OUCH! 😳 (X & Text) Colbert: "Do not compare ICE or Border Patrol agents to the Nazis.

[Cirsium]

19. The myth of the clean Wehrmacht

Myth Of The Clean Wehrmacht

The Wehrmacht may have lost the war, but it won the battle of postwar memory. Few of its members were ever prosecuted for war crimes. Instead, the German public remembered the army as an honorable institution whose men had behaved decently and avoided any involvement in Nazi atrocities. Politicians, former generals, and ordinary veterans all contributed to this popular narrative, which today has come to be known as the myth of the clean Wehrmacht.

Scholars have dismantled the myth over the last several decades. The war the Wehrmacht waged on the Eastern Front, we now know, was more a criminal campaign than a conventional one. Soldiers murdered millions of civilians—including Jews—despoiled the region of economic resources, burned tens of thousands of villages to the ground, and starved millions of POWs. All this was in service to the Nazi regime’s ideological goal of destroying “Jewish Bolshevism” and killing or enslaving the USSR’s “subhuman” inhabitants.

In recent years, scholars have tallied the army’s crimes and investigated the motives behind them but some crucial questions remain unanswered. What did soldiers think about the atrocities their side committed, and how did they emerge from the war insisting that they had remained innocent? What ideas of good and evil influenced the army and its men? Finally, where did the Wehrmacht myth come from and why did it have such a powerful hold over the German public?

https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/the-clean-wehrmacht-making-a-myth/

The myth of the ‘Clean Wehrmacht’ has endured for decades in post-World War II memory, portraying the German Army (Wehrmacht) as a professional military force uninvolved in Nazi atrocities. This narrative suggests that while the SS and Nazi Party carried out war crimes and genocide, the Wehrmacht remained honorable, fighting only conventional battles. However, modern scholarship, historical documents, and survivor testimonies have increasingly dismantled this myth, revealing the German Army’s direct involvement in war crimes, including the Holocaust and brutal occupation policies across Eastern Europe. Understanding this distortion of history is essential to grasp the full scope of responsibility and the mechanisms of denial in postwar Germany and beyond.

Extensive evidence now contradicts the myth. Historical research has uncovered thousands of documents, photographs, and testimonies showing the Wehrmacht’s complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity. These include mass shootings of civilians, participation in the deportation of Jews, destruction of villages, and reprisals against partisans. The invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Operation Barbarossa, marked a turning point where the Wehrmacht was fully integrated into the genocidal policies of the Nazi regime.

• Army units participated in the shooting of Jews, Roma, and political prisoners.

• Wehrmacht commanders coordinated with the Einsatzgruppen (SS death squads).

• Soldiers enforced the Commissar Order to execute captured Soviet political officers on sight.

• Entire villages were burned, and their populations massacred in anti-partisan campaigns.

https://elpopularec.com/myth-of-the-clean-wehrmacht/

Franz Halder was a German military officer who played a central role in the strategy and execution of the war on the Eastern Front during the Second World War. As Chief of the General Staff of the German Army, he coordinated numerous operations and was involved in policymaking that led to war crimes. After the war, Halder became an influential advisor to the U.S. Army, actively contributing to the creation of the image of a “clean” Wehrmacht. His role during the war and in postwar historiography remains the subject of extensive historical research.

During his work for U.S. Army historians, Halder promoted a specific interpretation of the German military role in the war. According to this interpretation, the Wehrmacht was separate from the political and ideological crimes of the Nazi regime. Halder presented the German army as an apolitical, professional force pursuing purely military objectives.

In the reports produced under his supervision:

• responsibility for war crimes was attributed solely to the SS;

• Hitler was portrayed as the sole author of strategic mistakes and crimes;

• the Wehrmacht’s involvement in orders such as the Kommissarbefehl was omitted or minimized.

https://worldwar1-2.com/franz-halder-clean-wehrmacht/