| Seventh anti-Partisan Offensive | |||||||
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| Part of the Yugoslav Front of World War II | |||||||
Marshal Josip Broz Tito with his cabinet and principal staff officers in Drvar, days before the offensive. |
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| Axis (and collaborationist forces): Germany Independent State of Croatia Chetniks |
Allies: Partisans |
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Ernst von Leyser Kurt Rybka |
Josip Broz Tito | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| cca. 20,000 German and NDH troops | cca. 17,000 | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| Partisan claims: 788 killed 881 wounded 50 missing German claims: |
Partisan claims: 500 killed 1,000 wounded 2,000 civilian casualties German claims: |
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The Seventh anti-Partisan Offensive or Seventh Enemy Offensive (Sedma neprijateljska ofenziva/ofanziva), codenamed Operation Rösselsprung (German for "knight's move"), was a combined airborne and ground assault by the German XV Mountain Corps and their collaborationist allies on the Supreme Headquarters of the Yugoslav Partisans located at Drvar aimed at capturing or killing Marshal Josip Broz Tito and destroying the headquarters, support facilities and co-located Allied military missions. The airborne assault is also known as the Raid on Drvar (Serbo-Croatian: Desant na Drvar, Cyrillic: Десант на Дрвар). The operation was launched on 25 May 1944.[1]
The Seventh anti-Partisan Offensive was a coup de main operation involving direct action by a parachute and glider-borne assault force based on 500th SS Parachute Battalion and their link-up with ground forces converging on Drvar. The airborne assault was preceded by heavy bombing of the town by the Luftwaffe. The ground forces included collaborationist forces of the Independent State of Croatia.[2]
The operation was a failure,[3] as Tito, his principal headquarters staff and the allied military personnel escaped. The operation failed because the various intelligence agencies did not share the limited intelligence available on Tito's exact location, which was compounded by a lack of contingency planning.[4]
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The Supreme Headquarters of the Partisans was located in the town of Drvar, Bosnia at the time (in today's Bosnia and Herzegovina). Tito's personal headquarters was initially located in a cave about one kilometre north of the centre of Drvar. The Unac River ran along the base of the ridge line in which the cave was located, creating an obstacle to movement between the town from the cave, and a rail line ran along the ridge line behind the cave. In addition to Partisan headquarters, various Partisan and Communist Party of Yugoslavia support, training and youth organisations were also based in and around Drvar at the time, along with Tito's escort battalion which was responsible for his personal safety. In villages close around Drvar were the British and Soviet military missions to the Partisans, and some United States military officers on various missions. The British military mission included Randolph Churchill (son of Winston Churchill).[5][6]
Apart from Partisan headquarters and related organisations close in and around Drvar, there were between 12,000 and 16,000 Partisans in the area of operations that would be subject to the ground assault by XV Mountain Corps. In the immediate vicinity of Drvar was the Partisan I Proletarian Corps consisting of the 1st Proletarian Division and 6th 'Lika' Proletarian Division (Nikola Tesla), with the Corps headquarters located in the village of Mokronoge, six kilometres east of Drvar. The nearest large Partisan formation to Drvar was the 3rd 'Lika' Proletarian Brigade of the 1st Proletarian Division based in the village of Kamenica five kilometres south of Drvar.[7]
In the wider area of operations were the Partisan V and VIII Corps, with the V Corps to the north-east and north-west of Drvar with its headquarters south of the Mrkonjic Grad - Klujc road, and the VIII Corps to the south east with its headquarters in the mountains between the Glamoc and Livno valleys. Importantly, the 4th Division of the V Corps was deployed between Bihac and Bosanski Petrovac and the 9th Division of the VIII Corps was deployed between Livno and Bosansko Grahovo.[8]
Three separate organisations were involved in attempting to determine the location of Tito's headquarters and the disposition of Partisan forces in Drvar. These were the intelligence and special clandestine operations sections of the Abwehr, and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD)(the intelligence branch of the SS).
The first of these was the Benesch Special Unit of Section II of the Abwehr, some members of which had been involved in identifying Tito's presence in the town of Jajce prior to the Sixth anti-Partisan Offensive. The unit was part of the Brandenburg Division, and was staffed by ethnic Germans who spoke local languages, had many contacts with the Chetniks and Ustaše militia, and had been tracking Tito since October 1943. Lieutenant Kirchner of the unit had again tracked Tito, establishing a patrol base near Bosansko Grahovo. He got very close to the Drvar cave, and located the Allied military missions, but despite German radio intercepts confirming that Drvar was the site of Tito's headquarters, Kirchner was unable to pinpoint the the cave as the location of the headquarters. Kirchner was attached to 500th SS Parachute Battalion for the operation.[9]
The second intelligence organisation was FAT (Front Reconnaissance Troop) 216 of Section I of the Abwehr. FAT216, commanded by Lieutenant Zavadil was also attached to 500th SS Parachute Battalion, but did not contribute much to the intelligence used to plan the raid.[9]
On Hitler's orders, Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) Otto Skorzeny, who had commanded the operation to rescue Mussolini, was independently involved in intelligence gathering in the lead-up to the raid.[10] Skorzeny acted on behalf of the SD, and after obtaining information from a Partisan deserter that pinpointed Tito's headquarters at the cave, he proposed a plan to infiltrate Drvar with a small group of soldiers to assassinate Tito.[11] Skorzeny soon discovered that the plan to eliminate Tito had been compromised, and had nothing further to do with the planned operation. It appears that he did not pass on the useful intelligence he had gathered to the commander of 500th SS Parachute Battalion (Captain Kurt Rybka), who was responsible for planning the critical airborne aspects of the operation.[9]
Largely due to inter-service rivalry and competition, the three organisations did not share the intelligence they gathered, which had a significant effect on the tactical planning and execution of the operation.[9]
The Partisans had their own highly effective intelligence network. They had been aware of the presence of the 500th SS Parachute Battalion in Yugoslavia for some time, and had been aware of the general threat of an airborne assault for over six months. They may have become aware of the isolation of the 500th SS Parachute Battalion for over a month before the operation, or the concentration of transport aircraft and gliders at Zagreb and Banja Luka. One of the reasons Skorzeny believed the operation had been compromised was the recapture by the Partisans of a deserter he had interrogated. As a result of these early indicators of an attack, Tito's main headquarters had been relocated to another cave near the village of Bastasi, seven kilometres west of Drvar. Tito then used the Drvar cave during the day, but returned to the Bastasi cave at night.[12] In addition to this precaution, elements of the 6th (Lika) Division were moved closer to Drvar.[12]
On or about 22 May 1944, a single German reconnaissance aircraft circled Drvar for some time, paying particular attention to the villages of Prinavor and Trinic-Brijeg where the British military mission and American military personnel were located. This was observed by the acting commander of the British military mission, who assumed it was spotting for an bombing raid, and advised both Tito and the Americans. Both Allied missions moved their locations as a result.[12]
Despite the intelligence received and observations made by the British, the Partisans appear to have been quite complacent about the threat, with Tito's chief of staff, Stephan Jovanovic swearing that "a German attack was impossible". The most obvious indicator that Tito was unaware of the imminent attack is that he remained at the Drvar cave overnight on the evening of 24 May 1944, following his birthday celebrations, instead of returning to Bastasi.[13]
Following intelligence collection, higher level planning for the operation began on 6 May 1944, following the issue of orders by the Commander of Army Group F, Field Marshal von Weichs. The order to XV Mountain Corps was issued by General Rendulic, the commander of 2nd Panzer Army on 21 May 1944, leaving only three days for preparation. General von Leyser, commander of XV Mountain Corps was responsible for the conduct of the operation.[2]
In outline, the XV Mountain Corps plan was for a heavy aerial bombardment of Partisan positions in and around Drvar by Luftwaffe Air Command Croatia aircraft, followed by a parachute and glider assault by 500th SS Parachute Battalion who had the task of capturing or killing Tito and destroying his headquarters. The assault also included tasks to capture or destroy the Allied military missions to the Partisans. On the same day, elements of XV Mountain Corps were to converge on Drvar to link up with 500th SS Parachute Battalion.[2] A small reconnaissance aircraft was tasked to fly into Drvar after its capture to retrieve Tito or his body.[14]
Captain Rybka received an outline of the operation on 20 May, and more details the following day. He realised that the gliders and transport aircraft would be insufficient for the whole of 500th SS Parachute Battalion to be delivered to Drvar in one lift, so he came up with a plan involving two waves, with a first wave of 654 troops conducting the assault at 7am and a second wave of 220 troops about five hours later. Critically, the intelligence he was given regarding the suspected location of Tito's headquarters (codenamed Citadel) was that it was in or near a cemetery on high ground south-west of the centre of Drvar, nearly two kilometres from Tito's actual headquarters cave. This would have far-reaching effects on the planning and execution of the assault.[15]
Rybka's plan for the first wave called for the insertion of 314 parachute troops in three groups (Red, Green and Blue) to secure the town, and another 354 troops in six glider-borne assault groups to carry out specific tasks. The glider-borne group tasks were:
The second wave would consist of the training company of 500th SS Parachute Battalion, who would insert by parachute at 12 midday.[16]
Rybka does not appear to have planned for any significant contingencies such as errors in the intelligence on the location of Tito's headquarters. His only contingency plan was that he would fire a red signal flare to order all available forces to converge on his position for subsequent tasks.[17]
At 5:00am the parachute and glider German SS and paratroopers fought their way to Tito's cave HQ and exchanged heavy gunfire resulting in numerous casualties on both sides.[18] In addition, formations of the Croatian Ustaše flocked to the firefight in support of the Germans, also attempting to capture Marshal Tito. By the time German forces had penetrated to the cave, however, Tito had already fled the scene and escaped: a train was waiting for him that took him to Jajce town.
There were fewer than 100 Partisans in the town when the operation started. Most of the Partisan troops were dispersed in the surrounding area. The students of the Partisan Officer's School, around 60 of them, joined in a fight, sometimes taking arms from fallen German troops, prevented a flanking attempt by the German paratroopers. This proved to be crucial for saving the foreign guests (giving them more time to escape) that were hosted by Tito. When elements of the Partisan 6th Lika Division arrived at the battlefield, the air raid was already a disaster and the brigade was ordered to wipe out the remaining Axis troops in the area and to evacuate the wounded and civilians, since it was already known that the Axis tanks and infantry were approaching Drvar from north west.
It would appear that Tito and his staff were prepared for a quick escape. The commandos were only able to retrieve Tito’s Marshal's uniform, which was later displayed in Vienna. After fierce fighting in and around the village cemetery, the Germans were able to link up with mountain troops. By that time, Tito, his British guests and Partisan staff were fêted aboard the British Royal Navy destroyer HMS Blackmore and her captain Lt. Carson, RN.
According to a German report XV. Gebirgs-Korps suffered 213 killed, 881 wounded, and 51 missing. The same reports claimed that 6,000 Partisans were killed.[19] In addition to that, 500th SS Parachute Bataillon was virtually annihilated, suffering losses of some 71 percent of its effecitves (576 KIA, 48 WIA)[20] The Partisans denied suffering such losses and reported they lost around 500 men and had over 1,000 wounded, mainly due to heavy bombing by the Luftwaffe. Moreover, Partisan reports claimed over 2,000 civilians were killed by German troops around Drvar, that were likely counted among the alleged 6,000 dead fighters reported by the SS.
(among other formations)
Chetniks
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