Albania: One Hundred Percent Of Jews In Albania Rescued From Holocaust, Brunswick Press, California (1997). Available at: http://www.aacl.com/index11.html
- Noel Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History, New York University Press; New Update edition (November 2000).
- Chris Bishop, Hitler's Foreign SS Divisions (2005)
- The Jews, the Serbs, and the Truth by Stephen Schwartz
