Wehrmacht - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

History

While instituting at once after the death of Hindenburg, on August 2nd, 1934, the solemn oath of the soldier by whom this one was committed obeying its person blindly, Hitler created the conditions of a brutal expansion policy and aggression: “I make in front of God the crowned promise of an absolute obedience to the führer of Reich and the German people, supreme commander of Wehrmacht, and to engage my life of valiant soldier to the service of this oath”. Later, this oath will be used as alibi with many soldiers to justify their passivity vis-a-vis the criminal orders of the Nazis, which explains the introduction of an article into the Constitution of the current Federal republic, recognizing with the soldiers the right to disobey orders which would run up against their conscience.

The term Reichswehr disappeared definitively from the official use as from 1935 and the German army was indicated by the Wehrmacht term at the time of the re-establishment of the Conscription.

Using of many innovations, whose in particular use of the Blitzkrieg , Wehrmacht knew a great number of successes at the beginning of the Second world war, before being confronted with a stronger adversity (with an undervaluation of the forces of the Soviet Union then the entry in war of the the United States), the defeat of Stalingrad and with an exhaustion of its own resources, which led it to a multiplication of reverse and finally to the defeat in 1945.

Since 1933, a known political resistance under the name of black Orchestre was set up in the higher realms of the army and tried several coups d'etat and attempted murders against Hitler. Thinking the war lost and hoping to negotiate a peace separated with the Anglo-American ones, a great number of generals of Wehrmacht organized a plot to kill Adolf Hitler the July 20th 1944, which constitutes the most famous action of the organization. The attack failed and the S carried out on order of Führer a wild repression, the near total of the officers having taken part in the attack will be carried out or will give itself death (see the case of Erwin Rommel).

17 on the whole was counted; 893 200 people on a population of 80 million inhabitants who were under the uniform between 1939 and 1945; approximately 5 100 000 were killed or reported missing and 5 300 000 wounded of which approximately the half after the attack missed against Hitler, therefore in the last 9 months of the war.

It is necessary to also count the In spite of us (Alsatian, Mosellans, Belgians of the cantons of the East and Luxembourger), of the territories annexed by Germany during the war and that she regarded as having a German population, and the incorporation of foreign volunteers.

Its Propagande was diffused in particular by the magazine Signal whose illustrations, particularly those color, are of a great quality.

War crimes

See also: War crimes of Wehrmacht

Wehrmacht made many War crimes during the Second world war - bombardments of open cities, massacres of civilians, summary executions of political police chiefs Soviet pursuant to the order relating to the police chiefs, and executions of prisoners of war and civil hostages as reprisals for the activities of the Guérilla in the occupied territories.

Although massive the extermination campaigns associated with the Holocauste were primarily the fact of the S and the Einsatzgruppen, Wehrmacht was also implied there, because its officers and troops cooperated with the Einsatzgruppen with much of places by gathering the Juifs and other people for their internment or of their execution. It often happened that members of Wehrmacht took part themselves in the massacres, as made it to a certain extent the members of almost all the armed forces engaged in the conflict, including the Soviet Japanese, and, seldom, even the allied forces in the West.

As the reality of the Holocaust became largely known at the end of the war, much of former members of Wehrmacht spread the idea that it was not tarnished by the crimes allegedly committed exclusively by the politicized S and the other groupings of which none was member of Wehrmacht. Although the Tribunal of Nuremberg condemned the chief of OKW Wilhelm Keitel and the chief of staff Alfred Jodl to have made war crimes, he did not judge that Wehrmacht was an criminal organization following the example organizations of the party like the S. Many Germans regarded that as an exemption of Wehrmacht. Within the German historians, the deep implication of Wehrmacht in the perpetration of war crimes, in particular on the face of the East, became a historical fact largely accepted at the end of the years 1970 and the years 1980.

Famous soldiers

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See too

References

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