Clean Wehrmacht

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In recent historical research, a narrative that was constructed by former members of the Wehrmacht in the early years of the Federal Republic of Germany is referred to as the Clean Wehrmacht (also referred to as the legend or myth of the clean Wehrmacht ) . Although it is scientifically untenable, it is still propagated today by traditional associations and politically right-wing authors. In it, the Wehrmacht is presented as uninfluenced by the ideology of National Socialism and as a non-political institution separate from the Nazi state . Wehrmacht crimes are denied or relativized. Instead, their military performance is highlighted.

The narrative of the clean Wehrmacht

After severe penalties had been imposed in the immediate post-war period as part of the denazification proceedings , the tide turned at the beginning of the 1950s: In the newly founded Federal Republic of Germany, “ victorious justice ” was now sharply criticized, the collective guilt thesis was outragedly rejected (according to the Historian Norbert Frei , the Allies had never seriously represented them), the German Bundestag began to enact amnesty laws, from which war criminals also benefited. This delegitimization of the judgments passed in the second half of the 1940s contributed to the construction of the image of a “clean Wehrmacht”: According to this, the Wehrmacht, unlike the police and SS units that carried out criminal murder, remained innocent and was fair and according to the regulations of the international martial law without being involved in the crimes of the Nazi state. In addition, there were statements, memoirs and studies of war history by former German officers. This view of history was largely designed by the former Chief of Staff Franz Halder and other officers who had worked for the United States Army's war history research group in the Operational History (German) Section since their captivity . The Freiburg military historian Wolfram Wette sees Halder's intentions, on which his co-authors from the former officer corps of the Wehrmacht had to orientate themselves, in the goal of "depicting the army command downright [as] historical victims of Hitler, or at least depicting the misused instruments of his criminal policy" and one A sharp distinction should be made between “supposedly clean warfare by the Wehrmacht and the dirty war of the SS, which is contrary to international law”. The generals around Halder then also used their advantage of exclusive file access for writings in the field of civil historiography, which they published from 1954 as part of the working group for military research . The interpretation of the Wehrmacht as a “clean Wehrmacht” had a strong influence on historiography for a long time .

After the final return of the war returnees from Soviet war captivity , 600 former members of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS made a public oath in the Friedland camp on October 7, 1955 , which met with strong media coverage. The oath was made by the spokesman for the transport, the former SS doctor Ernst Günther Schenck , who carried out starvation experiments in the Mauthausen concentration camp and advised Hitler on his suicide:

“We want to swear by the dead this war cost us, also by the dead of the Soviet Union, we want to swear by our children; we swear: we did not murder, we did not violate, we did not sing and murder. If we brought suffering and misery upon other people, according to the law of war in the service of the people and our soldiers' oath. "

The historian Wolfram Wette called this in 2011 a “collective perjury ”.

refutation

After earlier Wehrmacht documents were returned to the Federal Republic of Germany by the Western Allies , it became clear during their evaluation that this legend could no longer be upheld. Today the extensive involvement of the Wehrmacht in numerous Nazi crimes is documented. One example is the commissioner 's order, which regulated the murder of captured political officers by Wehrmacht units and its implementation was often questioned. Historical research from the 1980s and 1990s onwards, based on testimony, trial documents, field post letters , personal diaries and other documents, shows the direct and systematic involvement of the Wehrmacht in many massacres and war crimes, especially in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, as well as in the Holocaust . In the 1990s and 2000s made two Wehrmacht exhibition of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research these crimes to a wider public and focused on the as war of extermination led German-Soviet war . The historian Christian Hartmann found in 2009, “Nobody needs to expose the myth of the 'clean' Wehrmacht. Your guilt is so overwhelming that there is no need for any discussion about it. ”In 2014, the historian Hannes Heer stated in relation to the crimes of the Wehrmacht that such a thorough“ process of collective amnesia ”had taken place in Germany during the Adenauer era that his Consequences had a lasting effect.

literature

  • Detlev Bald, Johannes Klotz, Wolfram Wette: The Wehrmacht Myth. Post-war debates and maintaining tradition. Structure, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-7466-8072-7 .
  • Omer Bartov : Hitler's Wehrmacht. Soldiers, fanaticism and the brutalization of war (original title: Hitler's Army by Karin Miedler and Thomas Pfeiffer). Rowohlt TB, Reinbek near Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-499-60793-X .
  • Michael Bertram: The image of Nazi rule in the memoirs of leading generals of the Third Reich . Ibidem-Verlag 2009, ISBN 978-3-8382-0034-7 .
  • Rolf Düsterberg : Soldier and War Experience. German military memorial literature (1945-1961) on the Second World War. Motives, terms, evaluations. Niemeyer 2000, ISBN 978-3-484-35078-6 .
  • Jürgen Förster: The Wehrmacht in the Nazi state. A structural-historical analysis. Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-486-58098-1 .
  • Hannes Heer : How can you tell the story of the Holocaust and the war of extermination? About memory politics in a memory-resistant society. In: Hannes Obermair , Sabrina Michielli (ed.): Cultures of remembrance of the 20th century in comparison - Culture della memoria del Novecento al confronto. (= Booklets on the history of Bolzano / Quaderni di storia cittadina 7). Bozen, City of Bozen 2014, ISBN 978-88-907060-9-7 , pp. 115–153.
  • Lars-Broder Keil, Sven Felix Kellerhoff : Fighted like a knight? Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941–1945 . In: German Legends. About the "stab in the back" and other myths of history . Links, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-86153-257-3 , pp. 93-117.
  • Wilfried Loth , Bernd-A. Rusinek : Transformation policy: Nazi elites in West German post-war society. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-593-35994-4 .
  • Walter Manoschek, Alexander Pollak, Ruth Wodak, Hannes Heer (eds.): How history is made. For the construction of memories of the Wehrmacht and World War II. Czernin, Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-7076-0161-7 .
  • Walter Manoschek : The Wehrmacht in the race war. The war of annihilation behind the front. Picus, Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-85452-295-9 .
  • Manfred Messerschmidt : The Wehrmacht in the Nazi state. Time of indoctrination. von Decker, Hamburg 1969, ISBN 3-7685-2268-7 .
  • Rolf-Dieter Müller , Hans-Erich Volkmann (Hrsg.): The Wehrmacht. Myth and Reality. Edited on behalf of the Military History Research Office . Oldenbourg, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-486-56383-1 .
  • Klaus Naumann: The "clean" Wehrmacht. Social history of a legend. In: Mittelweg 36 7, 1998, issue 4, pp. 8-18.
  • Sönke Neitzel , Harald Welzer : Soldiers: Protocols of fighting, killing and dying . Fischer (S.), Frankfurt 2011, ISBN 978-3-10-089434-2 .
  • Ben Shepherd: The Clean Wehrmacht, the War of Extermination, and Beyond. In: The Historical Journal 52, 2009, issue 2, pp. 455-473, doi : 10.1017 / S0018246X09007547 .
  • Kurt Pätzold : You were the best soldiers. Origin and history of a legend , Militzke 2000, ISBN 978-3-86189-191-8 .
  • Alexander Pollak: The Wehrmacht legend in Austria. The image of the Wehrmacht in the mirror of the Austrian press after 1945. Böhlau, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-205-77021-8 .
  • Alfred Streim : Clean Wehrmacht? The prosecution of war and Nazi crimes in the Federal Republic and the GDR. In: Hannes Heer (ed.): War of extermination. Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941–1944. Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-930908-04-2 , pp. 569-600.
  • Peter Steinkamp, Bernd Boll , Ralph-Bodo Klimmeck: Clean Wehrmacht: The end of a legend? Freiburg experiences with the exhibition. War of Extermination: Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941 to 1944. In: Geschichtswerkstatt 29, 1997, pp. 92-105.
  • Michael Tymkiw: Debunking the myth of the clean Wehrmacht. In: Word & Image 23, 2007, issue 4, pp. 485-492.
  • Wolfram Wette : The Wehrmacht. Enemy images, war of extermination, legends. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-7632-5267-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Norbert Frei : German learning processes. Nazi past and generation succession . In: Same: 1945 and us. The Third Reich in the consciousness of the Germans . dtv, Munich 2009, p. 49.
  2. ↑ Wolfram Wette: The Wehrmacht. Enemy images, war of extermination, legends . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-7632-5267-3 , pp. 225-229.
  3. ↑ Wolfram Wette: The Wehrmacht. Enemy images, war of extermination, legends . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2002, p. 227.
  4. ↑ Esther-Julia Howell: Learn from the vanquished? The war-history cooperation between the US Army and the former Wehrmacht elite 1945–1961. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-11-041478-3 , pp. 270f. u. P. 278f.
  5. ↑ cit. according to Sascha Schießl: "The gateway to freedom". Consequences of the war, politics of remembrance and humanitarian demands in the Friedland camp (1945–1970) . Wallstein, Göttingen 2016, p. 266.
  6. ↑ Tough Legends . Interview with Wolfram Wette, in: Die Zeit from June 1, 2011, p. 22.
  7. ↑ See Astrid M. Eckert: Battle for the files: The Western Allies and the return of German archives after the Second World War . Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2004.
  8. ↑ a b Gerd R. Ueberschär : The legend of the clean Wehrmacht. In: Wolfgang Benz , Hermann Graml , Hermann Weiß (eds.): Encyclopedia of National Socialism. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-423-34408-1 , p. 110f.
  9. ^ Christian Hartmann: Wehrmacht in the Eastern War. Front and military hinterland 1941/42. (= Sources and representations of contemporary history , Volume 75) Oldenbourg, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-58064-8 , p. 790.
  10. ↑ Hannes Heer: How can you tell the story of the Holocaust and the war of extermination? About memory politics in a memory-resistant society. In: Hannes Obermair, Sabrina Michielli (ed.): Cultures of remembrance of the 20th century in comparison - Culture della memoria del Novecento al confronto. (= Booklets on the history of Bolzano / Quaderni di storia cittadina 7). Bozen, City of Bozen 2014, ISBN 978-88-907060-9-7 , pp. 123-124.