SS atrocities

During the summer of 1944, the partisan war escalated dramatically and V SS Corps' troops were involved in almost weekly anti-partisan sweeps around Sarajevo and eastern Bosnia. It was now joined by the Handschar Division, as well as by the newly formed Albanian (Skanderbeg) and Croat (Kama) Waffen-SS divisions. The intensity of the partisan fighting in Yugoslavia and Russia was recognized in 1944 when veterans of the conflict were given their own decoration, the Anti-Partisan Badge. Within the Waffen-SS and SS police, the badge was highly prized because it acknowledged the ferocity of the fighting against the partisans. The SS, however, still showed contempt towards their partisan foes, who were dubbed "bandits" or "illegal combatants" who did not warrant any rights under the rules of war. Captured partisans were either executed on the spot or dispatched to slave-labour camps.

As in Russia, the German anti-partisan campaign in Yugoslavia was doomed to failure because no real effort was made to win the population over to Berlin's cause. The barbaric behaviour of German units, particularly SS police and Waffen-SS divisions, and their local allies, was in fact instrumental in helping the partisans portray themselves as fighting a "war of national liberation".

The last acts

V SS Corps, and in particular the Prinz Eugen Division, ultimately played an important role in allowing thousands of German troops to escape from Greece, but in the end this made little difference to the outcome to the war in the Balkans. The drive by Soviet troops into Romania and Bulgaria in the autumn of 1944 threatened to trap 350,000 German troops in Greece. This included the remnants of the Waffen-SS Polizei Division that had been part of the German garrison in Greece since late 1943. Bulgaria changed sides and its troops invaded the region, now known as Macedonia, to try to cut the escape route of the German forces that were in full retreat from Greece. The Prinz Eugen Division moved into Macedonia and set up a bridgehead in the Vardar corridor to allow the German withdrawal to proceed successfully.

Soviet tank columns were now approaching Belgrade across the Danube plain, and V SS Corps was re-deployed to try to establish a solid front south of the city in the Nis region. It spent two months fighting a determined rearguard action against pursuing Soviet, Bulgarian and Yugoslav troops as the Germans retreated into Hungary. During these battles, V SS Corps' commander, Phleps, was captured and summarily executed by Soviet troops.

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