On April 6, 1941, German bombers appeared over Belgrade, and air raids quickly spread across Yugoslavia. Within days, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia collapsed, and the Nazis imposed military rule over Serbia. In the months that followed, guerrilla attacks against German forces increased, turning Serbia into a war zone. To suppress the resistance, the occupation authorities issued a fixed reprisal order in September 1941: for every German soldier killed, 100 civilian hostages would be executed, and for every soldier wounded, 50 civilians would be shot.
By mid-October 1941, a clash in central Serbia left 10 German soldiers dead and 26 wounded. German commanders calculated the number of civilians to be killed, launched reprisals in nearby villages, and then extended the killings into the city of Kragujevac, where men and boys between 16 and 60 were rounded up, marched to fields outside the city, and executed with heavy machine guns. When the killing ended, nearly 2,800 men and boys lay dead in mass graves. The massacre did not go unpunished, and the perpetrators eventually paid with their own lives.
The Second World War began on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. By early 1941, Adolf Hitler was preparing for the planned invasion of the Soviet Union. Before launching the campaign in the East, the German leadership sought to secure its southern flank in the Balkans, where political instability in Yugoslavia and the presence of British forces in Greece made the region a strategic concern for Berlin. On April 6, 1941, German aircraft bombed Belgrade in a massive air raid that killed many civilians and destroyed large parts of the city.
Within days, German, Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian troops advanced from all sides. The Yugoslav army, poorly prepared and ethnically divided, could not resist the coordinated assault. After only 11 days of fighting, the government signed an unconditional capitulation on April 17, 1941. Yugoslavia ceased to exist, and its territory was divided among the Axis powers and their local allies.
As resistance to the occupation grew, Berlin introduced increasingly brutal measures to suppress it. On September 16, 1941, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the High Command of Nazi Germany’s Armed Forces, issued Hitler’s order requiring the execution of 100 hostages for every German soldier killed and 50 for every soldier wounded. Three days later, on September 19, Hitler appointed Austrian General of the Infantry Franz Böhme as chief commander in Serbia, giving him direct authority to suppress attacks against German forces in the occupied territory. Böhme arrived with the staff of the 18th Mountain Corps and took control of the German occupation forces already stationed there, including the 704th, 714th, and 717th infantry divisions.
Böhme openly encouraged vengeance against the Serbian population and reminded his soldiers, many of whom were Austrian-born, of the defeats Austria-Hungary had suffered during the First World War. Addressing his troops, he declared: “Your objective is to be achieved in a land where, in 1914, streams of German blood flowed because of the treachery of the Serbs, men and women. You are the avengers of those dead. ”
The consequences of those orders soon became visible in the town of Gornji Milanovac in central Serbia.
By late September 1941, the town had been effectively cut off from the rest of German-occupied Serbia as guerrilla fighters repeatedly disrupted road and rail transport in the surrounding area. Two different resistance movements operated in the region: the Chetniks, a Serbian nationalist guerrilla force loyal to the Yugoslav government in exile and the Serbian monarchy, and the Partisans, a communist-led resistance movement organized under Josip Broz Tito that sought to wage a broader revolutionary war against the Axis occupation. On September 29, 1941, fighters from both groups attacked the German garrison in Gornji Milanovac, which was defended by German troops stationed in a local school building. The insurgents did not expect to capture the garrison; the attack was intended to demonstrate resistance and attract new recruits from the surrounding villages.
The assault began in the morning. The guerrillas quickly overran the German sentry posts, but heavy machine gun fire from inside the school halted their advance. After 90 minutes of fighting, 10 German soldiers had been killed and 26 wounded. Under German occupation policy, these casualties carried devastating consequences for the civilian population.
The standing orders demanded the execution of 100 Serbian civilians for every German soldier killed and 50 for every soldier wounded. The fighting in Gornji Milanovac triggered a massive reprisal operation, and German authorities began searching for hostages in the area around the nearby industrial city of Kragujevac. Located about 100 km south of Belgrade, Kragujevac had a population of more than 40,000 in 1941 and served as the headquarters of a German military district. In October 1941, German commanders decided that the city and its surrounding communities would supply the hostages needed to fulfill the brutal reprisal quota.
The first arrests began on the evening of October 18, 1941. German authorities ordered the detention of all male Jews in Kragujevac, together with individuals suspected of communist activity. Only 70 men were taken into custody, but because this number was far too small to satisfy the reprisal quota, German troops turned to nearby villages the following day. Soldiers entered the villages of Mečkovac, Maršić, Grošnica, and Milatovac, where men were rounded up and executed on the spot.
In these four villages alone, 422 civilians were shot, even though no German soldiers had been killed there. Despite these killings, the Germans still had not reached the number of hostages they required. German commanders therefore ordered large-scale arrests inside Kragujevac itself. Soldiers moved through the city arresting men and boys between the ages of 16 and 60, seizing people in fields, factories, markets, on the streets, and in their homes.
Some 300 school children and teachers were arrested in their classrooms. Roma children, mostly shoe shiners who had refused to polish German soldiers’ boots, were rounded up as well. The detainees were taken to army barracks on the outskirts of the city, where each hostage was registered and his belongings recorded. By evening, several thousand men and boys had been rounded up and placed under armed guard, waiting through the night for the decision that would determine their fate.
Members of the Serbian fascist movement Zbor were allowed to inspect the prisoners, after which a large number of detainees were removed from the execution lists. More than 3,000 individuals identified as supporters of the movement were released. Those who remained were labeled by the Nazis as communists, and for the German authorities, such accusations were enough to justify their execution. On the morning of October 21, 1941, the prisoners were marched from the city toward open fields on the outskirts of Kragujevac.
Groups of between 50 and 120 men and boys were lined up before German firing squads from the 717th Infantry Division. Heavy machine guns were positioned in front of the prisoners, and the executions began. The shootings continued for about seven hours. Witnesses later recalled scenes of extraordinary courage among the condemned.
One elderly teacher reportedly addressed the soldiers before the shooting began, declaring, “Go ahead and shoot. I am conducting my class. ” He was executed together with his students. As they faced the firing squads, many prisoners sang the patriotic song “Hey, Slavs.
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It is estimated that between 2,778 and 2,794 people were murdered during the massacre. Of the total killed, 144 were high school students, and 15 of the victims were 12 years old. Victims included Serbs, Jews, Romani people, Muslims, Macedonians, Slovenes, and members of other nationalities. Roughly 200 of the remaining prisoners were forced to bury the dead, an act that took days.
The rest were sent home. Following the massacre, the Wehrmacht held a military parade through the city center. After the war ended in May 1945, those responsible for the Kragujevac massacre eventually faced justice. The soldiers of the 717th Infantry Division, directly responsible for the massacre, continued anti-partisan operations across the Balkans for the remainder of the war.
In 1943, the division was reorganized as the 117th Jäger Division, and hundreds of those once deployed in Serbia were killed during the Second World War. The Serbian Volunteer Corps, the paramilitary branch of the fascist organization Zbor, which collaborated with the Nazis and was involved in the massacre, retreated into Austria toward the end of the war. There, they surrendered to British forces, but most were later returned to Yugoslavia, where they were executed on charges of treason. Franz Böhme, the commanding general in Serbia with direct responsibility for crushing the resistance, was captured in Norway.
He was brought before the Hostages Trial, a division of the subsequent Nuremberg Trials, and charged with war crimes committed in Serbia. When his extradition to Yugoslavia seemed imminent, Böhme committed suicide. Wilhelm Keitel, who issued Hitler’s order regarding the ratio of hostages to be shot, was indicted by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg as one of the major war criminals. He was found guilty on all counts and executed by hanging on October 16, 1946.
The 64-year-old Keitel’s execution was reportedly botched: the trapdoor was too small, causing painful head injuries, and as he fell with insufficient force to snap his neck, his convulsing lasted 28 minutes before he died. The Kragujevac massacre remains one of the most brutal examples of Nazi reprisal policy during the Second World War, a reminder of how radical ideology in power and blind obedience to orders can lead to unimaginable crimes.
