The 21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg was a German mountain infantry division. It was the armed wing of the German Nazi Party that served alongside, but was never formally part of, the Wehrmacht during World War II. In May 1944, members of the division arrested 281 Jews in Pristina and handed them over to the Germans, who transported them to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The division itself was better known for this action and for murdering, raping, and looting in predominantly Serb areas than for participating in combat operations on behalf of theGerman war effort. disbanded on 1 November 1944.
About 21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg in brief
The 21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg was a German mountain infantry division. It was the armed wing of the German Nazi Party that served alongside, but was never formally part of, the Wehrmacht during World War II. In May 1944, members of the division arrested 281 Jews in Pristina and handed them over to the Germans, who transported them to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where many were killed. The division itself was better known for this action and for murdering, raping, and looting in predominantly Serb areas than for participating in combat operations on behalf of theGerman war effort. Its only significant military actions took place during a German anti-Partisan offensive in the German occupied territory of Montenegro in June and July 1944. disbanded on 1 November 1944. The remaining members were incorporated into the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen. After the war, divisional commander SS-Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der Waffin-SS August Schmidhuber was found guilty of war crimes by a court in Belgrade and executed in 1947. Albania remained occupied by Italy until its surrender to the Allies in September 1943. In August of that year, faced with the imminent collapse of the Italian war effort, Germany deployed the 2nd Panzer Army to the Balkans to take over areas previously occupied byItaly. Most of Kosovo was annexed to Albania, and in the beginning, Albanians living there enthusiastically welcomed the Italian occupation.
They took advantage of their changed circumstances, attacked their Serb neighbours, and burned the homes of as many as 30,000 Serb and Montenegrin settlers. Although officially under Italian rule, the Albanians in Kosovo were given control of the region and encouraged to open Albanian-language schools, which had been banned by the Yugoslav government. The Italians also gave the inhabitants Albanian citizenship and allowed them to fly the flag of Albania. Some Kosovo Albanians even suggested that Albanians were \”Aryans of Illyrian heritage\”. The Germans took control of all Albanian forces that had been collaborating with the Italians prior to their capitulation, including the Balli Kombtar, an anti-communist and nationalist militia. That year, a number of Albanians from Kosovo and the Sandžak region were recruited into the 13th Mountain Division and largely composed of Bosnian Muslims. The Germans decided those troops were unreliable and quickly decided to strengthen the Albanian army and gendarmerie, but quickly decided they were too unreliable. The Albanians took over control of Tirana and other parts of the country, and were based in the town of Polizei, both based in Albania. In the early 1940s, the Germans took over most of Albania’s Albanian towns and cities, including Shkodra, Gjirokara, Dibra, Elbasan, and Kostan, as well as parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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