Utilizing Artifacts Associated with Unknown Individuals from Herzegovina to Assess Their Status as German World War II Military Combatants

International Journal of Historical Archaeology https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-025-00784-8 Utilizing Artifacts Associated with Unknown Individuals from Herzegovina to Assess Their Status as German World War II Military Combatants Katharine Eve Kolpan1 · Zoe Rafter1 · Sophie Streiff1 Accepted: 5 February 2025 © The Author(s) 2025 Abstract Unidentified, commingled remains from mass grave contexts make human skeletal identification difficult, particularly in regions where there have been multiple, distinct conflicts, the excavation and retrieval of remains has been delayed, and/or graves contain both combatants and civilians. Identification is further complicated when information about the excavation and recovery of human remains is unavailable. In mass grave contexts, artifacts associated with the burials of unknown individuals can link them to a particular conflict, indicate whether they were civilians or soldiers, provide information about their specific military unit, and may also include personal effects that can be used for individual identification. This analysis examines artifacts associated with the remains of individuals recovered from Herzegovina, Bosnia to suggest they are Axis-affiliated World War II soldiers. During the war, modern Herzegovina, Bosnia was partitioned into distinct German and Italian zones as well as the Nazi-controlled, Ustaše-led, Independent State of Croatia, complicating repatriation efforts. Artifact analysis of certain objects associated with these unidentified individuals indicates these men were members of the German rather than the Italian army. Keywords Artifacts · Bosnia · Soldiers · Unidentified human remains · World War II · Commingling · Mass graves * Katharine Eve Kolpan 1 Department of Culture, Society and Justice, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844, United States of America Vol.:(0123456789) International Journal of Historical Archaeology Introduction In the late 1990s and early 2000s, both Bosnian and international organizations began locating, excavating, exhuming, and identifying the remains of individuals buried in mass graves during the Bosnian War (1992–95). However, because Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) had also been involved in World War I (WWI; 1914–18) and World War II (WWII; 1939–45), these excavations led to the discovery of human remains from earlier military conflicts. For example, approximately 14% of human identification cases excavated between 1996 and 2014 were found to be related to conflicts outside the Bosnian War (Hanson et al. 2015). Regarding the WWII burials, the massive number of military and civilian casualties and alterations to the political landscape may explain why these graves were overlooked and why nonlocal combatants were not repatriated to their home nations. This research concerns the effort to identify and repatriate the bodies of a group of Axis-affiliated soldiers whose remains were presumably discovered during excavations related to the Bosnian War. It was conducted to assist the Cantonal Prosecutor in Herzegovina-Neretva Canton as part of a wider process involving the resolution of the accumulated unidentified (NN) cases related to the 1990s conflict. As of 2013, there were over 3,000 of these cases held across 12 mortuaries in BiH (Sarzinski 2018). As part of a 2013 state prosecutor-initiated review of all BiH’s NN cases, the Prosecutor’s Office of the Hercegovina-Neretva Canton utilized the Missing Persons Institute (MPI), pathologists, crime technicians, and an anthropological team from the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) to sort the fragmented and commingled remains into sets, build biological profiles, and sample the sorted skeletons for DNA (ICMP 2013, 2014, 2019). Locating, excavating, analyzing, and sampling human remains for DNA analysis is commonplace in BiH because many families want to repatriate and rebury missing loved ones from the Bosnian War according to local ethnic and religious customs (Verdery 1999; Wagner 2008). Researchers have also successfully utilized DNA to identify WWII-related remains in various parts of the Balkans (Marjanović et al. 2007, 2009; Pajnič et al. 2010). However, in those cases, the remains were thought to have a connection to the local community, and DNA samples from alleged relatives were on hand for comparison. The DNA samples taken from the WWIIrelated individuals discussed here did not yield any matches in the ICMP’s DNA database comprised of donated blood samples from relatives with missing loved ones from the Bosnian War (ICMP 2013). This may be because many of these unknown combatants may have been foreign nationals, or they may be from Balkan populations excluded from the reference sample. While the Bosnian community is used to researchers and international aid organizations managing human remains and employing modern technology to identify their loved ones, the reaction from foreign stakeholders to the identification and repatriation of Axis-affiliated soldiers is difficult to predict. Making the absent present via excavation and artifact analysis is potentially painful, International Journal of Historical Archaeology creating social tension and running the risk of opening old wounds—particularly when the past is as fraught as a community’s associations and interactions with the Third Reich (Buchli and Lucas 2001; Doretti and Fondebrider 2001; Dawdy 2010; González-Ruibal 2008; Harrison and Schofield 2010; Shepherd 2012). The Federal Republic of Germany has a long-standing commitment to identifying their military dead and utilizes their foreign cemeteries from WWII as a means of promoting “reconciliation over the graves” (Livingstone 2009). This promise acknowledges the negative memories of the host nation and is meant to provide a way for the Germans to accept and atone for the suffering German troops caused throughout Europe (Livingstone 2009). Countries like Austria and Italy have a more complicated history when it comes to acknowledging their part in the war. The Moscow Declaration of 1943 officially codified the Austrians as Hitler’s first victims even though many people in Austria were in favor of the Anschluss and a lot of Austrians willingly fought for the Reich in places such as the Balkans (Keyserlingk 1988; Judt 1992; Shepherd 2012). The Italians were part of the Tripartite Pact with Hitler until 1943. Focardi and Klinkhammer (2004) have argued that the Italians often characterize themselves as unwilling participants who attempted to minimize acts of German barbarism against civilians in southeast Europe. While the Italians undoubtedly contributed to actions that saved the lives of Yugoslav Serbs, there is also evidence that Italian soldiers engaged in murder, rape, and the destruction of property in the Balkans, making discussions of the identification of Italian Axis-affiliated soldiers more complex (Focardi and Klinkhammer 2004; Burgwyn 2005). These individuals appear to have been recov (...truncated)