The war crimes of Wehrmacht are the crimes perpetrated by the German armed forces traditional during the Second world war. Whereas the principal persons in charge of the Holocauste among the German armed forces were the units politicized Nazis (the Waffen-SS and particularly the Einsatzgruppen), the traditional armed forces represented by the Wehrmacht made themselves of the War crimes, in particular on the face of the East in the war against the Soviet Union. The Tribunal of Nuremberg at the end of the Second world war decided that Wehrmacht did not have the character of an criminal organization, but whom it had made of the crimes during the war.

War crimes

The war crimes committed by Wehrmacht include:

Atrocities made during the Invasion of Poland

Units of Wehrmacht killed more 16  000 Polish civilians during the September 1939 campaign by means of executions of mass, bombardments of open cities or the murders. After the end of the hostilities, during the administration of Poland by Wehrmacht, which lasted until October 25th, 1939, 531 cities and villages were flarings. Wehrmacht was made also guilty of 714 executions of mass and other crimes. As a whole, one estimates that 50  000 Polish civilians, including 7  000 Jews lost the life.

Atrocities during the Countryside the 18 day old

Between the 25 and the May 28th 1940, Wehrmacht made the Massacre of Vinkt. Hostages were captured in order to be used as shields. As the Belgian Armée continued to resist, of the farms were excavated (and plundered) to take more hostages who were to be carried out thereafter. In all, 86 civilians were carried out, but the total of the victims probably amounts to 140. The reasons of this carnage are not clear.

Destruction of Warsaw

Close to 13  000 soldiers and 250  000 civilians were killed by the German forces during the Insurrection of Warsaw. It was made use of human shields by the German forces during combat and the massacre of Wola, 50  000 civilians were carried out to force the Poles to go.

Order relating to the political police chiefs

This order indicated the war against Russia like “a war between two ideologies, not between two States”. It envisaged the immediate liquidation of the political police chiefs of the Red Army and later liquidation with the Soviet soldiers identified like “impregnated or active representatives with the ideology Bolshevik”. The order stipulated that the guilty soldiers of violation of the International laws would be excused. The order was written by the command of Wehrmacht at the request of Hitler and was distributed to the commanders of units.

The Barbarossa decree

The decree, emitted by Keitel a few weeks before the Operation Barbarossa, withdrew the made punishable infringements of the enemy civilians (in Soviet Union) from the jurisdiction of military justice. The suspects were to be submitted with an officer who would decide if they were to be or not shot down. The same decree specified that it was not necessary to continue the infringements made against civilians by members of Wehrmacht unless the maintenance of the discipline does not make it necessary.

Prison camps

In 1929, the third Geneva Convention relating to the treatment of the prisoner of war had been signed by Germany and the majority of the other countries, although the USSR and the Japan did not sign it before the end of the war (final version of the third convention of Geneva of 1949). This meant that Germany obliged to then treat all the prisoners of war in accordance with the provisions of Convention, that on the contrary, the Germans made captive by the Russians could not expect an equivalent treatment. In fact, neither the USSR nor Japan treated the prisoners of war in accordance with the convention of Geneva. Stalin itself was hardly concerned with his/her own son, Yakov Djougachvili, declining an offer to exchange it against the General Paulus.

Whereas the prison camps created by Wehrmacht for the men captured on the face of the West generally satisfied the humane conditions prescribed by the international agreements, the prisoners originating in Poland (which never signed act of capitulation) and in the USSR were imprisoned under worse conditions significantly. In December 1941, more than 2,4 million soldiers of the Red Army prisoners had been made. The latter suffered from malnutrition and diseases such as the Typhus which were the consequence of the failure of Wehrmacht in the supply of food in sufficient quantity, shelters, adequate sanitary facilities and from medical care for the prisoners. The latter were regularly subjected to tortures, ill treatments and humiliations. Between the launching of the Barbarossa operation at the summer 1941 and next spring, more than two million Soviet prisoners of war died whereas they were with the hands of the Germans. The failure of the Germans to reach the victory hoped in the East led to a lack of labor for the production of war and, at the beginning of 1942, the prisoners of war of the camps of the East - primarily of the Russians - were regarded as a source of servile work intended to allow the industry of German war to continue to function.

On a total of 5,6 million Soviet soldiers facts captive on the face of the East, 3,6 million were going to die in captivity

Massacres of prisoners of war

The massacres of prisoners of war by soldiers of Wehrmacht started at the time of the September 1939 campaign in Poland. There exist many cases where Polish soldiers were killed after being captured, as for example with Sladow where 250 prisoners of war were killed or drowned, with Ciepielow where approximately 300 prisoners were killed and with Zambrow where 200 other prisoners of war were killed. Approximately 50 British officers who had escaped from the Stalag Luft III were killed after being taken again, and 15 officers and men of the American Armée, although in uniform, were shot without judgment in Italy. The order of Hitler on the Commando S, published in 1942, contained a justification for the murder of enemy commandos who they are or not in uniform. The massacres also include/understand that of at least 1  500 prisoners of war French of African origin and were preceded by propaganda describing them like savages.

The decree Night and fog (Nacht und Nebel)

This decree, published by Hitler in 1941 and distributed with a directive of Keitel, was applicable in the territories conquered to the West (Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Denmark and Netherlands). This decree made it possible to seize people endangering the safety of Germany and to make them disappear without leaving traces. The directive of Keitel specified that an efficient intimidation could be obtained only by the capital punishment or measurements prohibiting to the close relations of the criminal and with the population to know her fate.

Actions of reprisals

In Italy, soldiers refusing to support the German cause were massacred by Wehrmacht on the Greek island of Céphalonie. Italian villages were shaven and their inhabitants assassinated during operations against the resistant ones.

In occupied Poland and the USSR, hundreds of villages were striped exterminated chart and their inhabitants. In the USSR, the Soviet or Jewish partisans captured were used to clean the fields of mines.

In certain number of occupied countries, the response of Wehrmacht to the attacks of the resistance movements was to take and kill hostages, sometimes to 100 hostages for each killed German. In 1944, before and after the Unloading of Normandy, the French Resistance and the Maquis increased their activities against all the German organizations, including Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS. Nearly 600 man of the maquis were killed with the combat against 15  000 Waffen-SS in the south of France, slowing down the movement of the latter towards the new face which had opened in North. After new incidents, Waffen-SS of Major Otto Dickmann exterminated the population of the village of Oradour-on-Glane in reprisals.

In the orders given as for the taking of hostages, Keitel had specified “it is important that the latter include known personalities or members of their families. ” An officer of command in France declared that “more to the hostages to be cut down will be known, with more the effect will be dissuasive on the authors of the misdeeds. ” The author William Shirer thinks that in all more 30  000 hostages could be carried out in the West only, whereas this policy was also applied by Wehrmacht in Greece, in Yugoslavia, in Scandinavia and Poland.

See also, for the executions of hostages in France Reprisals after the death of Karl Hotz

Appreciation of post-war period

After the end of the war in 1945, several general of Wehrmacht put forth a declaration which took the defense of the actions against the partisans, the execution of hostages and the use of labor forced for the effort of war. They put forward moreover that the Holocauste had been made by the S and the organizations which were associated to him, and which the command of Wehrmacht had been held in ignorance from what occurred in the death camps. According to this declaration, Wehrmacht had fought honourably what gave the impression that it had not made of war crimes and was not tarnished by what had occurred.

A certain number of officers of high ranking pertaining to Wehrmacht had however to answer of war crimes in front of courts. The commander-in-chief of OKW, Feldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel and his chief of staff Alfred Jodl were considered and condemned for war crimes by the international military Tribunal of Nuremberg in 1946. Both were convinced of all the loads which were charged to them, condemned to the capital punishment and hung. Whereas the court had declared that the Gestapo, the Sicherheitsdienst and the S (including Waffen-SS) were criminal organizations, the Court did not draw the same conclusion with regard to the high command from Wehrmacht. A considerable part of the German public opinion considered that caused to recognize that Wehrmacht had not played of role in the war crimes of the Nazi regime.

The continuations with load of the war criminals passed in the second plan of the concerns during the years 1950 whereas the Cold war gained in intensity. Both Allemagnes were to recreate armed forces and could not do it without the soldiers and officers trained having previously been useful in Wehrmacht. The priorities of the cold war and the taboos concerning the revision of the most unpleasant aspects of the second world war caused that the role of Wehrmacht in the war crimes was not seriously re-examined before the beginning of the year 1980. The idea of Wehrmacht foreign to any crime was put at evil by an exposure organized by the Hamburger Institute für Sozialforschung (Institute of the social searchs for Hamburg) entitled Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 (a) 1944 (Crimes of Wehrmacht, Dimensions of the war of extermination 1941-1944). The popular and itinerant exposure, seen by approximately 1,2 million visitors during the last decade showed, with the support of written documents and photographs, that Wehrmacht “had been implied in planning and the implementation of a war of annihilation against the Jews, the prisoners of war and the civil populations.” After criticisms against incorrect descriptions and legends of some of the images of the exposure, the direction of the Institute of the social searchs for Hamburg suspended the exposure and subjected its contents at a committee of German historians. In 2000, the report/ratio of the committee establishes that the charges according to which the exposure would be founded on falsified documents was not founded, but that certain documents presented in the exposure was not exact and that the arguments presented were sometimes too generals. On the other hand, the committee reaffirmed the reliability of the exposure.

the main theses of the exposure about Wehrmacht and the made war in the East do not remain less right about it when with the facts. It is undeniable that in Soviet Union, Wehrmacht “was not only empêtrée “in the genocide of the Jews, the crimes committed against the prisoners of war and in the combat against the civil population, but that she took part in it, by playing a leading role sometimes, sometimes of henchman. And it is not a question `of exactions' or `of excesses isolated', but of measurements which rested on decisions of the military leaders highest placed and commanders of troops, as well on the face as behind the face .

The committee recommended that the exposure is reopened in a re-examined form, presenting the documents and, as much as possible, leaving it to its visitors to draw their own conclusions. The reorganized exposure opened in 2001 and closed in 2004.

It is not that in 2004 qu' an exposure was presented on the crimes of Wehrmacht in Poland.

See too

• War crime

References