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Wehrmacht

April 11, 2023

The Wehrmacht (German pronunciation: [ˈveːɐ̯maxt] (listen), lit. 'defence force') were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer (army), the Kriegsmarine (navy) and the Luftwaffe (air force). The designation "Wehrmacht" replaced the previously used term Reichswehr and was the manifestation of the Nazi regime's efforts to rearm Germany to a greater extent than the Treaty of Versailles permitted.[11]

Wehrmacht
Reichskriegsflagge, the war flag and naval ensign of the Wehrmacht (1938–1945 version)
Emblem of the Wehrmacht, the Balkenkreuz, a stylized version of the Iron Cross seen in varying proportions
MottoGott mit uns[3]
Founded16 March 1935; 88 years ago (16 March 1935)
Disbanded20 September 1945; 77 years ago (20 September 1945)[a]
Service branches
HeadquartersMaybach II, Wünsdorf52°10′57″N 13°28′27″E / 52.1826°N 13.4741°E / 52.1826; 13.4741 (Maybach II)
Leadership
Supreme Commander
Commander-in-chief
Minister of WarWerner von Blomberg
Chief of the Wehrmacht High CommandWilhelm Keitel
Personnel
Military age18–45
Conscription1–2 years; compulsory service
Reaching military
age annually		700,000 (1935)[4]
Active personnel18,000,000 (total served)[5]
Expenditures
Budget
  • 19 billion ℛℳ (1939) (€85 billion in 2021)
  • 89 billion ℛℳ (1944) (€359 billion in 2021)[b]
Percent of GDP
Industry
Domestic suppliers
See list
Foreign suppliers
Annual exports245 million ℛℳ (1939) (€1090 million in 2021)[10]
Related articles
HistoryHistory of Germany during World War II
Ranks

After the Nazi rise to power in 1933, one of Adolf Hitler's most overt and audacious moves was to establish the Wehrmacht, a modern offensively-capable armed force, fulfilling the Nazi régime's long-term goals of regaining lost territory as well as gaining new territory and dominating its neighbours. This required the reinstatement of conscription and massive investment and defense spending on the arms industry.[12]

The Wehrmacht formed the heart of Germany's politico-military power. In the early part of the Second World War, the Wehrmacht employed combined arms tactics (close-cover air-support, tanks and infantry) to devastating effect in what became known as Blitzkrieg (lightning war). Its campaigns in France (1940), the Soviet Union (1941) and North Africa (1941/42) are regarded by historians as acts of boldness.[13] At the same time, the far-flung advances strained the Wehrmacht's capacity to the breaking point, culminating in its first major defeat in the Battle of Moscow (1941); by late 1942, Germany was losing the initiative in all theatres. The German operational art proved no match to the war-making abilities of the Allied coalition, making the Wehrmacht's weaknesses in strategy, doctrine and logistics apparent.[14]

Closely cooperating with the SS and the Einsatzgruppen, the German armed forces committed numerous war crimes (despite later denials and promotion of the myth of the clean Wehrmacht).[15] The majority of the war crimes took place in the Soviet Union, Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece and Italy, as part of the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, the Holocaust and Nazi security warfare.

During World War II about 18 million men served in the Wehrmacht.[16] By the time the war ended in Europe in May 1945, German forces (consisting of the Heer, the Kriegsmarine, the Luftwaffe, the Waffen-SS, the Volkssturm, and foreign collaborator units) had lost approximately 11,300,000 men, about 5,318,000 of whom were missing, killed or died in captivity.[17] Only a few of the Wehrmacht's upper leadership went on trial for war crimes, despite evidence suggesting that more were involved in illegal actions.[18][19] According to Ian Kershaw, most of the three million Wehrmacht soldiers who invaded the USSR participated in war crimes.[20]

Origin

Etymology

The German term "Wehrmacht" stems from the compound word of German: wehren, "to defend" and Macht, "power, force".[c] It has been used to describe any nation's armed forces; for example, Britische Wehrmacht meaning "British Armed Forces". The Frankfurt Constitution of 1849 designated all German military forces as the "German Wehrmacht", consisting of the Seemacht (sea force) and the Landmacht (land force).[21] In 1919, the term Wehrmacht also appears in Article 47 of the Weimar Constitution, establishing that: "The Reich's President holds supreme command of all armed forces [i.e. the Wehrmacht] of the Reich". From 1919, Germany's national defense force was known as the Reichswehr, a name that was dropped in favor of Wehrmacht on 21 May 1935.[22]

While the term Wehrmacht has been associated, both in the German and English languages, with the German armed forces of 1935–45 since the Second World War, before 1945 the term was used in the German language in a more general sense for a national defense force. For instance, the German-aligned formations of Poles raised during the First World War were known as the Polnische Wehrmacht ('Polish Wehrmacht', 'Polish Defense Force') in German.

Background

 
Reichswehr soldiers swearing the Hitler oath in August 1934

In January 1919, after World War I ended with the signing of the armistice of 11 November 1918, the armed forces were dubbed Friedensheer (peace army).[23] In March 1919, the national assembly passed a law founding a 420,000-strong preliminary army, the Vorläufige Reichswehr. The terms of the Treaty of Versailles were announced in May, and in June, Germany signed the treaty that, among other terms, imposed severe constraints on the size of Germany's armed forces. The army was limited to one hundred thousand men with an additional fifteen thousand in the navy. The fleet was to consist of at most six battleships, six cruisers, and twelve destroyers. Submarines, tanks and heavy artillery were forbidden and the air-force was dissolved. A new post-war military, the Reichswehr, was established on 23 March 1921. General conscription was abolished under another mandate of the Versailles treaty.[24]

The Reichswehr was limited to 115,000 men, and thus the armed forces, under the leadership of Hans von Seeckt, retained only the most capable officers. The American historians Alan Millet and Williamson Murray wrote "In reducing the officers corps, Seeckt chose the new leadership from the best men of the general staff with ruthless disregard for other constituencies, such as war heroes and the nobility."[25] Seeckt's determination that the Reichswehr be an elite cadre force that would serve as the nucleus of an expanded military when the chance for restoring conscription came essentially led to the creation of a new army, based upon, but very different from, the army that existed in World War I.[25] In the 1920s, Seeckt and his officers developed new doctrines that emphasized speed, aggression, combined arms and initiative on the part of lower officers to take advantage of momentary opportunities.[25] Though Seeckt retired in 1926, his influence on the army was still apparent when it went to war in 1939.[26]

Germany was forbidden to have an air force by the Versailles treaty; nonetheless, Seeckt created a clandestine cadre of air force officers in the early 1920s. These officers saw the role of an air force as winning air superiority, strategic bombing, and close air support. That the Luftwaffe did not develop a strategic bombing force in the 1930s was not due to a lack of interest, but because of economic limitations.[27] The leadership of the Navy led by Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, a close protégé of Alfred von Tirpitz, was dedicated to the idea of reviving Tirpitz's High Seas Fleet. Officers who believed in submarine warfare led by Admiral Karl Dönitz were in a minority before 1939.[28]

By 1922, Germany had begun covertly circumventing the conditions of the Versailles treaty. A secret collaboration with the Soviet Union began after the Treaty of Rapallo.[29] Major-General Otto Hasse traveled to Moscow in 1923 to further negotiate the terms. Germany helped the Soviet Union with industrialization and Soviet officers were to be trained in Germany. German tank and air-force specialists could exercise in the Soviet Union and German chemical weapons research and manufacture would be carried out there along with other projects.[30] In 1924 a fighter-pilot school was established at Lipetsk, where several hundred German air force personnel received instruction in operational maintenance, navigation, and aerial combat training over the next decade until the Germans finally left in September 1933.[31] However, the arms buildup was done in secrecy, until Hitler came to power and it received broad political support.[32]

Nazi rise to power

Further information: Nazism and the Wehrmacht and German re-armament

After the death of President Paul von Hindenburg on 2 August 1934, Adolf Hitler assumed the office of President of Germany, and thus became commander in chief. In February 1934, the Defence Minister Werner von Blomberg, acting on his own initiative, had all of the Jews serving in the Reichswehr given an automatic and immediate dishonorable discharge.[33] Again, on his own initiative Blomberg had the armed forces adopt Nazi symbols into their uniforms in May 1934.[34] In August of the same year, on Blomberg's initiative and that of the Ministeramt chief General Walther von Reichenau, the entire military took the Hitler oath, an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler. Hitler was most surprised at the offer; the popular view that Hitler imposed the oath on the military is false.[35] The oath read: "I swear by God this sacred oath that to the Leader of the German empire and people, Adolf Hitler, supreme commander of the armed forces, I shall render unconditional obedience and that as a brave soldier I shall at all times be prepared to give my life for this oath".[36]

By 1935, Germany was openly flouting the military restrictions set forth in the Versailles Treaty: German rearmament was announced on 16 March with the "Edict for the Buildup of the Wehrmacht" (German: Gesetz für den Aufbau der Wehrmacht)[37] and the reintroduction of conscription.[38] While the size of the standing army was to remain at about the 100,000-man mark decreed by the treaty, a new group of conscripts equal to this size would receive training each year. The conscription law introduced the name "Wehrmacht"; the Reichswehr was officially renamed the Wehrmacht on 21 May 1935.[39] Hitler's proclamation of the Wehrmacht's existence included a total of no less than 36 divisions in its original projection, contravening the Treaty of Versailles in grandiose fashion. In December 1935, General Ludwig Beck added 48 tank battalions to the planned rearmament program.[40] Hitler originally set a time frame of 10 years for remilitarization, but soon shortened it to four years.[41] With the remilitarization of the Rhineland and the Anschluss, the German Reich's territory increased significantly, providing a larger population pool for conscription.[42]

Personnel and recruitment

See also: Wehrmacht foreign volunteers and conscripts
 
Inspection of German conscripts

Recruitment for the Wehrmacht was accomplished through voluntary enlistment and conscription, with 1.3 million being drafted and 2.4 million volunteering in the period 1935–1939.[43][4] The total number of soldiers who served in the Wehrmacht during its existence from 1935 to 1945 is believed to have approached 18.2 million.[16] The German military leadership originally aimed at a homogeneous military, possessing traditional Prussian military values. However, with Hitler's constant wishes to increase the Wehrmacht's size, the Army was forced to accept citizens of lower class and education, decreasing internal cohesion and appointing officers who lacked real-war experience from previous conflicts, especially World War I and the Spanish Civil War.[44]

The effectiveness of officer training and recruitment by the Wehrmacht has been identified as a major factor in its early victories as well as its ability to keep the war going as long as it did even as the war turned against Germany.[45][46]

 
Common themes in Nazi propaganda revolved around national humiliation after the Treaty of Versailles, seen as a diktat (dictation) by Germans. This poster expresses that the corridor of "Danzig is German"; ceded to Poland as maritime access, it simultaneously divided East Prussia from the rest of Germany.

As the Second World War intensified, Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe personnel were increasingly transferred to the army, and "voluntary" enlistments in the SS were stepped up as well. Following the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, fitness and physical health standards for Wehrmacht recruits were drastically lowered, with the regime going so far as to create "special diet" battalions for men with severe stomach ailments. Rear-echelon personnel were more often sent to front-line duty wherever possible, especially during the final two years of the war where, inspired by constant propaganda, the oldest and youngest were being recruited and driven by instilled fear and fanaticism to serve on the fronts and, often, to fight to the death, whether judged to be cannon fodder or elite troops.[47]

 
An Afro-Arab soldier of the Free Arabian Legion

Prior to World War II, the Wehrmacht strove to remain a purely ethnic German force; as such, minorities within and outside of Germany, such as the Czechs in annexed Czechoslovakia, were exempted from military service after Hitler's takeover in 1938. Foreign volunteers were generally not accepted in the German armed forces prior to 1941.[47] With the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the government's positions changed. German propagandists wanted to present the war not as a purely German concern, but as a multi-national crusade against the so-called Jewish Bolshevism.[48] Hence, the Wehrmacht and the SS began to seek out recruits from occupied and neutral countries across Europe: the Germanic populations of the Netherlands and Norway were recruited largely into the SS, while "non-Germanic" people were recruited into the Wehrmacht. The "voluntary" nature of such recruitment was often dubious, especially in the later years of the war when even Poles living in the Polish Corridor were declared "ethnic Germans" and drafted.[47]

After Germany's defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad, the Wehrmacht also made substantial use of personnel from the Soviet Union, including the Caucasian Muslim Legion, Turkestan Legion, Crimean Tatars, ethnic Ukrainians and Russians, Cossacks, and others who wished to fight against the Soviet regime or who were otherwise induced to join.[47] Between 15,000 and 20,000 anti-communist White émigrés who had left Russia after the Russian Revolution joined the ranks of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS, with 1,500 acting as interpreters and more than 10,000 serving in the guard force of the Russian Protective Corps.[49][50]

1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945
Heer 3,737,000 4,550,000 5,000,000 5,800,000 6,550,000 6,510,000 5,300,000
Luftwaffe 400,000 1,200,000 1,680,000 1,700,000 1,700,000 1,500,000 1,000,000
Kriegsmarine 50,000 250,000 404,000 580,000 780,000 810,000 700,000
Waffen–SS 35,000 50,000 150,000 230,000 450,000 600,000 830,000
Total 4,220,000 6,050,000 7,234,000 8,310,000 9,480,000 9,420,000 7,830,000
Source:[51]

Women in the Wehrmacht

Main article: Wehrmachthelferin
See also: Women in Nazi Germany
 
Wehrmachthelferinnen in occupied Paris, 1940

In the beginning, women in Nazi Germany were not involved in the Wehrmacht, as Hitler ideologically opposed conscription for women,[52] stating that Germany would "not form any section of women grenade throwers or any corps of women elite snipers."[53] However, with many men going to the front, women were placed in auxiliary positions within the Wehrmacht, called Wehrmachtshelferinnen (lit. 'Female Wehrmacht Helper'),[54] participating in tasks as:

  • telephone, telegraph and transmission operators,
  • administrative clerks, typists and messengers,
  • operators of listening equipment, in anti-aircraft defense, operating projectors for anti-aircraft defense, employees within meteorology services, and auxiliary civil defense personnel
  • volunteer nurses in military health service, as the German Red Cross or other voluntary organizations.

They were placed under the same authority as (Hiwis), auxiliary personnel of the army (German: Behelfspersonal) and they were assigned to duties within the Reich, and to a lesser extent, in the occupied territories, for example in the general government of occupied Poland, in France, and later in Yugoslavia, in Greece and in Romania.[55]

By 1945, 500,000 women were serving as Wehrmachtshelferinnen, half of whom were volunteers, while the other half performed obligatory services connected to the war effort (German: Kriegshilfsdienst).[54]

Command structure

 
Structure of the Wehrmacht (1935–1938)
 
Structure of the Wehrmacht (1939–1945)

Legally, the commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht was Adolf Hitler in his capacity as Germany's head of state, a position he gained after the death of President Paul von Hindenburg in August 1934. With the creation of the Wehrmacht in 1935, Hitler elevated himself to Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces,[56] retaining the position until his suicide on 30 April 1945.[57] The title of Commander-in-Chief was given to the Minister of the Reichswehr Werner von Blomberg, who was simultaneously renamed the Reich Minister of War.[56] Following the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair, Blomberg resigned and Hitler abolished the Ministry of War.[58] As a replacement for the ministry, the Wehrmacht High Command Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), under Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, was put in its place.[59]

Placed under the OKW were the three branch High Commands: Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH), Oberkommando der Marine (OKM), and Oberkommando der Luftwaffe (OKL). The OKW was intended to serve as a joint command and coordinate all military activities, with Hitler at the top.[60] Though many senior officers, such as von Manstein, had advocated for a real tri-service Joint Command, or appointment of a single Joint Chief of Staff, Hitler refused. Even after the defeat at Stalingrad, Hitler refused, stating that Göring as Reichsmarschall and Hitler's deputy, would not submit to someone else or see himself as an equal to other service commanders.[61] However, a more likely reason was Hitler feared it would break his image of having the "Midas touch" concerning military strategy.[61]

With the creation of the OKW, Hitler solidified his control over the Wehrmacht. Showing restraint at the beginning of the war, Hitler also became increasingly involved in military operations at every scale.[62]

Additionally, there was a clear lack of cohesion between the three High Commands and the OKW, as senior generals were unaware of the needs, capabilities and limitations of the other branches.[63] With Hitler serving as Supreme Commander, branch commands were often forced to fight for influence with Hitler. However, influence with Hitler not only came from rank and merit but also who Hitler perceived as loyal, leading to inter-service rivalry, rather than cohesion between his military advisers.[64]

Branches

Army

Main article: German Army (1935–1945)
 
"Foot-mobile" infantry of the Wehrmacht, 1942

The German Army furthered concepts pioneered during World War I, combining ground (Heer) and air force (Luftwaffe) assets into combined arms teams.[65] Coupled with traditional war fighting methods such as encirclements and the "battle of annihilation", the Wehrmacht managed many lightning quick victories in the first year of World War II, prompting foreign journalists to create a new word for what they witnessed: Blitzkrieg. Germany's immediate military success on the field at the start of the Second World War coincides the favorable beginning they achieved during the First World War, a fact which some attribute to their superior officer corps.[66]

The Heer entered the war with a minority of its formations motorized; infantry remained approximately 90% foot-borne throughout the war, and artillery was primarily horse-drawn. The motorized formations received much attention in the world press in the opening years of the war, and were cited as the reason for the success of the invasions of Poland (September 1939), Denmark and Norway (April 1940), Belgium, France, and Netherlands (May 1940), Yugoslavia and Greece (April 1941) and the early stage of Operation Barbarossa in the Soviet Union (June 1941).[67]

After Hitler declared war on the United States in December 1941, the Axis powers found themselves engaged in campaigns against several major industrial powers while Germany was still in transition to a war economy. German units were then overextended, undersupplied, outmaneuvered, outnumbered and defeated by its enemies in decisive battles during 1941, 1942, and 1943 at the Battle of Moscow, the Siege of Leningrad, Stalingrad, Tunis in North Africa, and the Battle of Kursk.[68][69]

 
A tank destroyer battalion, part of the 21 Panzer Division of the Afrika Korps

The German Army was managed through mission-based tactics (rather than order-based tactics) which was intended to give commanders greater freedom to act on events and exploit opportunities. In public opinion, the German Army was, and sometimes still is, seen as a high-tech army. However, such modern equipment, while featured much in propaganda, was often only available in relatively small numbers.[70] Only 40% to 60% of all units in the Eastern Front were motorized, baggage trains often relied on horse-drawn trailers due to poor roads and weather conditions in the Soviet Union, and for the same reasons many soldiers marched on foot or used bicycles as bicycle infantry. As the fortunes of war turned against them, the Germans were in constant retreat from 1943 and onward.[71]: 142 [72][73]

The Panzer divisions were vital to the German army's early success. In the strategies of the Blitzkrieg, the Wehrmacht combined the mobility of light tanks with airborne assault to quickly progress through weak enemy lines, enabling the German army to quickly and brutally take over Poland and France.[74] These tanks were used to break through enemy lines, isolating regiments from the main force so that the infantry behind the tanks could quickly kill or capture the enemy troops.[75]

Air Force

Main article: Luftwaffe
 
German paratroopers landing on Crete

Originally outlawed by the Treaty of Versailles, the Luftwaffe was officially established in 1935, under the leadership of Hermann Göring.[38] First gaining experience in the Spanish Civil War, it was a key element in the early Blitzkrieg campaigns (Poland, France 1940, USSR 1941). The Luftwaffe concentrated production on fighters and (small) tactical bombers, like the Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter and the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bomber.[76] The planes cooperated closely with the ground forces. Overwhelming numbers of fighters assured air-supremacy, and the bombers would attack command- and supply-lines, depots, and other support targets close to the front. The Luftwaffe would also be used to transport paratroopers, as first used during Operation Weserübung.[77][78] Due to the Army's sway with Hitler, the Luftwaffe was often subordinated to the Army, resulting in it being used as a tactical support role and losing its strategic capabilities.[64]

The Western Allies' strategic bombing campaign against German industrial targets, particularly the round the clock Combined Bomber Offensive and Defence of the Reich, deliberately forced the Luftwaffe into a war of attrition.[79] With German fighter force destroyed the Western Allies had air supremacy over the battlefield, denying support to German forces on the ground and using its own fighter-bombers to attack and disrupt. Following the losses in Operation Bodenplatte in 1945, the Luftwaffe was no longer an effective force.[80]

Navy

Main article: Kriegsmarine
See also: Blockade of Germany (1939–1945) and Plan Z
 
Karl Dönitz inspecting the Saint-Nazaire submarine base in France, June 1941

The Treaty of Versailles disallowed submarines, while limiting the size of the Reichsmarine to six battleships, six cruisers, and twelve destroyers.[24] Following the creation of the Wehrmacht, the navy was renamed the Kriegsmarine.[81]

With the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, Germany was allowed to increase its navy's size to be 35:100 tonnage of the Royal Navy, and allowed for the construction of U-boats.[82] This was partly done to appease Germany, and because Britain believed the Kriegsmarine would not be able to reach the 35% limit until 1942.[83] The navy was also prioritized last in the German rearmament scheme, making it the smallest of the branches.[84][85]

In the Battle of the Atlantic, the initially successful German U-boat fleet arm was eventually defeated due to Allied technological innovations like sonar, radar, and the breaking of the Enigma code.[86]

Large surface vessels were few in number due to construction limitations by international treaties prior to 1935. The "pocket battleships" Admiral Graf Spee and Admiral Scheer were important as commerce raiders only in the opening year of the war.[87] No aircraft carrier was operational, as German leadership lost interest in the Graf Zeppelin which had been launched in 1938.[88]

Following the loss of the German battleship Bismarck in 1941, with Allied air-superiority threatening the remaining battle-cruisers in French Atlantic harbors, the ships were ordered to make the Channel Dash back to German ports.[89][90][91] Operating from fjords along the coast of Norway, which had been occupied since 1940, convoys from North America to the Soviet port of Murmansk could be intercepted though the Tirpitz spent most of her career as fleet in being.[92] After the appointment of Karl Dönitz as Grand Admiral of the Kriegsmarine (in the aftermath of the Battle of the Barents Sea), Germany stopped constructing battleships and cruisers in favor of U-boats.[93] Though by 1941, the navy had already lost a number of its large surface ships, which could not be replenished during the war.[94]

The Kriegsmarine's most significant contribution to the German war effort was the deployment of its nearly 1,000 U-boats to strike at Allied convoys.[94] The German naval strategy was to attack the convoys in an attempt to prevent the United States from interfering in Europe and to starve out the British.[95] Karl Doenitz, the U-Boat Chief, began unrestricted submarine warfare which cost the Allies 22,898 men and 1,315 ships.[96] The U-boat war remained costly for the Allies until early spring of 1943 when the Allies began to use countermeasures against U-Boats such as the use of Hunter-Killer groups, airborne radar, torpedoes and mines like the FIDO.[97] The submarine war cost the Kriegsmarine 757 U-boats, with more than 30,000 U-boat crewmen killed.[98]

Coexistence with the Waffen-SS

Main article: Waffen-SS
 
An army Oberleutnant with a SS-Hauptsturmführer from the Waffen-SS in 1944

In the beginning, there was friction between the SS and the army, as the army feared the SS would attempt to become a legitimate part of the armed forces of Nazi Germany, partly due to the fighting between the limited armaments, and the perceived fanaticism towards Nazism.[99] However, on 17 August 1938, Hitler codified the role of the SS and the army in order to end the feud between the two.[100] The arming of the SS was to be "procured from the Wehrmacht upon payment", however "in peacetime, no organizational connection with the Wehrmacht exists."[101] The army was however allowed to check the budget of the SS and inspect the combat readiness of the SS troops.[102] In the event of mobilization, the Waffen-SS field units could be placed under the operational control of the OKW or the OKH. All decisions regarding this would be at Hitler's personal discretion.[102]

Though there existed conflict between the SS and Wehrmacht, many SS officers were former army officers, which ensured continuity and understanding between the two.[103] Throughout the war, army and SS soldiers worked together in various combat situations, creating bonds between the two groups.[104] Guderian noted that every day the war continued the Army and the SS became closer together.[104] Towards the end of the war, army units would even be placed under the command of the SS, in Italy and the Netherlands.[104] The relationship between the Wehrmacht and the SS improved; however, the Waffen-SS was never considered "the fourth branch of the Wehrmacht.” [103]

Theatres and campaigns

The Wehrmacht directed combat operations during World War II (from 1 September 1939 – 8 May 1945) as the German Reich's armed forces umbrella command-organization. After 1941 the OKH became the de facto Eastern Theatre higher-echelon command-organization for the Wehrmacht, excluding Waffen-SS except for operational and tactical combat purposes. The OKW conducted operations in the Western Theatre. The operations by the Kriegsmarine in the North and Mid-Atlantic can also be considered as separate theatres, considering the size of the area of operations and their remoteness from other theatres.

The Wehrmacht fought on other fronts, sometimes three simultaneously; redeploying troops from the intensifying theatre in the East to the West after the Normandy landings caused tensions between the General Staffs of both the OKW and the OKH – as Germany lacked sufficient materiel and manpower for a two-front war of such magnitude.[105]

Eastern theatre

Main article: Eastern Front (World War II)
 
German troops in the Soviet Union, October 1941

Major campaigns and battles in Eastern and Central Europe included:

Western theatre

 
German soldiers in occupied Paris
Main article: Western Front (World War II)

Mediterranean theatre

 
German tanks during a counter-attack in North Africa, 1942
Main article: Mediterranean Theatre of World War II

For a time, the Axis Mediterranean Theatre and the North African Campaign were conducted as a joint campaign with the Italian Army, and may be considered a separate theatre.

Casualties

Main article: German casualties in World War II
 
80% of the Wehrmacht's military deaths were in the Eastern Front.[106]
 
A German war cemetery in Estonia

More than 6,000,000 soldiers were wounded during the conflict, while more than 11,000,000 became prisoners. In all, approximately 5,318,000 soldiers from Germany and other nationalities fighting for the German armed forces—including the Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and foreign collaborationist units—are estimated to have been killed in action, died of wounds, died in custody or gone missing in World War II. Included in this number are 215,000 Soviet citizens conscripted by Germany.[107]

According to Frank Biess,

German casualties took a sudden jump with the defeat of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad in January 1943, when 180,310 soldiers were killed in one month. Among the 5.3 million Wehrmacht casualties during the Second World War, more than 80 per cent died during the last two years of the war. Approximately three-quarters of these losses occurred on the Eastern front (2.7 million) and during the final stages of the war between January and May 1945 (1.2 million).[108]

Jeffrey Herf wrote that:

Whereas German deaths between 1941 and 1943 on the western front had not exceeded three per cent of the total from all fronts, in 1944 the figure jumped to about 14 per cent. Yet even in the months following D-day, about 68.5 per cent of all German battlefield deaths occurred on the eastern front, as a Soviet blitzkrieg in response devastated the retreating Wehrmacht.[109]

In addition to the losses, at the hands of the elements and enemy fighting, at least 20,000 soldiers were executed as sentences by the military court.[110] In comparison, the Red Army executed 135,000,[d][111][112] France 102, the US 146 and the UK 40.[110]

War crimes

Main articles: War crimes of the Wehrmacht, Consequences of German Nazism, and Nazi human experimentation

Nazi propaganda had told Wehrmacht soldiers to wipe out what were variously called Jewish Bolshevik subhumans, the Mongol hordes, the Asiatic flood and the red beast.[113] While the principal perpetrators of the civil suppression behind the front lines amongst German armed forces were the Nazi German "political" armies (the SS-Totenkopfverbände, the Waffen-SS, and the Einsatzgruppen, which were responsible for mass-murders, primarily by implementation of the so-called Final Solution of the Jewish Question in occupied territories), the traditional armed forces represented by the Wehrmacht committed and ordered war crimes of their own (e.g. the Commissar Order), particularly during the invasion of Poland in 1939[114] and later in the war against the Soviet Union.

Cooperation with the SS

Prior to the outbreak of war, Hitler informed senior Wehrmacht officers that actions "which would not be in the taste of German generals", would take place in occupied areas and ordered them that they "should not interfere in such matters but restrict themselves to their military duties".[115] Some Wehrmacht officers initially showed a strong dislike for the SS and objected to the army committing war crimes with the SS, though these objections were not against the idea of the atrocities themselves.[116] Later during the war, relations between the SS and Wehrmacht improved significantly.[117] The common soldier had no qualms with the SS, and often assisted them in rounding up civilians for executions.[118][119]

The Army's Chief of Staff General Franz Halder in a directive declared that in the event of guerrilla attacks, German troops were to impose "collective measures of force" by massacring entire villages.[120] Cooperation between the SS Einsatzgruppen and the Wehrmacht involved supplying the death squads with weapons, ammunition, equipment, transport, and even housing.[117] Partisan fighters, Jews, and Communists became synonymous enemies of the Nazi regime and were hunted down and exterminated by the Einsatzgruppen and Wehrmacht alike, something revealed in numerous field journal entries from German soldiers.[121] With the implementation of the Hunger Plan, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Soviet civilians were deliberately starved to death, as the Germans seized food for their armies and fodder for their draft horses.[122] According to Thomas Kühne: "an estimated 300,000–500,000 people were killed during the Wehrmacht's Nazi security warfare in the Soviet Union."[123]

While secretly listening to conversations of captured German generals, British officials became aware that the German Army had taken part in the atrocities and mass-murder of Jews and were guilty of war crimes.[124] American officials learned of the Wehrmacht's atrocities in much the same way. Taped conversations of soldiers detained as POWs revealed how some of them voluntarily participated in mass executions.[125]

Crimes against civilians

 
Civilians executed by German paratroopers in Kondomari
 
German troops marching civilians to execution
Main articles: Anti-partisan operations in World War II and German military brothels in World War II
See also: Category:World War II massacres

During the war, the Wehrmacht committed numerous war crimes against the civilian population in occupied countries. This includes massacres of civilians and running forced brothels in occupied areas.

Massacres would in many cases come as reprisals for acts of resistance. With these reprisals, the Wehrmacht's response would vary in severity and method, depending on the scale of resistance and whether it was in East or West Europe.[126] Often, the number of hostages to be shot was calculated based on a ratio of 100 hostages executed for every German soldier killed and 50 hostages executed for every German soldier wounded.[127] Other times civilians would be rounded up and shot with machine guns.[128]

To combat German officials' fear of venereal disease and masturbation,[129] the Wehrmacht established numerous brothels throughout Nazi Germany and its occupied territories.[130] Women would often be kidnapped off the streets and forced to work in the brothels,[131] with an estimated minimum of 34,140 women being forced to serve as prostitutes.[132]

Crimes against POWs

Main article: German mistreatment of Soviet prisoners of war
 
Sixteen blindfolded Partisan youth awaiting execution by German forces in Serbia, 20 August 1941

While the Wehrmacht's prisoner-of-war camps for inmates from the west generally satisfied the humanitarian requirement prescribed by international law,[133] prisoners from Poland and the USSR were incarcerated under significantly worse conditions. Between the launching of Operation Barbarossa in the summer of 1941 and the following spring, 2.8 million of the 3.2 million Soviet prisoners taken died while in German hands.[134]

Criminal and genocidal organization

See also: High Command Trial

Among German historians, the view that the Wehrmacht had participated in wartime atrocities, particularly on the Eastern Front, grew in the late 1970s and the 1980s.[135] In the 1990s, public conception in Germany was influenced by controversial reactions and debates about the exhibition of war crime issues.[136]

The Israeli historian Omer Bartov, a leading expert on the Wehrmacht[137] wrote in 2003 that the Wehrmacht was a willing instrument of genocide, and that it is untrue that the Wehrmacht was an apolitical, professional fighting force that had only a few "bad apples".[138] Bartov argues that far from being the "untarnished shield", as successive German apologists stated after the war, the Wehrmacht was a criminal organization.[139] Likewise, the historian Richard J. Evans, a leading expert on modern German history, wrote that the Wehrmacht was a genocidal organization.[113] The historian Ben H. Shepherd writes that "There is now clear agreement amongst historians that the German Wehrmacht ... identified strongly with National Socialism and embroiled itself in the criminality of the Third Reich."[140] British historian Ian Kershaw concludes that the Wehrmacht's duty was to ensure that the people who met Hitler's requirements of being part of the Aryan Herrenvolk ("Aryan master race") had living space. He wrote that:

The Nazi revolution was broader than just the Holocaust. Its second goal was to eliminate Slavs from central and eastern Europe and to create a Lebensraum for Aryans. ... As Bartov (The Eastern Front; Hitler's Army) shows, it barbarised the German armies on the eastern front. Most of their three million men, from generals to ordinary soldiers, helped exterminate captured Slav soldiers and civilians. This was sometimes cold and deliberate murder of individuals (as with Jews), sometimes generalised brutality and neglect. ... German soldiers' letters and memoirs reveal their terrible reasoning: Slavs were 'the Asiatic-Bolshevik' horde, an inferior but threatening race.[20]

Several high-ranking Wehrmacht officers, including Hermann Hoth, Georg von Küchler, Georg-Hans Reinhardt, Karl von Roques, Walter Warlimont and others, were convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the High Command Trial given sentences ranging from time served to life.[141]

Resistance to the Nazi regime

Main article: German resistance to Nazism
 
Martin Bormann, Hermann Göring, and Bruno Loerzer surveying the damage made by the 20 July plot

Originally, there was little resistance within the Wehrmacht, as Hitler actively went against the Treaty of Versailles and attempted to recover the army's honor.[142] The first major resistance began in 1938 with the Oster conspiracy, where several members of the military wanted to remove Hitler from power, as they feared a war with Czechoslovakia would ruin Germany.[143] However, following the success of the early campaigns in Poland, Scandinavia and France, belief in Hitler was restored.[142] With the defeat in Stalingrad, trust in Hitler's leadership began to wane.[144] This caused an increase in resistance within the military. The resistance culminated in the 20 July plot (1944), when a group of officers led by Claus von Stauffenberg attempted to assassinate Hitler. The attempt failed, resulting in the execution of 4,980 people[145] and the standard military salute being replaced with the Hitler salute.[146]

Some members of the Wehrmacht did save Jews and non-Jews from the concentration camps and/or mass murder. Anton Schmid – a sergeant in the army – helped between 250 and 300 Jewish men, women, and children escape from the Vilna Ghetto in Lithuania.[147][148][149] He was court-martialed and executed as a consequence. Albert Battel, a reserve officer stationed near the Przemysl ghetto, blocked an SS detachment from entering it. He then evacuated up to 100 Jews and their families to the barracks of the local military command, and placed them under his protection.[150] Wilm Hosenfeld – an army captain in Warsaw – helped, hid, or rescued several Poles, including Jews, in occupied Poland. He helped the Polish-Jewish composer Władysław Szpilman, who was hiding among the city's ruins, by supplying him with food and water.[151]

According to Wolfram Wette, only three Wehrmacht soldiers are known for being executed for rescuing Jews: Anton Schmid, Friedrich Rath and Friedrich Winking.[152]

After World War II

 
German Instrument of Surrender, 8 May 1945 – Berlin-Karlshorst

Following the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht, which went into effect on 8 May 1945, some Wehrmacht units remained active, either independently (e.g. in Norway), or under Allied command as police forces.[153] The last Wehrmacht unit to come under Allied control was an isolated weather station in Svalbard, which formally surrendered to a Norwegian relief ship on 4 September.[154]

On 20 September 1945, with Proclamation No. 2 of the Allied Control Council (ACC), "[a]ll German land, naval and air forces, the S.S., S.A., S.D. and Gestapo, with all their organizations, staffs and institution, including the General Staff, the Officers' corps, the Reserve Corps, military schools, war veterans' organizations, and all other military and quasi-military organizations, together with all clubs and associations which serve to keep alive the military tradition in Germany, shall be completely and finally abolished in accordance with the methods and procedures to be laid down by the Allied Representatives."[155] The Wehrmacht was officially dissolved by the ACC Law 34 on 20 August 1946,[156] which proclaimed the OKW, OKH, the Ministry of Aviation and the OKM to be "disbanded, completely liquidated and declared illegal".[157]

Military operational legacy

Immediately following the end of the war, many were quick to dismiss the Wehrmacht due to its failures and claim allied superiority.[158] However, historians have since reevaluated the Wehrmacht in terms of fighting power and tactics, giving it a more favorable assessment, with some calling it one of the best in the world, [159] partly due to its ability to regularly inflict higher losses than it received, while it fought outnumbered and outgunned.[160]

Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld, who attempted to examine the military force of the Wehrmacht in a purely military context, concluded: "The German army was a superb fighting organization. In point of morale, elan, troop cohesion and resilience, it probably had no equal among twentieth century armies."[161] German historian Rolf-Dieter Müller comes to the following conclusion: "In the purely military sense [...] you can indeed say that the impression of a superior fighting force rightly exists. The proverbial efficiency was even greater than previously thought, because the superiority of the opponent was much higher than at that time German officers suspected. The analysis of Russian archive files finally gives us a clear picture in this regard."[162] Strategic thinker and professor Colin S. Gray believed that the Wehrmacht possessed outstanding tactical and operational capabilities. However, following a number of successful campaigns, German policy began to have victory disease, asking the Wehrmacht to do the impossible. The continued use of the Blitzkrieg also led to Soviets learning the tactic and using it against the Wehrmacht.[163]

Historical negationism

Main article: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

Soon after the war ended, former Wehrmacht officers, veterans' groups and various far-right authors began to state that the Wehrmacht was an apolitical organization which was largely innocent of Nazi Germany's war crimes and crimes against humanity.[164] Attempting to benefit from the clean Wehrmacht myth, veterans of the Waffen-SS declared that the organisation had virtually been a branch of the Wehrmacht and therefore had fought as "honourably" as it. Its veterans organisation, HIAG, attempted to cultivate a myth of their soldiers having been "Soldiers like any other".[165]

Post-war militaries

 
Former Wehrmacht generals Adolf Heusinger and Hans Speidel being sworn into the newly founded Bundeswehr on 12 November 1955

Following the division of Germany, many former Wehrmacht and SS officers in West Germany feared a Soviet invasion of the country. To combat this, several prominent officers created a secret army, unknown to the general public and without mandate from the Allied Control Authority or the West German government.[166][167]

By the mid-1950s, tensions of the Cold War led to the creation of separate military forces in the Federal Republic of Germany and the socialist German Democratic Republic. The West German military, officially created on 5 May 1955, took the name Bundeswehr (lit. 'Federal Defence'). Its East German counterpart—created on 1 March 1956—took the name National People's Army (German: Nationale Volksarmee). Both organizations employed many former Wehrmacht members, particularly in their formative years,[168] though neither organization considered themselves successors to the Wehrmacht.[169][170][171] However, according to historian Hannes Heer "Germans still have a hard time, when it comes to openly dealing with their Nazi past", as such of the 50 military bases named after Wehrmacht soldiers, only 16 bases have changed names.[172]

Wehrmacht veterans in West Germany have received pensions through the War Victims' Assistance Act (German: Bundesversorgungsgesetz) from the government.[173][174] According to The Times of Israel, "The benefits come through the Federal Pension Act, which was passed in 1950 to support war victims, whether civilians or veterans of the Wehrmacht or Waffen-SS."[175]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The official dissolution of the Wehrmacht began with the German Instrument of Surrender of 8 May 1945. Reasserted in Proclamation No. 2 of the Allied Control Council on 20 September 1945, the dissolution was officially declared by ACC Law No. 34 of 20 August 1946.[1][2]
  2. ^ Total GDP: 75 billion (1939) & 118 billion (1944)[6]
  3. ^ See the Wiktionary article for more information.
  4. ^ 135,000 executed; 422,700 sent to penal units at the front and 436,600 imprisoned after sentencing.[111]

References

Citations

  1. ^ Allied Control Authority 1946a, p. 81.
  2. ^ Allied Control Authority 1946b, p. 63.
  3. ^ Armbrüster 2005, p. 64.
  4. ^ a b Müller 2016, p. 12.
  5. ^ Overmans 2004, p. 215.
  6. ^ Harrison 2000, p. 10.
  7. ^ Tooze 2006, p. 181.
  8. ^ Evans 2008, p. 333.
  9. ^ Department of State 2016.
  10. ^ Leitz 1998, p. 153.
  11. ^ Taylor 1995, pp. 90–119.
  12. ^ Kitchen 1994, pp. 39–65.
  13. ^ Van Creveld 1982, p. 3.
  14. ^ Müller 2016, pp. 58–59.
  15. ^ Hartmann 2013, pp. 85–108.
  16. ^ a b Overmans 2004, p. 215; Müller 2016, p. 16; Wette 2006, p. 77.
  17. ^ Fritz 2011, p. 470.
  18. ^ Wette 2006, pp. 195–250.
  19. ^ USHMM n.d.
  20. ^ a b Kershaw 1997, p. 150.
  21. ^ Huber 2000.
  22. ^ Strohn 2010, p. 10.
  23. ^ Wheeler-Bennett 1967, p. 60.
  24. ^ a b Craig 1980, pp. 424–432.
  25. ^ a b c Murray & Millett 2001, p. 22.
  26. ^ Wheeler-Bennett 1967, p. 22.
  27. ^ Murray & Millett 2001, p. 33.
  28. ^ Murray & Millett 2001, p. 37.
  29. ^ Wheeler-Bennett 1967, p. 131.
  30. ^ Zeidler 2006, pp. 106–111.
  31. ^ Cooper 1981, pp. 382–383.
  32. ^ Müller 2016, p. 10.
  33. ^ Förster 1998, p. 268.
  34. ^ Wheeler-Bennett 1967, p. 312.
  35. ^ Kershaw 1997, p. 525.
  36. ^ Broszat et al. 1999, p. 18.
  37. ^ Müller 2016, p. 7.
  38. ^ a b Fischer 1995, p. 408.
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  56. ^ a b documentArchiv.de 2004, §3.
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External links

  • Review of Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann's 1995 work Vernichtungskrieg – Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941–1944 by Jörg Bottger
  • Wehrmacht Propaganda Troops and the Jews – an article by Daniel Uziel
  • The Nazi German Army 1935–1945

Videos

April 11, 2023
wehrmacht, german, pronunciation, ˈveːɐ, maxt, listen, defence, force, were, unified, armed, forces, nazi, germany, from, 1935, 1945, consisted, heer, army, kriegsmarine, navy, luftwaffe, force, designation, replaced, previously, used, term, reichswehr, manife. The Wehrmacht German pronunciation ˈveːɐ maxt listen lit defence force were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945 It consisted of the Heer army the Kriegsmarine navy and the Luftwaffe air force The designation Wehrmacht replaced the previously used term Reichswehr and was the manifestation of the Nazi regime s efforts to rearm Germany to a greater extent than the Treaty of Versailles permitted 11 WehrmachtReichskriegsflagge the war flag and naval ensign of the Wehrmacht 1938 1945 version Emblem of the Wehrmacht the Balkenkreuz a stylized version of the Iron Cross seen in varying proportionsMottoGott mit uns 3 Founded16 March 1935 88 years ago 16 March 1935 Disbanded20 September 1945 77 years ago 20 September 1945 a Service branchesGerman Army Kriegsmarine LuftwaffeHeadquartersMaybach II Wunsdorf52 10 57 N 13 28 27 E 52 1826 N 13 4741 E 52 1826 13 4741 Maybach II LeadershipSupreme CommanderAdolf Hitler first Karl Donitz last Commander in chiefWerner von Blomberg first Adolf Hitler last Minister of WarWerner von BlombergChief of the Wehrmacht High CommandWilhelm KeitelPersonnelMilitary age18 45Conscription1 2 years compulsory serviceReaching militaryage annually700 000 1935 4 Active personnel18 000 000 total served 5 ExpendituresBudget19 billion ℛℳ 1939 85 billion in 2021 89 billion ℛℳ 1944 359 billion in 2021 b Percent of GDP25 1939 7 75 1944 8 IndustryDomestic suppliersSee listAlkett Auto Union Blohm Voss BMW Daimler Benz Focke Wulf Heinkel Henschel amp Son Junkers Krupp MAN SE Messerschmitt Opel PorscheForeign suppliersKingdom of Hungary Second Spanish Republic Switzerland 9 Annual exports245 million ℛℳ 1939 1090 million in 2021 10 Related articlesHistoryHistory of Germany during World War IIRanksHeer ranks Kriegsmarine ranks Luftwaffe ranksAfter the Nazi rise to power in 1933 one of Adolf Hitler s most overt and audacious moves was to establish the Wehrmacht a modern offensively capable armed force fulfilling the Nazi regime s long term goals of regaining lost territory as well as gaining new territory and dominating its neighbours This required the reinstatement of conscription and massive investment and defense spending on the arms industry 12 The Wehrmacht formed the heart of Germany s politico military power In the early part of the Second World War the Wehrmacht employed combined arms tactics close cover air support tanks and infantry to devastating effect in what became known as Blitzkrieg lightning war Its campaigns in France 1940 the Soviet Union 1941 and North Africa 1941 42 are regarded by historians as acts of boldness 13 At the same time the far flung advances strained the Wehrmacht s capacity to the breaking point culminating in its first major defeat in the Battle of Moscow 1941 by late 1942 Germany was losing the initiative in all theatres The German operational art proved no match to the war making abilities of the Allied coalition making the Wehrmacht s weaknesses in strategy doctrine and logistics apparent 14 Closely cooperating with the SS and the Einsatzgruppen the German armed forces committed numerous war crimes despite later denials and promotion of the myth of the clean Wehrmacht 15 The majority of the war crimes took place in the Soviet Union Poland Yugoslavia Greece and Italy as part of the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union the Holocaust and Nazi security warfare During World War II about 18 million men served in the Wehrmacht 16 By the time the war ended in Europe in May 1945 German forces consisting of the Heer the Kriegsmarine the Luftwaffe the Waffen SS the Volkssturm and foreign collaborator units had lost approximately 11 300 000 men about 5 318 000 of whom were missing killed or died in captivity 17 Only a few of the Wehrmacht s upper leadership went on trial for war crimes despite evidence suggesting that more were involved in illegal actions 18 19 According to Ian Kershaw most of the three million Wehrmacht soldiers who invaded the USSR participated in war crimes 20 Contents 1 Origin 1 1 Etymology 1 2 Background 2 Nazi rise to power 3 Personnel and recruitment 3 1 Women in the Wehrmacht 4 Command structure 5 Branches 5 1 Army 5 2 Air Force 5 3 Navy 5 4 Coexistence with the Waffen SS 6 Theatres and campaigns 6 1 Eastern theatre 6 2 Western theatre 6 3 Mediterranean theatre 7 Casualties 8 War crimes 8 1 Cooperation with the SS 8 2 Crimes against civilians 8 3 Crimes against POWs 8 4 Criminal and genocidal organization 9 Resistance to the Nazi regime 10 After World War II 10 1 Military operational legacy 10 2 Historical negationism 10 3 Post war militaries 11 See also 12 Notes 13 References 13 1 Citations 13 2 Bibliography 13 2 1 Printed 13 2 2 Online 14 External links 14 1 VideosOriginEtymology The German term Wehrmacht stems from the compound word of German wehren to defend and Macht power force c It has been used to describe any nation s armed forces for example Britische Wehrmacht meaning British Armed Forces The Frankfurt Constitution of 1849 designated all German military forces as the German Wehrmacht consisting of the Seemacht sea force and the Landmacht land force 21 In 1919 the term Wehrmacht also appears in Article 47 of the Weimar Constitution establishing that The Reich s President holds supreme command of all armed forces i e the Wehrmacht of the Reich From 1919 Germany s national defense force was known as the Reichswehr a name that was dropped in favor of Wehrmacht on 21 May 1935 22 While the term Wehrmacht has been associated both in the German and English languages with the German armed forces of 1935 45 since the Second World War before 1945 the term was used in the German language in a more general sense for a national defense force For instance the German aligned formations of Poles raised during the First World War were known as the Polnische Wehrmacht Polish Wehrmacht Polish Defense Force in German Background Reichswehr soldiers swearing the Hitler oath in August 1934 In January 1919 after World War I ended with the signing of the armistice of 11 November 1918 the armed forces were dubbed Friedensheer peace army 23 In March 1919 the national assembly passed a law founding a 420 000 strong preliminary army the Vorlaufige Reichswehr The terms of the Treaty of Versailles were announced in May and in June Germany signed the treaty that among other terms imposed severe constraints on the size of Germany s armed forces The army was limited to one hundred thousand men with an additional fifteen thousand in the navy The fleet was to consist of at most six battleships six cruisers and twelve destroyers Submarines tanks and heavy artillery were forbidden and the air force was dissolved A new post war military the Reichswehr was established on 23 March 1921 General conscription was abolished under another mandate of the Versailles treaty 24 The Reichswehr was limited to 115 000 men and thus the armed forces under the leadership of Hans von Seeckt retained only the most capable officers The American historians Alan Millet and Williamson Murray wrote In reducing the officers corps Seeckt chose the new leadership from the best men of the general staff with ruthless disregard for other constituencies such as war heroes and the nobility 25 Seeckt s determination that the Reichswehr be an elite cadre force that would serve as the nucleus of an expanded military when the chance for restoring conscription came essentially led to the creation of a new army based upon but very different from the army that existed in World War I 25 In the 1920s Seeckt and his officers developed new doctrines that emphasized speed aggression combined arms and initiative on the part of lower officers to take advantage of momentary opportunities 25 Though Seeckt retired in 1926 his influence on the army was still apparent when it went to war in 1939 26 Germany was forbidden to have an air force by the Versailles treaty nonetheless Seeckt created a clandestine cadre of air force officers in the early 1920s These officers saw the role of an air force as winning air superiority strategic bombing and close air support That the Luftwaffe did not develop a strategic bombing force in the 1930s was not due to a lack of interest but because of economic limitations 27 The leadership of the Navy led by Grand Admiral Erich Raeder a close protege of Alfred von Tirpitz was dedicated to the idea of reviving Tirpitz s High Seas Fleet Officers who believed in submarine warfare led by Admiral Karl Donitz were in a minority before 1939 28 By 1922 Germany had begun covertly circumventing the conditions of the Versailles treaty A secret collaboration with the Soviet Union began after the Treaty of Rapallo 29 Major General Otto Hasse traveled to Moscow in 1923 to further negotiate the terms Germany helped the Soviet Union with industrialization and Soviet officers were to be trained in Germany German tank and air force specialists could exercise in the Soviet Union and German chemical weapons research and manufacture would be carried out there along with other projects 30 In 1924 a fighter pilot school was established at Lipetsk where several hundred German air force personnel received instruction in operational maintenance navigation and aerial combat training over the next decade until the Germans finally left in September 1933 31 However the arms buildup was done in secrecy until Hitler came to power and it received broad political support 32 Nazi rise to powerFurther information Nazism and the Wehrmacht and German re armament After the death of President Paul von Hindenburg on 2 August 1934 Adolf Hitler assumed the office of President of Germany and thus became commander in chief In February 1934 the Defence Minister Werner von Blomberg acting on his own initiative had all of the Jews serving in the Reichswehr given an automatic and immediate dishonorable discharge 33 Again on his own initiative Blomberg had the armed forces adopt Nazi symbols into their uniforms in May 1934 34 In August of the same year on Blomberg s initiative and that of the Ministeramt chief General Walther von Reichenau the entire military took the Hitler oath an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler Hitler was most surprised at the offer the popular view that Hitler imposed the oath on the military is false 35 The oath read I swear by God this sacred oath that to the Leader of the German empire and people Adolf Hitler supreme commander of the armed forces I shall render unconditional obedience and that as a brave soldier I shall at all times be prepared to give my life for this oath 36 By 1935 Germany was openly flouting the military restrictions set forth in the Versailles Treaty German rearmament was announced on 16 March with the Edict for the Buildup of the Wehrmacht German Gesetz fur den Aufbau der Wehrmacht 37 and the reintroduction of conscription 38 While the size of the standing army was to remain at about the 100 000 man mark decreed by the treaty a new group of conscripts equal to this size would receive training each year The conscription law introduced the name Wehrmacht the Reichswehr was officially renamed the Wehrmacht on 21 May 1935 39 Hitler s proclamation of the Wehrmacht s existence included a total of no less than 36 divisions in its original projection contravening the Treaty of Versailles in grandiose fashion In December 1935 General Ludwig Beck added 48 tank battalions to the planned rearmament program 40 Hitler originally set a time frame of 10 years for remilitarization but soon shortened it to four years 41 With the remilitarization of the Rhineland and the Anschluss the German Reich s territory increased significantly providing a larger population pool for conscription 42 Personnel and recruitmentSee also Wehrmacht foreign volunteers and conscripts Inspection of German conscripts Recruitment for the Wehrmacht was accomplished through voluntary enlistment and conscription with 1 3 million being drafted and 2 4 million volunteering in the period 1935 1939 43 4 The total number of soldiers who served in the Wehrmacht during its existence from 1935 to 1945 is believed to have approached 18 2 million 16 The German military leadership originally aimed at a homogeneous military possessing traditional Prussian military values However with Hitler s constant wishes to increase the Wehrmacht s size the Army was forced to accept citizens of lower class and education decreasing internal cohesion and appointing officers who lacked real war experience from previous conflicts especially World War I and the Spanish Civil War 44 The effectiveness of officer training and recruitment by the Wehrmacht has been identified as a major factor in its early victories as well as its ability to keep the war going as long as it did even as the war turned against Germany 45 46 Common themes in Nazi propaganda revolved around national humiliation after the Treaty of Versailles seen as a diktat dictation by Germans This poster expresses that the corridor of Danzig is German ceded to Poland as maritime access it simultaneously divided East Prussia from the rest of Germany As the Second World War intensified Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe personnel were increasingly transferred to the army and voluntary enlistments in the SS were stepped up as well Following the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943 fitness and physical health standards for Wehrmacht recruits were drastically lowered with the regime going so far as to create special diet battalions for men with severe stomach ailments Rear echelon personnel were more often sent to front line duty wherever possible especially during the final two years of the war where inspired by constant propaganda the oldest and youngest were being recruited and driven by instilled fear and fanaticism to serve on the fronts and often to fight to the death whether judged to be cannon fodder or elite troops 47 An Afro Arab soldier of the Free Arabian Legion Prior to World War II the Wehrmacht strove to remain a purely ethnic German force as such minorities within and outside of Germany such as the Czechs in annexed Czechoslovakia were exempted from military service after Hitler s takeover in 1938 Foreign volunteers were generally not accepted in the German armed forces prior to 1941 47 With the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 the government s positions changed German propagandists wanted to present the war not as a purely German concern but as a multi national crusade against the so called Jewish Bolshevism 48 Hence the Wehrmacht and the SS began to seek out recruits from occupied and neutral countries across Europe the Germanic populations of the Netherlands and Norway were recruited largely into the SS while non Germanic people were recruited into the Wehrmacht The voluntary nature of such recruitment was often dubious especially in the later years of the war when even Poles living in the Polish Corridor were declared ethnic Germans and drafted 47 After Germany s defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad the Wehrmacht also made substantial use of personnel from the Soviet Union including the Caucasian Muslim Legion Turkestan Legion Crimean Tatars ethnic Ukrainians and Russians Cossacks and others who wished to fight against the Soviet regime or who were otherwise induced to join 47 Between 15 000 and 20 000 anti communist White emigres who had left Russia after the Russian Revolution joined the ranks of the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS with 1 500 acting as interpreters and more than 10 000 serving in the guard force of the Russian Protective Corps 49 50 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945Heer 3 737 000 4 550 000 5 000 000 5 800 000 6 550 000 6 510 000 5 300 000Luftwaffe 400 000 1 200 000 1 680 000 1 700 000 1 700 000 1 500 000 1 000 000Kriegsmarine 50 000 250 000 404 000 580 000 780 000 810 000 700 000Waffen SS 35 000 50 000 150 000 230 000 450 000 600 000 830 000Total 4 220 000 6 050 000 7 234 000 8 310 000 9 480 000 9 420 000 7 830 000Source 51 Women in the Wehrmacht Main article Wehrmachthelferin See also Women in Nazi Germany Wehrmachthelferinnen in occupied Paris 1940 In the beginning women in Nazi Germany were not involved in the Wehrmacht as Hitler ideologically opposed conscription for women 52 stating that Germany would not form any section of women grenade throwers or any corps of women elite snipers 53 However with many men going to the front women were placed in auxiliary positions within the Wehrmacht called Wehrmachtshelferinnen lit Female Wehrmacht Helper 54 participating in tasks as telephone telegraph and transmission operators administrative clerks typists and messengers operators of listening equipment in anti aircraft defense operating projectors for anti aircraft defense employees within meteorology services and auxiliary civil defense personnel volunteer nurses in military health service as the German Red Cross or other voluntary organizations They were placed under the same authority as Hiwis auxiliary personnel of the army German Behelfspersonal and they were assigned to duties within the Reich and to a lesser extent in the occupied territories for example in the general government of occupied Poland in France and later in Yugoslavia in Greece and in Romania 55 By 1945 500 000 women were serving as Wehrmachtshelferinnen half of whom were volunteers while the other half performed obligatory services connected to the war effort German Kriegshilfsdienst 54 Command structure Structure of the Wehrmacht 1935 1938 Structure of the Wehrmacht 1939 1945 Legally the commander in chief of the Wehrmacht was Adolf Hitler in his capacity as Germany s head of state a position he gained after the death of President Paul von Hindenburg in August 1934 With the creation of the Wehrmacht in 1935 Hitler elevated himself to Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces 56 retaining the position until his suicide on 30 April 1945 57 The title of Commander in Chief was given to the Minister of the Reichswehr Werner von Blomberg who was simultaneously renamed the Reich Minister of War 56 Following the Blomberg Fritsch Affair Blomberg resigned and Hitler abolished the Ministry of War 58 As a replacement for the ministry the Wehrmacht High Command Oberkommando der Wehrmacht OKW under Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel was put in its place 59 Placed under the OKW were the three branch High Commands Oberkommando des Heeres OKH Oberkommando der Marine OKM and Oberkommando der Luftwaffe OKL The OKW was intended to serve as a joint command and coordinate all military activities with Hitler at the top 60 Though many senior officers such as von Manstein had advocated for a real tri service Joint Command or appointment of a single Joint Chief of Staff Hitler refused Even after the defeat at Stalingrad Hitler refused stating that Goring as Reichsmarschall and Hitler s deputy would not submit to someone else or see himself as an equal to other service commanders 61 However a more likely reason was Hitler feared it would break his image of having the Midas touch concerning military strategy 61 With the creation of the OKW Hitler solidified his control over the Wehrmacht Showing restraint at the beginning of the war Hitler also became increasingly involved in military operations at every scale 62 Additionally there was a clear lack of cohesion between the three High Commands and the OKW as senior generals were unaware of the needs capabilities and limitations of the other branches 63 With Hitler serving as Supreme Commander branch commands were often forced to fight for influence with Hitler However influence with Hitler not only came from rank and merit but also who Hitler perceived as loyal leading to inter service rivalry rather than cohesion between his military advisers 64 BranchesArmy Main article German Army 1935 1945 Foot mobile infantry of the Wehrmacht 1942 The German Army furthered concepts pioneered during World War I combining ground Heer and air force Luftwaffe assets into combined arms teams 65 Coupled with traditional war fighting methods such as encirclements and the battle of annihilation the Wehrmacht managed many lightning quick victories in the first year of World War II prompting foreign journalists to create a new word for what they witnessed Blitzkrieg Germany s immediate military success on the field at the start of the Second World War coincides the favorable beginning they achieved during the First World War a fact which some attribute to their superior officer corps 66 The Heer entered the war with a minority of its formations motorized infantry remained approximately 90 foot borne throughout the war and artillery was primarily horse drawn The motorized formations received much attention in the world press in the opening years of the war and were cited as the reason for the success of the invasions of Poland September 1939 Denmark and Norway April 1940 Belgium France and Netherlands May 1940 Yugoslavia and Greece April 1941 and the early stage of Operation Barbarossa in the Soviet Union June 1941 67 After Hitler declared war on the United States in December 1941 the Axis powers found themselves engaged in campaigns against several major industrial powers while Germany was still in transition to a war economy German units were then overextended undersupplied outmaneuvered outnumbered and defeated by its enemies in decisive battles during 1941 1942 and 1943 at the Battle of Moscow the Siege of Leningrad Stalingrad Tunis in North Africa and the Battle of Kursk 68 69 A tank destroyer battalion part of the 21 Panzer Division of the Afrika Korps The German Army was managed through mission based tactics rather than order based tactics which was intended to give commanders greater freedom to act on events and exploit opportunities In public opinion the German Army was and sometimes still is seen as a high tech army However such modern equipment while featured much in propaganda was often only available in relatively small numbers 70 Only 40 to 60 of all units in the Eastern Front were motorized baggage trains often relied on horse drawn trailers due to poor roads and weather conditions in the Soviet Union and for the same reasons many soldiers marched on foot or used bicycles as bicycle infantry As the fortunes of war turned against them the Germans were in constant retreat from 1943 and onward 71 142 72 73 The Panzer divisions were vital to the German army s early success In the strategies of the Blitzkrieg the Wehrmacht combined the mobility of light tanks with airborne assault to quickly progress through weak enemy lines enabling the German army to quickly and brutally take over Poland and France 74 These tanks were used to break through enemy lines isolating regiments from the main force so that the infantry behind the tanks could quickly kill or capture the enemy troops 75 Air Force Main article Luftwaffe German paratroopers landing on Crete Originally outlawed by the Treaty of Versailles the Luftwaffe was officially established in 1935 under the leadership of Hermann Goring 38 First gaining experience in the Spanish Civil War it was a key element in the early Blitzkrieg campaigns Poland France 1940 USSR 1941 The Luftwaffe concentrated production on fighters and small tactical bombers like the Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter and the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bomber 76 The planes cooperated closely with the ground forces Overwhelming numbers of fighters assured air supremacy and the bombers would attack command and supply lines depots and other support targets close to the front The Luftwaffe would also be used to transport paratroopers as first used during Operation Weserubung 77 78 Due to the Army s sway with Hitler the Luftwaffe was often subordinated to the Army resulting in it being used as a tactical support role and losing its strategic capabilities 64 The Western Allies strategic bombing campaign against German industrial targets particularly the round the clock Combined Bomber Offensive and Defence of the Reich deliberately forced the Luftwaffe into a war of attrition 79 With German fighter force destroyed the Western Allies had air supremacy over the battlefield denying support to German forces on the ground and using its own fighter bombers to attack and disrupt Following the losses in Operation Bodenplatte in 1945 the Luftwaffe was no longer an effective force 80 Navy Main article Kriegsmarine See also Blockade of Germany 1939 1945 and Plan Z Karl Donitz inspecting the Saint Nazaire submarine base in France June 1941 The Treaty of Versailles disallowed submarines while limiting the size of the Reichsmarine to six battleships six cruisers and twelve destroyers 24 Following the creation of the Wehrmacht the navy was renamed the Kriegsmarine 81 With the signing of the Anglo German Naval Agreement Germany was allowed to increase its navy s size to be 35 100 tonnage of the Royal Navy and allowed for the construction of U boats 82 This was partly done to appease Germany and because Britain believed the Kriegsmarine would not be able to reach the 35 limit until 1942 83 The navy was also prioritized last in the German rearmament scheme making it the smallest of the branches 84 85 In the Battle of the Atlantic the initially successful German U boat fleet arm was eventually defeated due to Allied technological innovations like sonar radar and the breaking of the Enigma code 86 Large surface vessels were few in number due to construction limitations by international treaties prior to 1935 The pocket battleships Admiral Graf Spee and Admiral Scheer were important as commerce raiders only in the opening year of the war 87 No aircraft carrier was operational as German leadership lost interest in the Graf Zeppelin which had been launched in 1938 88 Following the loss of the German battleship Bismarck in 1941 with Allied air superiority threatening the remaining battle cruisers in French Atlantic harbors the ships were ordered to make the Channel Dash back to German ports 89 90 91 Operating from fjords along the coast of Norway which had been occupied since 1940 convoys from North America to the Soviet port of Murmansk could be intercepted though the Tirpitz spent most of her career as fleet in being 92 After the appointment of Karl Donitz as Grand Admiral of the Kriegsmarine in the aftermath of the Battle of the Barents Sea Germany stopped constructing battleships and cruisers in favor of U boats 93 Though by 1941 the navy had already lost a number of its large surface ships which could not be replenished during the war 94 The Kriegsmarine s most significant contribution to the German war effort was the deployment of its nearly 1 000 U boats to strike at Allied convoys 94 The German naval strategy was to attack the convoys in an attempt to prevent the United States from interfering in Europe and to starve out the British 95 Karl Doenitz the U Boat Chief began unrestricted submarine warfare which cost the Allies 22 898 men and 1 315 ships 96 The U boat war remained costly for the Allies until early spring of 1943 when the Allies began to use countermeasures against U Boats such as the use of Hunter Killer groups airborne radar torpedoes and mines like the FIDO 97 The submarine war cost the Kriegsmarine 757 U boats with more than 30 000 U boat crewmen killed 98 Coexistence with the Waffen SS Main article Waffen SS An army Oberleutnant with a SS Hauptsturmfuhrer from the Waffen SS in 1944 In the beginning there was friction between the SS and the army as the army feared the SS would attempt to become a legitimate part of the armed forces of Nazi Germany partly due to the fighting between the limited armaments and the perceived fanaticism towards Nazism 99 However on 17 August 1938 Hitler codified the role of the SS and the army in order to end the feud between the two 100 The arming of the SS was to be procured from the Wehrmacht upon payment however in peacetime no organizational connection with the Wehrmacht exists 101 The army was however allowed to check the budget of the SS and inspect the combat readiness of the SS troops 102 In the event of mobilization the Waffen SS field units could be placed under the operational control of the OKW or the OKH All decisions regarding this would be at Hitler s personal discretion 102 Though there existed conflict between the SS and Wehrmacht many SS officers were former army officers which ensured continuity and understanding between the two 103 Throughout the war army and SS soldiers worked together in various combat situations creating bonds between the two groups 104 Guderian noted that every day the war continued the Army and the SS became closer together 104 Towards the end of the war army units would even be placed under the command of the SS in Italy and the Netherlands 104 The relationship between the Wehrmacht and the SS improved however the Waffen SS was never considered the fourth branch of the Wehrmacht 103 Theatres and campaignsThe Wehrmacht directed combat operations during World War II from 1 September 1939 8 May 1945 as the German Reich s armed forces umbrella command organization After 1941 the OKH became the de facto Eastern Theatre higher echelon command organization for the Wehrmacht excluding Waffen SS except for operational and tactical combat purposes The OKW conducted operations in the Western Theatre The operations by the Kriegsmarine in the North and Mid Atlantic can also be considered as separate theatres considering the size of the area of operations and their remoteness from other theatres The Wehrmacht fought on other fronts sometimes three simultaneously redeploying troops from the intensifying theatre in the East to the West after the Normandy landings caused tensions between the General Staffs of both the OKW and the OKH as Germany lacked sufficient materiel and manpower for a two front war of such magnitude 105 Eastern theatre Main article Eastern Front World War II German troops in the Soviet Union October 1941 Major campaigns and battles in Eastern and Central Europe included Czechoslovakian campaign 1938 1945 Invasion of Poland Fall Weiss Operation Barbarossa 1941 conducted by Army Group North Army Group Centre and Army Group South Battle of Moscow 1941 Battles of Rzhev 1942 1943 Battle of Stalingrad 1942 1943 Battle of the Caucasus 1942 1943 Battle of Kursk Operation Citadel 1943 Battle of Kiev 1943 Operation Bagration 1944 Nazi security warfare largely carried out by security divisions of the Wehrmacht Order Police and Waffen SS units in the occupied territories behind Axis frontlines Western theatre German soldiers in occupied Paris Main article Western Front World War II Phoney War Sitzkrieg September 1939 to May 1940 between the invasion of Poland and the Battle of France Operation Weserubung German invasion of Denmark 9 April 1940 The Norwegian Campaign 9 April to 10 June 1940 Fall Gelb Battle of Belgium 10 to 28 May 1940 German invasion of Luxembourg 10 May 1940 Battle of the Netherlands 10 to 17 May 1940 Battle of France 10 May to 25 June 1940 Battle of Britain 1940 Battle of the Atlantic 1939 1945 Battle of Normandy 1944 Allied invasion of southern France 1944 Ardennes Offensive 1944 1945 Defense of the Reich air campaign 1939 to 1945Mediterranean theatre German tanks during a counter attack in North Africa 1942 Main article Mediterranean Theatre of World War II For a time the Axis Mediterranean Theatre and the North African Campaign were conducted as a joint campaign with the Italian Army and may be considered a separate theatre Invasion of the Balkans and Greece Operation Marita 1940 1941 Battle of Crete 1941 The North African Campaign in Libya Tunisia and Egypt between the UK and Commonwealth and later U S forces and the Axis forces The Italian Theatre was a continuation of the Axis defeat in North Africa and was a campaign for defence of ItalyCasualtiesMain article German casualties in World War II 80 of the Wehrmacht s military deaths were in the Eastern Front 106 A German war cemetery in Estonia More than 6 000 000 soldiers were wounded during the conflict while more than 11 000 000 became prisoners In all approximately 5 318 000 soldiers from Germany and other nationalities fighting for the German armed forces including the Waffen SS Volkssturm and foreign collaborationist units are estimated to have been killed in action died of wounds died in custody or gone missing in World War II Included in this number are 215 000 Soviet citizens conscripted by Germany 107 According to Frank Biess German casualties took a sudden jump with the defeat of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad in January 1943 when 180 310 soldiers were killed in one month Among the 5 3 million Wehrmacht casualties during the Second World War more than 80 per cent died during the last two years of the war Approximately three quarters of these losses occurred on the Eastern front 2 7 million and during the final stages of the war between January and May 1945 1 2 million 108 Jeffrey Herf wrote that Whereas German deaths between 1941 and 1943 on the western front had not exceeded three per cent of the total from all fronts in 1944 the figure jumped to about 14 per cent Yet even in the months following D day about 68 5 per cent of all German battlefield deaths occurred on the eastern front as a Soviet blitzkrieg in response devastated the retreating Wehrmacht 109 In addition to the losses at the hands of the elements and enemy fighting at least 20 000 soldiers were executed as sentences by the military court 110 In comparison the Red Army executed 135 000 d 111 112 France 102 the US 146 and the UK 40 110 War crimesMain articles War crimes of the Wehrmacht Consequences of German Nazism and Nazi human experimentation Nazi propaganda had told Wehrmacht soldiers to wipe out what were variously called Jewish Bolshevik subhumans the Mongol hordes the Asiatic flood and the red beast 113 While the principal perpetrators of the civil suppression behind the front lines amongst German armed forces were the Nazi German political armies the SS Totenkopfverbande the Waffen SS and the Einsatzgruppen which were responsible for mass murders primarily by implementation of the so called Final Solution of the Jewish Question in occupied territories the traditional armed forces represented by the Wehrmacht committed and ordered war crimes of their own e g the Commissar Order particularly during the invasion of Poland in 1939 114 and later in the war against the Soviet Union Cooperation with the SS Prior to the outbreak of war Hitler informed senior Wehrmacht officers that actions which would not be in the taste of German generals would take place in occupied areas and ordered them that they should not interfere in such matters but restrict themselves to their military duties 115 Some Wehrmacht officers initially showed a strong dislike for the SS and objected to the army committing war crimes with the SS though these objections were not against the idea of the atrocities themselves 116 Later during the war relations between the SS and Wehrmacht improved significantly 117 The common soldier had no qualms with the SS and often assisted them in rounding up civilians for executions 118 119 The Army s Chief of Staff General Franz Halder in a directive declared that in the event of guerrilla attacks German troops were to impose collective measures of force by massacring entire villages 120 Cooperation between the SS Einsatzgruppen and the Wehrmacht involved supplying the death squads with weapons ammunition equipment transport and even housing 117 Partisan fighters Jews and Communists became synonymous enemies of the Nazi regime and were hunted down and exterminated by the Einsatzgruppen and Wehrmacht alike something revealed in numerous field journal entries from German soldiers 121 With the implementation of the Hunger Plan hundreds of thousands perhaps millions of Soviet civilians were deliberately starved to death as the Germans seized food for their armies and fodder for their draft horses 122 According to Thomas Kuhne an estimated 300 000 500 000 people were killed during the Wehrmacht s Nazi security warfare in the Soviet Union 123 While secretly listening to conversations of captured German generals British officials became aware that the German Army had taken part in the atrocities and mass murder of Jews and were guilty of war crimes 124 American officials learned of the Wehrmacht s atrocities in much the same way Taped conversations of soldiers detained as POWs revealed how some of them voluntarily participated in mass executions 125 Crimes against civilians Civilians executed by German paratroopers in Kondomari German troops marching civilians to execution Main articles Anti partisan operations in World War II and German military brothels in World War II See also Category World War II massacres During the war the Wehrmacht committed numerous war crimes against the civilian population in occupied countries This includes massacres of civilians and running forced brothels in occupied areas Massacres would in many cases come as reprisals for acts of resistance With these reprisals the Wehrmacht s response would vary in severity and method depending on the scale of resistance and whether it was in East or West Europe 126 Often the number of hostages to be shot was calculated based on a ratio of 100 hostages executed for every German soldier killed and 50 hostages executed for every German soldier wounded 127 Other times civilians would be rounded up and shot with machine guns 128 To combat German officials fear of venereal disease and masturbation 129 the Wehrmacht established numerous brothels throughout Nazi Germany and its occupied territories 130 Women would often be kidnapped off the streets and forced to work in the brothels 131 with an estimated minimum of 34 140 women being forced to serve as prostitutes 132 Crimes against POWs Main article German mistreatment of Soviet prisoners of war Sixteen blindfolded Partisan youth awaiting execution by German forces in Serbia 20 August 1941 While the Wehrmacht s prisoner of war camps for inmates from the west generally satisfied the humanitarian requirement prescribed by international law 133 prisoners from Poland and the USSR were incarcerated under significantly worse conditions Between the launching of Operation Barbarossa in the summer of 1941 and the following spring 2 8 million of the 3 2 million Soviet prisoners taken died while in German hands 134 Criminal and genocidal organization See also High Command Trial Among German historians the view that the Wehrmacht had participated in wartime atrocities particularly on the Eastern Front grew in the late 1970s and the 1980s 135 In the 1990s public conception in Germany was influenced by controversial reactions and debates about the exhibition of war crime issues 136 The Israeli historian Omer Bartov a leading expert on the Wehrmacht 137 wrote in 2003 that the Wehrmacht was a willing instrument of genocide and that it is untrue that the Wehrmacht was an apolitical professional fighting force that had only a few bad apples 138 Bartov argues that far from being the untarnished shield as successive German apologists stated after the war the Wehrmacht was a criminal organization 139 Likewise the historian Richard J Evans a leading expert on modern German history wrote that the Wehrmacht was a genocidal organization 113 The historian Ben H Shepherd writes that There is now clear agreement amongst historians that the German Wehrmacht identified strongly with National Socialism and embroiled itself in the criminality of the Third Reich 140 British historian Ian Kershaw concludes that the Wehrmacht s duty was to ensure that the people who met Hitler s requirements of being part of the Aryan Herrenvolk Aryan master race had living space He wrote that The Nazi revolution was broader than just the Holocaust Its second goal was to eliminate Slavs from central and eastern Europe and to create a Lebensraum for Aryans As Bartov The Eastern Front Hitler s Army shows it barbarised the German armies on the eastern front Most of their three million men from generals to ordinary soldiers helped exterminate captured Slav soldiers and civilians This was sometimes cold and deliberate murder of individuals as with Jews sometimes generalised brutality and neglect German soldiers letters and memoirs reveal their terrible reasoning Slavs were the Asiatic Bolshevik horde an inferior but threatening race 20 Several high ranking Wehrmacht officers including Hermann Hoth Georg von Kuchler Georg Hans Reinhardt Karl von Roques Walter Warlimont and others were convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the High Command Trial given sentences ranging from time served to life 141 Resistance to the Nazi regimeMain article German resistance to Nazism Martin Bormann Hermann Goring and Bruno Loerzer surveying the damage made by the 20 July plot Originally there was little resistance within the Wehrmacht as Hitler actively went against the Treaty of Versailles and attempted to recover the army s honor 142 The first major resistance began in 1938 with the Oster conspiracy where several members of the military wanted to remove Hitler from power as they feared a war with Czechoslovakia would ruin Germany 143 However following the success of the early campaigns in Poland Scandinavia and France belief in Hitler was restored 142 With the defeat in Stalingrad trust in Hitler s leadership began to wane 144 This caused an increase in resistance within the military The resistance culminated in the 20 July plot 1944 when a group of officers led by Claus von Stauffenberg attempted to assassinate Hitler The attempt failed resulting in the execution of 4 980 people 145 and the standard military salute being replaced with the Hitler salute 146 Some members of the Wehrmacht did save Jews and non Jews from the concentration camps and or mass murder Anton Schmid a sergeant in the army helped between 250 and 300 Jewish men women and children escape from the Vilna Ghetto in Lithuania 147 148 149 He was court martialed and executed as a consequence Albert Battel a reserve officer stationed near the Przemysl ghetto blocked an SS detachment from entering it He then evacuated up to 100 Jews and their families to the barracks of the local military command and placed them under his protection 150 Wilm Hosenfeld an army captain in Warsaw helped hid or rescued several Poles including Jews in occupied Poland He helped the Polish Jewish composer Wladyslaw Szpilman who was hiding among the city s ruins by supplying him with food and water 151 According to Wolfram Wette only three Wehrmacht soldiers are known for being executed for rescuing Jews Anton Schmid Friedrich Rath and Friedrich Winking 152 After World War II German Instrument of Surrender 8 May 1945 Berlin Karlshorst Following the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht which went into effect on 8 May 1945 some Wehrmacht units remained active either independently e g in Norway or under Allied command as police forces 153 The last Wehrmacht unit to come under Allied control was an isolated weather station in Svalbard which formally surrendered to a Norwegian relief ship on 4 September 154 On 20 September 1945 with Proclamation No 2 of the Allied Control Council ACC a ll German land naval and air forces the S S S A S D and Gestapo with all their organizations staffs and institution including the General Staff the Officers corps the Reserve Corps military schools war veterans organizations and all other military and quasi military organizations together with all clubs and associations which serve to keep alive the military tradition in Germany shall be completely and finally abolished in accordance with the methods and procedures to be laid down by the Allied Representatives 155 The Wehrmacht was officially dissolved by the ACC Law 34 on 20 August 1946 156 which proclaimed the OKW OKH the Ministry of Aviation and the OKM to be disbanded completely liquidated and declared illegal 157 Military operational legacy Immediately following the end of the war many were quick to dismiss the Wehrmacht due to its failures and claim allied superiority 158 However historians have since reevaluated the Wehrmacht in terms of fighting power and tactics giving it a more favorable assessment with some calling it one of the best in the world 159 partly due to its ability to regularly inflict higher losses than it received while it fought outnumbered and outgunned 160 Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld who attempted to examine the military force of the Wehrmacht in a purely military context concluded The German army was a superb fighting organization In point of morale elan troop cohesion and resilience it probably had no equal among twentieth century armies 161 German historian Rolf Dieter Muller comes to the following conclusion In the purely military sense you can indeed say that the impression of a superior fighting force rightly exists The proverbial efficiency was even greater than previously thought because the superiority of the opponent was much higher than at that time German officers suspected The analysis of Russian archive files finally gives us a clear picture in this regard 162 Strategic thinker and professor Colin S Gray believed that the Wehrmacht possessed outstanding tactical and operational capabilities However following a number of successful campaigns German policy began to have victory disease asking the Wehrmacht to do the impossible The continued use of the Blitzkrieg also led to Soviets learning the tactic and using it against the Wehrmacht 163 Historical negationism Main article Myth of the clean Wehrmacht Soon after the war ended former Wehrmacht officers veterans groups and various far right authors began to state that the Wehrmacht was an apolitical organization which was largely innocent of Nazi Germany s war crimes and crimes against humanity 164 Attempting to benefit from the clean Wehrmacht myth veterans of the Waffen SS declared that the organisation had virtually been a branch of the Wehrmacht and therefore had fought as honourably as it Its veterans organisation HIAG attempted to cultivate a myth of their soldiers having been Soldiers like any other 165 Post war militaries Former Wehrmacht generals Adolf Heusinger and Hans Speidel being sworn into the newly founded Bundeswehr on 12 November 1955 Following the division of Germany many former Wehrmacht and SS officers in West Germany feared a Soviet invasion of the country To combat this several prominent officers created a secret army unknown to the general public and without mandate from the Allied Control Authority or the West German government 166 167 By the mid 1950s tensions of the Cold War led to the creation of separate military forces in the Federal Republic of Germany and the socialist German Democratic Republic The West German military officially created on 5 May 1955 took the name Bundeswehr lit Federal Defence Its East German counterpart created on 1 March 1956 took the name National People s Army German Nationale Volksarmee Both organizations employed many former Wehrmacht members particularly in their formative years 168 though neither organization considered themselves successors to the Wehrmacht 169 170 171 However according to historian Hannes Heer Germans still have a hard time when it comes to openly dealing with their Nazi past as such of the 50 military bases named after Wehrmacht soldiers only 16 bases have changed names 172 Wehrmacht veterans in West Germany have received pensions through the War Victims Assistance Act German Bundesversorgungsgesetz from the government 173 174 According to The Times of Israel The benefits come through the Federal Pension Act which was passed in 1950 to support war victims whether civilians or veterans of the Wehrmacht or Waffen SS 175 See alsoBribery of senior Wehrmacht officers German resistance to Nazism Glossary of German military terms Glossary of Nazi Germany Nazism and the Wehrmacht Wehrmacht Propaganda TroopsNotes The official dissolution of the Wehrmacht began with the German Instrument of Surrender of 8 May 1945 Reasserted in Proclamation No 2 of the Allied Control Council on 20 September 1945 the dissolution was officially declared by ACC Law No 34 of 20 August 1946 1 2 Total GDP 75 billion 1939 amp 118 billion 1944 6 See the Wiktionary article for more information 135 000 executed 422 700 sent to penal units at the front and 436 600 imprisoned after sentencing 111 ReferencesCitations Allied Control Authority 1946a p 81 Allied Control Authority 1946b p 63 Armbruster 2005 p 64 a b Muller 2016 p 12 Overmans 2004 p 215 Harrison 2000 p 10 Tooze 2006 p 181 Evans 2008 p 333 Department of State 2016 Leitz 1998 p 153 Taylor 1995 pp 90 119 Kitchen 1994 pp 39 65 Van Creveld 1982 p 3 Muller 2016 pp 58 59 Hartmann 2013 pp 85 108 a b Overmans 2004 p 215 Muller 2016 p 16 Wette 2006 p 77 Fritz 2011 p 470 Wette 2006 pp 195 250 USHMM n d a b Kershaw 1997 p 150 Huber 2000 Strohn 2010 p 10 Wheeler Bennett 1967 p 60 a b Craig 1980 pp 424 432 a b c Murray amp Millett 2001 p 22 Wheeler Bennett 1967 p 22 Murray amp Millett 2001 p 33 Murray amp Millett 2001 p 37 Wheeler Bennett 1967 p 131 Zeidler 2006 pp 106 111 Cooper 1981 pp 382 383 Muller 2016 p 10 Forster 1998 p 268 Wheeler Bennett 1967 p 312 Kershaw 1997 p 525 Broszat et al 1999 p 18 Muller 2016 p 7 a b Fischer 1995 p 408 Stone 2006 p 316 Tooze 2006 p 208 Muller 2016 pp 12 13 Muller 2016 p 13 U S War Department 1945 pp I 57 Muller 2016 pp 13 14 Miller 2013 p 292 293 Kjoerstad 2010 p 6 a b c d U S War Department 1945 p I 3 Forster 1998 p 266 Beyda 2014 pp 448 Muller 2014 pp 222 Muller 2016 p 36 Greenwald 1981 p 125 Sigmund 2004 p 184 a b United States Holocaust Memorial Museum n d Kompisch 2008 p 219 a b documentArchiv de 2004 3 Broszat 1985 p 295 Stein 2002 p 18 Megargee 2000 pp 41 42 Hayward 1999 pp 104 105 a b Hayward 1999 pp 105 106 Muller 2016 pp 18 20 Hayward 1999 p 105 a b Hayward 1999 p 106 Palmer 2010 pp 96 97 Mosier 2006 pp 11 24 Frieser 2005 pp 4 5 Atkinson 2002 p 536 Jukes 2002 p 31 Zeiler amp DuBois 2012 pp 171 172 Zhukov 1974 pp 110 111 Corrigan 2011 p 353 Bell 2011 pp 95 108 Trueman 2015a History com Editors 2010 Tooze 2006 pp 125 130 Outze 1962 p 359 Merglen 1970 p 26 Darling 2008 p 181 Girbig 1975 p 112 documentArchiv de 2004 2 Maiolo 1998 pp 35 36 Maiolo 1998 pp 57 59 Muller 2016 p 17 Maiolo 1998 p 60 Syrett 2010 pp xi xii Bidlingmaier 1971 pp 76 77 Whitley 1984 p 30 Garzke amp Dulin 1985 p 246 Hinsley 1994 pp 54 57 Richards 1974 pp 223 225 233 236 237 Garzke amp Dulin 1985 pp 248 Trueman 2015b a b Muller 2016 pp 71 72 Muller 2016 p 72 Hughes amp Costello 1977 Hickman 2015 Niestle 2014 Introduction Christensen Poulsen amp Smith 2015 pp 433 438 Stein 2002 p 20 Stein 2002 pp 20 21 a b Stein 2002 p 22 a b Christensen Poulsen amp Smith 2015 p 438 a b c Christensen Poulsen amp Smith 2015 p 437 Fritz 2011 pp 366 368 Duiker 2015 p 138 Overmans 2004 p 335 Biess 2006 p 19 Herf 2006 p 252 a b Muller 2016 p 30 a b Krivosheev 2010 p 219 Mikhalev 2000 p 23 a b Evans 1989 pp 58 60 Bohler 2006 pp 183 184 189 241 Stein 2002 pp 29 30 Bartov 1999 pp 146 47 a b Hilberg 1985 p 301 Datner 1964 pp 20 35 Datner 1964 pp 67 74 Forster 1989 p 501 Fritz 2011 pp 92 134 Megargee 2007 p 121 Smith 2011 p 542 Christensen Poulsen amp Smith 2015 pp 435 436 Neitzel amp Welzer 2012 pp 136 143 Marston amp Malkasian 2008 pp 83 90 Pavlowitch 2007 p 61 Markovich 2014 s 139 note 17 Gmyz 2007 Joosten 1947 p 456 Lenten 2000 pp 33 34 Herbermann Baer amp Baer 2000 pp 33 34 Le Faucheur 2018 Davies 2006 p 271 Wildt Jureit amp Otte 2004 p 30 Wildt Jureit amp Otte 2004 p 34 Bartov 1999 pp 131 132 Bartov 2003 p xiii Bartov 1999 p 146 Shepherd 2003 pp 49 81 Hebert 2010 pp 216 219 a b Balfour 2005 p 32 Jones 2008 pp 73 74 Bell 2011 pp 104 05 107 Kershaw 2001 p 693 Allert 2009 p 82 Schoeps 2008 p 502 Bartrop 2016 p 247 Wette 2014 p 74 Yad Vashem n d Szpilman 2002 p 222 Timm 2015 Fischer 1985 pp 322 324 Barr 2009 p 323 Allied Control Authority 1946a Large 1996 p 25 Allied Control Authority 1946b Hastings 1985 Van Creveld 1982 p 3 Hastings 1985 Gray 2007 pp 148 O Donnell 1978 p 61 Hastings 1985 Gray 2007 pp 148 Van Creveld 1982 p 163 Bonisch amp Wiegrefe 2008 p 51 Gray 2002 pp 21 22 Wette 2006 p 236 238 Wienand 2015 p 39 Wiegrefe 2014 Peck 2017 Knight 2017 Bickford 2011 p 127 Christmann amp Tschentscher 2018 79 Scholz 2018 Groeneveld amp Moynihan 2020 AFP 2019 Binkowski amp Wiegrefe 2011 Axelrod 2019 Bibliography Printed Allert Tilman 2009 The Hitler Salute On the Meaning of a Gesture Translated by Chase Jefferson Picador ISBN 978 0 312 42830 3 Allied Control Authority 1946a Enactments and Approved Papers of the Control Council and Coordinating Committee PDF I a href Template Cite 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Shepperton Surrey Ian Allan Ltd ISBN 978 0 7110 0290 6 Duiker William J 2015 The Crisis Deepens The Outbreak of World War II Contemporary World History Shepperton Surrey Cengage Learning ISBN 978 1 285 44790 2 Evans Anthony A 2005 World War II An Illustrated Miscellany Worth Press ISBN 978 1 84567 681 0 Evans Richard J 1989 In Hitler s Shadow West German Historians and the Attempt to Escape the Nazi Past New York Pantheon ISBN 978 0 394 57686 2 Evans Richard J 2008 The Third Reich at War New York NY Penguin ISBN 978 0 14 311671 4 Fest Joachim 1996 Plotting Hitler s Death The Story of the German Resistance New York Henry Holt and Company ISBN 978 0 8050 4213 9 Fischer Alexander 1985 Teheran Jalta Potsdam Die sowjetischen Protokolle von den Kriegskonferenzen derGrossen Drei in German Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik ISBN 978 3 8046 8654 0 Fischer Klaus 1995 Nazi Germany A New History in German New York NY Continuum ISBN 978 0 82640 797 9 Frieser Karl Heinz 2005 Blitzkrieg legende der 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President and Fellows of Harvard College 55 1 124 126 doi 10 2307 3114466 JSTOR 3114466 S2CID 154515739 Grossmann Atina 2009 Jews Germans and Allies Close Encounters in Occupied Germany Princeton NJ Princeton University Press ISBN 978 1 40083 274 3 Harrison Mark 2000 The Economics of World War II Six Great Powers in International Comparison Studies in Macroeconomic History Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 78503 7 Retrieved 9 January 2019 Hartmann Christian 2013 Operations Barbarossa Nazi Germany s War in the East 1941 1945 Oxford Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 966078 0 Hastings Max 5 May 1985 Their Wehrmacht was better than our Army Washington Post Hayward Joel 1999 A case study in early joint warfare An analysis of the Wehrmacht s Crimean campaign of 1942 Journal of Strategic Studies 22 4 103 130 doi 10 1080 01402399908437771 Hayward Joel Adolf Hitler and Joint Warfare Upper Hutt Military Studies Institute 2000 Hebert Valerie 2010 Hitler s Generals on Trial The Last War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg Lawrence Kansas University Press of Kansas ISBN 978 0 7006 1698 5 Herbermann Nanda Baer Hester Baer Elizabeth Roberts 2000 The Blessed Abyss Inmate 6582 in Ravensbruck Concentration Camp for Women Google Books Detroit Wayne State University Press ISBN 978 0 8143 2920 7 Retrieved 12 January 2011 Herf Jeffrey 2006 The Jewish enemy Nazi propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust Harvard University Press ISBN 978 0 674 02175 4 Hilberg Raul 1985 The Destruction of the European Jews New York Holmes amp Meier ISBN 978 0 8419 0832 1 Hinsley F H 1994 1993 British Intelligence in the Second World War Its influence on Strategy and Operations History of the Second World War abridged 2nd rev ed London HMSO ISBN 978 0 11 630961 7 Huber Ernst Rudolf 2000 Dokumente zur deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte Band 2 Deutsche Verfassungsdokumente 1851 1918 in German Kohlhammer Verlag ASIN B0000BQQHL Archived from the original on 22 April 2016 Hughes Terry Costello John 1977 Battle of the Atlantic HarperCollins Distribution Services ISBN 978 0 00 216048 3 Jones Nigel 2008 Countdown to Valkyrie The July Plot to Assassinate Hitler Philadelphia PA Casemate ISBN 978 1 84832 508 1 Joosten Paul A ed 1947 Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal PDF Vol 7 Nuremberg Germany International military tribunal Nuremberg OCLC 300473195 Jukes Geoffrey 2002 The Second World War The Eastern Front 1941 1945 Oxford Osprey ISBN 978 1 84176 391 0 Kershaw Ian 1997 Stalinism and Nazism dictatorships in comparison Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 56521 9 Kershaw Ian 2001 Hitler 1936 1945 Nemesis New York W W Norton amp Company ISBN 978 0 39332 252 1 Kershaw Ian 2008 Hitler A Biography New York W W Norton amp Company ISBN 978 0 393 06757 6 Killen John 2003 The Luftwaffe A History South Yorkshire Pen amp Sword Military ISBN 978 1 78159 110 9 Kitchen Martin 1994 Nazi Germany at War London amp New York Routledge ISBN 978 0 582 07387 6 Kjoerstad Ola 2010 German officer education in the interwar years PhD diss PDF University of Glasgow Kompisch Kathrin 2008 Taterinnen Frauen im Nationalsozialismus in German Bohlau Koln ISBN 978 3 412 20188 3 Krivosheev Grigori F 2010 Russia amp USSR at War in the 20th century in Russian Moscow Veche ISBN 978 5 9533 3877 6 Lampe John R 2000 1996 Yugoslavia as History Twice There Was a Country 2nd ed Cambridge England Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 77401 7 Large David Clay 1996 Germans to the Front West German Rearmament in the Adenauer Era Chapel Hill and London University of North Carolina Press ISBN 978 0 80784 539 4 Leitz C M February 1998 Arms Exports from the Third Reich 1933 1939 The Example of Krupp The Economic History Review Blackwell Publishers 51 1 133 154 doi 10 1111 1468 0289 00086 JSTOR 2599695 Lenten Ronit 2000 Israel and the Daughters of the Shoah Reoccupying the Territories of Silence Berghahn Books ISBN 978 1 57181 775 4 Maiolo Joseph 1998 The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany 1933 39 A Study in Appeasement and the Origins of the Second World War London Macmillan Press ISBN 978 0 312 21456 2 Markovich Slobodan G 2014 Memories of Victimhood in Serbia and Croatia from the 1980s to the Disintegration of Yugoslavia In El Affendi Abdelwahab ed Genocidal Nightmares Narratives of Insecurity and the Logic of Mass Atrocities New York City Bloomsbury pp 117 141 ISBN 978 1 62892 073 4 Marston Daniel Malkasian Carter eds 2008 Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare Osprey Publishing ISBN 978 1 84603 281 3 Megargee Geoffrey P 1997 Triumph of the Null Structure and Conflict in the Command of German Land Forces 1939 1945 War in History 4 1 60 80 doi 10 1177 096834459700400104 S2CID 159950260 Megargee Geoffrey P 2000 Inside Hitler s High Command Lawrence Kansas Kansas University Press ISBN 978 0 7006 1015 0 Megargee Geoffrey P 2007 War of Annihilation Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front 1941 Rowman amp Littelefield ISBN 978 0 7425 4482 6 Merglen Albert 1970 Geschichte und Zukunft der Luftlandetruppen in German Rombach ASIN B0000BSMDD Mikhalev Sergey Nikolaevich 2000 Liudskie poteri v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine 1941 1945 gg Statisticheskoe issledovanie Human Losses in the Great Patriotic War 1941 1945 A Statistical Investigation in Russian Krasnoyarsk State Pedagogical University ISBN 978 5 85981 082 6 Miller Charles A 2013 Destructivity A Political Economy of Military Effectiveness in Conventional Combat PhD diss Doctoral dissertation PDF Duke University Mosier John 2006 Cross of Iron The Rise and Fall of the German War Machine 1918 1945 New York Henry Holt and Company ISBN 978 0 80507 577 9 Muller Klaus Jurgen 1987 The Army Politics and Society in Germany 1933 1945 Studies in the Army s Relation to Nazism Manchester Manchester University Press ISBN 978 0 7190 1071 2 Muller Rolf Dieter 2014 The Unknown Eastern Front The Wehrmacht and Hitler s Foreign Soldiers New York I B Tauris ISBN 978 1 78076 890 8 Muller Rolf Dieter 2016 Hitler s Wehrmacht 1935 1945 Lexington University Press of Kentucky ISBN 978 0 81316 738 1 Murray Williamson Millett Allan Reed 2001 A War to Be Won Fighting the Second World War Cambridge Massachusetts Harvard University Press ISBN 978 0 674 00680 5 Neitzel Sonke Welzer Harald 2012 Soldaten On Fighting Killing and Dying The Secret WWII Transcripts of German POWs New York Alfred A Knopf ISBN 978 0 30795 812 9 Niestle Axel 2014 German U Boat Losses During World War II Details of Destruction London Frontline Books ISBN 978 1 84832 210 3 O Donnell H K June 1978 Smith Robert W ed A GENIUS FOR WAR Review Marine Corps Gazette 62 6 60 61 ISSN 0025 3170 Outze Borge 1962 Danmark under anden verdenskrig in Danish Copenhagen Hasselbalch ISBN 978 87 567 1889 9 Overmans Rudiger 2004 Deutsche militarische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg in German Munchen Oldenbourg ISBN 978 3 486 20028 7 Palmer Michael A 2010 The German Wars A Concise History 1859 1945 Minneapolis MN Zenith Press ISBN 978 0 76033 780 6 Pavlowitch Stevan K 2007 Hitler s New Disorder The Second World War in Yugoslavia New York City Columbia University Press ISBN 978 1 85065 895 5 Richards Denis 1974 1953 VI The Struggle at Sea The First Battle of the Convoy Routes the Anti Shipping Offensive and the Escape of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau Royal Air Force 1939 1945 The Fight at Odds History of the Second World War Military Series Vol I pbk ed London HMSO pp 94 116 ISBN 978 0 11 771592 9 Retrieved 15 October 2016 Schoeps Karl Heinz 2008 Holocaust and Resistance in Vilnius Rescuers in Wehrmacht Uniforms German Studies Review 31 3 489 512 JSTOR 27668589 Schulte Theo 1989 The German Army and Nazi Policies in Occupied Russia Oxford Berg ISBN 978 0 85496 160 3 Shepherd Ben H 2003 The Continuum of Brutality Wehrmacht Security Divisions in Central Russia 1942 German History 21 1 49 81 doi 10 1191 0266355403gh274oa Shepherd Ben H 2004 War in the Wild East the German Army and Soviet Partisans Cambridge Massachusetts Harvard University Press ISBN 978 0 674 01296 7 Sigmund Anna Maria 2004 Les femmes du IIIe Reich in French Jean Claude Lattes ISBN 978 2 7096 2541 8 Smelser Ronald Davies Edward 2008 The Myth of the Eastern Front the Nazi Soviet War in American Popular Culture New York Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 83365 3 Smith Helmut Walser 2011 The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History New York Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 923739 5 Stackelberg Roderick 2007 The Routledge Companion to Nazi Germany New York Routledge ISBN 978 0 41530 861 8 Stein George 2002 1966 The Waffen SS Hitler s Elite Guard at War 1939 1945 Cerberus Publishing ISBN 978 1 84145 100 8 Stone David J 2006 Fighting for the Fatherland The Story of the German Soldier from 1648 to the Present Day Herndon VA Potomac Books ISBN 978 1 59797 069 3 Strohn Matthias November 2010 The German Army and the Defence of the Reich Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 19199 9 Retrieved 15 May 2015 Syrett David 2010 The Defeat of the German U Boats The Battle of the Atlantic Studies in Maritime History University of South Carolina Press ISBN 978 1 57003 952 2 Szpilman Wladyslaw 2002 The Pianist The Extraordinary True Story of One Man s Survival in Warsaw 1939 1945 2nd ed Picador ISBN 978 0 312 31135 3 Taylor Telford 1995 Sword and Swastika Generals and Nazis in the Third Reich New York Barnes amp Noble ISBN 978 1 56619 746 5 Tooze Adam 2006 The Wages of Destruction The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy New York Penguin ISBN 978 0 67003 826 8 U S War Department 1945 Chapter I The German Military System Handbook on German Military Forces 15 March 1945 Technical Manual TM E 30 451 via Hyperwar Foundation Van Creveld Martin 1982 Fighting power German and US Army performance 1939 1945 Westport Connecticut Greenwood Press ISBN 978 0 31309 157 5 von Bischofhausen Otto 1950 1941 The Hostage Case PDF Report to Commanding Officer in Serbia 20 October 1941 Concerning Severe Reprisal Measures Vol Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals Nuremberg Allied occupied Germany Nuremberg Military Tribunals OCLC 312464743 Wette Wolfram 2006 The Wehrmacht History Myth Reality Cambridge Massachusetts Harvard University Press ISBN 978 0 674 02213 3 Wette Wolfram 2014 Ein Judenratter aus der Wehrmacht Feldwebel Anton Schmid 1900 1942 PDF In Muller Julia ed Menschen mit Zivilcourage Mut Widerstand und verantwortliches Handeln in Geschichte und Gegenwart in German Lucerne Kanton Luzern pp 74 82 Wheeler Bennett John 1967 The Nemesis of Power The German Army in Politics 1918 1945 London Macmillan ISBN 978 1 4039 1812 3 Whitley M J July 1984 Warship 31 Graf Zeppelin Part 1 London Conway Maritime Press Ltd Wienand Christiane 2015 Returning Memories Former Prisoners of War in Divided and Reunited Germany Rochester N Y Camden House ISBN 978 1 57113 904 7 Retrieved 22 September 2018 Williamson David G 2002 The Third Reich 3rd ed London Longman Publishers ISBN 978 0 58236 883 5 Zeidler Manfred 2006 The Strange Allies Red Army and Reichswehr in the Inter War Period In Schlogel Karl ed Russian German Special Relations in the Twentieth Century A Closed Chapter New York Berg pp 106 111 ISBN 978 1 84520 177 7 Zeiler Thomas W DuBois Daniel M 2012 A Companion to World War II John Wiley amp Sons ISBN 978 1 118 32504 9 Zhukov Georgy 1974 Marshal of Victory Volume II Pen and Sword Books Ltd ISBN 978 1 78159 291 5 Online AFP 28 February 2019 Germany struggles to stop Nazi war payment suspicions The Local Axelrod Toby 27 March 2019 German Jewish leader urges cancellation of pension payments to former SS members timesofisrael com The Times of Israel Retrieved 12 June 2019 Binkowski Rafael Wiegrefe Klaus 21 October 2011 How Waffen SS Veterans Exploited Postwar Politics Der Spiegel Christmann Rainer M Tschentscher A 5 February 2018 BVerfGE 36 1 Grundlagenvertrag servat unibe ch Das Fallrecht Retrieved 17 January 2019 Department of State 15 August 2016 RG 84 Switzerland National Archives Retrieved 16 May 2019 documentArchiv de ed 3 February 2004 1935 Wehrgesetz Vom 21 Mai 1935 Military Law of 21 May 1935 Reichsgesetzblatt in German Berlin Reich Ministry of Interior I 609 614 Retrieved 6 April 2019 Gmyz Cezary 22 November 2007 Seksualne niewolnice III Rzeszy Sex Slaves of the Third Reich in Polish Wprost Retrieved 11 March 2019 Groeneveld Josh Moynihan Ruqayyah 3 April 2020 The German army is still struggling to come to terms with its Nazi past according to historians businessinsider com Business Insider Retrieved 21 September 2020 Hickman Kennedy 2015 Battle of the Atlantic in World War II Dotdash Meredith Retrieved 20 May 2015 Germans invade Poland History 4 March 2010 Retrieved 21 May 2015 Knight Ben 16 May 2017 The German military and its troubled traditions Deutsche Welle Le Faucheur Christelle 23 July 2018 Were US POWs Starved to Death in German Camps The National WWII Museum Retrieved 11 February 2019 Lillian Goldman Law Library 2008 Judgement The Accused Organizations Avalon Lillian Goldman Law Library Retrieved 17 January 2019 Peck Michael 4 February 2017 Exposed The Secret Ex Nazi Army That Guarded West Germany Center for the National Interest The National Interest Retrieved 11 January 2019 Reichsgesetzblatt 1935 Die Verfassungen in Deutschland I no 52 in German Archived from the original on 24 September 2017 Retrieved 28 February 2018 Scholz Kay Alexander 28 March 2018 German army instills new traditions to move away from troubled history Deutsche Welle DW News Retrieved 16 January 2019 Timm Sylvia 4 May 2015 Verdienstorden der Bundesrepublik fur Historiker Wolfram Wette Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for Historian Wolfram Wette in German Badische Zeitung Retrieved 22 December 2016 Trueman Chris N 14 May 2015a Blitzkrieg historylearningsite co uk HistoryLearningSite Retrieved 20 May 2015 Trueman Chris N 18 May 2015b The Battle of Barents Sea historylearningsite co uk HistoryLearningSite Retrieved 13 May 2015 USHMM n d The German Military and the Holocaust United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Holocaust Encyclopedia Retrieved 13 January 2019 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum n d Women in the Third Reich Retrieved 8 September 2019 Wiegrefe Klaus 14 May 2014 Nazi Veterans Created Illegal Army Der Spiegel Spiegel Online Retrieved 11 January 2019 Wildt Michael Jureit Ulrike Otte Birgit 2004 Crimes of the German Wehrmacht PDF Hamburg Institute for Social Research Archived from the original PDF on 8 December 2018 Retrieved 28 November 2008 Yad Vashem n d The Righteous Among The Nations Yad Vashem The World Holocaust Remembrance Center Retrieved 16 January 2019 External linksThe Wehrmacht A Criminal Organization Review of Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann s 1995 work Vernichtungskrieg Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 1944 by Jorg Bottger Wehrmacht Propaganda Troops and the Jews an article by Daniel Uziel The Nazi German Army 1935 1945Videos How the Red Army Defeated Germany The Three Alibis Video on YouTube lecture by Jonathan M House of the U S Army Command and General Staff College via the official channel of Dole Institute of Politics Fighting a Lost War The German Army in 1943 Video on YouTube lecture by Robert Citino via the official channel of the U S Army Heritage and Education Center Mindset of WWII German Soldiers Video on YouTube interview with the historian Sonke Neitzel discussing his book Soldaten On Fighting Killing and Dying via the official channel of The Agenda a programme of TVOntario a Canadian public television station A Blind Eye and Dirty Hands The Wehrmacht s Crimes lecture by the historian Geoffrey P Megargee via the YouTube channel of the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and GenocidePortals Military of Germany World War IIWehrmacht at Wikipedia s sister projects Media from Commons Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Wehrmacht amp oldid 1147378284, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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