Crimes Against the Wehrmacht

485 Pages·2015·41.24 MB·English

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CRIMES AGAINST THE WEHRMACHT
Franz W. Seidler

Translated by Carlos Whitlock Porter

The original title:
VERBRECHEN AN DER WEHRMACHT

Translated and published by permission.
(c) 2015 by Carlos Whitlock Porter. All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-329-13871-1

All photos and text documents reproduced in the present volume are
from the Federal Archives/Military Archives, Freiburg.

Front Cover: Soviet cannibals in German captivity.
Table of Contents

Translator’s Preface..........................................................................5
About the Author..............................................................................6
Initial Press Reactions.......................................................................8
Foreword........................................................................................10

Introduction....................................................................................13

Soldiers in the Shadow of Politics............................................13
The Anti-Wehrmacht Agitation........................................13
The Wehrmacht in the War Against the Soviet Union.......22
The “Criminal” Orders.....................................................25
The Testimony of the Military Chaplains..........................32

Stalin’s Illegal Conduct of the War
During the “Great Patriotic War”.............................................35
Provisions of International Law Violated by the Soviets...35
The Partisan War in Violation of International Law..........40
Abuse of the Red Cross....................................................44
Violations Against the Prisoner of War Convention..........45
Revenge on Collaborators.................................................46

Soviet War Propaganda...........................................................48
Atrocity Propaganda in Support
of the Fighting Morale of the Red Army...........................48
The Murder Appeals of Ilya Ehrenburg.............................53
The Tradition of Soviet Crimes Against Humanity............57

The German Measures.............................................................61
The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau
in the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht....................61
German Counter Propaganda............................................64

References..............................................................................69

On the Editing.................................................................................75

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Documentation................................................................................76

Introduction to Volume One. “War Crimes of the Soviet
Armed Forces, 1941”..................................................................76

Introduction to Volume Two. “War Crimes of the Soviet
Armed Forces, 1942”..................................................................87

Chapter A.1. Murder and Mistreatment of POWs and
Defenseless Wounded.................................................................95

Chapter A.2. First Report on the Treatment of German
Prisoners of War in the Russian Hinterland...............................327

Chapter A.3. Plundering of Prisoners of War and the Dead
and Wounded............................................................................331

Chapter A.4. Desecration of Military Graves.............................332

Chapter A.5. Guerrilla Warfare.................................................339

Chapter A.6. Use of Dum-Dum and Explosive Bullets
(Ammunition Prohibited Under International Law)...................348

Chapter A.7. Prohibited Weapons and Ruses de Guerre.............361

Chapter B. Violation of the Red Cross and Attacks on
Medical Units and Field Hospitals.............................................369

Chapter C.1. Atrocities of the Bolsheviks Against the
Civilian Population of Ukraine..................................................424

Chapter C.2. Atrocities of the Bolsheviks Against the
Civilian Population in the Baltics..............................................440

Chapter D. Cannibalism Among Russian Prisoners of War
and on German Dead................................................................443

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Translator’s Preface

There is no consistent equivalence between German and American or
British army or Air Force ranks. In other books, the following terms are
usually translated as follows:

Gefreiter = Private First Class
Feldwebel = First Sergeant
Unterfeldwebel = Sergeant
Hauptfeldwebel = Chief Sergeant
Oberfeldwebel = Staff Sergeant
Stabsfeldwebel = Sergeant Major
Schütze (Grenadier) = Rifleman (Private)
Oberschütze = Private 1st Class (or Chief Rifleman)
Obergefreiter = Leading Aircraftsman (Luftwaffe)
Unterfeldwebel = Staff Sergeant (Luftwaffe)

The problem is that if you translate them into English and then
back into German you very often get the wrong ranks in German. There
is some overlap. For this reason I have usually chosen to leave them in
German.

Other terms:

Wehrmacht = Armed Forces
Heer = Land Forces
Armee = Army
Luftwaffe = Air Force
OKW = Supreme Command of the Armed Forces
IC or Ic = Third General Staff Officer for Intelligence and Counter-
Intelligence.

Bilddokument(e) zu Fall [...] = Pictorial Document(s) to Case [...]
Textdokument(e) zu Fall [...] = Text Document(s) to Case [...]

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About the Author

Franz W. Seidler is a Professor of Modern History specializing in
Social and Military History at the University of the Bundeswehr
[German Federal Armed Forces], Munich. Dr. Seidler’s principal field
of research is the Second World War. His principal publications in
book form deal with the personnel problems of the Wehrmacht [Armed
Forces], Wehrmachtgefolgen [Armed Forces Auxiliaries],
Wehrmachthilferinnen [Armed Forces Female Auxiliaries], the
Organization Todt, and the Deutscher Volksturm [ad-hoc home defense
units], as well as with problems of legal jurisdiction of the German
Armed Forces and collaboration in German-occupied territories. The
present volume is intended to provide a picture of the dangers posed to
every German soldier by the Red Army’s conduct of partisan warfare in
violation of international law, and the “thousand deaths” possibly
suffered by the fathers and grandfathers of those same persons who
now wax indignant about the “crimes of the German Armed Forces”.
The traveling exhibition known in German as
“Vernichtungskrieg: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1944” [“War
of Extermination: Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941-1944”, translated
into English as “The German Army and Genocide: Crimes Against War
Prisoners, Jews and Other Civilians in the East, 1939-1944” or simply,
“The Crimes of the German Army”, and referred to below as the “Anti-
Wehrmacht Exhibition”] – is simply an exercise in propaganda. It states
no historical facts and provides no precise factual data or details. The
present book, however, in the first of two volumes, provides full
documentation of more than 300 Soviet war crimes committed in 1941-
1942, accompanied by exact descriptions, many of them proven in
detail by eyewitness statements and horrifying photographic evidence.
This shocking volume was made possible by a systematic study of the
archives of the incorruptible and entirely objective Wehrmacht War
Crimes Bureau [“Wehrmacht Untersuchungstelle”], which investigated
8,000 war crimes. Even Goebbels’ propaganda ministry was compelled
to keep silent about these atrocities for fear of their possible effects on
the morale of the domestic front. Only now is the full truth of the
matter revealed. Horrifying mutilations, including deliberate blindings,
rapes, inconceivable tortures, sadism, massacres of wounded men in
hospitals, cold-blooded slaughter – even cannibalism practiced [by the
Soviets] on [the bodies of] German soldiers – all proven in abundant
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detail. The photographs – more than 100 of them – are enough to make
the reader’s blood run cold. The book is a shocking indictment of an
army which committed truly shocking, and unpunished, war crimes –
Stalin’s Red Army.
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Initial Press Reactions

“The scalding of hands during interrogation, fatal bayonet wounds in
the backs of bound and helpless prisoners, members of the Wehrmacht,
even cannibalism – all the horrors of a hate-filled Soldateska – as
proven by testimony and medical evidence”.
– Focus, 50/1997.

“This unique book written in refutation of the Anti-Wehrmacht
Exhibition should be owned by every soldier, young and old.”
– Zeitschrift Kamaraden (Abeitsgemeinschaft fur Kamaraden-
werke und Traditionsverbände e.V.) [Association for Comradeship and
Tradition]

“At long last, running counter to the spirit of the times, an historian
refutes the Anti-Wehrmacht Exhibition by means of solid
documentation.”
– Welt am Sonntag, 9/1998.

“This material is absolutely reliable, I can assure you... the
documentation is badly needed and is to be welcomed.”
– Prof. Dr. Alfred M. de Zayas (quoted in Focus).

“This book, better than any defense brief, will prove itself the most
effective weapon against the libelous ‘Anti-Wehrmacht Exhibition’.”
– Dr. Alfred Mechtersheimer, Frieden, 2000 (Friedenskomitee
2000 [Peace Committee 2000].

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“Kill the German wherever you find him. Beat him on the street, in the
house, blow him up with grenades, stick bayonets in him, pitch forks,
cut him in half with axes, impale him, cut him up with knives, hit,
however you can, but kill! Kill him, and you rescue your life and that of
your family. Kill him and you rescue your homeland, your people.
Everywhere you must kill the beast! When he stops to sleep – tear to
pieces the sleeping one. If he goes into the forest – there he will find
death. If he is on the road, a mine should tear him to pieces. If he
travels by train – let the train be derailed. Crush, split, stab him in the
forest, on the field, on the street, destroy him everywhere!”

– Ilya Ehrenburg

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Foreword

This book is a reply to the exhibition “War of Extermination: Crimes of
the Wehrmacht 1941-1944”, shown by a Hamburg private institute for
social research in several cities of the Federal Republic of Germany and
Austria. The stated intention of its organizer, Hannes Heer, is to open
debate “on the most barbaric chapter of German and Austrian history”
(after Auschwitz). Barbarity has many faces. Verbally, it is expressed
through venomous hatred, and, in action, in the bestiality of murderous
deeds.
The “Power of Images”, with which the Exhibition is credited, is
also expressed by the contents of the present book. What men are
capable of doing to each other makes one shudder. The human body, of
course, only offers a limited number of variants of torture even for the
most perverted fantasy, but the victim of torture dies a thousand deaths.
Most of the victims of Soviet murders would have preferred to have
died quickly by a bullet in front of a cemetery wall or a noose on the
gallows, as practiced by the Germans during their executions. The
mutilations alone give the reader an idea of the sufferings of the victims
of the Red Army before they died. If the reader, in viewing the
photographs, tries to put himself in the victim’s place while they were
being martyred, tormented, beaten or mauled to death – in the condition
in which they were found by their comrades – he will obtain an idea of
what men without morals are capable of doing.
In contrast to the Anti-Wehrmacht Exhibition, the present
volume of documentation on Soviet military atrocities has no room for
falsification, misleading texts and arbitrary claims.
– All cases are proven.
– The place names and dates are beyond doubt.
– The detailed circumstances of the cruel events were supported
by eyewitnesses.
– The pictures are not private photographs, but juridical and
medical probative material.
– The texts have not been manipulated in any way.
– For most documents, additional probative material exists,
which can be consulted by scholars.
– The wording of the texts can be verified in the Federal
Archive / Military Archives Freiburg under the heading RW 2 / v. 147–
v. 152.
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