During the Second World War, several Cossack units served in the German armed forces, and their movements and combat operations were already the subject of scholarly research and popular historiography. Contrasting the majority of published works, based on German military sources and focused on deployment and anti-partisan combat activities, this paper aims to analyze and showcase the First Cossack Cavalry Division on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) from a perspective of civilian victims and Croatian authorities. Such perspective portrays the Cossacks as uncompromising and exceptionally efficient fighters against communism and resistance, but also as undisciplined villains, leaving the trail of crimes, robbery, rape, molest and murder of civilians. The paper is mostly based on unpublished historical sources from the Archives of Yugoslavia and the Military Archives in Belgrade.