The 'ordinary' soldiers of the Wehrmacht

First of all, has anyone actually seen the documentary?

Second, I didn't have an clear intention when I first posted this. I was aiming at the air. However, after reading some responses, I started getting it.

As philosopher Hannah Arendt (a German Jew herself, deeply hated and persecuted), one of the brightest minds in the century has put it, there is no such thing as collective guilt (like in Goldhagen's book, Hitler's Willing Executioners). Guilt can be suffered only by those individuals directly involved in a crime/sin. On the other hand, there is collective responsibility. People are responsible for what is done in their name and by its collective force, good or bad, and has a responsibility towards History and the future generations, whether to exploit the good deeds of the past or redeem its mistakes.

It all reduces to one simple question: what were the German soldiers and officers fighting for?

That is my point. And I stand by it, me, born and raised a German, grandson of an Army lieutenant-colonel guilty of war crimes.

No, I am not saying that. But I am saying that the German Army, as Omer Bartov has proven, was up to the neck in war crimes, from field marshal down to privates.

And what about the regular Army units which, throughout the war, acted as security and anti-partisan forces behind the front? We all know what 'anti-partisan warfare' means: sheer slaughter of civilians.

The point is NOT the generalisation of guilt. Rather, it is the Army as a whole was involved in a criminal war of agression, which is in itself a collective crime.

And I also cannot accept this premise at all. I am NOT talking at shooting un-armed POWs or even artillery or air bombardment of civilians. The crimes of the Western allies can NEVER be equivalent to those of the Germans, nor in scale, less even in essence. The Allies did not capture Gestapo officials and everyone with a NSDAP pin, take them to the woods ans summarily shoot them, did they? Did they hang their own citizens and soldiers in the streets, with signs on them?

Goldhagen's book has been severely questioned on grounds of accuracy and methodology. I have indeed read it and he is an advocate of collective guilt, which I find an exaggeration, and a very dangerous one. However, he does have a point on anti-semitism as a strong, unique, factor. As are Prussian militarism, German megalomania and sick nationalism, the inherent, institutionalized violence of the Germans, the strictly hierarchical society. Unfortunately, those are too 'subjective' factors to study with an 'objective' methodology...

But, did they let 3 million German POWs starve to death? Did they use it as slave labour? Did they try gas chamber on them? Did they shoot them in hidden mass graves? Did they?

EvilGuy, can you provide any source for all those... remarks?

Were they?! Are you sure?! Were G.I.s fighting to build and empire in Europe that would ensure the annihilation and enslavement of all Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, Mediterraneans, mentally-ill, mutilated, genetically deffective, politically suspicious and a long etcetera?

Would you like to hear Dr. Goebbels in his famous 'total war' speech, in Belin Sportpalats in 1943, slipping his tongue and almost saying 'the exter... cleansing of Jews'? Or Hitler, in 1939, saying that, 'if the Jews provoked another world war and dragged Germany into it, they would not survive that war'?

Mind if I correct you? A long tradition of blind obedience, violence instincts (the too frequent duels), elitism and racism, authoritarian and right-winged political beliefs and typical German megalomania and war-praising (anyone here has read Clausewitz?).

Again? Where does that truth come from? Watch the documentary... which states that the comissar order was carried out in 2/3 of the cases.

 

I do not see how you could have gotten from my quote that I was implying that the majority of the German Army did commit atrocities. As a matter of fact, I do agree with your statement. I also asked what the percentages would be of those who did commit atrocities versus those who did not. These percentages would support what you have said.

The Allgemeine SS was as you described but the Waffen SS started out as Hitler's personal guard and then went on to becoming a politically indoctrinated armed force. It was originally designed to be what you described but as the war progressed, it was far from it.

Not so. The army had plenty of clout and manpower to overthrow Hitler even with the Waffen SS. It was just their code of honor that restricted them from breaking their personal oath to Hitler.

Even the Waffen SS like the army had no time to contribute to the Jewish question. There were specific units designed for this. The Einzatzgruppen were actually under the control of the SD.

The Generals knew more than this. Intially there were plenty of complaints from the about the work of the einzatzgruppen and wanted it stopped especially in their area of operations. Afer a while, it just went unnoticed.

 

Personally I think too few people give enough appreciation to the role of government supported indoctrination of the masses in that era. Hitler and the Nazi's essentially from 1933 onwards forced their ideology onto the masses of Germany, no more so than the schools in Germany where many of the young soldiers who were to fill the ranks of the German army were just starting to reach the age where they 'discover' the world around them (rather than their own little world) and will be drastically effected by the world view presented to them by their government. Many of the 18, 19, 20 and 21 year olds in the German army in 1939 would have seen the world through the prism of Nazi ideology which they were brought up in during their youth.

To make matters worse much of Nazi ideology could be built upon the cultural ideologies woven throughout the German society years and years before the war started. When Germans went to war in 1914 they went to war in the defense of German "Kultur". The notion of superior German culture had always held sway in German society, so adding in Racial superiority was not exactly a big leap for the older generation of German society that had already had their world view developed by the time the Nazi's took over, it only required some modification to fit the nazi world view. Even "lebensraum" was not a nazi invention, WWI, though maybe not referred to as such, but the desire for colonies, the expansion east into slavic lands to colonize, these were all things the nazi's adopted and modified to a degree, yet they remained ingrained notions in the minds of older Germans.

I honestly believe that the majority of them and the German people in Germany understood what their country stood for and supported that notion, the writing had been on the wall since 1933. I think that kind of brainwashing meant that war crimes were comitted across the services regardless of one being SS or not, afterall tens of millions of Russian civilians perished one way or another by German hands and Hitler's sanctioned policies of ethnic cleansing meant the German soldier would not face prosecution by the brutal German military justice system. The German people and the German Army had been indoctrined and brainwashed for decades into becoming the potential instrument of Hitlers racial and global ambitions, and I believe many more Germans took part in fulfilling hitlers racial plans than will ever admit because of the eternal shame it has brought onto their country and people.

Now I dont think this is much different than many other allied countries in WWII so I dont believe this fact shows badly on the German people as a whole. The War of liberation launched by the Western allies was frankly a war to liberate white europian people from Nazi domination, not a world wide quest to grant freedom upon all peoples of all races. The british still maintained their grip on their colonial possessions during this time with no intention of liberating the brown and black skinned people under their control in the Middle East and Africa, and I have no doubt culturally they felt superior to those people. The US fought for freedom in Europe while continuing their policy of segregation of coloured people at home, and many have suggested the was a role for racism in the US campaign in the pacific.

Still when you factor in decades of indoctrination in one way or another and the raising of German children by a government determined to shape their world view to conform to Nazi ideology, and combine that with the course of the war on the eastern front, the inital "confirmation" of slavic inferiority by the primitive living condition german units encountered upon their drive into the soviet union, and than later when the war turned against them and the German soldier found himself in a hostile country, hundreds of miles away from home, facing unbelievable turnover rates in men in his units and the constant destruction of his comrades in short periods of time during battles, it is of little surprise crimes would be comitted against the population of Russia. And I dont think it was mainly just random killings that ultimately resulted in the total civilian death toll. I have seen some interesting statistics from the anti-partisan sweeps carried out by units including frontline Wehrmacht where large numbers of "partisans" were killed, like thousands, but only a few dozen rifles found.

 

If that is the case, how do you justify all of the volunteers from countries outside of Germany signing up to fight? How were they 'brainwashed'?

Because of the propaganda machine, a lot of German people played along because they had no choice. This happens in a police state. Selp preservation I believe it is called. The majority of the Germans did know that the concentration camps existed and that there was a program to force the Jews out of Germany. What they did not know was the details of the 'Jewish question'. If the Nazi heiarchy wanted the general population to know what was going on, then why come up with euphemisms such as 'transportation to the east' and 'the Jewish question'?

 

Some of them were already political fanatics in their own countries -- how their worldview was arrived at was unimportant. The arrival of the Nazis as an occupying power gave them a handy vehicle to act out their ideologies. Others were simply adventurers, some joined because family or friends were joining, and others were looking for a meal ticket.

Come on. -No- government, at least one in any nation steeped in European civilization, would come out with a program that blatant. As for the knowledge of the people, I believe there was a direct relationship of the degree of knowledge to the proximity of a camp. Those close to camps knew that horrible things were happening. Those farther away had genuinely good chances of not having much perspective on what was happening given the communications technology of the age and the much greater focus on the local scene that was common then.

Brendan Phibbs, in The Other Side of Time, related an interesting anecdote about this topic. An officer in the 12th Armored Division, he entered a shop of some kind with German civilians in it. This was in a German town with a camp. The civilians paid him no mind, just another Ami, and continued their discussion about the camp and what had became of those sent to it, and how they had deserved to perish in the camp. What they didn't know was that Phibbs had a classical education and was fluent in German -- and they were absolutely horrified when Phibbs rounded on them for their callous approval of mass murder. We should bear in mind that Germans were as capable of lying about such things as anybody, especially if they thought their skins or livelihood might be at stake if they admitted the truth about what they knew.

Given the police state in which the Germans lived, I am not surprised that most of them simply opted to go with the flow, no matter where it led. A particularly illuminating view of the problems of attempting even very mild initiative, much less resistance, is given in Stephen Fritz's Endkampf. 1945 had many instances of Germans against Germans in which the strongly propagandized young Heer officers, SS men, and Hitler Jugend went after their own countrymen with sadistic fervor even when it was obvious to even the dullest of men that the Third Reich was finished.

Cheers

BW

 

I don't want to turn this thread into yet another Waffen SS thread, but there was no initial distinction between the two branches of the SS. And whilst the core of the 'Leibstandarte' was Hitler's personal guard, it wasn't the case of the 'Totenkopf' nor Das Reich (which received a whole 'Totenkopf' Standarte before been raised to division level). Then, by 1942 all SS men responsible for labour, concentration and extermination camps were incorporated to the Waffen SS... Also, there is the rotation system and the 'guard' duties of convalescent W-SS men.

Now, I would like to add two more photographs. The first is of the summary execution of 36 men in the Yugoslavian town of Pančevo, ordered and committed not by any SD or police unit, but by the most élitesque of élite regiments, the Großdeutschland regiment.

The second photograph shows the round-up of Jews in the town of Szczebrzeszyn, who were later transported to the extermination camp of Belzec. Can you notice the blue uniforms and the little wings in the neck? Again, not SD, not Allgemeine, not Waffen SS, not Ukrainian auxiliaries, no Army... it's the Luftwaffe! On October 21st 1942, Luftwaffe personnel gathered almost 1.000 Jews and sent them to their deaths in Belzec, whilst, aided by the local Polish population (both treathened and incentived), seeked and found 500 hiding Jews, who were shot in the spot.

 

Friedrich have some pity, I'm an amateur historian not a moral philosopher and feel very much out my depth here. When you "aim at the air" like that you are going to make a lot of casualties.
I have read Clausewitz but very little about the holocaust, I freely admit the little I did made me sick and I chose to avoid inflicting on myself more of the horrible details. My interest in it is understanding how we can prevent something like that happening again and that is something I'm very serious about with understanding as the keyword so I really can't resist this post as the common German involvement is a key issue, I just hope we can keep it under control.

I agree with you that a, hopefully unrepeatable, mindset prevailing in Germany at the time is at the root of it but, in my opinion, most of the rest of your second post is too extreme.

Collective responsibility is just as slippery a concept as collective guilt. IMO it all boils down to power, I won't hold people responsible for things they have no power about. And by power I mean being able to do something about it without a huge risk to themseves and their loved ones and with at least some chance of success. In any acceptable ethical system there must be a middle ground between an accomplice and a hero/marthir. Padoxically in my view the 1933 Germans are more responsible than the 1943 ones as they had more power but then they had no way to guess the extent of Hitler's madness. Anyway most of the time people who say "you should have prevented it" are just attempting to justify they did nothing to prevent it themseves.

As far as I know, and despite lack of clear policies from above, a very large majority of Heer soldiers on the western front behaved honorably. As they came from the same cultural mould as those east the only reasonable conclusion is that something in the way war was waged there made the difference. From what I've read atrocities were commonplace in the east practically from day one and from both sides, after a couple of months of that it would take a very strong moral fiber to resist. The German practice of keeping units in the line for very long periods, and often using those pulled out for rebuilduing for garrison and anti partisan duty is also probably partly to blame for the brutality.

I agree the holocaust, and the Heer's involvement in it, is a different story from "ordinary" war crimes, and on a different level from anything that happened elsewhere though I suspect part of the shock and outrage is due to the perpetrators apparently being not that different from the rest of us, we can more easily live with african tribes attempting genocide with machetes than with europeans doing it with an industrial process. IMO responsibility boils down to how much the average soldier really knew and while they had plenty of evidence of it they also had plenty of "evidence" that the war was due to a global jewish/communist conspiracy against Germany, Goebels knew how to do his job. I doubt the average Heer grunt would have as clear a picture as we have now.

I also doubt that the forced labor issue was so evident, nazi germany's labor laws were pretty harsh even towards German workers, a soldier returning home on leave in 1943 or after was more likely to see the bombings, and become more fanatical, than the slaves.

So while the "mindset" that produiced the horror was shared by all Germans I don't think we can hold the average German "responsible", he was unlikely to have a good enough picture of what was happening to make a choice that would have needed a heroic amount of moral and physical courage.

 

Very good post, Tired. I appreciate the response.

The thing is that the more I read about WWII history, the more I question myself on philosophical grounds. Because I think it is very important to have concepts and ideas clear that can provide a better understanding.

An example is the nature of the Nazi régime. It is unique in history. No other dictatorship is comparable, not even Stalin's. And here philosophy and sociology must take a part. Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism is a supperb attempt to explore the matter, just as her Eichmann in Jerusalem, a reflexion on the nature of evil and the Holocaust.

In the end, I do agree with your last sentence and that is precisely the base for my strong stand:

And there were a few like that:

 

I don't think Nazi ideology ever preached aloud the need to put people in extermination camps, nor were such notions instilled in propaganda. Its similar to the euthanasia program instituted by the nazi state and the propaganda line put on posters. Those posters certainly didnt talk about how they should kill off all disabled people, but they stressed the cost of these dependents on the state and portrayed them as burdens. There was a lot of implying on the part of the state in regards to dealing with the slavs in the east, but you combine that with encouragement by the German high command and hitler (Commissar order for example, plus numerous other encouragement type orders released by commanders talking about the ruthlessness the German soldier was to show to the enemy people), they certainly made sure there was no barrier besides the soldiers own moral barrier to stop them from participating in Hitlers racial policies.

Now I dont want to give the impression that I believe the propaganda was so effective most germans would line up to be part of the einsatzgruppen given the chance. From what I have read about the einsatzgruppen, even a number of those guys started to have problems killing women and children, hence the reason for such a switchover to industrialized murder (camps) after Himmler did a little investigating about his death units in the east. I do believe that the average German soldiers sincerly believed in his own cultural and racial superiority. I think that meant he would be more inclined to commit or participate in war crimes when he viewed those people as less than human. I think the combination of factors in the east meant many germans committed crimes against soviet civilians, even if it was simply forcing people out of their houses in the middle of winter to stay warm.

There have been a number of books suggesting the extensive role of Nazi ideology in the German armed forces in Russia, and frankly while this will be debated for a long time, its very risky to believe the word of the Germans themselves because of the shame WWII brought onto the state of Germany. Just as it would be embarrassing for an aged America person to admit he believed blacks were infeiror to whites back in his day, so I would imagine it would be difficult for a German soldier to admit they believe in the nazi party line. Easier to find a scapegoat, that being the SS and Hitler.

 

Have anyone ever watched the antisemitic propaganda that poured out of Goebbel's Ministry? While the German state did not reveal in public the exact nature of the extermination camps, if anyone of you watched Nazi propaganda films or posters, you would see how Jews were compared to rats, roaches or pests--there was a segment in the Eternal Jew in which the westward migration of the Jews were shown to match the spread of the plague, and the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto were filmed as to live in squalid rooms full of of roaches (the Jews were forced to move into overcrowded ghettoes and hence sanitation issues raise). The purpose here is to visually link Jews to pests, and we exterminate pests, do we not? There is talk in Mein Kampf of genocidal warfare. There was a Marxist Frankfurt muckraking newspaper which claimed that they have discovered Government plans to kill all Jews code named "the Final Solution" in 1933. There was the radio broadcast of 1939. What would be the logical conclusion?

The German Army's propaganda constantly barraged their soldiers with the the goal of informing them that the objective of the war was the total destruction of the Jewish-Bolshevik enemy. After the Barbi Yar massacre near Kiev, an operation performed by an Einsatzgruppe under the command of a certain Paul Blobel and also regular German troops from the Seventeeth Army, its commander, Gen. Reichenau issued a chilling order afterward that the German soldier in the East is not a a fighter who must abide to the rules of war but "a standard-bearer of an inexorable racial idea" and that "every soldier must have full understanding of the necessity of the harsh but just punishment of the Jewish subhumans." Of course, the harsh but just treatment here can refer to nothing other than the Babi Yar, where the troops assisted the killing of 33,000 civilians, mostly women and children. Reichenau continued to emphasize that the Jews were the enemies: "It has the broader objective of nipping in the bud any uprisings in Wehrmacht's rear, which experience shows to always have been instigated by Jews." Ultimately, the purpose of the war was to "free the German people from the Asiatic-Jewish danger once and for all". What could "once and for all" possibly entails for the Jewish-Asiatic-Bolsheivk threat, except total destruction? This order, IIRC, so impressed Hitler that he told other generals to circulate it in the Army, and amongst those many generals who did so was von Manstein. A British soldier, quoted by Max Hasting, said that the most common pictures he found in the wallets of dead Landsers were photos of their mother, girlfriend, pornographic postcard and pictures of hangings or some other atrocities. What are we to make of that?

The SS might well be a segregated institution from the German Army, but SS men did not live apart from the greater German society. Historical evidence suggests that huge sums of wealth, from the jewry, reichmarks and bank notes of the victims to watches and other consumer goods produced by slave labor workshops, flowed from the camps to the SS men's families, forming a veritable black market economy. Is there really any reasonal doubt that, knowing how anti-semite the Nazi Party was, the true nature of the camps? This is not to speak of the massive number of starving, sick Red Army POWs sent to German municipalities as slave laborers, which the city authorities rejected because those men were already dying. Their protests and demands to the Army to send men of better physical condition was included in German state archives.

I find the claim of ignorance very difficult to accept.

 

One thing you forgot to mention is that many German Soldiers and Civilians at that-were completely fooled by Goebbels Propaganda. Have you ever heard Hitlers broadcast about the Stalingrad situation? I have-and not long after that "faked all is well" speech was made-the 6th Army surrendered. This same broadcast is also mentioned in Jason Marks excellent book: Island of Fire.

Now as Goebbels Propaganda Milistry was so good with decieving civilians-many soldiers were also so deceived. That "We are winning in Stalingrad" speech was one to really "take the cake."

 

AMEN to that Brother. Couldn't have been better said.

 

Oh yes, I forgot, those poor Germans under Herr Goebbels' spell...

Now, let's see what those Germans heard on the radio, on the famous 'Total War' speech, in which he almost slipped out the truth:

And here's the same thing on video (at 3'18").

 

Friedrich;
Have you read Vasily Grossman's war diary? Review: A Writer at War by Vasily Grossman | Books | The Guardian
Good stuff- the best first hand WWII account I have ever read. His novel "Life and Fate" is considered by some to be the "War and Peace" of the 20th century. At any rate, Grossman came to believe that Stalin was planning to outHitler Hitler in the USSR before the Soviet dictator's plans-whatever they might have been-were cut short by his death in 1953. It seems that totalitarian societies in general tend to have a problem with Jews and Jewishness. Some of the rhetoric coming out of places like Waziristan and Iran is sounding eerily familiar.
JeffinMNUSA

 

You make your point very well and I fail to see why others can not understand that point you are making.I have said in previous posts that in the case of the Waffen SS not all could be tarred with the same brush and yet we have this same argument again and again, seems that in some peoples eyes that German=nazi killing monster can we not learn to see that yes atrocities were commited but to seperate the kind of Germans in the Heer or Waffen SS to name but 2 that commited said atrocities.

 

Wish I had something profound to add to this discussion but sadly I do not. The profound aspect of this discussion is that we are still having it nearly 65 years after the fact and apparently no closer to an answer of the central question, "Who is to blame?" We generally can agree on who the leaders were, that some degree of complicity was necessary from nearly all levels of that society and that's where we are left with a big void of speculation.

I agree with a statement earlier in the thread that trying to understand what happened, to try and prevent it from happening again is one of the central themes that keeps the study of WWII alive. I know it is a question to which I keep trying to find an answer.

 

1. The book refers to Germans living around a camp
2. More than likely, these Germans were forced to tour the camp and even help with the cleaning so they were exposed to the true happenings of the camp after the fact.
3. Yes, they said what they did because of 12 yrs of anti-semite rhetoric.

This does not prove that all Germans thought that way and that all Germans knew what actually went on inside the camps. I can see how those who lived by the camps would suspect.

As Wtid said, we cannot accuse all Germans nor can we still accuse them today because the majority of Germans today were not even born in the Nazi era and I agree with them that enough is enough. We should not forget what happened but enough with the blame game because all countries did their share.

 

I take it your comment is meant for the forum at large because I have made no accusations. I certainly did not make any comments about all members of any group.

As to the Germans of 1945, in general, there certainly were more than a few liars about, for as the GI's observed when they occupied areas of Germany, it was a wonder because according to the locals, no one had been a Nazi -- somehow the Nazis were all somewhere else in Germany. Like I said, when they thought that unblemished truth might impact them personally, they lied about it. That pointed out, there were in fact many Germans who never were Nazis and who basically lived out their lives in the shadow of what was happening around them. Obviously, no one expects that they lied because there was no need to do so -- if they spent twelve years on a farm somewhere, so what?

There is a need to continue working this issue, though -- precisely because there has been a lot of misinformation put out. Concepts like good German soldier/bad SS man, German generals too honorable to accept mass murder, all Germans were Nazis, German society as a whole was upstanding but duped by the "evil magician" (a German term, btw) Hitler, etc., are just too simplistic. The reason all this should be very well understood is that it can happen again -- to any country. Let us attempt to understand it better so as to keep the "evil magicians" and their siren songs at a healthy distance.

If you have any concerns about my wanting to blame Germans of today then your concerns are mistaken.

As far as Phibbs is concerned, I will take his impression of the event without great reservation for the simple reason that he was there. You and I can wonder about his powers of observation all we wish, but we were not there.

Cheers

BW

 

You have not made any accusations. My intent was to point out that the example given from that book was biased. Taking Phibbs impression without reservation just because he was there is biased. Will you not give the Germans the same courtesy as they were there as well? Who is to say that they indeed did not know the whole truth?

 

PzJgr, please believe what you wish. Again, for my part, I have read Phibb's work in its entirety. Apart from this report, he also mentions encounters with the Germans, both military and civilian, that cover a wide range of human behavior, and other comments of his about the Germans are not negative. Phibbs was a keen observer and I have no reason to suspect him of an agenda in the book as he simply reported what he saw in the course of his duties.

Cheers

BW