Case
study
1
The Muslim Bosniak
population of Bosnia-Hercegovina was
in a state of ferment on the eve of
Yugoslavia’s entry into World War
II. The Cvetkovic-Macek ‘Sporazum’
(agreement) of 26 August 1939 had
dealt a heavy blow to the
traditional Muslim goal of autonomy
for Bosnia-Hercegovina, by
effectively partitioning the latter
between Serbia and a newly
established Croatian ‘banovina’
(province). This prompted the
mainstream Muslim political elite to
come together in the ‘Muslim
Movement for the Autonomy of
Bosnia-Hercegovina’, which demanded
that a Bosnian banovina be
established alongside the Croatian -
a demand that was launched by Dzafer
Kulenović, the president of the
‘Yugoslav Muslim Organisation’ (JMO)
- the political party enjoying the
support of the overwhelming majority
of Bosnian Muslims. This movement
brought together different political
currents among the Muslims. Not
least, this included formerly
‘pro-Serbian’ Muslims who had
subscribed to the strategy of
collaborating with the regime in
Belgrade; a strategy that had been
followed by the JMO leader Mehmed
Spaho until his death in June 1939,
but which had been completely
discredited by the Sporazum, when
the Belgrade regime sacrificed the
Muslims to reach an agreement with
the Croatian opposition. On the
other hand, the small dissident
‘pro-Croatian’ Muslim current that
had traditionally rejected
collaboration with the Belgrade
regime and that formed the ‘Muslim
Branch of the Croat Peasant Party’
(MOHSS) now found itself paralysed
by its adherence to a Croatian
national movement that had turned
its back on support for Bosnian
unity. Yet Muslims generally were
united in fear of the threat posed
by the Great Serb reaction to the
movements for Croatian and, above
all, Bosnian autonomy, that took
shape in the ‘Movement “Serbs
Assemble!”’ - a precursor to the
wartime Chetnik movement that would
carry out a policy of genocide
against Muslims.2
Following the Axis
invasion and destruction of the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia in April 1941,
a Great Croatian puppet-state was
established - the ‘Independent State
of Croatia’ (NDH) - under the
fringe-extremist, fascist and
terrorist Ustasha movement. The
whole of Bosnia-Hercegovina was
incorporated into the NDH, which in
June was divided into twenty-two
administrative units or 'Great
Župas' (velike župe), each headed by
a 'Great Župan'. This division was
designed deliberately in order to
erase the border between Croatia and
Bosnia-Hercegovina, both
administratively and in the minds of
the people, in keeping with the
Great Croatian nationalist ideology
of the Ustashas.3 The Ustasha
poglavnik (führer) Ante Pavelić
appointed prominent Bosnian Muslims
and Croats to serve as window
dressing for his regime; Osman
Kulenović, Džafer's brother, was
appointed deputy prime minister on
15 April. The Ustasha movement’s
central body, the General Ustasha
Council, was formally constituted in
early May; in it, below Pavelić,
were the Doglavniks (Vice-Führers).
They included two elderly Bosnian
politicians from the pre-Yugoslav
era, the Croat-oriented Muslim
Adem-aga Mešić and the Croat Jozo
Sunarić. Below the Doglavniks were
the Poboćniks (Adjutants); they
included Alija Šuljak and Hakija
Hadžić, formerly leaders of the
MOHSS.
Hadžić was the
leading Muslim Ustasha in
Bosnia-Hercegovina. His purge from
the state apparatus of the older,
politically mainstream Muslim
notables catalysed Muslim elite
resistance to the NDH.4 In supporting
the NDH project, the MOHSS leaders
built upon their abandonment of any
support for Bosnian autonomy, but
upheld the traditional Muslim goal
of support for Bosnian unity -
albeit within a Great Croatian
framework. Despite the Ustasha
movement’s formal commitment to the
traditional integral Croat
nationalist view of the Muslims as
Islamic Croats, in practice all
levels of the NDH apparatus, its
armed forces and the Ustasha
movement would be wholly dominated
by Catholic Croats, with the Muslims
under-represented in all of them.5
The mainstream
Muslim elite reacted from the start
with reservation to the
establishment of the NDH, but the
form this reaction took differed
according to political current. To a
greater extent than either Serbs or
Croats, politically conscious
Muslims failed to split cleanly into
ideologically pro- and anti-fascist
camps and were relatively unwilling
to fight other Muslims. This has
prompted Šaćir Filandra to claim
provocatively: 'The Bosniaks did not
participate in World War II’.6
Political divisions among the Muslim
elite were not primarily
ideological, but were between
conflicting strategies of how best
to safeguard its position, and the
Muslim population as a whole, in the
face of two threats: the
assimilationism and hegemonism of
the Croat Ustashas and the genocide
of the Serb Chetniks.
In the first weeks
of the NDH's existence, a group of
Bosnian Muslim, Serb and Croat
politicians, who were anti-Ustasha
but nevertheless ready to
collaborate with the occupiers,
delivered a memorandum to the German
military government contesting the
validity of the inclusion of
Bosnia-Hercegovina in the NDH and
demanding a direct German military
administration over the whole of
Bosnia-Hercegovina. The initiative
for this came from Uzeir-aga
Hadžihasanović - a leading figure
in the JMO and de facto leader of
the pro-German but anti-Ustasha wing
of the Muslim elite. This effort at
cross-confessional collaboration by
members of the Bosnian elites
against the Ustasha genocide came to
an abrupt end when the Ustashas
responded by arresting three of the
four Serb signatories, all of whom
were later executed, while the
Muslims were strongly warned to
desist from such activities.7
Hadžihasanović
thereupon ceased lobbying the
Ustashas directly and adopted a
back-seat role in channelling Muslim
autonomist opposition to the NDH. He
and Džafer Kulenović summoned
leading members of the former JMO to
a meeting at a private residence in
the north-Bosnian town of Doboj,
some time in the summer of 1941, to
adopt a new Muslim strategy. With
Hadžihasanović's support, and
despite the opposition of a majority
of those present, Kulenović
resolved to enter the NDH government
in order to act as a counterweight
to Hakija Hadžić and the MOHSS,
whose tampering with the institution
of the Islamic Religious Community
had been causing concern. On 14
August, a delegation of Muslim
notables led by Kulenović and
Hadžihasanović was received by
Pavelić and delivered to him a
declaration of Muslim loyalty toward
the NDH, after which Kulenović
replaced his brother Osman as
vice-president of the government in
November. The formally pro-NDH wing
of the Muslim elite would be
henceforth divided into two hostile
camps: the collaborationist wing of
the former JMO and the genuine
ideological Ustashas who had emerged
from the MOHSS.8
The Serb rebellion
that broke out in the NDH in the
summer of 1941, in response to the
genocidal anti-Serb policies of the
Ustashas, itself assumed a pogromist
character in many areas; rebels
burned Muslim villages and
slaughtered their inhabitants. One
portion of the rebellion evolved
into the Chetnik movement, whose
policy towards non-Serbs,
particularly Muslims, was actively
genocidal. Consequently Muslims,
like Serbs, responded to the threat
of national extermination by
organising their own paramilitary
formations. Some joined Ustasha
bodies: the Ustasha commander for
Bosnia-Hercegovina, Jure Francetić,
organised mostly Muslim refugees
from East Bosnia, who had fled
before the Chetnik knife, in a
‘Black Legion’ for combat against
the rebels. Numbering 1-1,500 highly
motivated troops determined to
defend their homes, the Black Legion
routed both the Partisans and the
Chetniks in East Bosnia in the
spring of 1942.9 More commonly,
Muslims deserted from the NDH’s
regular army (the Home Guard) to
join local Muslim militias set up to
defend their homes in the localities
where they were under threat. These
militias were more motivated than
the Home Guard, but their members
frequently felt no loyalty
whatsoever to the Ustasha cause,
even viewing Ustashas as an alien
enemy equivalent to the Serb rebels.
In response to the desperation of
the Muslim public and the failure of
the NDH forces to offer protection,
members of the Muslim elite were by
the end of the year putting
themselves at the head of this
spontaneous Muslim movement of
self-defence and organising
autonomous Muslim military forces.
In Bijeljina in
north-east Bosnia, the initiator of
this enterprise was Murat-beg
Pašić, an independently-minded
local Ustasha commander of
Muslim-autonomist bent; according to
one of his enemies within the
Ustasha movement, he agitated 'in
favour of Bosnia coming under German
administration on the grounds that
the NDH is not competent to
administer Bosnia.'10 His support for
the formation of autonomous Muslim
armed forces was in line with this
activity. In nearby Tuzla, already
in September 1941, the Great Župan
Ragib Čapljić advocated the
formation of an autonomous Muslim
military force; he reportedly said
during a visit to the town of
Kalesija, near Tuzla: 'This [area]
is neither Serb nor Croat'. The
Tuzla merchant Muhamedaga
Hadžiefendić, who had served as an
officer in both the Austro-Hungarian
and Yugoslav armies, began to
organise armed Muslim resistance to
the rebels in November, when he
successfully repelled an attack on
the Muslim village of Puračić.
After receiving permission from
Zagreb, he summoned on 20 December a
gathering of local and village
Muslim leaders of the region to
begin organising a Muslim legion. On
22 December, the 'Volunteer section
of the people's uprising of Major
Hadžiefendić' was formally
proclaimed in Tuzla.
By the spring of
1942, there were five thousand
troops under Hadžiefendić's
command, covering an area from
Gračanica in the west and Orašje and
Bosanski Šamac in the north to
Zvornik and Bijeljina in the east
and Kladanj to the south. In July,
they assumed the name 'Volunteer
Home Guard Regiment', frequently
abbreviated to 'Domdo'', and by the
end of the year six Domdo battalion
staffs were set up, located in
Bijeljina, Brčko, Gračanica,
Puračić, Živinice and Tojšice and
all subordinate to Hadžiefendić's
command in Tuzla.11 The Domdo legions
were largely recruited haphazardly
from among the Muslim peasantry of
north-east Bosnia, and their
discipline and behaviour tended to
resemble that of the rebels they
were fighting against. Domdo
legionnaires plundered the homes
even of peaceful Serb villages,
beating and occasionally killing the
inhabitants. They were aggressive
and contemptuous toward the NDH's
regular army and police and to
Croats generally, treating their
area of operations as Muslim
territory in which they as Muslims
were in charge.12
Hadžiefendić
himself was a dedicated Muslim
autonomist whose Islamic, non-Croat
rhetoric increasingly earned him the
disfavour of the Ustashas.13 The
Muslim autonomists of Sarajevo and
other towns attempted to extend
Hadžiefendić's legion to their own
area or to set up Muslim militias of
their own. They sought to employ
El-Hidaje, an organisation that had
been set up in 1936 by members of
the ulema (Islamic clergy) with the
aim of preserving the authority of
Islamic law and institutions over
the Bosnian Muslims, as a front
organisation for this purpose. Their
long-term goal was the separation of
Bosnia-Hercegovina from the NDH.
Among those involved in this project
in Sarajevo were Hadžihasanović,
Hafiz Muhamed efendi Pandža,
director of the 'Merhamet'
philanthropic society and member of
the Ulema medžlis or High Islamic
Council, and the city mayor Mustafa
Softić, Hadžihasanović's
son-in-law; in Banja Luka the former
Radical politician Suljaga
Salihagić; in Mostar, the former
mufti Omer Džabić and others. They
included veterans of the Muslim
movements for autonomy under
Austria-Hungary of 1899-1909 and
under Yugoslavia of 1939-41. In
Sarajevo five Muslim militias were
formed: at Vratnik, Hrasnica,
Nahorevo, Jarčedol and Kotarac.14
In eastern
Hercegovina, Muslim alienation from
the NDH coupled with the mortal
threat posed by the Chetniks, backed
by the Italians, gave rise to a form
of Muslim militia that sought to
accommodate itself to the
Italian-Chetnik order and that was
specifically directed against the
Ustashas and Partisans: the Muslim
National Military-Chetnik
Organisation. This was a variation
on the theme of the Muslim militias
that appeared elsewhere in Bosnia,
but one that reflected peculiarly
Hercegovinian conditions. One
section of the Hercegovinian Muslim
political world had traditionally
been Serb-oriented, ever since the
Serb-Muslim collaboration against
Austria-Hungary; its most eloquent
and radical Muslim spokesman had
been the poet Osman Đikić. At the
same time, the Muslim population of
Hercegovina from 1941 faced
particular danger in what was the
most distant and demographically
Serb-dominated part of the NDH,
where anti-Muslim chauvinism was
strongest. This tradition and this
danger produced the Muslim Chetnik
phenomenon in Hercegovina. This was
in part an expression of Italian
policy that aimed to mobilise the
population of Italy's zone of the
NDH into its auxiliary Volunteer
Anti-Communist Militia.
Among the
principal representatives of the
pro-Chetnik Muslim current were
Ismet Popovac, Mustafa Pašić and
Major Fehim Musakadić. Popovac and
Pašić had joined the Serb rebels in
1941;15 they then declared for the
Chetniks. Popovac, the former mayor
of Konjic, thereupon built a Muslim
Chetnik militia through
collaboration with the Italians.16 On
21 July 1942, Popovac wrote to Draža
Mihailović to assure him that 'the
Muslims have never as a whole, or
via any kind of qualified forum,
recognised the Croatian state', and
to urge that 'the Muslims be
gathered in either a joint or a
specific Chetnik detachment'. To
assist in the mobilisation of
Muslims in the Chetniks, Popovac
suggested to Mihailović that he
'adopt a prominent Muslim, who has a
good voice and political roots among
the people, and give him an
appropriate rank as Muslim
representative and advisor on all
questions that relate to the areas
in which Muslims live.'17 Mihailović
eventually appointed Musakadić,
former Sarajevo chief of police, as
the commander of his Muslim Chetnik
forces, and another Muslim, Mustafa
Mulalić, as vice-chairman of the
Chetniks' Central National
Committee.18
Popovac's Muslim
Chetniks remained nationally
conscious Muslims despite their Serb
colouring; they pursued the
traditional Muslim goals of survival
and autonomy through collaboration
with the Chetniks, just as their
pro-Croat counterparts did through
collaboration with the Ustashas. It
was the opinion of Vladimir
Zečević, one of Mihailović's
agents in Hercegovina, that
Popovac's 'main goal was to protect
the Muslims, rather than to struggle
for the Serb nation and Serb
affairs.'19 This assertion is
supported by the fact that Popovac
was in close contact with Suljaga
Salihagić, one of the authors of
the Muslim Memorandum to Hitler of
November 1942. Popovac saw
Salihagić, a former member of the
Serb-nationalist People's Radical
Party, as a logical choice for
organiser of Muslim Chetnik
formations in Bosanska Krajina; that
there could be collaboration between
the pro-Chetnik Popovac and the
pro-German Salihagić indicates the
extent to which the solidarity among
members of the Muslim elite overrode
differences of political
orientation.20 Indeed, the Muslim
Chetnik leaders declared in December
1942 that 'the Muslims of
Bosnia-Hercegovina and in all parts
of the country are an integral and
indivisible part of Serbdom', but
also that their goal was a state
'organised on the principle of
democracy and social rights in which
the Muslims will be equal citizens.'21
They announced in early January 1943
their goals as 'the organisation and
arming of the Muslims in
Bosnia-Hercegovina and other parts
of Yugoslavia' and 'the unity and
organisation of all Muslims on the
basis of all for one and one for
all.'22
Popovac held talks
with Mihailović's officers Petar
Bačović and Dobroslav Jevđević in
late September or early October 1942
and agreed to form a Muslim Chetnik
organisation.23 This was eventually
legalised by the Italian military
authorities in Hercegovina as a
section of their Volunteer
Anti-Communist Militia. That month
Popovac issued an appeal to the
Muslims in the Partisan ranks on a
Serb nationalist and anti-Croat
basis, calling upon them to desert
and to join his forces.24 This Muslim
collaboration with the Chetniks on
an anti-Croat basis did provide a
degree of protection for the
Hercegovinian Muslims, who were
enrolled in the Italian-Chetnik
militias, while the Croats were
forced to flee.25 Popovac and Pašić
convened a meeting of the Muslim
Chetnik leaders in late November
1942 which resolved that its goal
was, in the words of an Ustasha
secret police report, 'that the
Muslims enrol in the Chetniks,
supposedly as a Muslim militia, to
protect the Muslim element.'26
Popovac's Muslim
Chetniks formed part of a broader
Hercegovinian Muslim autonomist
circle. On 6 October 1942, a
conference of Muslim notables was
held in Mostar which resolved to
send a delegation to Italy's General
Santovito to express the loyalty of
the Muslims of Hercegovina to the
Kingdom of Italy and to demand
weapons for Muslim self-defence. A
second conference on 8 October
resolved to collaborate with
Popovac's Muslim Chetnik faction so
as to win Italian confidence, and to
send a delegation directly to Rome.
The delegation included the former
Mufti Omer Džabić, whose uncle Ali
Fehmi had led the Hercegovinian
Muslim autonomist movement of
1899-1909, as well as a
representative of Popovac's Muslim
Chetniks. It resided in Italy in the
second half of October and held
talks with the Italian government
and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,
Haj Amin al-Husseini. The Italians
agreed to arm the Muslims on
condition the latter fight only
under the Italian Army. The
delegation may also have sought the
establishment of an autonomous
Bosnia-Hercegovina under Italian
protection and to have done so with
the blessing of Hadžihasanović's
Sarajevo-based autonomist faction.27
Nevertheless, the extreme
anti-Muslim nature of the Chetnik
movement ensured that the Muslim
Chetnik project would enjoy very
little success. When in July 1943
the Partisan 10th Hercegovinian
Brigade reentered Hercegovina, it
succeeded in killing Popovac and
Musakadić, two of the three
principal Muslim Chetnik leaders;
the organisation thereupon
effectively disintegrated.28
The most notorious
expression of Muslim resistance to
the Ustashas, and of Muslim
collaborationism vis-a-vis the
Nazis, was the Muslim Memorandum to
Hitler of November 1942. This
represented the culmination of
activity on the part of the
pro-German, anti-Ustasha wing of the
Muslim autonomist movement. Up until
the summer and autumn of 1943,
Muslim autonomist activity aimed
predominantly at direct
collaboration with the Germans to
bypass the Ustashas. On 29 May, a
group of Banja Luka notables met to
establish a council for the purpose
of organising an independent Muslim
battalion for action against the
Partisans. At the same time, they
resolved to send a memorandum to
Berlin to demand autonomy for
Bosnia-Hercegovina. This move was
provoked by a long-running power
struggle between the Banja Luka
Muslim community and the anti-Muslim
Ustasha administration of the town.29
Muslim discontent heightened with
the Chetnik massacres of Muslim
civilians in the summer of 1942,
widely seen as the consequence of
Ustasha persecution of the Serbs, so
that the Ustashas and Chetniks were
viewed as a joint threat, much as
they were by the Partisans. At the
annual assembly of El-Hidaje held on
16 August 1942, many of the
participants expressed concern at
the threat posed to the existence of
the Muslims from both the Ustashas
and the Chetniks.30
The campaign for
an autonomous Muslim military force
across the whole of
Bosnia-Hercegovina was from August
1942 taken up by 'National
Salvation', an umbrella organisation
grouping representatives of the
various Muslim societies and
associations in Bosnia-Hercegovina.
Spurred by the massacre of Muslims
in Foča earlier that month, the
founding conference of National
Salvation was held in Sarajevo on 26
August, presided over by Safet
Bašić, representative of the Reis
ul-ulema, the Muslim religious
community's most senior figure, and
attended by about three-hundred
Muslim notables. The opening speech
was delivered by Muhamed Pandža, who
raised the demand for an independent
Muslim armed force to enable the
Muslims to defend themselves. The
conference denounced the failure of
the NDH authorities to protect the
Muslims of East Bosnia, called for
the Muslims to appeal over and above
the NDH to the Germans, the
Italians, the Allies and the Islamic
world, and resolved in favour of
'the joint cooperation of the entire
population of Bosnia-Hercegovina and
the complete unity of Muslims,
Orthodox and Catholics’.
The leadership of
National Salvation that was then
elected consisted of Mehmed
Handžić, Uzeiraga Hadžihasanović
and five other Muslim notables. It
formed the unofficial national
leadership of the Muslim nation at
that time and aspired both to an
independent foreign policy and to
the financing and arming of Muslim
resistance to the rebels. This group
worked actively to inform the Grand
Mufti of Jerusalem, the Kings of
Saudi Arabia and Egypt and the
President of Turkey as well as the
British, Americans and Soviets of
the plight of the Muslims of
Bosnia-Hercegovina.31 A forty-eight
member Council of National Salvation
was elected at this time, including
the former politicians Šefkija
Behmen, Zaim Šarac and Hamdija
Karamehmedović. According to a UNS
report, 'the goal of the leading
Muslim figures is to remain further
in the position of leading figures,
that is they wish that the
Bosnian-Hercegovinian Muslims
guarantee them a majority. Their
attempts at achieving this are
various and one of the most
important, which is being constantly
drawn out across several years, is
the autonomy of Bosnia.'32
Following a second
massacre of Muslims by Chetniks at
Višegrad, a new seven-member
'Council of National Salvation' was
elected, headed by Handžić and
Pandža, to defend Muslims under
threat in Bosnia-Hercegovina and to
care for refugees.33 El-Hidaje in
March 1943 took over the extremist
'Young Muslim' organisation, in what
represented a closing of ranks
between the conservative and radical
wings of the Muslim autonomist
movement. National Salvation sought
to extend the system of autonomous
Muslim armed forces begun by
Hadžiefendić in Tuzla in 1941.
Pandža visited Pavelić on 30
October 1942 to suggest the
formation of a force of Muslim
legions across the whole of
Bosnia-Hercegovina, with
Hadžiefendić, Sulejman Filipović
or Šefket Hasandedić as possible
commanders. The request was then
presented to the German military
authorities. However, the Ustashas
were hostile to the
Muslim-autonomist character of the
legions and limited them to the
Tuzla region.34
The Muslim
autonomist campaign for autonomous
Muslim military forces thereupon
grew into a demand made directly to
Hitler for Bosnian autonomy under
the Reich. On 1 November 1942, a
group of leading Muslim politicians,
going by the name of the 'National
Committee', presented their
Memorandum to Hitler, or 'Our Führer
!', as they warmly addressed him.
Other than Hadžihasanović, its
authors appear to have been Softić,
Salihagićand, according to one
source, Pandža.35 The Memorandum
claimed: 'Nobody, not a single
ethnic group, not a single tribe,
likewise not a single nation in all
Europe has with greater devotion
felt and understood your gigantic
movement to establish a new order in
Europe as have we Bosnians, Muslims
of Bosnia. We have in the principles
of National Socialism, your
movement, felt that it alone brings
justice, order and peace to Europe,
which has been blighted and ruined
by democracy.' The Memorandum made
every effort to appeal to Hitler in
a language that he would understand,
claiming that the Bosnian Muslims
were in origin 'Goths, i.e. a
Germanic tribe named 'Bosnia''. It
denounced Pavelić's commissioner
for Bosnia, Božidar Bralo, as a
protector of the Jews: 'He thwarted
your intentions and order regarding
the Jews, beginning immediately to
accept many Jews in Bosnia into the
Catholic Church, particularly in
Sarajevo, where they are very
numerous and very rich. In that way
he attempted to protect them from
what, after the victory and
occupation of this country, had to
happen.' It was the Jews, claimed
the Memorandum, who were responsible
for the Serb rebellion, for under
Ustasha protection they 'began once
again their treasonous work. They
began to organise Chetnik and rebel
bands and generously to assist them
materially.' Nevertheless, the
Memorandum referred to the fact that
'the Jewish problem amongst us has
finally been solved...'.36
So far as
Bosnia-Hercegovina was concerned,
the Memorandum spoke of Pavelić's
violation of 'the historical right
of Bosnia to its separateness' and
complained that the civil war was
the product of the illegitimate
Ustasha rule: 'If Bosnia had been
treated as we had expected, if the
Muslims had been organised and armed
under the leadership of the German
armed forced and been called upon to
collaborate in the administration,
in Bosnia it would not have come to
all this.' The Memorandum therefore
requested: 'That now within the
Croatian state, on the territory of
Bosnia, a political-administrative
authority be formed named the 'Župa
of Bosnia', with its seat in
Sarajevo. The chief of this župa
would be appointed solely and
exclusively by you, our Führer.' All
Muslims currently serving in the
Ustashas and Home Guard on NDH
territory were to be withdrawn and
formed into a 'Bosnian Guard', based
on the existing Muslim Legions and
under the command of Hadžiefendić:
'Because, for the short period of
existence of the Croatian state, we
have come to the complete
realisation that only a Bosniak can
defend and protect his Bosnia'.
The Memorandum
demanded that the Ustasha movement
be abolished in Bosnia-Hercegovina.
It requested instead: 'That the
foundation of a National Socialist
Party be enabled on the territory of
Bosnia.' Following the German
victory, the Memorandum requested
from Hitler 'that you include your
territory, our Bosnia, in the camp
of other European communities under
your protection and give it the same
independence that our neighbours
will have.' The Muslims were to be
guaranteed an absolute ethnic
majority in Bosnia-Hercegovina
through the cession of Serb- and
Croat-majority borderland areas to
neighbouring countries and through
population exchanges with them.37 In
this way the Muslim autonomists
sought, through the Memorandum, a
rump Bosnia-Hercegovina with an
ethnic Muslim majority under the
protection of a foreign power. Be
that as it may, and despite the
obsequious Hitlerite
window-dressing, the Muslim
Memorandum was expressing
traditional Muslim autonomist
demands that found similar
expression in other political
currents.
Among the Nazi
leadership the greatest interest in
the idea of an autonomous Muslim
army under German command was shown
by Heinrich Himmler, who viewed the
Islamic world as a potential ally
against the British Empire and for
whom the NDH was a 'ridiculous
state'.38 At Himmler's suggestion,
Hitler approved in February 1943 the
establishment of an SS Division made
up of Bosnian Muslims. The Ustasha
functionary Alija Šuljak arrived in
Tuzla at the end of March 1943 with
the goal of mobilising the Muslim
population behind the formation of a
Bosnian SS Division. For this
purpose he held, with the assistance
of the German SS, rallies in
Živinice and Gračanica where he
called upon the Muslims to join the
Division. From 30 March until 10
April 1943, at the request both of
Himmler and of leading Muslim
notables, the Grand Mufti of
Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini
toured Zagreb, Sarajevo and Banja
Luka in order to meet with Muslim
notables and agitate for the
formation of a Bosnian SS Division.
Following the failure to attract the
required number of volunteers, the
Germans turned to conscription and
plundered the NDH armed forces for
recruits, decimating several units
of the latter in the process.
Eventually, three thousand Muslims
were released from service in the
NDH armed forces to serve in the
Division, at great cost to Home
Guard and Ustasha morale.39 The name
eventually chosen for the Division
was the '13th SS Volunteer
Bosnian-Hercegovinian Division
(Croatia)', an attempt to reconcile
the feelings of both its Croat and
Muslim members.40 Yet it was more
commonly known as the 'Handschar
Division'.
The formation of a
Muslim SS Division was supported by
elements within the Muslim elite who
hoped that it could be used to
achieve their own national goals.
Pandža later claimed during his
interrogation by the Partisans in
the autumn of 1943 that 'at the time
of the foundation of the Muslim SS
Division it was assured us that the
Division would act only as a
guardian of peace and order on the
territory of Bosnia-Hercegovina and
that it would not leave that
territory.' He said that he had been
promised by al-Husseini that 'this
division would definitely remain in
Bosnia-Hercegovina, that it would be
formed and trained there and that
its sole task would be to defend the
Muslims from those who would attack
Muslims.' Pandža also said that he
had been told that 'that division
would enable the separation of
Bosnia-Hercegovina from the NDH and
the establishment of an autonomous
Bosnia-Hercegovina that would be
included within the German new
order.’41
The widespread
Muslim warmth toward the Germans,
prior to autumn 1943, was a product
of their fear of the Great Serbian
threat. According to a report from
the German 114th Hunting Division,
in April 1943: 'The Muslims are in
large part amicably disposed toward
the Axis. They say of this, that the
defeat of Germany would mean their
ruin, because in the new Great
Serbia they would not be able to
achieve their right.' Furthermore,
'The political goal of the Muslims
is the autonomy of
Bosnia-Hercegovina. Some express the
will also to be a German
protectorate.'42 However, in the
autumn of 1943, the Germans turned
toward increased collaboration with
the Chetniks and quisling Serbia,
and this heightened the Muslim
alienation from all Axis and
quisling factions. The Muslim
attitude in this period rapidly
changed under the combined impact of
Chetnik genocide, NDH collapse and
the formation of the Handschar
Division, and this brought the
Muslim militias toward the
Communist-led People’s Liberation
Movement (NOP), which agitated on
the platform of Bosnian
self-government and unity.
Hadžiefendić
appears to have hoped his Legion
would form the nucleus of a Muslim
army that would enable
Bosnia-Hercegovina to achieve
autonomy. As such, he was ready to
transfer his hopes to the Handschar
Division as a more powerful Muslim
armed force inspired by the
autonomist ideal. Yet in this
instance, the ambitions of the
Muslim autonomists and the desire of
ordinary Muslims simply to protect
their homes diverged, for the
Handschar Division was a regular
military unit that could not play
the role of local defence force for
the north-east Bosnian Muslims. The
authorities' efforts to recruit
members of the Domdo forces for the
Handschar Division thus acted as a
catalyst for the subversion of the
former by the NOP. The Communists in
Tuzla waged a propaganda campaign to
dissuade Domdo officers from joining
the Handschar Division.
Hadžiefendić therefore supported
the establishment of the Handschar
Division at the expense of his
political standing among his
officers and rank-and-file, many of
whom consequently turned toward the
Partisans. The recruitment of
volunteers for the Handschar
Division also had a deleterious
effect on the Home Guards as well as
on the Ustashas, many of whom
abandoned their units to join the
better-paid SS.43
A string of
defections of Domdo officers and
soldiers to the Partisans occurred
across north-east Bosnia in May
1943, among them Hadžiefendić’s
adjutant Omer Gluhić, Lieutenants
Daut Filipović and Osman Gruhonjić,
and Professor Meša Selimović
(subsequently the famous novelist).
The defections of the legionnaires
revealed the unwillingness of the
Muslims of north-east Bosnia either
to fight for the NDH or to join the
SS. The defection of Hadžiefendić's
adjutant Gluhić was particularly
damaging and provoked the NDH's
dismissal of Hadžiefendić himself.44
This in turn discredited the NDH
further, divided the Muslim
autonomists among themselves and
prepared the terrain for the
Partisans' adoption of the
autonomist mantle.45 During the summer
and autumn of 1943, the trickle of
defections to the Partisans among
Muslim collaborationist officers,
soldiers and local notables became a
flood. These defections were an
essential element in the Partisans’
ability to capture Bosnian cities
and towns, consequently, in their
ultimate victory.
Meanwhile, as the
NOP gained steam in
Bosnia-Hercegovina, troops of the
Handschar Division stationed in the
town of Villefranche-de-Rouergue in
southern France staged a futile but
spectacular mutiny in September
1943, a precursor of larger revolts
to come back home. The Division's
long period of organisation and
training in Germany and France meant
its removal from Bosnian soil,
leaving its soldiers' homes
undefended from the Chetnik threat.
At the same time, the Muslim and
Croat officers and soldiers resented
their subordinate position vis-a-vis
the German officers. Among the Croat
troops of the Division, there was
dissatisfaction at its Muslim
autonomist character and at German
favouritism toward the Muslims, and
desertions among Croats were
therefore higher than among Muslims.46
The rebellion began on 17 September
1943, in response to news that the
Division was to be transferred back
to Germany, which was presumed to be
a prelude to its relocation on the
Russian front. The rebellion
involved about five-hundred Muslim
and Croat troops and involved the
execution of five German officers.47
Estimates of the number of Muslim
and Croat SS troops killed by the
Germans during and after the
suppression of the rebellion range
from about twenty to two hundred. A
further 825 troops of the Handschar
Division were 'purged' as unreliable
and sent to Dachau concentration
camp.48
A watershed was
represented by the Partisans’ first
liberation of Tuzla in north-east
Bosnia in early October 1943. Among
the Muslim elite in Tuzla, a
pro-Serb political orientation had
traditionally been strong, and this
inclined it towards resistance to
the NDH. Those who did collaborate
with the NDH tended to reject the
Ustashas' genocidal policies, and
under Mayor Seadbeg Kulović (before
1941 a member of the MOHSS) and
Great Župan Ragib Čapljić, the
Tuzla Serbs were safer than
elsewhere in the country.49 The
Partisans launched their decisive
assault to capture Tuzla on the
night of 1-2 October. The outcome
was decided when about seventy Home
Guard officers under Colonel
Sulejman Filipović, Commander of
the 8th Home Guard Regiment and
consequently the senior NDH
commander in the region, with whom
the Communists had been negotiating,
took the decision to surrender,
after which the Home Guard
rank-and-file abandoned its weapons
and positions en masse.50 Among the
fifty-five individuals executed by
the Partisans following their
victory in Tuzla was Major
Hadžiefendić.
A considerable
section of the Muslim
collaborationist forces and a
significant number of Muslim
notables defected to the NOP in the
autumn of 1943. For many Domdo
officers and soldiers, this
reflected their readiness to seek
physical protection from the
Chetniks and Ustashas in the ranks
of the Partisans, rather than in the
ranks of a specifically Muslim
militia. The circle of Muslim
notables ready to seek salvation in
collaboration with the NOP included
Sulejman Filipović, Muhamed Pandža,
Muhamed Sudžuka, Hamdija Ćemerlić
and Zaim Šarac. These were largely
individuals whose political
orientation had from the start made
them reluctant citizens or
collaborators of the NDH: Filipović
had been a loyal officer of the
royal Yugoslav army; Ćemerlić,
Sudžuka and Šarac had been members
of the pro-Serbian Muslim cultural
society ‘Gajret’; Šarac had also
been a politician of the primarily
Serb and pro-Yugoslav Independent
Democratic Party. Sudžuka was deputy
Great Župan of Pliva and Rama; a
veteran of the pre-war Muslim
Movement for the Autonomy of
Bosnia-Hercegovina, former editor of
the JMO newspaper Pravda and member
of the General Council of Gajret,
who despite his pro-Yugolav
orientation enjoyed close links to
the Young Muslim organisation before
and possibly after his defection to
the Partisans.51 As a prominent former
collaborator with considerable local
standing, he was a particularly
valuable recruit to the NOP.
However, not all
the new recruits to the NOP would
remain loyal. Ismet Bektašević was
a pre-war parliamentary delegate for
the Srebrenica District and member
of the JMO General Council. In 1941,
Bektašević had formed a Muslim
militia and eagerly participated in
the confiscation of weapons from the
Serb population and arrest of local
Serb politicians.52 He nevertheless
went over to the Partisans on 15
October 1943 following the
liberation of Tuzla, and was
selected to be a member of the
Presidium of ZAVNOBiH and councillor
at the Second Session of AVNOJ. With
Bektašević's help, the Partisans
mobilised former Muslim legionnaires
into the Srebrenica, Kladanj and
Tuzla Detachments, though only the
last of these reached any size in
this period. However, in December
1943, the Ustashas captured
Bektašević, who thereupon resumed
collaboration with them.53 Setting up
his office in Bratunac, he coopted
NOP supporters, and helped to
recruit Muslims into the Handschar
Division.54 He was subsequently
executed by the Partisans.
Similarly, Hafiz
Muhamed efendi Pandža left Sarajevo
on 20 October 1943 in the company of
about twenty members of the Young
Muslims to form a 'Muslim Liberation
Movement' that would fight against
both the Ustashas and the Chetniks
independently of the Partisans.
Drawing his first recruits from
among the Muslim militias in the
area to the south of Sarajevo, he
succeeded in raising a militia of
4-500. Pandža was captured by the
Partisans on 10 November, and
promised to collaborate with the NOP
on the basis of the shared goal of
Bosnian autonomy. He even assured
his captors that when the Handschar
Division - that he himself had
helped to recruit - arrived in
Bosnia following its training
abroad, it 'would not serve the
occupiers but would serve the
people.’55 However, according to
Partisan sources, when Pandža was
soon recaptured by the enemy, he
allegedly resumed collaboration with
them, though there is some doubt as
to whether this was genuinely the
case and, if so, whether or not it
was voluntary. Certainly, his
deposition to the Ustasha policy in
Zagreb on 21 January 1944, in which
he apparently expressed his devotion
to the NDH and to Croatian
nationalism, was out of character
with his politics since the start of
the war, which had initially been
strongly pro-German but nevertheless
anti-Ustasha.56
With the
destruction of Hadžiefendić's Domdo
Legion and the defection of a large
part of it to the NOP in the summer
and autumn of 1943, there remained a
hard core of local Muslim leaders
and their constituents committed to
the struggle against the Partisans.
These included former Muslim
legionnaires as well as Muslim
militias that had existed
independently since the start of the
war. In July, the Muslim militia
commander Nešad Topčić founded, in
the region of Kalesija near Tuzla,
the so-called '10th Mountain Group
of Bosnian Highlanders', a couple of
hundred strong. This group then
linked up with other Muslim
militias, such as the independent
militia of the village of Teočak
that had successfully defended
itself from the Chetniks and
Partisans since 1941, to become the
so-called 'Green Forces' - the
'green' referring to the fact that
they were an army of the forests.
Although they were formally included
within the Home Guards from January
1944, they remained in practice
wholly independent in both
organisation and command, their
ideology explicitly Islamic and
their fezzes adorned with the
Islamic crescent rather than the
Croatian chequerboard or the Ustasha
'U'. These then assumed the
leadership of the Muslim autonomist
resistance to the Partisans and
Chetniks in north-east Bosnia.
Unlike the Domdo
Legion, the Green Forces were
largely a backwoods militia that
resembled its Chetnik opponent
rather than an autonomous wing of
the NDH armed forces. Out of
necessity, they were tolerated by
the Ustashas but scarcely looked
upon favourably. According to a UNS
report, Topčić 'was in his time a
very good Croat nationalist and
Ustasha' and 'continues to claim
that he is a Croat whose only goal
is to destroy the Chetniks and the
Partisans', but in reality he
'follows the path exclusively of
purely Islamic politics and its true
realisation in the goal of the
Autonomy of Bosnia-Hercegovina under
the Green banner.' [emphasis in
original].57 The Ustashas disliked
Topčić for his military structure's
independence from the NDH armed
forces; for his recruitment of
Muslim Partisan-deserters; for his
purely token loyalty to the Ustasha
state; and because he allegedly
maintained relations with his
Partisan and Chetnik opponents.58 As
the brittle and overextended
Partisan 'state' in East Bosnia
crumbled under the weight of the
German counterattack in late 1943
and early 1944, considerable numbers
of Muslims abandoned the Partisans
and joined the Green Forces.59 During
the so-called Sixth Enemy Offensive,
the Green Forces fought with
considerable success against the
Partisans, inflicting several
defeats upon them. Numbering about
8-10,000 men thanks largely to
desertions from the Home Guards and
to a lesser extent from the
Partisans, the Green Forces
represented a major military
obstacle to the Partisans in East
Bosnia.
Draža
Mihailović's Chetnik leadership, in
this period, sought to compensate
for its weakening military and
political position by toning down
its aggressively Great Serbian image
and attempting to appeal to
non-Serbs. In Bosnia-Hercegovina,
this meant above all a turn toward
the Muslims. Mihailović
consequently began to attempt to
mobilise the Muslim population in
the Chetniks; his propaganda
increasingly spoke of the need for
'brotherly love and cooperation'
between the Muslims, Serbs and
Croats.60 Meanwhile, in July 1943, a
meeting of the 'Ravna Gora kernel',
comprising prominent Muslim
residents of Belgrade, resolved to
send Mustafa Mulalić, a former
politician of the Yugoslav National
Party, to join Mihailović's staff,
so that 'in proximity to him, he can
influence the Chetnik commander not
to carry out the mass extermination
of the Muslim population' in
Bosnia-Hercegovina.61 Mulalić's move
was also in part the work of
Hadžihasanović, who sought to
moderate the Chetnik movement's
anti-Muslim agenda and ensure that
the Muslims had a foot in each camp.62
In September 1943, Mulalić
established contact with
Mihailović.
Given the change
in Mihailović's view of the Muslim
question, Mulalić was quickly
accepted into the leadership of the
movement, from where he attempted to
use his personal contacts with other
Muslim notables to draw them in too.
Through his contacts in Tuzla, he
attempted to elicit from the Domdo
commander Muhamedaga Hadžiefendić a
declaration of loyalty to King Peter
II.63 Mulalićmet with Sarajevo mayor
Mustafa Softićat the village of
Nahorevo near Sarajevo, and sought
the Sarajevo Muslim elite's support
for the Chetniks.64 Nothing came of
these talks, however, and Softić
subsequently edged toward
collaboration with the NOP. The
Chetniks’ 'Congress of St Sava' of
25-28 January 1944, held with the
tacit acquiescence of the German
authorities at the village of Ba
near Ravna Gora in western Serbia,
upheld the principle that
Bosnia-Hercegovina would join the
Serbian federal unit in the
projected post-war Yugoslavia, with
the Muslims enjoying merely
religious autonomy. Mulalić
thereupon launched a Muslim Chetnik
newspaper entitled 'Mašrik' ['The
East'], in which he propagandised in
favour of the idea that 'all
conditions for the renewal and
development of Bosnia are to be
found within the framework of
Serbia’.65
The Chetniks and
Green Forces tended to join forces
against the Partisans. This
represented less of an ideological
alliance against Communism than an
exhaustion of the politics of
chauvinism and a desire for a return
to normality after the pogroms and
destruction of the previous years.
On 18 December 1943, The Trebava
Chetnik Detachment concluded an
agreement with local Green Forces
for a joint struggle against the
Partisans; the Green Forces put
Chetnik cockades on their fezzes.66
The Sarajevo Chetnik Dejan Kočović
recalls the collaboration of
Chetniks and Green Forces in
south-west Bosnia: 'Thus, entire
inter-village non-aggression pacts
were occasionally formed. For
example, if neighbouring Muslim and
Serb villages made a pact between
them and formed village militias,
they always monitored each other's
activities, for after all there
could not be complete trust. Thus,
they sullenly measured and observed
each other through field-glasses,
but sense and the desire for peace
remained strong. Both knew that the
war must one day end, but they did
not know with whose victory.'67
In mid-February
1944, the Handschar Division finally
returned to the NDH. It received its
baptism of fire in actions against
the Partisans in Srem, where it
massacred hundreds of Serb
civilians.68 Yet the Division, like
its Partisan opponents, employed
political as well as military
tactics, based on its Bosnian and
Muslim autonomist ideology. It
crossed from Slavonia into East
Bosnia at Br
ko on 15 March,
whereupon its commander Colonel
Karl-Gustav Sauberzweig told his
troops in an open letter: 'Not only
do you [have these weapons given to
you by the Führer] in your hands,
but above all you have an idea in
your hearts - to liberate the
homeland'.69 A leaflet distributed in
the Žepče district by the Germans on
behalf of the 'SS soldiers of the
Bosnian-Hercegovinian Division' in
April addressed itself to the 'Men
and women of Herceg-Bosna !',
claiming: 'We have returned to our
homeland, to liberate it from
terror'. It concluded: 'Our leader
Adolf Hitler promised us the best
armaments. We have received them. He
has made of us soldiers, honourable
fighters for the homeland. We defend
every inhabitant of the Bosnian
homeland. With us arrives a new age.
We greet the homeland; we greet all
of you!'70 The Germans apparently
attempted to recruit more East
Bosnian Muslims into the Handschar
Division in this period, 'by telling
them that they would be a 'Bosnian
army' and that they would get their
own 'Bosnian state'.'71
The 21,000-strong
Handschar Division greatly
outnumbered the Partisans in East
Bosnia. Following fierce fighting,
the SS troops expelled most of the
Partisan forces from Majevica,
Semberija and part of Posavina and
penetrated into Birač and Romanija,
systematically massacring the
inhabitants of villages taken from
the Partisans. The Handschar
Division maintained an alliance with
Chetnik warlords such as Radivoje
Kerović and did not aim to
exterminate or expel the entire Serb
population. Rather, the massacres
were intended to uproot and destroy
the Partisan movement in East
Bosnia. But according to one Ustasha
report of this period, the SS
troops' brutality against even the
non-Serb population of reconquered
areas was such that it drove many
Muslims to seek refugee back with
the Partisans.72 The Division's
operations against the Partisans
began on 23 April 1944 and continued
throughout the spring. By mid-June,
Sauberzweig claimed Partisan losses
amounted to 4,526 confirmed dead,
3,766 presumed dead and 1,246
prisoners (including six US airmen).73
Under Sauberzweig's leadership, the
Handschar Division set up what was
effectively a quisling Bosnian
Muslim state in north-east Bosnia,
violating the 'sovereignty' of the
NDH and provoking outrage in Zagreb.
The NDH administration was suspended
and the Division established its own
military, civilian and economic
administration.
The Cazinska
Krajina region in the extreme
north-west of Bosnia, despite
traditionally looking towards
Croatia, had proven difficult for
the Ustasha regime to digest, on
account of the fiercely autonomist
and conservatively Islamic
orientation of its population. Its
two most important notables were
Nurija Pozderac and Hasan Miljković:
the former, a pro-Croatian former
member of the General Council of the
JMO, had been the NOP’s most
prominent non-Communist Muslim
supporter at the time of the First
Session of AVNOJ in November 1942,
and was among the Partisans killed
at the Battle of Sutjeska. Miljković
was mayor of Velika Kladuša and a
former politician of the Croat
Peasant Party; he collaborated first
with the Ustashas, then went over
briefly to the Partisans following
Velika Kladuša’s liberation in
February 1942, then resumed
collaboration with the NDH. The
independently minded Home Guard
commander Huska Miljković, a
defector from the Partisans and
subsequently a successful and
merciless commander against them,
won the permission in 1943 to form a
Muslim militia in Cazinska Krajina,
linked to Hasan Miljković, which the
latter allegedly hoped to use to
bring about the establishment of an
autonomous Bosnia-Hercegovina within
the NDH.74
Huska Miljković
built his militia as a coalition of
former Ustashas, HSS supporters and
deserters from the Partisans and
Home Guards, numbering about three
thousand by late 1943. While the
Ustasha authorities viewed 'the
activities of Huska Miljković as
hostile to our state', the Germans
were pleased by his successes
against the Partisans and
endeavoured to build up his
authority in the region.75 However,
aware that the Germans were losing
the war, Huska defected to the
Partisans on 2 February 1944, which
formed the basis for the Partisans’
new ‘Una Operational Group’, with
Huska as commander and the Communist
Šukrija Bijedićas political
commissar.76 Huska nevertheless
continued to play a double game,
maintaining elements of
collaboration with the Germans and
Ustashas even as he formally fought
with the Partisans. He was
subsequently assassinated by
pro-Ustasha elements from within his
former militia’s ranks.
In the spring of
1944, as the Partisans approached
victory, the Muslim autonomists
continued with their own, quieter,
resistance to the Ustasha regime. On
28-29 April 1944, during his visit
to Sarajevo, NDH Prime Minister
Nikola Mandić received a delegation
of Muslim notables who wished to
complain about Ustasha policies,
above all about the Ustashas'
killing of individual Muslims, their
incarceration in concentration camps
and the lack of significant Muslim
participation in the organs of the
state. The delegates were Zaim
Šarac, whose son Džemil was a
Communist; Šefkija Behmen, formerly
number two in the JMO; Hamdija
Kreševljaković, a leading member of
the former National Salvation; Asim
Ugljen, president of the Supreme
Court; Hifzija Gavrankapetanović,
vice-president of the Croatian State
Parliament; and Ismetbeg
Gavrankapetanović, a member of
parliament. This group of Muslim
notables thereupon grew to form an
informal lobby representing the
Muslim population before the Ustasha
regime.77 Meanwhile, according to one
source, in early May 1944, the Green
Forces commander Nešad Topčić,
accompanied by some former Handschar
Division officers, visited Berlin,
where he was suspected by the
Ustashas of requesting from the
Germans the establishment of an
autonomous Bosnia-Hercegovina.78
The Muslim
autonomists continued to seek the
separation of Bosnia-Hercegovina
from the NDH. Behmen in this period
invited the Green Force leader Nešad
Topčić, head of the most powerful
remaining independent Muslim
military force, to visit Sarajevo at
this time. Topčić then made further
visits to Berlin, in June and
November of 1944, to lobby the
Germans for Bosnian autonomy.79 In
late May, Ustasha forces were
prevented by the Germans from
entering Goražde in East Bosnia at
the request of a local Muslim
militia leader, who warned the
Germans that he would otherwise
consider them his enemies.80 On 29
July 1944, Mehmed Handžić,
president of El-Hidaje and author of
the Sarajevo Muslim Resolution of
1941 against Ustasha policy,
unexpectedly died at the age of
thirty-eight following a routine
operation at the Koševo Hospital in
Sarajevo. It has been suggested that
this was an assassination carried
out by the Communists, which, given
the NOP's infiltration of the
Sarajevo medical profession, is not
impossible.81 Whether by accident or
assassination, the most powerful
opponent of both the Partisans and
the Ustashas among the Muslim
autonomists thereby left the
historical stage. Following the
death of Uzeiraga Hadžihasanović
the previous year, the Muslim
autonomists were now left without
any leaders of prime stature; the
Partisans were rapidly becoming the
only credible Muslim resistance
movement above the regional level.
Despite its
successes against the Partisans
following its appearance in
north-east Bosnia in early 1944, the
Handschar Division was unable to
crush Partisan resistance in Birač
or conquer south-east Bosnia. On 19
June, a second Bosnian SS division,
the 23rd SS Division 'Kama' was
established by the Germans, but by
September this had only two thousand
troops. By the autumn of that year,
the Handschar Division began to show
signs of disintegration. In the
period 1-20 September, two thousand
Bosnian troops deserted from it.
Consequently, on 16 September, the
Division commanders proposed either
dissolving the Division or
stiffening it with German personnel
to bring the German-Bosnian ratio
within it up to 1:2.82 Nevertheless,
the disintegration of the unit
continued. The increase in support
given by the Germans to the
Chetniks, in particular the
provision of arms to Chetnik bands
that then used them to attack Muslim
and Croat villages, helped to
discredit the Germans in the eyes of
the Division's troops.83 In the
contemporary words of Muhidin
Begić, who served in the 16th
Muslim Brigade: 'Under the blows and
the pursuit of the fighters of the
People's Liberation Army, the 13th
SS Division is collapsing, with
segments of it turning on their own
initiatives against their German
officers and joining the People's
Liberation Army.'84 The final German
withdrawal from Tuzla in September
proved to be a particular catalyst
for SS troops to join the Partisans;
at this time, former SS troops
comprised the largest component of
new recruits to the Partisans’ 27th
East Bosnian Division.85
The collapse of
the Handschar Division, as the
flagship Muslim autonomist force, in
turn catalysed the collapse of other
Muslim quisling armed formations. In
September, the Partisans and Green
Forces held negotiations in the
vicinity of Vis in East Bosnia to
discuss the possibility of the Green
Forces' absorption into the
Partisans. The Partisan delegation
was headed by Abdusalem Basara, a
former Domdo commander. While the
Partisans demanded that the Green
Forces be subsumed wholly within the
Partisan military structure, the
Green Force representatives rejected
the idea of fighting away from their
localities and for Partisan military
goals. They offered instead to act
as a local Partisan militia that
would remain in the area under its
own commanders. This was
unacceptable to the Partisans and
the meeting ended unsuccessfully.
Hostilities were thereupon resumed,
but the Green Forces were
increasingly unwilling fighters.
When Partisan forces entered the
town of Gradačac in East Bosnia in
October, the Muslim militia
defending it failed to offer any
resistance.86 Members of the Green
Forces in this period were joining
the Partisans more readily than
former Chetniks. The Oblast NOO for
East Bosnia reported on 23 November
1944: 'It is necessary only to note
that this process among the Chetniks
is taking place more slowly, for,
while the Green Forces lost support
and perspective with the collapse of
the 13th SS Division, and are
massively joining the P[eople's]
L[iberation] Army in which they see
the sole force [sic], the Chetnik
leaders are still succeeding, by
means of lies, in deceiving one part
of the uninformed masses.'87 On 15
December, Partisans dressed as Home
Guards entered Nešad Topčić's hotel
room in Modriča, dragged him out and
shot him dead. This effectively
ended the Green Forces as a
functioning army in
Bosnia-Hercegovina, though in some
localities they continued to resist
the Partisans until the end of the
war and beyond.88
With Muslim SS
soldiers deserting in large numbers
to the Partisans, the 13th and 23rd
SS Divisions began to be redeployed
in northern Croatia in October 1944
to resist the Soviet advance from
Serbia. This move away from the
Bosnian homeland brought about
massive desertions among the troops.
On the 17th, the day after the
redeployment was ordered, the
Bosnian troops of the 23rd Division
mutinied and the latter was
thereupon dissolved. On the 25th,
the Germans began to disarm the 13th
Division, with 70% of its Bosnian
troops released from service. What
remained was a smaller unit of equal
numbers of Germans and Bosnians that
followed other German units in
retreat to Germany.89 Meanwhile,
hundreds of former SS soldiers
joined the Partisans. By late
December, the Oblast Committee of
the KPJ for East Bosnia reported
that a total of two thousand troops
from the Handschar Division had
joined the Partisans.90
The final Partisan
victory in Bosnia-Hercegovina in the
first half of 1945, involving the
liberation of Mostar, Sarajevo,
Zenica, Banja Luka and other major
cities and towns, was made possible
by the large scale support for the
NOP among part of the Bosnian Muslim
population, including many former
Muslim collaborationist troops; the
liberation of these cities was
greatly facilitated by further
large-scale desertions from among
the quisling forces. For many former
quislings, this was not simply a
matter of joining the winning side,
but of continuing the struggle by
other means, for the NOP shared the
Muslim autonomists’ goals of
resisting the forced assimilation of
the Muslims by the Ustashas, their
extermination by the Chetniks, and
of establishing Bosnia-Hercegovina
as a self-governing unit - this time
within the new Yugoslav federation.
For many Muslim autonomists who did
not become sincere supporters of the
new Communist-dominated order, it
was merely a question of a new form
of collaboration. Politican tensions
between the new regime and
non-Communist Muslim political
elements would continue following
the end of the war.
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