Poland, 1st of September 1939. At dawn, without a declaration of war,   German artillery opens fire across the  Polish border. Stukas dive from the clouds,   their sirens screaming, as Polish towns erupt  in flames. Columns of Wehrmacht the German Armed   Forces roll forward in tight formation  – armoured spearheads breaking through,   motorized infantry following fast behind. On 28  September Warsaw officially surrenders.

Less than   2 years later – on 6 April 1941 – Nazi Germany  begins its invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece.   Among the advancing troops is a commander who  embodies the new face of the Wehrmacht: efficient,   disciplined, and unquestioningly obedient. Under  his command, entire villages burn and thousands of   civilians are slaughtered in a campaign of terror  across the Balkans. His name is Gustav Fehn.

Gustav Fehn was born on the 21st of February  1892 in the city of Nuremberg, then part of   the German Empire. Like many young men of his  generation, he was drawn early to the army,   the most respected institution in Imperial  Germany. In July 1911, at the age of nineteen,   he entered military service as a cadet  and 2 years later he became an officer.

The German Empire and Europe were  still at peace, and for ambitious   young officers like Fehn, the army offered  both a career and a sense of belonging. When the First World War began in the summer  of 1914, Fehn was sent to the Western Front.   The German army, confident of a quick victory,  advanced through Belgium and France but the   campaign soon turned into a bloody stalemate  of trench warfare.

During the war Fehn received   promotions and various military awards  such as both classes of the Iron Cross,   the Wound Badge, the Hanseatic Cross of Hamburg  and the Friedrich-August Cross. These promotions   and military awards marked him as a capable and  loyal officer, one of those who survived the   destruction of the old imperial army and formed  the backbone of the next army in the peace time.

After the armistice in November 1918, Germany  descended into turmoil. Soldiers returned home to   a country in revolution and despair. Fehn, like  many officers unwilling to lay down his arms,   joined one of the Freikorps, paramilitary  groups fighting communists and separatists   in the ruins of postwar Germany.

The  Freikorps were violent and chaotic,   but for men like Fehn, they were also  a refuge – a way to preserve military   discipline in a world that seemed to have lost  it. He served with the Freikorps group named   “Deutsche Schutzdivision”, which operated  in Berlin and various regions of Germany. In 1919, Fehn was accepted into the new  Reichswehr, the professional army of the   newly founded Weimar Republic.

The army was  strictly limited in size by the Treaty of   Versailles to 100,000 men, but its officers were  carefully selected for competence and reliability.   Fehn began a long period of steady service, moving  through various infantry and cavalry assignments.   He completed an elite officer-training course and  proved to be an able administrator and instructor.

The interwar Reichswehr focused on modernization  within the tight restrictions imposed by   Versailles, studying mobile tactics and technology  that would later become central to blitzkrieg –   the lightning war. Fehn fit neatly into this  professional and formally apolitical corps. When in January 1933 Adolf Hitler came to  power as the German chancellor, Fehn was   soon promoted to major and was assigned to the  Infantry School in Dresden as an instructor.

At Dresden, Fehn taught infantry tactics  to young officers and witnessed the growing   militarization of Germany. The army, long proud  of its independence from politics, was now tied   to the Nazi regime. Many officers welcomed  the expansion of the military but ignored the   regime’s ideology.

When the army swore an oath of  loyalty to Hitler personally in 1934, Fehn, like   most of his colleagues, complied without protest  and swore his allegiance to the Nazi dictator. By 1938, Fehn had risen to the rank of Oberst  – an equivalent to Colonel, and a year later he   assumed command of one of the motorized regiments  intended to spearhead Germany’s future conquests.   When the Wehrmacht invaded Poland and started the  Second World War on 1 September 1939, Fehn led   his regiment in the campaign and distinguished  himself as a calm and efficient commander.

The   swift German victory brought him once again  promotion and military awards. Fehn again   commanded his unit during the Western campaign  of 1940, leading troops through France and the   Low Countries. For his leadership, he was awarded  the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, one of the   highest awards in the military and paramilitary  forces of Nazi Germany during World War II.

Soon   after the victory over France, in November 1940  Fehn assumed command of the 5th Panzer Division,   one of Germany’s elite armoured units. In the spring of 1941, Fehn’s division   took part in the invasion of Yugoslavia and  Greece, campaigns that secured the Balkans   for Germany and its allies just a few weeks  before German invasion into the Soviet Union.

Parts of Fehn´s division were also engaged in  the Battle of Crete, a costly airborne assault   that brought this important island under German  control. Fehn’s reports showed a commander focused   on mobility and discipline rather than glory. His  superiors regarded him as a competent professional   rather than a visionary – a man who obeyed orders  faithfully and kept his formation effective.

Later that year, Fehn’s division was transferred  east to join Army Group Centre in the invasion   of the Soviet Union. His men took part in the  offensive against Moscow and were part of this   brutal and exhausting campaign connected also with  murdering the civilian population. Disease, mud,   and partisan attacks also took a heavy toll on  the soldiers.

Fehn’s leadership and willingness   to serve the Nazis earned him the German Cross  in Gold on the 7th of July 1942, an award that   recognised personal bravery and effective command. In 1942 he became General der Panzertruppe,   and he briefly commanded the XXXX Panzer  Corps, part of the 1st Panzer Army,   before being placed in the Führerreserve, the pool  of senior officers awaiting new assignments.

His   next appointment came unexpectedly, after a few  days, on 16 November 1942, he was sent to North   Africa to serve as commander of the Afrika  Korps, where he tried to hold the collapsing   front in North Africa, but on 15 January 1943 he  was severely wounded and evacuated to Germany.   The North African campaign ended soon after in  total defeat for Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

After his recovery, Fehn returned to duty but  never regained the prominent position he once   held. He ended up commanding the XXI. Mountain  Army Corps in the Balkans. In October 1943,   he was transferred to Yugoslavia, where he  directed anti-partisan operations against the   forces of communist partisan leader Josip Broz  Tito.

The campaign was bitter and merciless,   with civilians often caught between  reprisals and guerrilla warfare.   Fehn’s corps was part of the 2nd Panzer Army,  charged with maintaining German control over   a region already descending into chaos. On 20 July 1944, the very day of the failed   assassination attempt on Hitler, Fehn took command  of the XV.

Mountain Army Corps, a position he held   until the end of the Second World War. His forces  fought retreating battles as the Red Army advanced   from the east and partisans led by Josip Broz Tito  grew stronger in the mountains of Balkan. To the   very end, Fehn followed orders, maintaining  discipline even as Germany disintegrated   around him.

While he projected the image of  a disciplined career officer, the reality of   his leadership during these final months was far  darker. Under Fehn’s authority, the retreat of the   XV. Mountain Corps across Balkan regions became  inseparable from a campaign of systematic violence   against civilians.

Entire villages were burned in  punitive operations, thousands of hostages – men,   women and children – were executed in retaliation  for partisan attacks, and collective punishments   were imposed on communities accused of aiding the  resistance. Rather than uphold the rules of war,   Fehn implemented and enforced Hitler’s brutal  directives for “bandit fighting,” which treated   civilians and partisans as one and the same.

In  doing so, he transformed the German withdrawal   from the Balkans into a scorched-earth  campaign that left behind a trail of   destruction, death, and lasting trauma. In May 1945, with the German surrender,   Fehn was taken prisoner by the British. Like  many captured officers, he expected to face   interrogation and internment, perhaps even a  formal war crimes trial.

Instead, on 4 June 1945,   the British handed him over to Yugoslav partisans,  who accused him of responsibility for atrocities   committed by German troops in the Balkans. There was no formal trial, no written sentence.   On 5 June 1945, in Ljubljana, Gustav Fehn  was executed by a partisan firing squad,   along with other high-ranking German officers such  as Werner von Erdmannsdorff, Friedrich Stephan,   and Heinz Kattner.

The executions were  swift and carried out without ceremony   which was part of the violent reckoning that  swept through the Balkans at the war’s end. Gustav Fehn had served three German  states – imperial, republican,   and Nazi – and had remained a soldier through  them all. He was neither a fanatic nor a hero,   but a professional officer whose loyalty and  obedience helped sustain the machinery of a   brutal regime that brought devastation  to Europe.

When partisans shot him for   crimes committed by units under his  command, he was fifty-three years old. Before we end today’s story, take a look at  world history.tv, your special destination   for true history lovers. Discover exclusive  documentaries and incredible stories you won’t   find anywhere else. Thank you for watching  and don’t forget to subscribe for more.