The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality

395 Pages·2007·3.33 MB·English

by  Wolfram Wette

THE WEHRMACHT

THE WEHRMACHT
HISTORY, MYTH, REALITY
WOLFRAM WETTE
translated by deborah lucas schneider
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge,Massachusetts
London,England
Copyright©2006bythePresidentandFellowsof HarvardCollege
Allrightsreserved
PrintedintheUnitedStatesof America
FirstHarvardUniversityPresspaperbackedition,2007
OriginallypublishedasDieWehrmacht—Feindbilder,Vernichtungskrieg,Legenden,
©S.FischerVerlagGmbH,FrankfurtamMain2002.
Libraryof CongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Wette,Wolfram,1940–
[Wehrmacht.English]
TheWehrmacht:history,myth,reality/WolframWette;
translatedbyDeborahLucasSchneider.
p.cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN-13978-0-674-02213-3(cloth:alk.paper)
ISBN-100-674-02213-0(cloth:alk.paper)
ISBN-13978-0-674-02577-6(pbk.)
ISBN-100-674-02577-6(pbk.)
1.Germany–ArmedForces—History—20thcentury.
2.WorldWar,1939–1945—Germany. 3.WorldWar,1939–1945—Atrocities.
4.Nationalism—Germany—History. 5.Germany.Heer—Officers—History.
I.Title.
D757.W43132006
940.54′1343—dc22 2005052604
Contents
PrefacebyPeterFritzsche vii
ForewordbyManfredMesserschmidt xv
Listof Abbreviations xix
1. Perceptionsof Russia,theSovietUnion,
andBolshevismasEnemies 1
2. Anti-SemitismintheGermanMilitary 25
3. TheWehrmachtandtheMurderof Jews 90
4. GeneralsandEnlistedMen 139
5. TheLegendof theWehrmacht’s“CleanHands” 195
6. ATabooShatters 251
7. Conclusion 292
Notes 299
Index 361

Preface
PeterFritzsche
“History,” Günter Grass has written, “the history we Germans
have repeatedly mucked up” over the course of the twentieth cen-
tury, “is a clogged toilet. We flush and flush, but the shit keeps ris-
ing.”Grassdespairsinthemostexasperatedlanguageabouttheabil-
ityof GermanstocometotermswiththeirNazipast.Heiscertainly
right to indicate that the German past has not gone away. Germans
liveeverydaywiththeconsequencesof WorldWarIIandtheHolo-
caust.ButGrassiswrongtoinsinuatethatGermanstodayaretrying
togetridof thepastorhavenotlearnedfromit.Inthelate1990s,in
atrulyextraordinarydemonstrationof publicinterest,tensof thou-
sands of Germans visited the photographic exhibition “War of Ex-
termination: The Crimes of the Wehrmacht, 1941–1944.” More ef-
fectively than any other work of history, the exhibit opened up a
difficult and productive debate on the role of ordinary Germans
inthemurderof innocentciviliansduringWorldWarII.Organized
by the Institute for Social Research in Hamburg, “War of Extermi-
nation” showed photograph after photograph of German soldiers
roundingupandkillingJewishmen,women,andchildrenintowns
across Poland, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia. In the streets, on
hastily erected gallows, along the edges of forest, perpetrators and
victims occupied the same photographic space. After fifty years, a
few dozen photographs eliminated at once the distance of time and
place and of selective memory. Facsimiles of military documents as
well as excerpts from the letters and diaries of Wehrmacht soldiers
added to the powerful message that the organizers hoped to convey:
vii
viii preface
theGermanarmywascomplicitinthemurderof Jewsandotherci-
vilians. The exhibit showed that it was more than just a few units
thatwereguiltyof warcrimes,andthatpartisanswerenottheonly
civilianstheWehrmachtkilled.
The Wehrmacht exhibit opened in Hamburg in March 1995 and
eventually toured thirty-three cities in Germany and Austria before
itwasdisassembledattheendof 1999.Itpromptedanextensivena-
tional debate about complicity and about the writing and rewriting
of history. The outpouring of newspaper commentaries and letters
totheeditor,andsometimestearful,sometimesdefianttestimonyby
veteransthemselves,followedbyconferences,paneldiscussions,tele-
vision shows, and finally some corrections to the installation itself,
did not provide closure. Rather, the photographs and documents
posednewquestionsabouttheGermanarmyandchallengedwidely
heldassumptionswhichdistinguishedbetweenthemillionsof Ger-
mans in the “clean” Wehrmacht and the hundreds of thousands of
culpable Nazis in the killing squads of the SS.1 Even the German
parliament debated the “War of Extermination” exhibit. In March
1997, lawmakers from all parties participated in a remarkably per-
sonal discussion in which they recollected family histories, exposed
their own misunderstandings and distortions, and, most important,
listenedtooneanother.ThankstotheWehrmachtexhibit,Germans
brokethecycleof reiterationandrepetition.
Theexhibittouchedaveryrawnerve.Almost20millionGerman
menservedintheWehrmachtintheyears1939–1945.Itwastrulya
people’sarmy.Anyindictmentof whatmilitaryunitsinthefielddid
to civilians was an indictment of masses of ordinary Germans, the
fathersof friendsandneighbors.“Youngandoldmaywellhavepre-
ferred to identify with the victims as they had done on other occa-
sions,” reflected Michael Geyer, “but here they recognized them-
preface ix
selves as killers of unarmed men, women, and children.”2 Indeed,
muchof theevidenceof theWehrmacht’sparticipationinatrocities
camefromsoldiersthemselves,whoseemedeagertobearwitnessto
their acts. A series of photographs held in the United States Holo-
caust Memorial Museum (but not featured in the exhibition) shows
Wehrmacht soldiers assembling and shooting Jewish civilians and
then browsing through the pictures they have taken of the grisly
events.Thesesnapshotsmaywellhavebeentuckedawayintheper-
sonal belongings of soldiers at the front or sent back home to rela-
tives as souvenirs.3 Now they are evidence of the extensive criminal
activity of the Wehrmacht and of the broad knowledge and accep-
tanceof thatactivityineverydaylife.
The exhibit provoked an uproar because it undermined the ways
inwhichpostwarGermanshadmanagedtocometotermswiththe
very difficult legacy of the Nazi period. While no one disputed the
factsof theHolocaust,therecordof theWehrmachtwasregardedas
relatively “clean.” The distinction between the many “good” Ger-
mans in the Wehrmacht and the far less numerous “bad” Germans
in Nazi organizations had allowed the postwar generations both to
recognizecomplicityandtocontaincomplicity.Indeed,ordinarysol-
diersof theWehrmachtwereoftenperceivedasvictimsthemselves,
theunwillinginstrumentsof aNazi-inspiredracewarandthebear-
ers of its horrors on the eastern front. In the collective memory of
the war, the accent fell not on “Barbarossa,” the operational code
namefortheGermaninvasionof RussiainJune1941,butonStalin-
grad, the battle site everyone knew as the place where so many sol-
diers on both sides suffered and died in the winter of 1942–43 and
the location from which so many German prisoners, more than one
hundred thousand in all, were taken, the vast majority never to re-
turnhome.TheWehrmachtexhibitdisputedthisvisionof German