@article{10.4159/harvard.9780674065130,
      recid = {464761},
      author = {Shepherd, Ben.},
      title = {Terror in the Balkans German armies and partisan warfare /  [electronic resource] :},
      publisher = {Harvard University Press,},
      address = {Cambridge, Mass. :},
      number = {10.4159/harvard.9780674065130},
      pages = {1 online resource (vi, 342 p.) :},
      year = {2012},
      abstract = {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.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/464761},
}