CAPTAIN HÖFFNER REPORTS ON NOVEMBER 5, 1941, THAT HE HAD RECEIVED A RESOLUTION FROM THE BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA MUSLIM LEADERS AND CONVEYS HIS OPINION ON THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE RESOLUTION ADOPTION, THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE MASS KILLINGS OF THE SERBS AND THE NEED FOR AUTONOMY IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA.[1]
Arthur Höffner[2]
Captain
Svačićev trg 3
Zagreb.
Explanations accompanying the German translation of the attached
Resolution of Bosnia-Herzegovina Muslims of October 12, 1941.
The Resolution was handed to me in Croatian by a prominent Muslim, who, as I would like to state immediately, does not belong to the small number of Muslim intellectuals who declare themselves as Croats, but have always held the view that the problem of Bosnia and Herzegovina, given the specificity of its population can be permanently resolved only on the basis of the self-government of these provinces, as it already existed within the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
The signatories of the Resolution do state that they speak as Croatian Muslims, but this, as has been presented to me, happened only for tactical reasons, so that they would not actually be portrayed as enemies of the state, after the Ustasha-regime, without being asked, and based on its own absolute power, described Muslims as “Croats of the Islamic faith”, although no reasonable man who is familiar with the situation cannot doubt that the Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina became a separate ethnic national group due to their religion and the blood influence of the Ottomans centuries ago, although perhaps their ancestors were indeed once Croats or Serbs. Even if individuals do feel to be Croats or Serbs, these are just exceptions.
Having said this, I return to the initial topic.
The intention to take a stand against the unheard-of violence, which the Ustashas caused with their looting and murder acts which, both in scope and horror, are unprecedented in the history of the Balkan peoples, existed among Muslims several months ago, but one purely political reaction against the crimes of the Ustashas seemed to be too dangerous to the leading figures, in terms of the consequences that could be expected. Finally, they agreed that the action should begin with the Mohammedan clergy at the head, ostensibly under the green flag of the Prophet, so that a possible Ustasha counteraction could encounter the well-known religious fanaticism of broad sections of the Muslim population.
It can be noticed that Reis Ulema,[3] as the religious[4] leader of the local Muslims, did not put himself at the head of the signatories. The explanation for this is in the fact that Reis Ulema Spaho[5] once got his high position only because of the political position of his brother, the late Minister Dr. Spaho, against the will of Bosnian Muslims, who considered him morally unworthy to perform this high clerical duty[6].
As can be seen from the attached Resolution, the first to sign it was Haji Mehmed Hadžic, the president of “El-Hidaje”, an organization of the Mohammedan clergy. He completed his studies at the most famous Mohammedan high school, the University of Cairo, he was assessed as a man extremely clear headed, and he stood out by speaking publicly in Cairo against the oppressive system of the English.
As to the content of the Resolution, it should be noted that it unequivocally and uncompromisingly demands the liquidation of the Ustasha system.
And the fact that Muslims, who have always been opportunists since they are no longer in power in the Balkans, decided to reveal their cards in such a delicate political situation, so this fact must be given great attention, because the insanity of the Ustasha regime could go so far as to respond to the Resolution with violence against Muslims, especially since, according to my source, signatures are now being collected for it throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina. With one reckless step of the Ustasha government, the political situation in Croatia and Serbia could become even more unfavorable for the Reich than is the case anyway.
In the Resolution, the Muslims tried to make the participation of Muslim elements in the Ustasha misdeeds smaller than it really was. It is true, however, that the prominent Muslims really had nothing to do with them. On the other hand, it must be taken into account that the Muslim mob in Bosnia are extremely numerous. This is explained by the fact that, of all groups of peoples living in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Muslims are most susceptible to degeneration, which can be related to the fact that their community is not conditioned by blood ancestry, but is based on religious grounds, which is why the Muslim element, which is mostly of Slavic origin, was much more exposed to unhealthy mixing of blood with oriental hordes that penetrated the Balkans during the Turkish period than was the case with the Serbs and Croats. Another cause of degeneration of Muslims is endemic syphilis, because it is very difficult to battle it due to the customs associated with the Mohammedan religion.
The degeneration of the Muslims is also manifested in the lesser ability to earn a living, which finally leads to proletarianization with all its consequences. The fact that, however, even this Muslim mob composed of proletarians in no way began to kill on its own, proves the fact that the population in these territories has always been peaceful and that Bosnia and Herzegovina, thanks to the pacification achieved during the four decades of Austro-Hungarian governance, was rated in terms of security of life and property as generally much more favorable than many civilized countries in Europe. Even the Serbian regime, which lasted for over two decades, and which had previously almost completely destroyed the exemplary governance of Bosnia and Herzegovina, did not have a harmful impact worth mentioning in terms of security.
It was only up to the Ustasha regime to ignite the beastly instinctual cruelty and greed of all the elements that felt less worthy in these territories and to take them into its service.
It is therefore absolutely justified when the Resolution states that Muslims do not bear any guilt in the fact that even the mob of the Islamic faith, after being generously supplied with weapons, ammunition and uniforms, did not resist the temptation to use the offered opportunity to plunder and kill without any danger, on the other hand, this mob was even pardoned for this, through the calls of Minister Dr. Budak and many other Ustasha leaders on the radio, to persecute Serbs until their eradication as a patriotic obligation.
The ringleaders for the crimes committed against the Serb population of Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to my Muslim source, were mostly Croats who came from outside, from Lika, from Kordun and from those areas of Herzegovina that were inhabited by Catholics. The latter are under the influence of the Franciscan order, which is politically leading in these areas, and which was always considered tolerant in the past, but currently it believes that its Christian mission is to eradicate Serbs, even in cases where mass conversions of the Serbs to the Catholic Church have already been forced.[7]
Among the ringleaders who stood out with their particular cruelty, there were very often Ustashas from the ranks of the Ustasha Supreme Leader’s bodyguard battalion, [8] and some of them were listed by their names.
One of them committed a horrible murder in broad daylight in a hospital in Banja Luka against a Muslim hoca[9] who became insane some time ago, snatching him from the hands of his guards, throwing him to the ground and trampling him to death. Namely, the insanity of the hoca was manifested, among other things, in the fact that he shouted “Long live King Peter”, which is why they eventually took him to the hospital to avoid incidents. When the Ustasha heard the hoca’s shouts, he attacked the man, despite all the explanations of the case by the guards, and killed the insane man.
The name of this Ustasha is Joso Babić, he belongs to the bodygard battalion of the Supreme Commander and he went unpunished even though prominent Muslims filed a lawsuit and even though the participation of the Mohammedan population in Banja Luka in this case during the funeral of the hoca was demonstratively expressed.
According to my source, the cruelty with which the murders were committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina under the leadership of the Ustashas surpasses everything that has been recorded so far in the bloody history of the Balkan peoples. The execution by shooting was quickly abandoned, as it was considered a waste of ammunition.
Therefore, other types of death were chosen. Humans are simply slaughtered like animals. In other cases, thousands of people were sent to the afterworld by smashing their skulls with hammers or axes. People were forcefully driven like cattle into houses and barns, which were then set on fire and the people were left to die in flames. Near Bosanski Petrovac, where over 8,000 corpses lay unburied around before the Italian action, around the traces of burnt hay, 70 charred corpses were found lying all around, and as could be seen, they had been tied to a haystack with wire and died like on stake. It happened that the parents, in order to save them, let their small children slip through the windows of the burning houses, which were surrounded by the Ustashas. However, the Ustashas brought pitchforks for hay and manure, picked the children with them and threw them back into the flames. One can hardly imagine such cruelty, in front of which even non-humans would be horrified, and even the churches were used to force people like cattle into them and kill them there.
To all this, my source of information remarked: “And all this was happening in the twentieth century in a country occupied by the armed forces of those two great powers that want to be guarantors of a better, more moral new order on this continent and which sacrifice the best blood of their peoples to achieve this goal.”
The number of victims of the massacre of the Serbs is estimated at 350,000 to 400,000 people, and the number of those on the Muslim side as victims of the Serbian counteraction is estimated at about 40,000 people. An action is underway on both the Serbian and Muslim sides to collect statistics on the number of victims. At the same time, it must be taken into account that during this winter, countless thousands of people were left to die of cold and hunger, wandering in the woods or around their burnt doors as refugees without bread and a roof over their heads.
If this, on the German side, is marked as the unfortunate consequences of a revolution and if one tries to present things in such a way that as far as the Serbs are concerned, it is about insurgent guerrillas and communists who were killed by the Ustashas because they did not want to submit to the new political order in Croatia, this is either a conscious untruth or it is a sad lack of recognition of facts, which the German people cannot absolve from their responsibility before history. There is no doubt that the regime change in Croatia would have taken place without mentioning the worthwhile sacrifice in blood, if only the leaders of the Ustasha movement had not declared a hunting season against the local Serbian population.
Namely, there would be no uprisings in Serbia on such a large scale, which the communists were given the opportunity to use for their own purposes, if the Ustashas had not deported as beggars countless thousands of local Serbs, confiscating their property, and driven even more across the border on the Drina.
The takeover of power by the Ustasha regime in Croatia did not stem from a revolutionary idea, whose victory was won through struggle, this was an unexpected and barely predicted result of the senseless act of the Belgrade coup government of March 27, 1941 and the reaction of the German Reich that followed as a consequence, which enabled the leaders of the Ustasha movement to take their ministerial seats without significant support.
And instead of undertaking now to organize the state that the Reich gave them as a present, and to win over the population through their own good example to the idea of a new community of peoples in Europe based on social grounds, the Ustasha leaders seized the opportunity to treat the local Serbs, who were repeatedly oppressed by the Belgrade regime in exactly the same way as the Croats, in a hellish way they sought to express their years of accumulated hatred, after being too big cowards for two decades and unable to force their Serbian oppressors to the other side of the Drina in a manly battle, and they preferred to, as emigrants from their safety abroad, drive innocent railway passengers or users of public payphones to the afterworld by planting insidious infernal machines as a manifestation of their “national protest” directed against Serbian violence.
The results of the seven-month Ustasha rule are devastating in all areas. First of all, because of the destruction of every legal order, it caused a moral crisis, which the history of the Croatian people has never known before. In the absence of supporters, the Ustasha movement, without choosing, seized from the dregs of society and provided refuge in its ranks to the entire criminal milieu of the country, which had already appropriated the executive police power. The decent population has been tyrannized in a sadistic way and with exactly the same methods, as was the case with the Bolsheviks, who have only been surpassed by the Ustashas in terms of not valuing the people, given that they themselves do not recognize the authority of their own leaders and are outspoken anarchists.
Although the Ustasha regime is supported by the Reich government for foreign policy reasons, this will not help it, because there is no doubt that in the chaos it has caused in the country’s economic life due to looting and destruction of values, it will fail hopelessly.
It is up to the government of the Reich to end, if possible, the great torments of the majority of the population of this country, terrorized by non-humans, by correctly knowing the true facts and the measures that will prove necessary based on that. That this should happen before the great trust, created on April 10, 1941, and the great respect, which the German people enjoyed in the broadest strata of society of this country, even among many Serbs, is reduced to zero, is an imperative, considering the leadership to which Germany lays claim in the new Europe.
Apart from a few explanatory contributions on my part, in the above allegations I have mostly conveyed only the opinions and information of my Muslim commissioner, which I was logically unable to dispute.
Zagreb, November 5, 1941 –
[1] АВ, Ф. 562, 3.1.1.2, 8-11.
[2] The retired Captain Arthur Höffner was a transport officer in the staff of the German General in Zagreb Edmund Glaise von Horstenau and one of his best rapporteurs. See: Zbornik dokumenata i podataka o narodnooslobodilačkom ratu naroda Jugoslavije, Volume XII, Book 1, Dokumenti Nemačkog rajha, Beograd: Vojnoizdavački zavod, 1973, 46, f. 6; See also Captain Höffner ‘s report of August 27, 1941 on Ustasha crimes against the Serbs; 328-330.
[3] Reis ul-ulema in Serbian, reisül-ulema in Turkish, i.e. Grand Mufti – Subeditor’s note.
[4] In the original: kirchliche, of the church.
[5] Fehim Spaho.
[6] This probably refers to the fact that he was an alcoholic; D. Sušić, Parergon, 23.
[7] M. Koljanin, Preveravanje Srba u Nezavisnoj Državi Hrvatskoj, 46-56.
[8] Poglavnik’s bodygard battalion, Ustasha unit subordinated directly to the Supreme Leader/Commander (poglavnik) of the NDH Ante Pavelić; A. Obhođaš, M. Werhas, B. Dimitrijević, Z. Despot, Ustaška vojnica. Oružana sila Ustaškog pokreta u Nezavisnoj Državi Hrvatskoj 1941.-1945 (prva knjiga, travanj 1941. – rujan 1943/Book One, April 1941 – September 1943), Zagreb: Infinitus, 2013, 251-259.
[9] Hoca and khoja are some of the spellings for the term khawaja, Islamic religious teacher/lecturer. – Subeditor’s note.