Clean Wehrmacht

The myth of the clean Wehrmacht

Protesters against the "Wehrmacht exhibition" (Wehrmachtsausstellung), that exposed the crimes of the Wehrmacht to the general German public, holding up glorified Wehrmacht propaganda.

The myth of the Clean Wehrmacht (German: Saubere Wehrmacht) or Clean Wehrmacht legend (Legende von der sauberen Wehrmacht) is a term describing the controversial belief that the armed forces of Nazi Germany during World War II were largely unconnected to atrocities the regime committed and that they were equal to Allied armed forces in observing the customary rules of war.

This belief was created in the early years of the Federal Republic of Germany by former Wehrmacht personnel in the climate of the Cold War. Due to the need to have West Germany as ally in an expected confrontation with the Soviet Union, Western Allies condoned this propaganda myth, presenting former Nazi generals and officers as honorable and apolitical. German historiography also uses the term Wehrmacht's "clean hands" to describe this phenomenon.[1][2]

Although historically indefensible, the myth of the clean Wehrmacht is still promoted today by veterans' associations and far-right authors and publishers. In this narrative, the Wehrmacht is represented as a separate, supposedly apolitical institution, similar to its predecessor, the Reichswehr. War crimes of the Wehrmacht are denied or relativised, and instead, its military achievements are highlighted. Many proponents of this theory acknowledge war crimes committed by Wehrmacht personnel, but downplay or deny its involvement in Nazi genocides such as the Holocaust and the persecution of the Soviet prisoners of war, while emphasizing the role of the SS and other Nazi organisations.

Preparations for war of extermination

In their plan to create the Greater Germanic Reich the Nazi leadership aimed to conquer Eastern European territories, Germanise those seen as part of the Aryan race, subjugate and exterminate the Soviet populations, and colonise the territory with ethnic German settlers.

In the eyes of the Nazis, the war against the Soviet Union would be a Vernichtungskrieg, a war of annihilation.[3] Racial policy of Nazi Germany viewed the Soviet Union (and all of Eastern Europe) as populated by non-Aryan Untermenschen ("sub-humans"), ruled by "Jewish Bolshevik conspirators".[4] Accordingly, it was stated Nazi policy to kill, deport, or enslave the majority of Russian and other Slavic populations according to the Generalplan Ost ("General Plan for the East").[4] The plan consisted of the Kleine Planung ("Small Plan") and the Große Planung ("Large Plan"), which covered actions to be taken during the war and actions to be implemented after the war was won, respectively.[5]

Before and during the invasion of the Soviet Union, German troops were heavily indoctrinated with anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic and anti-Slavic ideology via movies, radio, lectures, books and leaflets.[6] Following the invasion, Wehrmacht officers told their soldiers to target people who were described as "Jewish Bolshevik subhumans", the "Mongol hordes", the "Asiatic flood" and the "Red beast".[7] Many German troops viewed the war in Nazi terms and regarded their Soviet enemies as sub-human.[8] A speech given by General Erich Hoepner indicates the disposition of Operation Barbarossa and the Nazi racial plan, as he informed the 4th Panzer Group that the war against the Soviet Union was "an essential part of the German people's struggle for existence" (Daseinkampf), and stated, "the struggle must aim at the annihilation of today's Russia and must therefore be waged with unparalleled harshness."[9]

Foundation

The Potsdam Conference held by the Soviet Union, United Kingdom and United States from 17 July to 2 August 1945 largely determined the occupation policies that the defeated country was to face. These included demilitarization, denazification, democratization and decentralization. The Allies' often crude and ineffective implementation caused the local population to dismiss the process as "noxious mixture of moralism and 'victors' justice'".[10]

For those in the Western zones of occupation, the arrival of the Cold War undermined the demilitarization process by seemingly justifying the key part of Hitler's foreign policies — the "fight against Soviet bolshevism".[11] In 1950, after the outbreak of the Korean War, it became clear to the Americans that a German army would have to be revived to help face off against the Soviet Union. Both American and West German politicians were faced with the prospect of rebuilding the armed forces of the Federal Republic.[12]

Himmerod memorandum

From 5 to 9 October 1950, a group of former senior officers, at the behest of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, met in secret at the Himmerod Abbey (hence the memorandum's name) to discuss West Germany's rearmament. The participants were divided in several subcommittees that focused on the political, ethical, operational and logistical aspects of the future armed forces.[13]

The resulting memorandum included a summary of the discussions at the conference and bore the name "Memorandum on the Formation of a German Contingent for the Defense of Western Europe within the framework of an International Fighting Force". It was intended as both a planning document and as a basis of negotiations with the Western Allies.[13]

The participants of the conference were convinced that no future German army would be possible without the historical rehabilitation of the Wehrmacht. Thus, the memorandum included these key demands:

Adenauer accepted these propositions and in turn advised the representatives of the three Western powers that German armed forces would not be possible as long as German soldiers remained in custody. To accommodate the West German government, the Allies commuted a number of war crimes sentences.[12]

A public declaration from Dwight D. Eisenhower followed in January 1951, stating that there was "a real difference between the German soldier and Hitler and his criminal group". Chancellor Adenauer made a similar statement in a Bundestag debate on the Article 131 of the Common Law, West Germany's provisional constitution. He stated that the German soldier fought honorably, as long as he "had not been guilty of any offense". These declarations laid the foundation of the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht" that reshaped the West's perception of the German war effort.[1]

Denial of responsibility

After penalties were imposed in the immediate postwar period as part of the denazification process in the late 1940s to the early 1950s, Federal Republic of Germany population and politicians sharply criticised the practice of "victor's justice" and the theory of collective guilt (in the opinion of historian Norbert Frei, it was never the Allies' intention to impose collective punishment). Thus, the German Federal Parliament began to enact amnesty laws under which many war criminals saw their sentences commuted.

The changing political climate aided in the creation of the image of a "clean Wehrmacht", according to which, unlike the criminal killings carried out by police and SS groups, the Wehrmacht had fought fairly under the provisions of the international law of war, without having been involved in the crimes of the Nazi regime.[14] Jennifer Foray, in her 2010 study of the Wehrmacht occupation of the Netherlands, asserts that "Scores of studies published in the last few decades have demonstrated that the Wehrmacht's purported disengagement with the political sphere was an image carefully cultivated by commanders and foot soldiers alike, who, during and after the war, sought to distance themselves from the ideologically driven murder campaigns of the National Socialists."[15]

In addition, former German officers published their memoirs and historical studies. This chief architect of this body of work was the former Chief of Staff Franz Halder, who informally supervised the work of other officers who, during and since their prisoner-of-war captivity, worked for military history research group of the United States Army in the Operational History (German) Section and had exclusive access to the German war archives stored in the United States.[16]

Following the return of the last war prisoners from Soviet captivity, on 7 October 1955, 600 former members of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS swore a public oath in the Friedland Barracks that received a strong media reaction:

"Before the German people and the German dead and the Soviet Armed Forces, we swear that we have neither committed murder, nor defiled nor, not plundered. If we have brought suffering and misery on other people, it was done according to the Laws of War."[17]

The myth debunked

In 2011, the Freiburg military historian Wolfram Wette called the "clean Wehrmacht" thesis a "collective perjury".[18] After the return of former Wehrmacht documents by the Western Allies to the Federal Republic of Germany,[19] it became clear through their evaluation that it was not possible to sustain the myth any longer. Today, the extensive involvement of the Wehrmacht in numerous Nazi crimes is documented, such as the Commissar Order.[20]

While advocates of the thesis of a "clean Wehrmacht" were attempting to describe the Wehrmacht as independent of the Nazi ideology, and denying their war crimes or trying to put individual cases into perspective, more recent historical research from the 1980s and 1990s based on witness statements, court documents, letters from the front, personal diaries and other documents demonstrates the immediate and systematic involvement of the armed forces in many massacres and war crimes, especially in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, and the Holocaust.[20]

In the 1990s and 2000s, two exhibitions by the Hamburg Institute for Social Research exposed these crimes to a wider audience and focused on the hostilities as a German-Soviet extermination war. The historian Christian Hartmann found in 2009 that "no one needs to expose the deceptive myth of the 'clean' Wehrmacht any further. Their guilt is so overwhelming that any discussion about it is superfluous."[21]

In 2000, historian Truman Anderson identified a new scholarly consensus centering around the "recognition of the Wehrmacht’s affinity for key features of the National Socialist world view, especially for its hatred of communism and its anti-semitism".[22] Similarly, Ben Shepherd writes that "Most historians now acknowledge the scale of Wehrmacht involvement in the crimes of the Third Reich," but maintains that "There nevertheless remains considerable debate as to the relative importance of the roles which ideology, careerism, ruthless military utilitarianism, and pressure of circumstances played in shaping Wehrmacht conduct."[23]

See also

References

Citations

  1. 1 2 Wette 2007, pp. 236–238.
  2. ↑ Smelser & Davies 2008, pp. 74–76.
  3. ↑ Förster 1988, p. 21.
  4. 1 2 The Fatal Attraction of Adolf Hitler, 1989.
  5. ↑ Rössler & Schleiermacher 1996, pp. 270–274.
  6. ↑ Evans 1989, p. 59.
  7. ↑ Evans 1989, pp. 59–60.
  8. ↑ Förster 2005, p. 127.
  9. ↑ Ingrao 2013, p. 140.
  10. ↑ Large 1987, pp. 79–80.
  11. ↑ Large 1987, p. 80.
  12. 1 2 3 Smelser & Davies 2008, pp. 72–73.
  13. 1 2 Abenheim 1989, pp. 53–54.
  14. ↑ Norbert Frei: Deutsche Lernprozesse. NS-Vergangenheit und Generationenfolge. In: Derselbe: 1945 und wir. Das Dritte Reich im Bewußtsein der Deutschen. dtv, München 2009, S. 49.
  15. ↑ Foray 2010, pp. 769-770.
  16. ↑ Wolfram Wette: Die Wehrmacht. Feindbilder, Vernichtungskrieg, Legenden. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-7632-5267-3, S. 225–229.
  17. ↑ zit. nach Hans Reichelt, Die deutschen Kriegsheimkehrer. Was hat die DDR für sie getan? edition ost, Berlin 2007
  18. ↑ Zähe Legenden. Interview mit Wolfram Wette, in: Die Zeit vom 1. Juni 2011, S. 22
  19. ↑ Vgl. Astrid M. Eckert: Kampf um die Akten: Die Westalliierten und die Rückgabe von deutschem Archivgut nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2004.
  20. 1 2 Gerd R. Ueberschär: Die Legende von der sauberen Wehrmacht. In: Wolfgang Benz, Hermann Graml, Hermann Weiß (Hrsg.): Enzyklopädie des Nationalsozialismus. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-423-34408-1, S. 110f.
  21. ↑ Christian Hartmann: Wehrmacht im Ostkrieg. Front und militärisches Hinterland 1941/42. (= Quellen und Darstellungen zur Zeitgeschichte, Band 75) Oldenbourg, München 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-58064-8, S. 790.
  22. ↑ Anderson 2000, p. 325.
  23. ↑ Shepherd 2009, pp. 455-456.

Bibliography

In English

In German

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  • Michael Bertram: Das Bild der NS-Herrschaft in den Memoiren führender Generäle des Dritten Reiches, Ibidem-Verlag 2009, ISBN 978-3-8382-0034-7.
  • Rolf Düsterberg: Soldat und Kriegserlebnis. Deutsche militärische Erinnerungsliteratur (1945--1961) zum Zweiten Weltkrieg. Motive, Begriffe, Wertungen., Niemeyer 2000, ISBN 978-3-484-35078-6.
  • Jürgen Förster: Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat. Eine strukturgeschichtliche Analyse. Oldenbourg, München 2007, ISBN 3-486-58098-1.
  • Lars-Broder Keil, Sven Felix Kellerhoff: Ritterlich gekämpft? Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941–1945. In: Deutsche Legenden. Vom „Dolchstoß“ und anderen Mythen der Geschichte. Links, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-86153-257-3, S. 93–117.
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