Franz Böhme was an Austrian-born Wehrmacht general whose career took him from the Austro-Hungarian Army to senior command positions in Nazi Germany during the Second World War. After the Anschluss in 1938, Böhme entered German military service and later commanded the 32nd Infantry Division during the campaigns in Poland and France. In 1941, his career took a darker turn when he was appointed chief commander of German-occupied Serbia. Following the German invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, resistance grew rapidly across Serbia. Adolf Hitler demanded severe reprisals, and Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel ordered that 100 hostages be killed for every German soldier lost and 50 for every soldier wounded. Appointed to suppress the uprising in September, Böhme implemented this policy and encouraged his troops to view their campaign as revenge for Serbia’s role in the First World War. The consequences were devastating. After resistance fighters attacked German troops at Gornji Milanovac, occupation forces began gathering thousands of hostages from Kragujevac and surrounding villages. Men and boys were taken from homes, streets, factories and fields, while hundreds of schoolchildren and teachers were detained in their classrooms. On 21 October 1941, between 2,778 and 2,794 people lost their lives near Kragujevac. Among them were 144 high-school students, while 15 victims were only twelve years old. During Böhme’s three months in Serbia, German records claimed that between 20,000 and 30,000 civilians lost their lives in reprisal operations. After continuing his military career in the Arctic, Yugoslavia and Norway, Böhme was captured by British forces in 1945. He was later indicted in the Hostages Trial, one of the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, over crimes committed in Serbia. In May 1947, while awaiting the proceedings and facing possible extradition to Yugoslavia, Böhme died in Nuremberg at the age of 62. This documentary examines Franz Böhme’s military career, the occupation of Yugoslavia, resistance in Serbia, Kragujevac in 1941, Wehrmacht reprisals and the post-war proceedings that followed.
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