Josef Schultz - The Man Who Wouldn't Shoot

Map showing partisan areas of operation in 1943

Despite the staggering amount of media made about World War II we barely scratch the surface. Entire fronts of the war and its darker sides particularly those carried out by Allied powers are often overlooked with one or two exceptions. For example the Yugoslav front, while the war in Greece has received some attention, probably due to the presence of British divisions there before the country was occupied by the German army, almost nothing about what went on across the border in neighbouring Albania and Yugoslavia gets popular attention.

In the case of Albania its early annexation by Italy is brought up as an example of a missed warning sign, and the SS recruiting Albanians is brought up as footnote, often by Reich apologists to try and dispute the popular and correct impression that Nazi Germany was a nation obsessed with racial purity.

Yugoslavia tends to get much less, aside from Force 10 from Navarrone the cheaper more action pulp sequel to the famous Guns of Navarrone, it doesn't get much attention outside of Yugoslav and former Yugoslav made documentaries and books. In a way this is understandable if disappointing, the Balkans were extremely complex. Initially Kingdom of Yugoslavia joined the Axis before popular protests and a coup by officers in the armed forces installed a pro Allied one instead. A combined German and Italian force (mostly German, since Italy's failed invasion of Greece had cost it entire armies) quickly overran the country.

But instead of a quick and fairly easy occupation the region erupted into even more mass violence once the Wehrmacht had established itself. Croatian Fascists in the Ustashe movement set up an independent pro Nazi region, ran their own paramilitary and extermination camp system targeting Serbs and the Balkan Jewish community. A puppet government, Italian, Hungarian and Bulgarian occupation zones and bands of Chetniks, majority Serb armed bands that sometimes supported the Axis but over times worked independently. And then finally there were the partisans, of which Tito's Communist forces are the most well known and active.

This made for a vicious mix, with the armies of occupation and their allies often resorting to the destruction of entire villages, collective punishments and ethnic cleansing campaigns. Out of all of this confusion and terror and mythic hero was created. Private Josef Schultz, soldier of the 714th Infantry division.

Shultz is something of a folk hero in the region as a soldier who refused to take part in executions of prisoners, and according to legend was made to stand in line with those prisoners and die along side them. The existence of Josef Schultz and his deployment to Yugoslavia are confirmed, but West German investigations believe the stories around his death are fictious. Nevertheless he remains a popular folk hero.

In 1973 Zastava films made a short film about Josef Schultz, and at only 13 minutes long its one of the most moving anti-war films I've ever seen.



https://youtu.be/REkZ1gcqzL8

Short film about the life and death of Joseph Schultz, made in 1973 in Yugoslavia.

Download https://archive.org/details/josephschultz_201702

This photo often attributes the soldier without a helmet as being the last photo of Josef Schultz, sadly while this is disputed the photo is otherwise genuine. This is a real photo of a mass execution carried out by the German army.