| 21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg (1st Albanian) | |
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| Active | Raised 1944, Surrendered 1945 |
| Country | Albania |
| Branch | Waffen SS |
| Type | Mountain |
| Size | about 9,000 |
| Nickname | Skanderbeg |
The 21st SS Division Skanderbeg was a Waffen SS Mountain division set up by Heinrich Himmler in March 1944, officially under the title of the 21st Waffen-Gebirgs Division der SS Skanderbeg (Albanische Nr. 1). It was named after George Kastrioti Skanderbeg, the national hero of Albanians who resisted Ottoman invasion for 25 years, and united Albanian princes under one national banner.
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Formation
The names of 11,398 recruits were submitted to Berlin. Of these, 9,275 were deemed suitable for drafting, and 6,491 were actually drafted into the Waffen SS. The final division was formed up by the aforementioned recruits, another three hundred ethnic Albanians transferred from the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar and German and Austrian officers, NCOs and enlisted men. The final total strength of the division was 8,500 to 9,000 men, consisting of two infantry regiments, an artillery regiment, a reconnaissance battalion, a mountain combat engineer battalion, a signals battalion and an anti-tank battalion. Albanians in Kosovo saw the invasion of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia by Axis Powers as an opportunity to secede from the kingdom, and eventually merge with Albania. In 1941 Albania, Western Macedonia, and majority of Kosovo were under Italian control. Following the surrender of Fascist Italy in 1943, the territories under discussion, inhabited largely by Albanians were handed over to Nazi Germany. The 21st Waffen SS Mountain Division was the only fully ethnic Albanian division to be recruited during the Second World War. It was established originally to combat partisans with the promise that the territories with a majority Albanian population were to become an independent and unified state to include Albania, Kosovo and Western Macedonia or what Albanian nationalists called “Natural Albania” or "Ethnic Albania". The division was placed under the command of SS-Standartenführer August Schmidhuber, later promoted to SS-Oberführer. It fought against communists who were on the increase and consolidating their actions, both in Albania and Yugoslavia as the Second World War was drawing to an end. In Kosovo, the division embarked on ethnic cleansing of the Serbs and other non-Albanians.[1][2] The division was operational for a full year (March 1944 – March 1945) loosing pace with the German withdrawal from the area during the last months of WWII, and reorganizing into the 21st SS Mountain Skanderbeg Division, concentrated at Skopje, leading to its defense, alongside the Prinz Eugen Division, of the Vardar River valley in Macedonia, allowing German General Alexander Lohr's Army Group E to retreat from Greece. By January 1945, a group of the Skanderbeg Division retreated to Kosovka Mitrovica in Kosovo and then to Brcko in Bosnia-Herzegovina. They reached Austria in May, 1945, and fought until Germany's surrender. The division surrendered to Western Allied personnel. SS-Brigadefűhrer August Schmidthuber, one of the commanders of the 21st SS Mountain Division "Skanderbeg”, was captured in 1945 and turned over to Yugoslav authorities. He was put on trial in February 1947 by a Yugoslav military tribunal at Belgrade, on charges of participating in massacres, deportations and atrocities against civilians. The tribunal sentenced him to death by hanging. He was executed on February, 27th 1947. [3] The division arm patch consisted of a white double-headed eagle on a black background. The recruits wore the white traditional Albanian highlander cap (plis), and later the SS issued grey headgear in the same style, with the Totenkopf sewn on the front.
Order of Battle
See also
Further reading
- Hermann Neubacher, Sonderauftrag Sudost (1953)
- Haroey Samer, Rescue In Albania: One Hundred Percent Of Jews In Albania Rescued From Holocaust, Brunswick Press, California (1997). Available at: http://www.aacl.com/index11.html
- Noel Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History, New York University Press; New Update edition (November 2000).
- Chris Bishop, Hitler's Foreign SS Divisions (2005)
References
- ^ http://www.kosovo.net/ww2kos.html
- ^ http://www.rastko.org.yu/kosovo/istorija/savic_skenderbeyss.html Rastko project: Albanian Skenderbeg SS Division
- ^ History of the United Nations War Crimes Commission and the Development of the Laws of War p. 528, United Nations War Crimes Commission, London: HMSO, 1948)
-- Divisions of the 
