Composition
Sources differ regarding the division's initial composition. Pavlowitch states that sixty percent of its recruits were Muslims and the rest were Yugoslav Volksdeutsche who made up the majority of its officers and NCOs, while Tomasevich counters that it was formed with 23,200 Muslims and 2,800 Croats, with mostly German officers. He further states it was the largest of the Muslim SS Divisions with 26,000 men. Lepre indicates that the division's prescribed strength was reduced from 26,000 to 21,000, and Cohen states that the division achieved a maximum strength of 17,000 in April 1944. The division had a Muslim Imam for each battalion other than the all-German signal battalion. For about six months the division included about 1,000 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and the Sandžak region who made up the 1st Battalion of the 2nd Regiment, which later became the 1st Battalion of the 28th Regiment (I/28).
By the time the division had completed its training, it was still about one third below its designated strength in both officers and NCOs, and its officer corps remained almost entirely German.
Read more about this topic: 13th Waffen Mountain Division Of The SS Handschar (1st Croatian)
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“Vices enter into the composition of virtues as poisons into the composition of certain medicines. Prudence and common sense mix them together, and make excellent use of them against the misfortunes that attend human life.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“There was not a grain of poetry in the whole composition of Lord Fawn, and poetry was what her very soul craved;Mpoetry, together with houses, champagne, jewels, and admiration.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“Since body and soul are radically different from one another and belong to different worlds, the destruction of the body cannot mean the destruction of the soul, any more than a musical composition can be destroyed when the instrument is destroyed.”
—Oscar Cullman. Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? The Witness of the New Testament, ch. 1, Epworth Press (1958)