Artur Phleps
Artur Gustav Martin Phleps was an Austro-Hungarian, Romanian and Nazi German army officer who held the rank of Obergruppenführer in the Waffen-SS during World War II. An Austro-Hungarian Army officer before and during World War I, Phleps specialised in mountain warfare and logistics, and had been promoted to Oberstleutnant by the end of the war. During the interwar period he joined the Romanian Army, reaching the rank of General de divizie, and also became an adviser to King Carol. After he spoke out against the government, he was sidelined and asked to be dismissed from the army.
In 1941, he left Romania and joined the Waffen-SS as an SS-Standartenführer under his mother's maiden name of Stolz. Seeing action on the Eastern Front as a regimental commander with the SS Motorised Division Wiking, he later raised and commanded the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen, raised the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar, and commanded the V SS Mountain Corps. Units under his command committed many crimes against the civilian population of the Independent State of Croatia, German-occupied territory of Serbia and Italian governorate of Montenegro. His final appointment was as plenipotentiary general in south Siebenbürgen and the Banat, during which he organised the evacuation of the Volksdeutsche of Siebenbürgen to the Reich. In addition to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, Phleps was awarded the German Cross in Gold, and after he was shot and killed in the aftermath of the 1944 Romanian coup d'état, he was awarded the Oak Leaves to his Knight's Cross.
Early life
Phleps was born in what was then called Birthälm, near Hermannstadt in Siebenbürgen, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At the time, Siebenbürgen was densely populated by Romanian ethnic Germans, commonly referred to as Transylvanian Saxons. He was the third son of a surgeon, Dr. Gustav Phleps, and Sophie, the daughter of a peasant. Both families had lived in Siebenbürgen for centuries. After finishing the Lutheran Realschule school in Hermannstadt, Phleps entered the Imperial and Royal cadet school in Pressburg in 1900, and on 1 November 1901 was commissioned as a Leutnant in the 3rd Regiment of the County of Tyrol.In 1903, Phleps was transferred to the 11th Feldjäger Battalion in Güns, and in 1905 was accepted into the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt. He completed his studies in two years, and was endorsed as suitable for service in the General Staff. Following promotion to Oberleutnant he was transferred to the staff of the 13th Infantry Regiment at Esseg in Slavonia, then to the 6th Infantry Division in Graz. This was followed by a promotion to Hauptmann in 1911, along with a position on the staff of the XV Army Corps in Sarajevo. There, he specialised in mobilisation and communications, in the difficult terrain of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
World War I
At the outbreak of World War I, Phleps was serving with the staff of the 32nd Infantry Division in Budapest. His division was involved in the early stages of the Serbian campaign, during which Phleps was transferred to the operations staff of the Second Army. This Army was soon withdrawn from the Serbian front and deployed via the Carpathian Mountains to the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia, to defend against a successful offensive by the Russian Imperial army. The Second Army continued to fight the Russians in and around the Carpathians through the winter of 1914–1915. In 1915 Phleps was again transferred, this time to Armeegruppe Rohr commanded by General of the Cavalry Franz Rohr von Denta, which was formed in the Austrian Alps, in response to the Italian declaration of war in May 1915. Armeegruppe Rohr became the basis for the formation of the 10th Army, which was headquartered in Villach. Phleps subsequently became the deputy quartermaster of the 10th Army, responsible for organising the supply of the troops fighting the Italians in the mountains.On 1 August 1916, Phleps was promoted to major. Later that month, King Ferdinand I of Romania led the Kingdom of Romania in joining the Triple Entente, subsequently invading Phleps's homeland of Siebenbürgen. On 27 August, Phleps became the chief of staff of the 72nd Infantry Division, which was involved in Austro-Hungarian operations to repel the Romanian invasion. He remained in this theatre of operations for the next two years, ultimately serving as the chief quartermaster of the German 9th Army, and was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class, on 27 January 1917. In 1918 he returned to the mountains when he was transferred to Armeegruppe Tirol, and ended the war as an Oberstleutnant and chief quartermaster for the entire Alpine front.
Between the wars
After the war, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolved and Phleps returned to his homeland, which had become part of the Kingdom of Romania, officiated later under the Treaty of Trianon. He was appointed as commander of the Saxon National Guard, a militia which was serving with the Romanian Army and formed of the German-speaking people of Siebenbürgen, in 1918.On 1 April 1919, he was named chief of staff of the, a unit formed from Transylvanian volunteers under the command of a Romanian officer, General de brigadă . In this role, Phleps confronted the Hungarian communist revolutionary government of Béla Kun, which fought against Romania in 1919. He participated in the Carei-Debrecen offensive, and in the crossing of the Tisza, distinguishing himself in the battles for the bridgehead at Tokaj and at Miskolc.
On 17 July 1919, he was admitted in the Romanian Army with the rank of Locotenent-colonel. For his tactical and commanding abilities displayed in the war, he was praised by Generals Hanzu, and Petala, and was decorated with the Officer's cross of the Order of the Star of Romania with swords and ribbon of military virtue. He was also promoted to the rank of Colonel in June 1920. Between 1921 and 1923, he commanded the 84th Infantry Regiment from Bistrița, then joined the general army headquarters and started teaching logistics at the Romanian War Academy in Bucharest. He attended the V Army Corps staff college in Brașov, and published a book titled Logistics: Basics of Organisation and Execution in 1926, which became the standard work on logistics for the Romanian Army. Ironically, after the book was published, Phleps failed his first general's examination on the topic of logistics. He commanded various Romanian units, including the 1st Brigade of the vânători de munte, while also serving as a military advisor to King Carol II in the 1930s. Phleps was promoted to General de brigadă in 1933, and reached the rank of Divisional general in 1938, despite his reported disdain for the corruption, intrigue and hypocrisy of the royal court. After criticising the government's policy and publicly calling King Carol a liar when another general tried to twist his words, he was transferred to the reserves in 1940 and finally dismissed from service at his own request in 1941.
World War II
SS Motorised Division ''Wiking''
In November 1940, with the support of the leader of the Volksgruppe in Rumänien, Andreas Schmidt, Phleps had written to the key Waffen-SS recruiting officer SS-Brigadeführer Gottlob Berger offering his services to the Third Reich. He subsequently asked for permission to leave Romania to join the Wehrmacht, and this was approved by the recently installed Romanian Conducător, the dictator General Ion Antonescu. Phleps volunteered for the Waffen-SS instead, enlisting under his mother's maiden name of Stolz. According to the historian Hans Bergel, Phleps joined the Waffen-SS because Volksdeutsche were not permitted to join the Wehrmacht. He was appointed an SS-Standartenführer by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and joined the SS Motorised Division Wiking, where he commanded Dutch, Flemish, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish volunteers. When Hilmar Wäckerle, the commander of SS-Regiment Westland, was killed in action near Lvov in late June 1941, Phleps took over command of that regiment. He distinguished himself in fighting at Kremenchuk and Dnipropetrovsk in Ukraine, commanded his own Kampfgruppe, became a confidant of Generalmajor Hans-Valentin Hube, commander of the 16th Panzer Division, and was subsequently promoted to SS-Oberführer. In July 1941 he was awarded the 1939 clasp to his Iron Cross 2nd Class and then the Iron Cross 1st Class.7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division ''Prinz Eugen''
On 30 December 1941, Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel advised Himmler that Adolf Hitler had authorised the raising of a seventh Waffen-SS division from the Volksdeutsche of Yugoslavia. In the meantime, Phleps reverted to his birth name from his mother's maiden name. Two weeks later, SS-Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der Waffen SS Phleps was selected to organise the new division. On 1 March 1942, the division was officially designated the SS-Freiwilligen-Division "Prince Eugene of Savoy. Phleps was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer on 20 April 1942. After recruitment, formation and training in the Banat region in October 1942, the two regiments and supporting arms were deployed into the southwestern part of the German-occupied territory of Serbia as an anti-partisan force. Headquartered in Kraljevo, with its two mountain infantry regiments centred on Užice and Raška, the division continued its training. Some artillery batteries, the anti-aircraft battalion, the motorcycle battalion and cavalry squadron continued to form in the Banat. During his time with the 7th SS Division, Phleps was referred to as "Papa Phleps" by his troops.File:Artur Phleps and Kurt Waldheim.jpg|250px|thumb|left|From left: Italian General Ercole Roncaglia, Kurt Waldheim, Oberst Macholz and Phleps at Podgorica airfield in Montenegro during Case Black, 22 May 1943. This photograph caused much controversy when it was published while Waldheim was running for the Austrian presidency in 1985–1986.|alt=an Italian officer and three German officers in uniform standing beneath the wing of an aircraft on a grassed airfield
In early October 1942, the division commenced Operation Kopaonik, targeting the Chetnik force of Major Dragutin Keserović in the Kopaonik Mountains. The operation ended with little success, since the Chetniks had forewarning of the operation and were able to avoid contact. After a quiet winter, in January 1943 Phleps deployed the division to the Independent State of Croatia to participate in Case White. Between 13 February and 9 March 1943 he was responsible for the initial aspects of raising the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar in the NDH in addition to his duties commanding the 7th SS Division.
In his strongly apologetic history of the division which he later commanded, Otto Kumm claims that the 7th SS Division captured Bihać and Bosanski Petrovac, killed over 2,000 partisans and captured nearly 400 during Case White. After a short rest and refit in April, the division was committed to Case Black in May and June 1943, during which it advanced from the Mostar area into the Italian governorate of Montenegro killing, according to Kumm, 250 partisans and capturing over 500. The historian Thomas Casagrande notes that all German units fighting partisans routinely counted the uninvolved civilians they murdered as partisans, so that the reported number of inflicted casualties is likely to have included many civilians. The division played a decisive role during the fighting. Although Himmler had already planned to award Phleps the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross for his role in organising the 7th SS Division, it was for the achievements of his division during Case Black that Phleps received the award. Phleps was also portrayed in the SS-magazine Das Schwarze Korps. He was awarded the Knight's Cross in July 1943, and was promoted to Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS, and placed in command of the V SS Mountain Corps.
In May 1943, Phleps became frustrated by the failure of his Italian allies to cooperate with German operations, which was demonstrated in his reputation for forthright speech. During a meeting with his Italian counterpart in Podgorica, Montenegro, Phleps called the Italian corps commander General Ercole Roncaglia a "lazy macaroni". Phleps scolded his Wehrmacht interpreter, Leutnant Kurt Waldheim for toning down his language, saying "Listen Waldheim, I know some Italian and you are not translating what I am telling this so-and-so". On another occasion, he threatened to shoot Italian sentries who were delaying his passage through a checkpoint. On 15 May 1943, Phleps handed over command of the division to SS-Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der Waffen SS Karl von Oberkamp.
While under Phleps's command, the division committed many crimes against the civilian population of the NDH, especially during Case White and Case Black. These included "burning villages, massacre of inhabitants, torture and murder of captured partisans", earning the division a distinctive reputation for cruelty. These charges have been denied by Kumm, among others. Still, the divisional orders routinely called for the annihilation of hostile civilian population, and Waffen-SS documents show that these orders were regularly carried out. For example, Himmler's police representative in the NDH, SS-Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der Polizei Konstantin Kammerhofer, reported on 15 July 1943 that units of the 7th SS Division had shot the Muslim population of Kosutica, about 40 men, women, and children gathered in a "church". The division claimed that "bandits" in the village had opened fire, but the police could not discover any traces of combat. Such incidents, which jeopardized the plan to raise a Muslim SS division, led to a dispute between Kammerhofer and Phleps's successor Oberkamp. Himmler ordered Phleps to intervene, and he reported on 7 September 1943 that he could not discover anything wrong with the shootings in Kosutica and that Kammerhofer and Oberkamp had resolved their dispute. The war crimes committed by the 7th SS Division became the subject of international controversy when Waldheim's service in the Balkans became public in the mid-1980s, during his successful bid for the Austrian presidency.