Reddit reviews The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality

The Clean Wehrmacht myth is a blatant lie. The Wehrmacht were repeatedly involved in war crimes, including the extermination of undesirables, and at the very least most, if not all, members were aware that their government was pursuing a campaign of violence against civilians and had purged undesirables (such as cripples and mentally ill) from society back home. The Wehrmacht may have been normal men, but that does not mean they are free of the blame for what occurred during World War 2.

Here are some resources regarding the Clean Wehrmacht Myth:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht

https://www.amazon.com/The-Wehrmacht-History-Myth-Reality/dp/0674025776

https://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Eastern-Front-Nazi-Soviet/dp/0521712319

https://www.amazon.com/War-Extermination-Military-Studies-Genocide/dp/1571814930

I'd also add Ordinary Men to that list, as it's a very interesting study/discussion of how plain people like you and me can become bloodthirsty exterminators of other people in the right circumstances. https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492122897&sr=1-1&keywords=ordinary+men

Edit: Done replying to comments in this thread, it's exhausting. None of the argumentation is new. To quote the Duke of Wellington, "they came on in the same old way...". The materials are there for you to explore and read. You can form your own judgments based on facts and rigorous research, that's the beauty of a free and open society, the kind of society Nazi Germany was actively trying to prevent. The reason the Clean Wehrmacht myth needs to be refuted is because, as I've said in another comment, it presents an ignorant view of history that allows us to avoid the hard truth, learned largely from World War Two, that ordinary men who would otherwise be considered honorable, decent people can take part in atrocious crimes or, at the very least, hear about them and be permissive or even supportive of them. If we deny that, we can't learn to prevent such things happening again.

Edit 2: Honestly last thing, I just want to add a comment by one of the mods of r/askhistorians specifically relating to this subject. It's honestly the best comment on Reddit I've ever seen regarding this subject and it has a list of plenty of resources for those who want to investigate this issue further: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3xc03h/just_how_much_of_the_wehrmacht_was_dirty/cy3cxs0/

Because that defence worked so well didn't it. The clean werhmacht is a myth spread after the trials to try and ease the reintegration of the werhmacht back into German armed forces.

I advise reading https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wehrmacht-History-Myth-Reality/dp/0674025776

Part II:

For Stalingrad/Leningrad:

STALINGRAD: How the Red Army Survived the German Onslaught

Leningrad: State of Siege

Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad

To the Gates of Stalingrad: Soviet-German Combat Operations, April-August 1942

Armageddon in Stalingrad: September-November 1942

Stopped at Stalingrad: The Luftwaffe and Hitler's Defeat in the East, 1942-1943

The 900 Days: The Siege Of Leningrad

Kursk:

The Battle of Kursk

Demolishing the Myth: The Tank Battle at Prokhorovka, Kursk, July 1943: An Operational Narrative


Air War:

Barbarossa: The Air Battle July-December 1941

Stalingrad: The Air Battle: 1942-January 1943

Kursk: The Air Battle, July 1943

Bagration to Berlin: The Final Air Battles in the East 1944-1945

Black Cross/Red Star : Vol. 1, Operation Barbarossa 1941

Black Cross / Red Star: The Air War Over The Eastern Front, Vol. 2 - Resurgence: January - June 1942

Black Cross Red Star: The Air War Over the Eastern Front Volume 3


German Army:

War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II

Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich

The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture

The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality

The Unknown Eastern Front: The Wehrmacht and Hitler's Foreign Soldiers

Death of the Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of 1942

The Wehrmacht Retreats: Fighting a Lost War, 1943

Partisans:

Defiance

Stalin's Guerrillas: Soviet Partisans in World War II

Holocaust/Genocide:

Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule

Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine

Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine

The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization

The Holocaust in the Soviet Union

It's anti-Russian (anti-Slav) racism picked up from Wehrmacht apologists that got uncritically accepted in the West during the cold war & has stayed unchallenged.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wehrmacht-History-Myth-Reality/dp/0674025776
https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=14799

I literally just said he was an average one plucked from Austria, actually, small town, put on the frontline. And for the most part, the Wehrmacht were very much aware and complicit with such going ons.

See this Wikipedia article here, or if you'd prefer, Hannes Heer's "War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II", or Wolfram Wette's "The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality" for further reading.

This is something called the myth of the clean Wehrmacht. Though yes most regular army soldiers didn’t staff or visit death camps or concentration camps, they were involved in other aspects of the Holocaust, particularly on the eastern front where they at times assisted the Einsatzgruppen in mass shootings. They were also very aware of what was going on in death camps, many witnessed deportations. They were aware of what they were fighting for, and were complicit in the crimes of Holocaust. Here’s a basic introduction into the role of the Wehrmacht during the Holocaust,

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-german-military-and-the-holocaust

https://medium.com/@HolocaustMuseum/debunking-a-persistent-myth-of-wwii-the-german-armys-hands-were-not-clean-51ff4aa6178

https://www.amazon.com/Wehrmacht-History-Myth-Reality/dp/0674025776

Stop with this Wehraboo revisionist bullshit. It doesn't matter if they were a good person or a bad person, they were all standing over the same mass graves. The average German civilian knew what was happening, let alone the soldiers carrying out the work. If they didn't defect or resist, they were as guilty as the rest.

 

EDIT: Since I'm already catching downvotes, if you're not a Nazi apologist and maybe just misinformed, here are some great resources that go into explicit detail how the average German soldier was far from clean:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3xc03h/just_how_much_of_the_wehrmacht_was_dirty/?st=jse6fwxk&sh=c852a62b

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/480hnc/were_the_nazis_encouraged_to_use_terror_as_a_form/?st=jse6fxso&sh=835b61d6

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5vc22s/how_much_did_the_wehrmacht_on_the_eastern_front/?st=jse6g0af&sh=7fb522db

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5voi0y/is_it_true_that_the_wehrmacht_generally_treated/?st=jse6g1dz&sh=d2a96c8a

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht

http://www.amazon.com/The-Wehrmacht-History-Myth-Reality/dp/0674025776

http://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Eastern-Front-Nazi-Soviet/dp/0521712319

http://www.amazon.com/War-Extermination-Military-Studies-Genocide/dp/1571814930