Page:Robert M. Kennedy - German Antiguerrilla Operations in the Balkans (1941-1944) - CMH Pub 104-18 (1954).pdf/91

74 Finally, German casualties from disease, chiefly typhoid, dysentery, and malaria, were unusually high, as were losses from direct physical exhaustion in the long marches and movements over rough terrain. The majority of the German personnel throughout the operations were of the older age groups and, except for the mountain units, had had little or no experience or conditioning for the type of warfare in which they had to engage.

On the basis of incomplete casualty figures, it can be said with some degree of accuracy that 1 out of 7 soldiers in German uniform, whether German or not, became a casualty by the close of operations. At the time of the capitulation, thousands more fell into Yugoslav hands, when they did not manage to get clear of the Balkans to surrender to Allied forces in Italy or Austria.

All three occupied countries were impoverished by the peninsula-wide fighting and reprisals. Greece, a maritime country, lost the bulk of the merchant fleet upon which it depended for its very existence. Yugoslavia, a grain-producing country that supplied food to much of southern Europe, could no longer even feed itself. Albania, the least developed of the three, lost a large part of the livestock upon which the national economy was based. In a 1-month period in mid-1944, a full quarter of all the locomotives in the Balkans were destroyed by Allied air attacks, a most serious loss in view of the inadequate road system and uneven distribution of food-producing areas. In Yugoslavia, the facilities of numerous mines were destroyed by sabotage, in the fighting to retake them, or demolished by the withdrawing occupation forces.

Perhaps the most significant results of the occupation were in the political field. Two kingdoms fell, if Albania is considered, and replaced by communist dictatorships; Greece was prevented from sharing their fate only by the prompt intervention of strong British ground forces, supported by air and naval units. As was to be expected, the assumption of power by the communists was followed shortly by the elimination of all political opposition and the establishment of one-party states.

The successes achieved by the guerrillas against the Germans, Italians, and Bulgarians in the Balkans during World War II strengthened considerably the tradition of resistance to foreign occupation forces. Communist indoctrination of large segments of the population, with stress placed on clandestine methods and guerrilla tactics, also played its part in awakening this sentiment. Thus there is little doubt that a foreign invader today, whether from East or West, would be confronted with a formidable task of pacification following a successful campaign against the regular forces of the Balkan nations.

The experience of the Germans in their Balkan occupation also offers a number of lessons in the administration of conquered enemy