In 1944, Europe remained under Nazi occupation. After more than four years of war, Nazi Germany had suffered devastating losses but still controlled vast territories beyond its own borders.
Because its forces had to defend front lines, watch over occupied lands, and fight resistance movements, the regime needed more soldiers. It relied increasingly on manpower from the countries it controlled.
New units were formed from local recruits, placed under German officers, and sent to defend the occupation. In the Balkans of southeastern Europe, one such unit was formed mainly from Albanian recruits from Kosovo.
Nazi propaganda presented it as a new and powerful mountain division. In reality, most of its soldiers would flee, and the formation would collapse after only six months.
Before it disintegrated, however, its members would help deport Jews and kill prisoners and unarmed civilians. This is the story of the 21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS "Skanderbeg," the crimes its men committed, and the deadly consequences that followed its soldiers and commanders.
The conditions that later made the division possible began to emerge before World War II. On April 7, 1939, Fascist Italy invaded Albania, a country on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, and subjected it to Italian control.
World War II began on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. The conflict reached the western Balkans on April 6, 1941, when Germany and its partners attacked the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and forced it to surrender in less than two weeks.
After its defeat, most of Kosovo, a former Yugoslav region, was annexed to Italian-controlled Albania. Along with several neighboring districts, it formed "Greater Albania," an expanded territory intended to unite areas with large Albanian communities.
Many Kosovo Albanians wanted the region to remain united and feared being placed again under Yugoslav rule after the war. The Italian authorities, and later the Germans, exploited these hopes and fears to gain local support and recruit men into their forces.
Local armed groups were recruited to fight the Chetniks, royalist Serb fighters, and the Yugoslav Partisans, the communist-led resistance movement under Josip Broz Tito. The occupation also deepened old conflicts between the region's communities.
Some Albanian collaborators expelled their Serb neighbors from their homes, seized their property, and killed civilians or those suspected of supporting the resistance without evidence of participation in fighting.
Italy surrendered to the Allies on September 8, 1943, ending Italian rule over Albania and most of Kosovo, but that did not end foreign control. German forces rushed to replace the Italians and occupy their former territories.
Germany presented Albania as an independent state, although its government depended on German support and the presence of German troops in the country. The new occupiers wanted to turn local support for the idea of "Greater Albania" into soldiers fighting in their war.
In September, Albanian nationalists founded the Second League of Prizren. The organization supported cooperation with the German occupiers. One of its most prominent figures was Xhafer Deva, a politician from the city of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo.
In November 1943, he became interior minister in the German-backed Albanian government. Deva used his position to help recruit Kosovo Albanians to fight the Partisans. His role was to provide local support and find recruits, while the Germans organized, trained, and led them.
This suited the plans of Heinrich Himmler, head of the Nazi paramilitary SS organization, which enforced racial policy and ran the concentration camp system. Its military branch, the Waffen SS, formed divisions that fought alongside the Wehrmacht, Germany's regular armed forces.
A battalion of several hundred Albanian soldiers was already serving in the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS "Handschar," a German-led formation made up mainly of Bosnian Muslims.
In February 1944, Adolf Hitler approved Himmler's proposal to create a separate Albanian division. The division was established on May 1, 1944, under the name 21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS "Skanderbeg."
It was named after Albania's greatest national hero, Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg, a 15th-century Albanian commander famous for fighting the Ottoman Empire that ruled most of the Balkans at the time. Nazi propaganda used his image and the double-headed Albanian eagle alongside SS symbols to attract recruits.
Most of the soldiers were Muslim Albanians from Kosovo, though there were fewer Catholics. Muslim recruits reportedly swore an oath on the Quran, pledging to wage a jihad presented as a holy war against unbelievers.
The Germans provided most of the officers and technical specialists, drawing on personnel from Germany and German-speaking communities in southeastern Europe. The commander was August Schmidhuber, an experienced officer who had served in the "Prinz Eugen" Division, a Waffen SS formation recruited largely from ethnic Germans living in Yugoslavia.
Despite its name, the "Skanderbeg" division never reached its planned size as a full division. At its peak, it included about 6,500 men, many of whom received only six weeks of training before being sent into combat.
The division was involved in crimes against civilians less than two weeks after it was formed. On May 14, 1944, its soldiers raided the homes of Jewish families in Pristina, today the capital of Kosovo.
They arrested 281 Jews, including local residents and refugees who had fled to Kosovo from other occupied territories. The prisoners were then handed over to German security authorities.
Most of those detained were later transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northwestern Germany, where many died from hunger, disease, overcrowding, and lack of medical care. By helping carry out the arrests, the "Skanderbeg" division participated directly in the Holocaust, Nazi Germany's campaign to persecute and kill the Jews of Europe.
The campaign against Jews was not the division's only crime. Across Kosovo, its soldiers killed Orthodox Serb civilians and looted and burned their homes.
Soldiers of "Skanderbeg" became increasingly despised by their German officers for their lack of discipline and widespread looting. Schmidhuber himself complained about the men under his command when he said of the Albanian soldier: "During an attack, he advances only as long as he finds something to steal or loot. For him, the war ends when he seizes a goat, a plowshare, or a sewing machine wheel."
His criticism focused on the damage this behavior did to military discipline and combat effectiveness, not on the suffering of the civilians who were robbed or attacked.
This lack of discipline and violence accompanied the division in its first major battles. In the summer of 1944, German commanders sent the "Skanderbeg" division to northeastern Montenegro as part of an attempt to prevent the Partisans from advancing toward Serbia.
The poorly trained division struggled against experienced opponents, suffering losses as the operation quickly began to collapse. German-led forces then turned against villages accused of supporting the resistance.
On July 28, soldiers from "Skanderbeg" entered the settlement of Velika along with the 14th Regiment of the "Prinz Eugen" Division and local auxiliary units. Most of the local men had already left the village or were hiding in the surrounding forests.
Those who remained were mainly women, children, and the elderly. That did not stop the men of the "Skanderbeg" division. The attackers moved through Velika, killing civilians in their homes, gardens, and fields.
Some victims were shot where they were found, while others were thrown into burning buildings. One survivor, Divna Vucetic, later recalled how a member of the division killed her son and tried to kill her as well.
She said: "He fired immediately, hitting my son Borislav in my arms, and hitting me in my right arm." The soldier who shot me entered the house, stayed there briefly, then went out. When the soldier left the house, he reloaded his rifle, came within two steps of me, and looked me directly in the eyes. I turned away so I would not see him fire, but I could not escape. He fired several shots. I remember that only the fifth bullet brought me down. Then I lost consciousness.
In about two hours, at least 428 people were killed, including around 120 children. Some estimates put the death toll as high as 550.
Even as members of the "Skanderbeg" division took part in the Velika massacre, the division was already disintegrating as a military force. The failed battles in Montenegro left it weak, with more than 400 men having fled or disappeared before the operation ended.
During the second half of August, the remaining forces fought around Debar, a city in the western part of present-day North Macedonia, but again failed to defeat the insurgents. German commanders concluded that the unit was no longer fit for anything but basic guard duties.
Some members were then assigned to guard chromium mines near Kosovo, where one "Skanderbeg" regiment reportedly lost its men in clashes with insurgents, while desertions continued to shrink the division's strength.
On September 1, 1944, the division's collapse turned into open rebellion. Soldiers stationed in Tetovo and Gostivar, two cities in western present-day North Macedonia, mutinied, killed German officers and personnel, and fled with their weapons and uniforms.
By then, Germany was losing the war. The Red Army, the armed forces of the Soviet Union, was approaching the Balkans as Romania and Bulgaria abandoned their alliances with Germany.
By the beginning of October 1944, the division's strength had fallen to about 4,900 men, fewer than 1,500 of whom were fit for combat. Heinrich Himmler tried to fill the gap with German sailors withdrawn from Greece, but these reinforcements could not turn what remained of "Skanderbeg" into an effective division.
In October, the remaining forces fought around the city of Gjakova in western Kosovo and covered the withdrawal of German forces from the region. The collapse of the division as a military formation did not stop its crimes against prisoners and civilians.
Schmidhuber ordered his forces to burn more villages and kill more people. In the autumn of 1944, members of the division shot or hanged 131 resistance fighters.
On October 24, General Alexander Löhr, commander of Army Group E, the German command responsible for military operations in Greece and the southern Balkans, ordered all Albanian soldiers still serving in the division to be disarmed and sent home.
On November 1, exactly six months after its creation, the "Skanderbeg" division was officially dissolved. Its German officers, specialists, and sailors were reorganized into "Battle Group Skanderbeg" under the command of Alfred Graf.
They withdrew from Kosovo in mid-November and were later placed under the command of the "Prinz Eugen" Division as the German retreat through the Balkans continued. Although the new unit retained the name "Skanderbeg," the Albanian division Himmler had hoped would become the nucleus of a much larger Waffen SS force in the Balkans had ceased to exist.
The men responsible for its crimes would face the consequences of their actions later. After Germany's surrender, Heinrich Himmler, who had supported the creation of "Skanderbeg," was captured by British forces. He avoided trial by committing suicide with poison on May 23, 1945.
Both August Schmidhuber and Alexander Löhr fell into Yugoslav hands. From February 5 to 16, 1947, they were tried with five other German commanders before a Yugoslav military court in Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia.
Schmidhuber was convicted of participating in massacres, deportations, and other crimes against civilians. Löhr was convicted of war crimes by forces under his command, including the killing of hostages and the burning of villages. Both men were sentenced to death.
Schmidhuber was executed by hanging, while Löhr was executed by firing squad. "Skanderbeg" lasted only six months and failed as a combat formation. Most of its recruits fled, while those who remained proved ineffective in combat and suffered losses against experienced insurgent forces.
Yet its military weakness did not make it harmless. Its members helped deport the Jews of Pristina, killed prisoners, ambushed civilians, looted and burned villages, and took part in the Velika massacre.
The division is not remembered for battlefield victories, but for serving the Nazi occupation, contributing to the Holocaust, and committing violence against people who could not defend themselves.