Wehrmacht soldiers, officers and generals did not just deny their roles in the extermination of Jews, Romani, and Slavs on the Eastern Front, they denied ever knowing about it. This is despite providing active support and encouragement in the genocides. In fact, the Wehrmacht would make occasional ‘requests’ to the SS and the Einsatzgruppen. For example, the High Command would ask the Einsatzgruppen to speed up the mass executions in order to preserve the food supply. But the incident that stood out to me the most was Field Marshal Erich von Manstein and the watch incident – after a mass murder of Jews at Simferopol in Crimea, the only issue Manstein had was that the SS kept all the valuables looted from the corpses for themselves. He (or his staff) kept sending messages to SS to send him the watches at least…
After the war and a brief imprisonment, Manstein would be regarded as a hero by the German public. His memoir – like that of many other Wehrmacht veterans – scrupulously maintained the lie that the average German soldier was unaware of any war crimes and completely uninvolved.
I read about the watch incident in a brief passage on page 43 of [The Myth of the Eastern Front : the Nazi-Soviet war in American popular culture by Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies (2008 edition)](https://archive.org/details/mythofeasternfro0000smel). It’s all in German, but you can read Manstein’s messages to the SS yourself on pages 658-671 of the book [Das Gesetz des Krieges. Das deutsche Heer in Russland 1941 bis 1945. Der Prozess gegen das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Munich, Peiper, 1993)](https://archive.org/details/dasgesetzdeskrie0000frie).
Unofficial_Computer on
Praying that this myth fucking dies already.
BeduinZPouste on
I heard interesting thing:
“The worst thing about death camps – in a sense – was that they shifted the blame from everyone to few. “We didn’t know what was happening in the camps!” Surely, just as regular people don’t want to know what exactly happends at slaughterhause. But everyone knows it ain’t good. There are the pictures of German looking sick when they saw films from camps. Average person would get as sick from watching animals getting gassed to death.
They didn’t know exactly, maybe not even the leaders, but it was willfull ignorance at best. There are countless letters from Russia detailing everything you can ask. Tossing babies into air to be used as targets, done by regular people.
Less than 10% of victims of war died in gas chambers. But they the chambers were so horific they made us almost forgot about all the others, and theirs murderers.”
nickthedicktv on
Eisenhower was right to march those Germans through the concentration camp because they’d deny they knew anything about it.
MigratingPenguin on
Oh boy, get ready for a million downvotes. This sub loves minimization and trivialization of Nazism.
LibertyChecked28 on
Yea, this won’t survive even 72h before the Mods remove it.
It would either get ignored, or downvoted to oblivion by the Wehrmacht defence force.
FergalStack on
“We’ll tell them Hitler was crazy and didn’t give us winter clothes. We totally would have won otherwise *wink*”
ProgramPristine6085 on
Wehrmacht troops claiming to be innocent of the SS’s doings after being the primary ones that documented the Einsatzgruppen’s killings
haonlineorders on
Too many r/historymemes users: “Did you hear the Nazis/Wehrmacht were horrified by the actions of the Japanese/Unit731/Serbians/Ustase”
Bill Nye The Science Guy (and everyone who understands WW2 history”: “No you fucking idiot”
PrimmSlim-Official on
The allies didn’t execute nearly enough German officers
11 Comments
Wehrmacht soldiers, officers and generals did not just deny their roles in the extermination of Jews, Romani, and Slavs on the Eastern Front, they denied ever knowing about it. This is despite providing active support and encouragement in the genocides. In fact, the Wehrmacht would make occasional ‘requests’ to the SS and the Einsatzgruppen. For example, the High Command would ask the Einsatzgruppen to speed up the mass executions in order to preserve the food supply. But the incident that stood out to me the most was Field Marshal Erich von Manstein and the watch incident – after a mass murder of Jews at Simferopol in Crimea, the only issue Manstein had was that the SS kept all the valuables looted from the corpses for themselves. He (or his staff) kept sending messages to SS to send him the watches at least…
After the war and a brief imprisonment, Manstein would be regarded as a hero by the German public. His memoir – like that of many other Wehrmacht veterans – scrupulously maintained the lie that the average German soldier was unaware of any war crimes and completely uninvolved.
I read about the watch incident in a brief passage on page 43 of [The Myth of the Eastern Front : the Nazi-Soviet war in American popular culture by Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies (2008 edition)](https://archive.org/details/mythofeasternfro0000smel). It’s all in German, but you can read Manstein’s messages to the SS yourself on pages 658-671 of the book [Das Gesetz des Krieges. Das deutsche Heer in Russland 1941 bis 1945. Der Prozess gegen das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Munich, Peiper, 1993)](https://archive.org/details/dasgesetzdeskrie0000frie).
Praying that this myth fucking dies already.
I heard interesting thing:
“The worst thing about death camps – in a sense – was that they shifted the blame from everyone to few. “We didn’t know what was happening in the camps!” Surely, just as regular people don’t want to know what exactly happends at slaughterhause. But everyone knows it ain’t good. There are the pictures of German looking sick when they saw films from camps. Average person would get as sick from watching animals getting gassed to death.
They didn’t know exactly, maybe not even the leaders, but it was willfull ignorance at best. There are countless letters from Russia detailing everything you can ask. Tossing babies into air to be used as targets, done by regular people.
Less than 10% of victims of war died in gas chambers. But they the chambers were so horific they made us almost forgot about all the others, and theirs murderers.”
Eisenhower was right to march those Germans through the concentration camp because they’d deny they knew anything about it.
Oh boy, get ready for a million downvotes. This sub loves minimization and trivialization of Nazism.
Yea, this won’t survive even 72h before the Mods remove it.
It would either get ignored, or downvoted to oblivion by the Wehrmacht defence force.
“We’ll tell them Hitler was crazy and didn’t give us winter clothes. We totally would have won otherwise *wink*”
Wehrmacht troops claiming to be innocent of the SS’s doings after being the primary ones that documented the Einsatzgruppen’s killings
Too many r/historymemes users: “Did you hear the Nazis/Wehrmacht were horrified by the actions of the Japanese/Unit731/Serbians/Ustase”
Bill Nye The Science Guy (and everyone who understands WW2 history”: “No you fucking idiot”
The allies didn’t execute nearly enough German officers
Cold war caused this.