Hello again everybody and welcome back to Food It's Plits and today we're going to look at some more strange SS divisions. This time we're going to look at the 13th Woffe and Mountain Division of SS Hanshaw, also known as the first crow-watt of the Nazi Muslim warriors. Hanshaw was actually one of three Muslim divisions that the SS had. We're only going to concentrate on Hanshaw. Strange thing is we all associate the SS with these blonde, blue-eyed, pure-arion, master race, pure Germanic stock. That's not necessarily the case. Yes, in the early years of the formations of the SS, that really was the case. You have to trace your bloodlines back, you have to be Germanic. But with the outbreak of war in 1939, more and more over with the invasion of Russia in 1941, the Germans were struggling to get recruits, so they decided to open up their recruitment, especially in the SS, to non-Germanic people, of which the Hanshaw was the first division comprised, poor purely of non-Germanic. The creation of a non-Germanic Muslim division, however, was not foremost in the German mines. It came about due to other things taking place during the war, and the catalyst is all down to Benitemr Salini, the fascist dictator of Italy, who decided that it would be a really good idea to invade Greece. Clearly, it wasn't a good idea. The Italians invaded, they got repulsed and then pushed back into Albania, which sent shockwaves through the German high command. Most notably, Greece was allied to Great Britain at the time, and the Germans thought that if the Greeks continued their push, they would push into Romania and be able to steal and take the oil fields in wished, which the Germans really relied upon. So much to the Nazis and Neumts, they had to postpone their planned invasion of Russia, Operation Barbarossa, and intervene in the Balkans crisis that the Italians had created. Getting involved in the Balkans was not part of the Nazi game plan or strategy, but because Italy was an ally of Nazi Germany, they felt that they really had no choice, so intervene they did. And because of this intervention, the Axis powers were able to swiftly defeat the Arnube Yugoslavia, and effectively bring in Stesphere influence, the likes of Hungary, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and stabilize that region. And for a time, the Balkans was relatively stable. All that I ever was due to change, especially because of Germany's invasion of Russia. Now the Serbs have always been closely allied to Russia, funnily enough. World War 1, in real terms, started because the Austro-Gerians tried to crush Serbian resistance, prior to World War 1, and following the assassination of Archduke Thirdland in Sarajevo by Serb and the Russians came to their assistance and declared war on both the Austrian Empire and Germany effectively starting the Great War. So there's a long history between the Serbs and the Russians, and with the German invasion of Russia, coupled with the lack of German troops on the ground in the Balkans, this gave rise to Serbians rising up and engaging in part of St. Activities. Now this was initially done by the Technics, and again it tied up German troops, meaning that the Germans had to send more troops black into Yugoslavia to quash these partisan activities and properisings. By 1942, however, the Germans effectively had enough of tying up valuable resources in the Balkans, and then as a general, got a lot burger. Proposed setting up a Bosnian Muslim division in order to release German troops and send them to the east, and for those troops to maintain security for the region, there's just an idea that was shared by another SS general, Arthur Falt, who noted that Bosnian Muslims bear a special status as being a reverty, he could quite almost everybody on the planet. This was something that fascinated him, and he loved the idea, he'd always been fascinated by the Islamic faith, and he believed that it created fearless soldiers. He thought that Muslims would make perfect SS soldiers, because they are promised heaven if they are killed in battle. Initially, they were concerns around the race argument, but the Germans found a really cany-way around this, they just exited theories put forward by Croatian German nationalists, that stated Croatian Muslims are not officially slouts, they are pure aliens due to their Gothic and Iranian ancestry problem solved. With the race factor conveniently solved, Arthur Falt was then tasked with forming the very first non-Germanic SS division, which he did. Although the German did encounter resistance from Operation Nationalists, who were concerned that in Pyraean and Italian Muslim division, this would found the flames of a Muslim uprising against them, but the Germans found a simple solution to this, they merely added in Gothic letters the word, Croat, on the cuff title, and they made sure that the officers were Croatian Catholics, problems solved, yet again. Recruitment was then handed over to a German called Carv on Kempler, an SS officer who spoke servo Croat and was a so-called Islamic expert. He was to work a long-sized soldier, they Bosnia, Muslim and together they set about recruiting. However, both men soon fall out, with soldier concerned by Kempler's use of mainly Muslim emblems and colors, as well as meeting with Muslim politicians who were opposed to the Croatian Tazi state. This recruitment drive, however, wasn't exactly effective, so him, Le, requested the involvement of the grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a sunny cleric in charge of all the Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem, and it was at the time, oddly enough, and conveniently a resident in Berlin. The Mufti visited Sarajevo, Zagreb and Banjo-Lukka in order to agitate support from the Muslim population, and therefore boosted recruitment. Despite the Mufti seal of approval, recruitment was done at best, and it fell significantly short of the numbers required to fill the division. In fact, recruitment was so dire that him, Le, had to concede to allowing a 10% concuptic component to this division, which led to just on the 3000 Catholics being refruited into what was meant to be a purely Muslim division. By this stage, the division itself comprised about 23,200 Muslims, 2800 Catholics, and more Germans, all of whom were officers. By the time it was ready, it was still considerably on the strength, and almost all its officers were Germanic. The Germans, however, still had concerns, and before the unit was sent into action, it was moved to France to undergo further training. Whilst in France, however, the division mutinied, led by some notable Muslims, they killed numerous German officers, including von Kempler, and tried to rally around the Muslims in order to gain support to reach out to the Western Allies and effectively surrender. The mutiny was eventually quashed, and it was put down to infiltration by Tito's partisans. The division was then immediately transferred to Germany to finish its training and where the Germans could keep a closer eye upon it. By February 1944, the division's training was completed, and it was immediately returned to Yugoslavia. To deal with anti-partisan activities against Tito's partisans, and from March 1944 until September 1944, that is what the division dealt with. During this period, however, Tito offered a general amnesty to anybody who left the division, and quite a few took up this offer, and they moved from doing anti-partisan activities to becoming partisans and taking up the fight against the Germans. In October 1944, the division had gained mutinied, and once the Red Army had captured Bell Raid in October, an imam when the division led a further mutiny, leading him led to disarm the disloyal Bosnia. Who were in turn transferred to Labour battalions and auxiliary units. By now the Red Army advance was unstoppable, and the remains of the unit retreated into Austria where it eventually surrendered to the British. The division, while successful in its anti-partisan activities, was both brutal and savage, especially against Serbs and Jews within the Yugoslavian territory, not only during combat operations. In many of its areas of operations, numerous reprisal attacks were undertaken against the Serbian civilian population, leaving many thousands of Serbs dead. After the war, 38 members of this unit would try to war crimes, with all being found guilty, with ten being sentenced to death and eventually executed, and the other 28 given lengthy prison terms. All however were released in 1952. Interestingly, approximately 1,000 of those who had served in the 13th and 23rd division, both of whom are Muslim divisions, eventually ended up in the Syrian army during the 1948 to 1949 Arab-Israeli war. I've been Fuget, that has been a brief look into the Nazis, Muslim soldiers, one of the more well-known of the Bazaar SS divisions. While means commenting, like, and everything below, if you haven't yet, hit that subscribe button, it's a lovely thing to do. You can always send me emails to FugetBlitz at gmail.com, until the next time, thank you for watching, and I hope you enjoyed the content.