Afiero, Massimiliano 13. Waffen-Gebirgs-Division der SS "Handschar" (kroatische Nr. 1)

The SS "Handschar" division was founded to recruit mainly Bosnian-Muslim volunteers and was organised as a mountain infantry division. Ultimately, however, it also included Croatian-Catholic volunteers as well as numerous German and ethnic German Yugoslav officers. Members of the division took the oath both to Adolf Hitler and to Ante Pavelic, the head of the Croatian government. It was the first SS division with non-Germanic members, although Himmler even managed to find a Gothic origin for the Bosnians. The division was first sent to France for training, where there was also an attempted insurrection, and then to Germany. After returning to the Balkans, the division operated mainly in the so-called security zone in north-east Bosnia between the Sava, Bosna, Drina and Spreca rivers. It was deployed for a short time in the Syrmia region north of the Sava before moving to north-east Bosnia. At the end of 1944, the division was moved to the Zagreb area. Then, in the following months, the last remnants of the "Handschar" fought against Red Army units and Bulgarian troops in southern Hungary, fought a series of defensive battles and then retreated towards the Austrian border. Most of the Bosnian elements that still followed the division tried to return to Bosnia by any means possible. The rest of the division retreated westwards instead, hoping to surrender to the Allied forces. The history of the division is accompanied by numerous testimonies, documents from the time, extracts from official communications, the division's war diary and hundreds of photos and maps. The book also includes a (brief) history of the 23rd Waffen Mountain Division of the SS "Kama".