Sandžak is a historical and geo-political region in the Balkans, located in the southwestern part of Serbia and the eastern part of Montenegro. The Serbo-Croatian term Sandžak derives from the Sanjak of Novi Pazar, a former Ottoman administrative district founded in 1865.
The 21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg was a German mountain infantry division of the Waffen-SS, the armed wing of the German Nazi Party that served alongside, but was never formally part of, the Wehrmacht during World War II. At the post-war Nuremberg trials, the Waffen-SS was declared to be a criminal organisation due to its major involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division "Prinz Eugen", initially named the SS-Volunteer Division Prinz Eugen, was a mountain infantry division of the Waffen-SS, an armed branch of the German Nazi Party that served alongside but was never formally part of the Wehrmacht during World War II. At the post-war Nuremberg trials, the Waffen-SS was declared to be a criminal organisation due to its major involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity. From 1942 to 1945, the division fought a counter-insurgency campaign against communist-led Yugoslav Partisan resistance forces in occupied Yugoslavia. It was formed in 1941 from both Reich Germans and Volksdeutsche – ethnic German volunteers and conscripts from the Banat, Independent State of Croatia, Hungary and Romania. The division surrendered on 11 May 1945 to Yugoslav Partisan forces, with thousands of stragglers surrendering by the 15th near the Austrian border.
The Second League of Prizren was an organisation founded by Albanian officials in occupied Kingdom of Yugoslavia, modern-day Kosovo in September 1943 to campaign for the ethnic unification of Albanians in Albania.
August Schmidhuber was an SS-Brigadeführer who commanded two Waffen-SS divisions in occupied Yugoslavia and Albania during the latter stages of World War II who was executed by the post-war Yugoslav authorities for war crimes. The Waffen-SS was an armed branch of the German Nazi Party that served alongside but was never formally part of the Wehrmacht. At the post-war Nuremberg trials, the Waffen-SS – of which Schmidhuber was a senior officer – was declared to be a criminal organisation due to its major involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Artur Gustav Martin Phleps was an Austro-Hungarian, Romanian and Nazi German army officer who held the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS 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.
The Banat was a political entity established in 1941 after the occupation and partition of Yugoslavia by the Axis Powers in the historical Banat region. It was formally under the control of the German puppet Government of National Salvation in Belgrade, which theoretically had limited jurisdiction over all of the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia, but all power within the Banat was in the hands of the local minority of ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche). The regional civilian commissioner and head of the ethnic German minority was Josef Lapp. Following the ousting of Axis forces in 1944, this German-ruled region was dissolved and most of its territory was included into Vojvodina, one of the two autonomous provinces of Serbia within the new SFR Yugoslavia.
The German occupation of Albania occurred between 1943 and 1944 during World War II. Before the armistice between Italy and the Allied armed forces on 8 September 1943, Albania had been in a de jure personal union with and was de facto under the control of the Kingdom of Italy. After the armistice and the Italian exit from the Axis, German military forces entered Albania and it came under German occupation, creating the client-state, the Albanian Kingdom.
Pavle Đurišić was a Montenegrin Serb regular officer of the Royal Yugoslav Army who became a Chetnik commander (vojvoda) and led a significant proportion of the Chetniks in Montenegro during World War II. He distinguished himself and became one of the main commanders during the popular uprising against the Italians in Montenegro in July 1941, but later collaborated with the Italians in actions against the Communist-led Yugoslav Partisans. In 1943, his troops carried out several massacres against the Muslim population of Bosnia, Herzegovina, and the Sandžak in which an estimated 10,000 people were killed between January and March, including thousands of women, children, and the elderly. He then led his troops during their participation in the anti-Partisan Case White offensive alongside Italian forces. Đurišić was captured by the Germans in May 1943, escaped, and was recaptured.
The Vullnetari were an Axis collaborationnist volunteer militia of Albanians from Kosovo set up in 1941 by Italian forces after the successful invasion of Yugoslavia. They served as an auxiliary force for civilian control and protection of villages.
The Sandžak Muslim militia was established in Sandžak and eastern Herzegovina in Axis occupied Yugoslavia between April or June and August 1941 during World War II. It was under control of the Independent State of Croatia until September 1941, when Italian forces gradually put it under their command and established additional units not only in Sandžak, but in eastern Herzegovina as well. After the capitulation of Italy in September 1943 it was put under German control, while some of its units were merged with three battalions of Albanian collaborationist troops to establish the "SS Polizei-Selbstschutz-Regiment Sandschak" under command of the senior Waffen SS officer Karl von Krempler.
Hafiz Sulejman Pačariz or Sulejman Paçarizi (1900–1945) was an Islamic cleric of Albanian origin and commander of the detachment of Muslim militia from the village of Hisardžik during the Second World War. When Germans took over control over Sandžak in 1943 Pačariz was appointed as commander of SS Polizei-Selbstschutz-Regiment Sandschak. Forces under his command were referred to as Pačarizovci. He allegedly led his forces while riding a black horse. In 1945, Pačariz was captured, put on trial, found guilty for massacres of civilians and executed as war criminal.
Polizei Selbstschutz Regiment Sandschak, also known as the Krempler Legion was a unit established on the territory of Sandžak by the senior Waffen-SS officer Karl von Krempler under the command of Hoxha Patchariz in Axis occupied Yugoslavia. Krempler went to the Sandžak region in October and reorganized the local volunteer militia of around 5,000 anti-communist, anti-Serb Muslim men headquartered in Sjenica.
Velika is a village in the municipality of Plav, Montenegro, close to the village of Murino.
Mullah Jakup Kardović was an Albanian Muslim cleric and during WWII a commander of a detachment of the Muslim militia in Rožaje, his native region. In November 1941, Kardović distinguished himself during the Battle for Novi Pazar, when he defended the city against the attacking Chetniks.
The Chetniks, a Yugoslav royalist and Serbian nationalist movement and guerrilla force, committed numerous war crimes during the Second World War, primarily directed against the non-Serb population of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, mainly Muslims and Croats, and against Communist-led Yugoslav Partisans and their supporters. Most historians who have considered the question regard the Chetnik crimes against Muslims and Croats during this period as constituting genocide.
The Operation Draufgänger was a German Wehrmacht military operation against the Yugoslav Partisans at the Montenegrin-Serbian border area, aimed at breaking the Partisan foothold on the Lim river which was a potential penetration point into Serbia. In turn, it was a Partisan counter-operation, known as the Andrijevica Operation. The operation began on 18 July on the Čakor–Gusinje–Andrijevica–Berane line, when Kampfgruppe E burnt down at least 16 villages and killed several hundreds inhabitants. From different directions, German troops attacked villages and a part approached Andrijevica, pushed out parts of two Partisan brigades, and then took over the town on 19 July and continued attacking. The staffs of the Partisan brigades assessed the combined German forces as inadequate and self-initiatively decided to attacks, resulting in great German losses. With the possibility to surround and destroy, the II Assault Corps gave the operational command on 23 July on general attack. From different directions the German troops were surrounded in the wider region of Murino on 24 July. On 28 July the Partisan 2nd, 5th and 17th divisions were ordered to move across the Ibar, which gave the opportunity for the 14th Regiment SS to break through Čakor towards Peć, while larger part of the 21st Division SS broke and many Albanians deserted. The German troops were decisively defeated, and the Partisans moved for action in Serbia. Operation Rübezahl followed.
Operation Rübezahl was the name of 3 German anti-partisan operations in Yugoslavia during World War II. The first operation announced the beginning of a strategic retreat by Nazi German troops from Serbia after the front change of Romania and Bulgaria.
Richard Kaaserer was an Austrian SS-Oberführer and Oberst of Police who served in the Waffen-SS, and as an SS and Police Leader (SSPF) in Serbia and Norway during the Second World War. After the war, he was executed for war crimes in Yugoslavia.
The Doli Pivski massacre was the mass killing of 522 Serb civilians by the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen, along with Croatian Ustaše and the SS Handschar Division on 7 June 1943 in the village of Doli Plivski, Montenegro, near the border of Bosnia and Herzegovina during World War II.
SS Prinz Eugen 
SS Skanderbeg