Through Blood and Brotherhood
Comrades and Enemies in World War II Yugoslavia
Brian R. Johnson, Casemate, 2024, 282 pages
Book Review published on: July 21, 2025
Author Brian R. Johnson's book, Through Blood and Brotherhood: Comrades and Enemies in World War II Yugoslavia, is based on the diary of a young Wehrmacht soldier Gottfried Weber from Saxony, Germany. It relates Weber's experience as a radio operator in the backwater theater of World War II Yugoslavia. Writers generally agree that few diaries are transcribed with future readers in mind. Diary transcribers usually slap their internal thoughts on some notebook for their own consumption. Thus, it takes a talented author to grab hold of a raw diary and provide context and meaning to the daily transcriptions. Johnson accomplishes this task with the help of other biographies from the Balkans conflict. Through Blood and Brotherhood is laid out in eleven parts: an acknowledgment; an introduction; chapters 1--6 represent 1941--1945; chapter 7 represents peace; chapter 8 covers Weber's captivity (by the Allies); and finally, there is an epilogue (lives beyond the war).
The introduction is fascinating. Johnson found the diary and photographs for sale on the internet. He started inquiring about his new acquisition and discovered he was sitting on a gold mine of historical knowledge. He was fortunate to find Bernie Sichling, who could translate the text, which was written in old school German cursive. What is telling is that the diary and photos were sold at all. I personally come from a family with deep family lore and history. We still possess family artifacts from the 1800s which we cherish. During his research, Johnson discovered that the German culture encouraged sort of a compliant amnesia of a twelve-year period. After the war, the diary's author, Weber, went back to his hometown in East Germany, became a bookkeeper, and died peacefully.
Since Weber did not start his diary until 1942, Johnson uses the year 1941 to set the stage and give the context of the mess poor Weber stepped into. The tale of the Balkans is so old and well known that it has entered the English vernacular as the pejorative "balkanization." The reader ascertains that the intent and vision of Yugoslavia was in no way the reality. It's as if some gaggle of inebriated Versailles negotiators brainstormed and concluded the Balkans had a common Slavic ancestry and should therefore be unified into a single ethno-state. Johnson describes how the Catholic Croatians who lived under Hapsburg rule had nothing in common with the Orthodox Serbs but who both distrusted the Muslim Bosnians. Adding to this eclectic dimension was the patchwork of various political groupings overlaying them. These included the Royalists, Communists, Croation Nationalists, Serb Nationalists, etc. To further add to the din, the country had a semi-itinerant group of Roma and Jewish populations. Many of these inter-grouping conflicts occurred at the most local level where one section of the valley would be at odds with the other. A soft coup d'état of the eleven-year-old Yugoslavian king's pro-German regent, Paul Karađorđević, prompted an invasion from Germany, Italy, and Bulgaria. Yugoslavia was already in an internal war with itself when these three invaded.
Johnson begins Weber's 1942 recount with a pleasant narrative flow, though there are few direct quotes from the diary/soldier himself. One is confident the essence of the diary is being relayed. The diary begins with Weber's induction into the labor service, which is abbreviated as RAD. Its equivalent would be our 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps or Works Project Association. He spent more than six months in this service where his spade was inspected and displayed like his weapon. His subsequent basic training comes across as structured, but not necessarily unpleasant. His camp Christmas celebration was idyllic. He was completely unaware of the Christmas horrors going on at the Eastern Front, where the surrounded, emaciated, lice infested, frostbitten Stalingrad soldiers were eating the last of their horses.
The 1943 chapter contrasts Weber's double-luck good fortune with the declining fortune of Germany and the overall situation in the Balkans. After completing his basic training, he was selected for radio operators' school. The rest of his basic training class got shipped off to a unit in the Leningrad sector. His second good fortune was not getting assigned to the Eastern Front but rather to the Balkans. He went to Sarajevo by train and occupied a fixed structure in the city. Croatia was given expanded territory to form an Axis-friendly government. The revolutionary Croatian right wing group, Ustaše, was chartered to control the populace while the Germans conducted more standard military operations. It was clear that German forces were sparse and could not protect the populace; so, the populace dispersed to join one insurgent group or another for protection. Sectarian violence exploded among the Ustaše (Croats), Chetniks (Royalist Serbians), and Partisans (Communist Serb-Croats). The Germans formed the 7th SS Division of expat Germans and conducted major anti-partisan operations with limited success. If matters couldn't get worse for the Axis, Italy dropped out of the war and abandoned its occupation sector. Weber's 118th Jager Division had to retake abandoned islands from the partisans, during which time he was wounded in the leg. The author gives some side stories about Office of Strategic Services operators and other characters as a supplement.
The atmosphere of 1944 was increasingly oppressive for the protagonist Weber. Johnson supplemented this period heavily with biographies from allied personnel involved in this sector. Weber was on the Dalmatian Coast Island of Korcula operating as a headquarter radioman. The Allies moved up the coast of Italy and started bombing with increasing frequency. The Partisans gained more control, and the Allies supplied them with impunity. The internal butchery between the Chetniks and Partisans reached its zenith. Weber was bombed and needed to move out of his permanent structure to a heavily camouflaged hovel. After receiving a naval bombardment, his unit moved to the mainland, which he described as a "hotbed of partisan activity." Johnson purposely bifurcates this development by creating separate chapters for the island and for the mainland in 1944.
The chapter covering 1945 details the collapse of the German war effort and Weber's harrowing retreat. He escaped Soviet captivity by the narrowest margins. His division fought its way to British lines to surrender. He was not disappointed. The British were the most benevolent of captors. The author interweaves numerous other biographies to describe the overall war situation not only in the Balkans but also in Central Europe. Weber decided to return to his home in the Soviet zone. While Weber's diary entries are not that ominous, Johnson details just how oppressive the environment was under communism. The epilogue provides warm closure to all the different biographical entries he utilized to put together the overall story of this particular theater of operations. Weber's story ends well.
The book provides a refreshing look at a theater of war that is neglected by contemporary culture. Ironically, this book had more relevance to our last twenty years of war than Normandy or Ardennes. I got flashbacks of Iraq and Afghanistan reading about the machinations of the sectarian conflict of the former Yugoslavia and greater Balkans.
Book Review written by: Andrew K. Murray, U.S. Army, Retired, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas