The Muslim Units of the Waffen SS

When the Independent State of Croatia proclaimed its independence on April 10th 1941, during the German invasion of Yugoslavia, part of the land it claimed was the former Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The province was an ethnic and religious mix, with a portion of the population being Catholic Croatian, a portion being Orthodox Serbian, and a portion being Croatians of the Muslim faith. It was these Muslim inhabitants of Bosnia that Himmler and the SS would target in their recruitment of a Croatian SS Division

The reasons for the recruitment in particular of Croatian Muslims by the SS were many-fold. For one, Himmler was fascinated by the Islamic faith, and thought Muslims to be fearless soldiers willing to kill for their religion. Himmler also subscribed to the propaganda theory that Croatians (and therefore the Croatian Muslims) were not, in fact, Slavic people, but actually of Aryan (Gothic) descent, and thereby acceptable to the racially "pure" SS. The fact that this ludicrous theory would not hold up to any kind of serious scrutiny was conveniently ignored. Finally, the Germans were hoping to rally the World's 350 million Muslims to their side, in a struggle against the British Empire. The creation of a Muslim, albeit European Muslim Division, was considered a stepping stone to this greater end.

Adolf Hitler approved of Himmler's idea on February 13th 1943. Prior to the formation of the division, however, approval also had to be granted by the Croatian government, as their citizens were to be recruited, and on Croatian territory. The Croatian Poglavnik, Ante Pavelic, and his ministers had many problems with the idea, but eventually agreed to the division's creation on March 5th 1943. The divisional strength reached the required 26,000 men by mid 1943.

The new division was assigned the number "13", and originally named the "13 SS Frei.Gebirgs Division (kroatien). The full name "13 Waffen-Gebirgs-Division der SS 'Handschar' (kroatische Nr. 1)" was not given until May, 1944. A "Handschar" (or Handzar in Croatian) is curved Turkish sword - the Scimitar. This sword has historically been the symbol of Bosnia. The Division was to have 2 Infantry Regiments (Waffen-Gebirgs-Jager Regiments der SS 27 & 28 - kroatisches Nrs. 1 & 2), an Artillery Regiment (SS-Gebirgs-Artillerie Regiment 13), a Reconnaissance Company, a Panzerjager Company, a Flak Company, a Pioneer Battalion, and other support units; and was designated an SS "mountain" division. The first commander (from March 9, 1943 till August 1, 1943) was SS Standartenfuhrer Herbert von Obwurzer. Oberfuhrer (later Brigadefuhrer) Karl-Gustav Sauberzweig took over till June 1st 1944, when Desiderius Hampel (Oberfuhrer, later Brigadefuhrer) replaced him. Hampel commanded the remnants of the division until its surrender on May 8th 1945.

The uniform worn by the division was regular SS issue, with a divisional collar patch showing an arm, holding a Scimitar, over a Swastika. On the left arm was a Croatian armshield (red-white chessboard). Headgear was the Muslim Fez, in field grey (normal service) or red ("walking out"), with the SS eagle and death's head emblazoned. Non-Muslim members could opt to wear the normal SS mountain cap. The oval mountain troop Edelweiss patch was worn on the right arm.

During the Second World War in Yugoslavia many Muslim clerics in Bosnia and Kosovo were willing accomplices in the genocide of the nations Serbian, Jewish and Roma population. From 1941 until 1945, the Nazi-installed regime of Ante Pavelic in Croatia carried out some of the most horrific crimes of the Holocaust (known as the Porajmos by the Roma), killing over 800,000 Yugoslav citizens - 750,000 Serbs, 60,000 Jews and 26,000 Roma. In these crimes, they were helped by Muslim fundamentalists in Bosnia and Kosovo who were openly supported by the Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini. A notorious anti-Semite, he openly encouraged Muslims to join Nazi units that would be later implicated in genocide and crimes against humanity - the infamous Hanjar (or Handschar) 13th Waffen SS division. One of these crimes was The Massacre at Koritska Jama Gorge, in Bosnia during 1941 .

Many of the victims of the Holocaust/Porajmos were murdered in the Second World War's third largest death camp - Jasenovac, where over 200,000 people - mainly Orthodox Serbs met their deaths.

The most senior Muslim cleric to be involved in the Holocaust/Porajmos was Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who according to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (Edition 1990, Volume 2, Pages 706 and 707), made a substantial contribution to the Axis war effort by organizing "in record time" recruitment to Muslim SS units in Croatia that would be involved in some of the worse atrocities of the Second World War.

Altogether, it is estimated that some 20,000 Muslims fought in the Hanjar (Sword) SS Division, which fought against Yugoslav partisans led by General Tito, and carried out police and security details in fascist Hungary. The Nazi's recruited two SS divisions from Yugoslavia's Muslim population: the infamous Bosnian 13th Waffen Hanjar (or Handschar) SS division, and the Albanian Skanderbeg 21st Waffen SS division. SS conscription in Yugoslavia during the war produced 42,000 Waffen SS and police troops

Once in Berlin, the Mufti received an enthusiastic reception by the "Islamische Zentralinstitut" and the whole Islamic community of Germany, which welcomed him as the "Führer of the Arabic world." In an introductory speech, he called the Jews the "most fierce enemies of the Muslims" and an "ever corruptive element" in the world. Husseini soon became an honored guest of the Nazi leadership and met on several occasions with Hitler. He personally lobbied the Führer against the plan to let Jews leave Hungary, fearing they would immigrate to Palestine. He also strongly intervened when Adolf Eichman tried to cut a deal with the British government to exchange German POWs for 5000 Jewish children who also could have fled to Palestine. The Mufti's protests with the SS were successful, as the children were sent to death camps in Poland instead. One German officer noted in his journals that the Mufti would liked to have seen the Jews "preferably all killed." On a visit to Auschwitz, he reportedly admonished the guards running the gas chambers to work more diligently. Throughout the war, he appeared regularly on German radio broadcasts to the Middle East, preaching his pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic message to the Arab masses back home.

To show gratitude towards his hosts, in 1943 the Mufti traveled several times to Bosnia, where on orders of the SS he recruited the notorious "Hanjar troopers," a special Bosnian Waffen SS company which slaughtered 90% of Bosnia's Jews and burned countless Serbian churches and villages. These Bosnian Muslim recruits rapidly found favor with SS chief Heinrich Himmler, who established a special Mullah Military school in Dresden.

The only condition the Mufti set for his help was that after Hitler won the war, the entire Jewish population in Palestine should be liquidated. After the war, Husseini fled to Switzerland and from there escaped via France to Cairo, were he was warmly received.

All religions have idjits who don't get it. Islam, unfortunately, has a lot more idjits to its name, probably because it's got more violent content in its pages than other holy books.

This was the nonsense which was bounced around by Islamic apologists when 9/11 first happened. This is not about idiots in "all religions". This is not about the IRA or the problems in Ireland. This is about the global jihad. This is about 13 centuries of Islamic repression. This is about the challenge to Western interests. This is about a religion which has never stopped its desire for global sharia. So while some desire to obfuscate the issue by misdirecting the discussion to "idiots" in "all religions" and even to suggest that Islam has a greater proportion of idiots, is entirely irrelevant to the nature of Islam and its global rather than merely regional problems.

The battle in Ireland has nothing to do with Christianity. It has far more to do with socialism. But it is often used to slime Christianity by those who know nothing about it.

Nazi's wore belt buckles that said God is with us, and sang Christmas carols outside the gas chambers while the Jews died. Was it because they believed in Christ? No, actually they were occultists. But they knew the value of causing shame to Christ's name for their master.

Jim Jones claimed to be a Christen too. He taught a very non-Christian viewpoint that would stand out like a sore thumb in any church that actually was Christian, but the non-Christians that followed him did not know that because they had no idea what Christianity was about, so they could not spot a counterfeit if it bit them. It did bite them by the way.

This is the very problem you have stumbled into. I might suggest, before you get all offended at Christianity, you might find out what it is first. You might find out that you have been deceived like the Jews of that day into hating the very thing you should love by wolves in sheep shirts.

Nosense? No, just the facts.

You talk of Islam as though it were one great force walking across the world. In reality it's as broken and divided as any other major religion. 1.5 Billion people spread across several countries in more than a few regions does not make for a good unity. The folks in the Middle East can't even get their ducks in a row to do ANYTHING unilateral.

I know from personal experience that most Muslims really do just want to live their lives and get by. There are exceptions, and these need to be dealt with - resolutely and harshly - but you can't tar all Muslims everywhere with the brush of the global jihad.

What happened on 911 was, by the standards of the Noble Qu'ran, harram. Of course, you have Muslims out there who don't see it that way, just as you have "Christians" who think it's okay to act like animals. They all can be found, f**ked and forgotten, and I'll shed no tears for any. But I won't accept that all are bad because of the actions of the mad, the bad and the thankfully few.

J

BTW, you misunderstand my point entirely. It is that those who disparage the liberties of some (in your case Muslims) only create an atmosphere in which the liberties of themselves and others are ultimately undermined. A victim of Nazi oppression made this point this point many decades ago when he warned "They came for the Catholics but I wasn't a Catholic so I didn't speak up, etc."

Who is disparaging the liberties of Muslims? Muslims in the free world have infinitely more liberties than the all their millions of fellow Muslims have in the Islamic world. For you, pointing out the work of the Grand Mufti in rallying and creating an Islamic SS division in Bosnia - the leader of the "palestinian' Arabs during the British Mandate period - is construed by you to entail some sort of slight against Islamics. As if historical allusions which aren't flattering to Islamics create a slight against Islam which guys like you rush to minimize and relativize. The additional concurrent story here is that several emerging/newly created Islamic states in the ME and North Africa were openly sympathetic to Nazism. We all know about Europe and the Nazi movements there. What most don't realize is that the "religion of peace" adherents had a love affair with Nazi ideology. Stories like the above seek to open this historical book obfuscated so long by those historians empathetic to Islam.

The battle in Ireland has nothing to do with Christianity.

(Funny how it seems to have followed the lines of it, then.)

Nazi's wore belt buckles that said God is with us, and sang Christmas carols outside the gas chambers while the Jews died. Was it because they believed in Christ? No, actually they were occultists.

(Bull. Most Nazi soldiers were Christian. There were a FEW of the high ranking ones who were into the occult, but that was hardly a widespread thing. When war came around, they did the same thing Christians everywhere do when a war comes around: they followed orders and begged God to be forgiven for any sins they might commit while doing it.)

Jim Jones claimed to be a Christen too.

(That's right, but he was no Christian I'd recognize.)

This is the very problem you have stumbled into. I might suggest, before you get all offended at Christianity, you might find out what it is first.

(I'd suggest that you ask questions before you assume. I was raised Christian. I respect Christianity. What I do NOT respect is people who claim to be Christian but do not act like it. Like some of the folks in Ireland, for example)

J

You talk of Islam as though it were one great force walking across the world. In reality it's as broken and divided as any other major religion. 1.5 Billion people spread across several countries in more than a few regions does not make for a good unity. The folks in the Middle East can't even get their ducks in a row to do ANYTHING unilateral.

The overriding unity of Islam is the overwhelming desire to have sharia as the global unifying principle. This is unequivocal in Islamic belief. Anyone who takes seriously the Koran, and most Islamics do, believe that either by demographics or by Jihad this will take place. The muted responses by most Islamics when 9/11 happened and subsequently their behaviour, particularly from the seat of Islam - Saudi Arabia - display the simple fact that Islam is a dangerous virus which has its viral infections spread over most of this world but particularly in the free world. Call it Islamism if you will. Even Pipes states that Islamists make up 10-15% of the global Islamic population. If you think that 150,000,000 adherents does not present as a global danger than you are very naive. This, in addition to the fact that the sharia ideology is a mainstream ideology in Islam regarldless of the ultimate means envisaged to accomplish that end.

I know from personal experience that most Muslims really do just want to live their lives and get by. There are exceptions, and these need to be dealt with - resolutely and harshly - but you can't tar all Muslims everywhere with the brush of the global jihad.

This is the tactic which has been used by Islamic sympathizers. They attack people who point out the pervasive problem of Islam by resorting to the "guy down the street" nonsense. Keep the little-town Islamic rhetoric to a minimum it only points out that you're more inclined to be the next victim of the quiet Islamic down the street...or rather your neighbour who you've lulled into believing your home-spun Islamic myths.

What happened on 911 was, by the standards of the Noble Qu'ran, harram. Of course, you have Muslims out there who don't see it that way, just as you have "Christians" who think it's okay to act like animals. They all can be found, f**ked and forgotten, and I'll shed no tears for any. But I won't accept that all are bad because of the actions of the mad, the bad and the thankfully few.

Here again you bring christians into your relativized rhetoric. Your perceptions are unfortunately reflective of many Islamics who try to whitewash the global menace by pointing out disparate nut-cases in other religions. It wont work with this poster.

"If you think that 150,000,000 adherents does not present as a global danger than you are very naive."

(No, I just know how people work. I know that most modern Muslims couldn't be bothered to go on a Jihad if you paid them - and that's saying something.)

"This is the tactic which has been used by Islamic sympathizers. They attack people who point out the pervasive problem of Islam by resorting to the "guy down the street" nonsense."

(The pervasive problem of Islam? Okay, now I got your number, Jenny.)

"Keep the little-town Islamic rhetoric to a minimum it only points out that you're more inclined to be the next victim of the quiet Islamic down the street...or rather your neighbour who you've lulled into believing your home-spun Islamic myths."

(Unless you're willing to tell me that you've lived in a Muslim country, as I do, I'm just going to dismiss this as the blind man outside 'looking' in, rather than informed commentary.

(Come back and talk to me when you've gone and seen for yourself what the books you read warned you about.)

J

I have no problem with pointing out the considerable underside of Islam. As I said before, Islam is a mixed bag. So are all religions to one degree or another (for example the recent epidemic of pedophile priests and their protectors in the Church)...though I am perfectly willing to agree that Modern Islam on the whole is worse than the others.

The "underside" of Islam is an underside that doesn't relativize to mixed bags of other religions. Since when has jihadic ideology and Islamism (some 100 to 150 million adherents according to Pipes) translate to paedophilic priests. It's not just the fact that some religious adherents have gradations of stupidity and localized destructive behaviour from time to time, it's the fact that this Islamic problem is serious and dangerous enough in a pervasive sense that minimization only serves to whitewash the problem.

If you don't believe that many folks here want to toss out (or worse) the civil liberties of Muslims, read a few posts on FR.

When it happens ping me and then will take theoretical rhetoric as a basis for argument. In the meantime watch and be of sober mind.

(No, I just know how people work. I know that most modern Muslims couldn't be bothered to go on a Jihad if you paid them - and that's saying something.)

Of course they wouldn't. Why not let their Islamist brethren do all the dirty work. They can pick the pieces up later.

(The pervasive problem of Islam? Okay, now I got your number, Jenny.)

What? Keeping track of Christians for some reason?

(Unless you're willing to tell me that you've lived in a Muslim country, as I do, I'm just going to dismiss this as the blind man outside 'looking' in, rather than informed commentary.

Yeah. I'm sure that as a Christian I'd be welcome with open arms in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc.

(Come back and talk to me when you've gone and seen for yourself what the books you read warned you about.)

I've read many passages and read a number of histories on Islam. What's your excuse?

It would be rather refreshing if some of those "diverse elements" would pipe in and do some condemnation.....their silence has been deafening.

Bingo! If Muslims are so peaceful why aren't they speaking out against everything taking place, specifically here in America. Even the "they are afraid of being attacked by other Muslims" theory doesn't hold clout, as that just implies that the majority or a good percentage of Muslims in the states are evil.

I tolerate but keep my eyes open and my weapons handy. A little paranoia keeps the senses sharpened.

I CAN, however, remember all the 'fun' that goes on in Northern Ireland between the Protestants and the Catholics

Uh, if you knew anything about that conflict, you would know that it is more ethno-political, rather than theocratic. The "protestants" (many of whom are atheists and agnostics) are the descendents of Scots and British settlers who were sent by the crown in the 17th Century. The "Catholics" (including the atheist Marxists in the IRA) are those who were there before good 'ol William of Orange came through. To compare them to the sand people in the Mid East is laughable.

You would as long as you played by their rules. THat really goes for any country you visit or stay in, of course, but many Muslim countries have extremely harsh rules. So go visit the moderate ones and steer clear of the more hardline ones. Easy, huh?

Yeah. Just like Communist regimes. No thanks. I speak about the gospel and get my head chopped off. Not my idea of fun.

I know what I'm talking about from first-hand experience - that's what.

Yeah, I really, really believe you. Yes I do.

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