Reddit reviews The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality
We found 7 Reddit comments about The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
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We found 7 Reddit comments about The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
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