Mountain Infantery experience Serbia and the Ukraine
This very heavily illustrated book is one the very best of its type in that many sepia toned photos
show the men and officers of the outfit with vehicles from bicycles and horses to huge halftracks and
radio trucks. They also show their weapons and equipment, their captives, the death and destruction
they produced, and their everyday life among occupied people.
There are dead enemy soldiers, odd looking heavy tanks, piles of helmets and rifles, columns of jaunty
Gebirgsjäger on the march, Gebirgsjager on horseback and the graves of dead comrades.
Supplementing about 200 very sharp full-page gravure photos are around a dozen full-page,
full-color paintings by A. Ludecke, one of the Gebirgsjäger who painted what he saw along the
route of the 4th Mountain Division to the Ukraine.
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Hardcover in Half Linen / Cloth
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In good exterior and very good interior condition.
Boards and spine rubbed and slightly dusty/soiled. Faint foxing to boards, otherwise ok with minor traces of use and age.
All pages are complete and tight in the binding.
Approx/Measurements: 10" x 7-1/2" ~ 2.2 lbs.
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by Oberstl. H. M.
Published by Unit 1c of Enzian Div.
Book is divided into two content categories:
Part I
Heuberg - Ungarn - Rumänien - Bulgarien - Serbien
Part II
Ungarn - Slowakei - Ukraine
Background infos:
At the beginning of the 1940s, Yugoslavia found itself surrounded by hostile countries. Except for Greece, all other neighboring countries had signed agreements with either Germany or Italy. Hitler was strongly pressuring Yugoslavia to join the Axis powers. The government was even prepared to reach a compromise with him, but the spirit in the country was completely different. Public demonstrations against Nazism prompted a brutal reaction. The Luftwaffe bombed Belgrade and other major cities and in April 1941, the Axis powers occupied Yugoslavia and disintegrated it. The western parts of the country together with Bosnia and Herzegovina were turned into a Nazi puppet state called the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) and ruled by the Ustashe. Serbia was set up as another puppet state under Serbian army general Milan Nedic. The northern territories were annexed by Hungary, and eastern and southern territories to Bulgaria. Kosovo and Metohia were mostly annexed by Albania which was under the sponsorship of fascist Italy. Montenegro also lost territories to Albania and was then occupied by Italian troops. Slovenia was divided between Germany and Italy that also seized the islands in the Adriatic.
The ruthless attitude of the German occupation forces and the genocidal policy of the Croatian Ustaša regime, aimed at Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and anti-Ustaša Croats, created a strong anti-fascist resistance. Many Yugoslavs, mostly Serbs, stood up against the genocide and the Nazis. Many joined the Partisan forces created by the Communist Party (National Liberation Army headed by Josip Broz Tito) in the liberation and the revolutionary war against Nazis and all the others who were against communism. During this war, the Partisans killed many civilians who did not support their ideals. By the end of 1944, the Red Army liberated Serbia, and by May 1945, the remaining republics were meeting up with the Allied forces in Hungary, Austria and Italy. Yugoslavia was among the countries that had the greatest losses in the war: 1,700,000 (10.8%25 of the population) people were killed and national damages were estimated at 9.1 billion dollars according to the prices of that period.
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