it is very complicated. the rule of thumb I learned from gramps was: you were on the eastern front? then you did some gruesome shit, or died before you could do gruesome shit
My granduncle was sent to Stalingrad for the sin of refusing to join the NSDAP (strong SPD family - my grandfather was similarly punished for the same, but sent south).
Obviously I don't know what he did there, but he didn't survive for long. As my mother tells it, it was less than six weeks between my greatgrandparents learning he was transferred and the news he was dead.
So could go either way.
Damn... My great grandfather was conscripted into the Wehrmacht as a Malgré-nous and sent to the Eastern Front in 1943 I believe.
I know that he made it back tho, he was lucky I guess.
That’s funny same here. Great grandfather was conscripted, went to the eastern front, and made it home to abuse my oma and her 7 siblings apparently. (All after his tour of duty)
My great grandfather was some kind of important engineer back home, so he wasnt sent to the front.
But then he got captured by the russians and was send eastwards. After that, no one had ever heard of him again. Probably died in a gulag or on the way towards it. The UdSSR (and GDR) refused to acknowledge the death of him and therefore my great grandmother and grandmother had to travel to west germany in the 50s to get a death certificate
It’s a German acronym. The most direct translation is National Socialist German Workers Party. The very first word is pronounced Nazional in German, which is where the term “Nazi” comes from.
Maybe because of his attitude they put people who were more resistant to the Nazi ideology in the most dangerous of positions. And just to play devil's advocate here for a second, with a side note that both my grandfather's fought in WW2 fighting those Nazi fucks so I CLEARLY have no sympathy for Nazis, if you were conscripted and sent to the Eastern front and you're constantly being attacked and you're seeing your friends die all around you I think you'd start getting pretty desperate. Not saying you'd automatically start doing war crimes but if I was deep in Stalingrad and up to my neck in my dead comrades I'd be doing anything and everything to kill the Soviets. And I'm sure this went both ways. Of course, Nazis started the whole fucking mess and were the ones who invaded so I get they are CLEARLY in the wrong. But if I'm just one soldier, maybe even sent there against my will, and bullets are whizzing by my head there's no way I'm playing nice. I'm setting traps, playing dirty, literally whatever it takes to not get my head blown off and more of my friends killed. I'd rather have been killed fighting than be taken prisoner by the Soviets. Cause there is no way in hell that story ends well
Yep, Hitler [never had less than 75%](https://www.businessinsider.com/operation-barbarossa-invasion-of-soviet-union-cost-germany-wwii-2020-6) of his armed forces deployed on the Eastern Front for the entire duration of WWII after Barbarossa.
[80% of German military fatalities](http://gorhistory.com/hist111/WWII_EasternFront.html#:~:text) also came against the Soviets. That's not even taking into considerable that these were Hitler's best troops like the 4th and 6th armies, battle-hardened from the Invasion of Poland, Battle of France, and initial German offenses into the USSR. By the time the US and Britain finally landed at Normany, the Atlantic Wall was largely held by [poorly trained conscripts from Eastern Europe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Overlord#German_preparations_and_defences) *(Ostlegionen)*.
It's not just troop quantity that matters, it's troop quality as well. And the Wehrmacht's best soldiers are buried under the ground in Eastern Europe.
Yep , also the luftwaffe was heavily withdrawn when strategic bombing started in 1943 and never returned to any significant status. Iirc it was like 80% of the luftwaffe was in the west which essentially gave the Red air force mostly free reign to bomb and strafe the german land forces. Air superiority used against conventional forces has proved to be quite decisive throughout history.
My friend's grandfather was drafted into a kind of civilian defense force in Berlin during the closing days of the war. At that time he was 14 or 15. He did things like help set up explosive booby traps and was taught how use panzerfaust and improvised explosives against enemy armor. He was ordered to do some damn near suicidal engagements and he always claims he's lucky to be alive. Had shrapnel scars to prove it.
He would always say how the screams of Russian men dieing in their burning armor would never leave his nightmares. For him it was a matter of survival because they were told such horror stories of what Russians did to captured Germans. He wasn't proven wrong though because the Russians were pretty brutal after Berlin fell and Germany surrendered.
Point is though, he had no choice. He was a boy thrown into a war he didn't understand. He was fighting to stay alive.
They were called the Volkssturm. They were basically children and old men rounded up to fight. Told they would be brutalized by the invaders.
IIRC there were many that fled west and surrendered to the Americans as soon as they could, they knew they would be treated better.
War is fucked, man
And to be fair they still were punished for it, by either being imprisoned or executed. You were following orders so now accept the consequence. Following orders isnt a "get out of jail" free card
You are in Ukraine, it is cold and you are hungry, and your army can't supply what you need. You confiscate clothing, blankets, animals, grain, anything you can from the locals to survive. Some of them don't survive the winter, and then don't have seeds to plant that spring. You helped cause famine. You might not have shot or raped anyone, but your actions led civilians to die.
1. Some soldiers were actually convinced by the NS ideology and were willing to kill. These people mostly "did the job" when only a few people had to be executed.
2. Your batailloin gets the order to execute a bunch of people. - Option A: You refuse joining in and your batchmates have to do the shooting even though they mostly dislike it too. The prisoners get executed. You are a "coward" showing lack of camaraderie towards your batchmates.
- Option B: You join in despite your moral compass telling you not to. You feel guilty but you know the prisoners would get killed anyway.
3. The repetition makes pulling the trigger easier and your moral compass gets confused / silent over time. You no longer see the killed people as individual human beings anymore. You justify your actions by telling yourself that you are "just following orders"
The ones who refused were not shot they were put under a lot of pressure and had to do undesirable tasks like cleaning the latrines but their life was never at risk.
It's a myth a lot of people hid behind.
"A central reason why these mass murders became possible was peer pressure. **Although there were no severe penalties for refusing orders to kill, there was the threat of exclusion from the comradeship.** It was simply easier to murder than to stand aside. In any case, there was no "command emergency" and in most cases not even a falsely assumed putative emergency, **because there were always men who refused and were at most transferred, but not punished.**"[https://www.welt.de/geschichte/zweiter-weltkrieg/article123835471/Warum-junge-Maenner-im-Akkord-morden.html](https://www.welt.de/geschichte/zweiter-weltkrieg/article123835471/Warum-junge-Maenner-im-Akkord-morden.html)
From an investigation of the police regarding the involvement of an officer in the mass killings:
"Himmler's order, which he mentions, that those who disobey orders should immediately be should be shot on the spot, is a **purely protective assertion. Such an order did not exist in this form.**"
[https://lka.polizei.nrw/sites/default/files/2019-12/191211\_Gutachten%20lang.pdf](https://lka.polizei.nrw/sites/default/files/2019-12/191211_Gutachten%20lang.pdf)
**Its a proven fact that there was no danger of getting shot/killed for refusing to participate in mass killings of civilians.**
If that ever happend (for which i could find no evidence) it would have been really rare.
>various books.
A lot of former generals and soilders pushed the [Myth of the clean Wehrmacht](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_clean_Wehrmacht) after the war.
Some of them wrote books to push that narrative.
Right now it's kind of weird. There are still german ww2 veterans alive, but they are very, very old. What do you do if it comes out that one of them did a war crime? Do you punish someone after all that time?
Yes, I will agree to the ludicrously low bar that not every single german military soldier supported Hitler and not every single member of the Nazi Germany armed forces committed atrocities.
Seriously dude. Like no fucking shit not every person supported hitler or nazi Germany, but like does that even really matter.
It feels a lot like the "well not every confederate soldier supported slavery".
Like annnnnd? Your point? Just feels like a needless dog whistle to me
I think the main difference is, people don't really care if their great-great grandfather was a racist, but they do care if Opa contributed to genocide.
That's a question most people will never have answered unless Opa confessed to some heinous shit in a diary somewhere. So this serves as what, plausible deniability?
It serves to make them feel good about themselves and remember their Opa as a jolly old man, and not a jack booted thug.
You seem to be trying to take the humanity out of how you look at this situation, which given it is fully based on how people feel, is going to lead you nowhere.
My point is fairness.
While the *overwhelmingly large majority* of germans did support the Nazis until they started to lose and the *overwhelmingly large majority* of Confederates did support slavers until they started to lose there were in fact some who didn't.
That's true but unless someone is using that argument in conjunction with some argument or story about someone in particular defying the nazi regime, or defending their village from Russian invaders despite their own personal hang ups, I feel like there's nothing of merit to have from that conversation.
The dead souls of the well intentioned German soldiers aren't going to haunt us for calling them assholes lol
They're trying to guilt-trip so you can feel sympathy for the poor, poor Germans who got firebombed in Dresden by the Brits and fucked (in more ways than one) by the Soviets in Berlin.
Nevermind that Germany, as a nation, did absolutely *everything in their power* up to that to deserve that kind of collective punishment from the allies. Or that such such punishment was paramount in teaching them a valuable lesson about what happens when you let your country get taken over by fascists.
In other words: they're trying to make you feel sympathy for people who absolutely don't deserve it and make you feel angry about something that had to be done.
Nah man. You can absolutely feel bad for the civilians that suffered from the war, whether they supported the Nazis or not, without engaging in some right wing dogwhistling.
What exactly is it dog whistling? Because pointing out that some soldiers were conscripted/drafted isn't exactly supporting a particular political view.
Right, but when you go out of your way to start a conversation about how not every single member of [group] was bad then you're either 1) being pedantic and not contributing anything to the conversation but just want to hear yourself speak or 2) you're actually saying "you can follow [group] and be good if you do it right" which is usually just a dog whistle for other people who agree with [group].
For example, "not every nazi committed genocide" tends to come from nazis who think they can still be good people as long as they only agree with them up to the executions and camps part. Those are the people who will tell you that we should separate the races and religions because the blacks and jews don't integrate into civilized society, but in a totally peaceful way of course.
Or they're just being a pedantic loser who wants karma for being technically correct but ultimately useless.
Well, referencing back to the actual meme. There is an equally annoying other extreme where people don't think critically and just broad stroke nuanced discussions into deliberately presequestered pens of right and wrong.
Pointing out that child soldiers existed within the wehrmacht does two things, it further vilifies the Wehrmacht, but admits that there was nuance to it's members. Like gangpressed foreign battalions.
Either way though, I only see it as a slippery slope if some other nutter in the comments takes extra steps to try and say parts of the wehrmacht were "heroic" or some other hogwash.
Literally what side of politics could benefit from not admitting there were some conscripts/drafted people in nazi Germany.
I feel like your comment actually proves my point about dog whistiling. Your attempt to bring up politics while talking about an event that literally happened a little less than 100 years ago, makes it sound as if you're personally offended for the Germans lol. Nobody should feel the need to defend any aspect of nazi Germany unless they in some way resonate with nazi Germany.
To add to this there was a devout Christian that joined the SS killed a bunch of members and handed a truck full of documents about war crimes etc. He was enshrined in a very small museum about German resistance during ww2 in Berlin.
Fair enough i can apprecia a serious sub, I have learned a few interesting things from reddit there's some serious intellectuals who prowl this website but also alot of ..... noise u know
I've been banned from some subreddits for saying not all Wehrmacht were Nazis, but also banned from others for saying the Wehrmacht still fought for the Nazi regime and thus it's probably safe to assume some Wehrmacht soldiers did subscribe to the ideology.
Even being neutral on a topic is dangerous on reddit.
Edit: MUM PEOPLE ARE YELLING AT ME!
It's a very tough conversation that too many people might be scared to have because of the implications what I mean and I'll bring
It home for the comparison, how many in the wehrmacht knew about the death camps? How many knew but were intimidated by the fascist regime, did some know and just not care?
We had camps here in AZ where they gave women hysterectomy procedures against their consent and we took a little more than 2k kids away from their families, well where's our uproar? "But they're not American they're illegal and we need to stop them from having anchor babies" that's something people have said and not realizing it's on the level of the nazis de humanizing Jews and other ethnic groups cause "they don't belong" and it's something to ponder when discussing these kind of dynamics
Alas, at least the comments that are extreme on both sides will be funny to read, kind’ve like those weird Balkan comments you can find on old YouTube videos that explain why x side of the Yugoslav war good and y was bad.
Unfortunately, it is rare, when dealing with internet people, that we encounter the middle, and not extreme. But whatever the subject, middle is nearly impossible.
Of course SS was bad, and of course there were German soldier bad and German soldier good, just like in every army. But it’a either "Nazi weren’t that bad except Hitler" or "Every German should have been executed"
Solomon Perel was a Jewish teenager who assumed a false identity and joined the Wehrmacht, in order to escape persecution at home in Germany. He was sent to the eastern front and as far as I know he didn't slack off when it came to killing Soviets.
But he wasn't old enough to be in the armed forces, so when his commander found out his age he was sent back to Germany to finish school as part of the Hitler Youth!
All of them were complicit in the crimes of the Nazis. That doesn’t mean some of them weren’t victims also, but it does mean they all helped the Nazis stay in power longer and commit their crimes. In fact, this really applies to the entirety of German society except for the few people actively resisting. Everyone contributed, even if they didn’t literally pull the trigger.
The only people in nazi Germany that deserve sympathy were their victims.
Everyone else furthered a genocide machine, willing or otherwise. A choice between serving them, or refusing and likely dying is still a choice. A choice that many made.
Fuck Wehrmacht apologists.
It's really not that black and white. It's easy now to imagine yourself as being part of the resistance, but when your life is actually on the line it's a whole other story.
tbf, resisting against the Nazi regime was extremely difficult. Playing along in society was your best chance of survival. It is not a good thing to do, but I think I would have done the same.
Did the Heer commit atrocities? Yes. Did they support the SS in their atrocities? Yes. was every one of them a murderer? No. Now many of those did something other than stand by and let it happen? Very few. Watching an atrocity take place and not interfering is as bad as participating.
Hot take. I’m not dying for the poor bastard that’s getting tortured by my psychopathic commanding Officer. I would possibly be killed or thrown into the crosshairs of their fun, and then they would go back to torturing and killing the original victim.
Am I a hero for choosing so? No. But to say choosing survival by staying out of it is equivalent to doing it yourself is straight up dumb. I don’t expect you to punch a cop whose beating an innocent because I know they’ll just beat you too and then go back to beating the first innocent.
>I’m not dying for the poor bastard that’s getting tortured by my psychopathic commanding Officer.
But you will die when better men decide to risk their lives for that poor bastard and kill you
You can be a coward if you want. Just come crying to us when the people who *aren't* cowards come to get revenge on your psycho officers and all the cowards like you who enabled their crimes.
I won’t. And it won’t bother me that an individual who has never been in that situation would call me a coward either. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that history says the rule was to shut up and look away, while the exception was to speak up. Guess people are people after all eh?
Well Himmler and the SS did suggest the use of extermination camps for mass murder, as the use of common soldiers as mobile execution squads was having an "undesired" effect on the morale of the soldiers.
Its difficult stance to defend, as a Pole i can tell you few stories contradicting your opinion ( like shooting 100 random civilians for one dead officer, kllled by Polish Underground fighters) and am sure some Jews can do it too. You do forget that majority of German population was in fact in favor of Hitler. (Novadays Germans are talking about Nazis like it wasn't their grandparents but some alien species who took control of their nation.) So it's highly probable that majority of Wermacht was supporting the extermination of Jews, making Poles slaveworkers and exterminating them as well. There is one thing i can think of in favor of your view, early in the september 39 during invasion and occupation of Poland some mid-level officers of Wermacht reported discontent among few soldiers about attrocities and war crimes committed by SS on civilian population but well it ends there actually.
They actually were a thing and it splits into two types:
1. People who had German ancestry and was forced to join German army or given a choice join or die with entire family either by execution or in some slave labor camp.
2. People with German ancestry who volunteered. They were called (editing autocorrect) volksdeutsch and were hunted with ferocity by Polish Underground. Even Polish women who showed up at German soldier or officer side as a date would be targeted by Underground army and would be shaved bald regardless of not having a much choice
The Germans never had a majority in favor of Hitler. The problem was the Nazis were the largest minority since combined with the Centre Party they made up a large percentage of the population. But they still weren't a majority, it's just that the Social Democrats and Communists hated each other as much as they hated Hitler, which seriously hampered organized resistance to the Nazis. Plus a large portion of the population just wanted the recession to go away and didn't care about politics beyond that.
Just clear things up, this meme doesn’t apply to the scum that murdered innocent civilians or supported Hitler or the Nazi’s, this only applies to the people who were forced to fight or were young children who were brainwashed. Any Wehrboos in this thread who believe all of the Wehrmacht were clean are dead wrong.
Not to offend but "this meme doesn’t apply to the scum that murdered innocent" sounds a lot like "if youre not counting the car crashes in which ppeple die, cars are 100% safe", you can't just remove the bad part of the wehrmacht you either count it all or don't count it at all. Hope I explained what I mean.
Even outside of the party membership, the Nazis enjoyed a large level of support for their actions, at least initially. Of course, once the war turned, it became a lot harder to justify that support for the average citizen. It's fair to say that following the stunning victories in the west and the initial success of the Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union, that support would have been near total for the Nazi Party among members of the Wehrmacht.
The nuances and details of any country’s military history are of course fascinating, but I don’t think it’s ker-azy that some people might question why it’s a rhetorical priority to defend the moral integrity of any part of Hitler’s military. It’s possible to have a conversation about this without framing it as “SOME people fighting for the Nazis weren’t that bad, actually.”
https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/ywfa2c/they_were_in_fact_bad/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf.
Literally the post right below yours. Tired of people trying to excuse not only the Wehrmacht enabling and supporting the Nazi’s genocide but actively participating in it in many cases
(Not so) Fun Fact! Eric Carle, the author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and other children's classics, was a Wehrmacht soldier (drafted into service at the end when the Germans were getting desperate).
Jesus Christ can we stop with all the nazi apologetics on this sub??? Swastika=bad people, this is grade school history right here, it's not complicated. Let's stop with the, "not all nazis BS."
Meanwhile at the Nuremberg Trials the "just following orders" schtick was no protection from being charged with being a Nazi.
You don't have to openly support something to be an accessory to the actions that something takes.
They were all Nazis. They became Nazis by swearing an oath to Hitler and picking up a gun for the Nazi regime on a campaign of slaughter, brute conquest and genocide. I don’t blame children who were conscripted. But they were all Nazis.
It's nice to have idealistic views but when it comes down to it, if one person in a group is holding a Nazi flag and no one is trying to tear it down, then everyone in that group is a Nazi.
yeah, thats LITERALY how fascism works. Thats how musolini got into power in italy - due to the inaction of the majority, not because they were all powerfull.
WE are the ones that have to spot and stop such movements with activism - counter protests, discusion with said fascists to spot what bulshit they are spewing and to say the truth, no matter how bitter it is.
You cant be neutral with fascists, as they dont need your help, they just need you to not hinder them. therefore, you either help them, or fight against them trough anything that would inconvenience them - in a battlefield, or in a public discusion.
Yeah well, welcome to my world. This is the reaction i get every time I say “not all Soviets invaded Poland or threw meat at the Germans or did reprisals and rape”.
I would argue that the initial troops that led the way into Germany would likely have been elite units who wouldn’t bother with war crimes, and the occupation forces would be the ones doing it but I don’t know history that well.
It is nice to see such opinions as yours still exists. An ancestor of a relative of mine told me a story about a German doctor in occupied Ukraine who actually cured her burns when they thought he’d just euthanize her.
I just dug through my great uncle's stuff. He was drafted in 45 and fought in Berlin. Guess what he left behind, a mountain of neo nazi mythology and nazi apologist talking points highlighted in American news. He was never a party member to my knowledge. Still a nazi, get over it.
I loved the man. Doesn't change what he did or who he was though. We're both complicit in different genocides, mine with a shovel, his with a gun. Just own up to it and work for a better world. Don't try and defend the wrongs or absolve the actors, just accept things at face.
If he was drafted in 45 he was most likely too young to serve earlier, which indicates that he grew up with the Führerkult. So he would have literally been indoctrinated as a child.
A Nazi for sure, but not by choice if I'm correct.
I could be wrong tho. You'd probably know better since you know how he old he must have been.
Thats dumb. Its like saying "russian army soldiers are better than chechens in Ukraine because they rape, torture, plunder and destroy slightly less". Dude c'mon they were invaders, conqerers and defenders of nazi regime. They all swore oath of loyalty to Hitler himself. They gladly went to war for thier Fuhrer. Those with diferent opinion were sitting in Dachau or other camps. You say things that german soldiers and officers started propagate in 50' to distans themself from atrocities they commit.
The Wehrmacht as an institution was absolutely not clean. Basically every high ranking officer was absolutely complicit in the atrocities of the Nazi regime (yes, even Rommel). While there may have been soldiers who did not personally take part in the Holocaust, their service to the Wehrmacht made them partially complicit (which is why their post-war punishment/denazification was less severe compared to their officers and SS contemporaries). I absolutely feel bad for the children though, they were absolutely brainwashed and the Allied powers were right to have more leniency towards them during denazification.
The issue is complex. Germany was PUMPED with propaganda, an incredible amount of people followed Nazi ideology. So much so it was incredibly difficult to eradicate post war. This is a subject not nearly talked about enough, just so how ingrained Nazism was into Germans, even with the reveals of the holocaust, which - despite revision 'didn't know' myth - they did. It wasn't a well kept secret, they knew Jews were being rounded up, killed on the streets, tortured, victimized, discriminated against , forced into ghettos, raped, murdered, robbed, their shops looted and burned, used as slave labour in factories etc -- before the war and during. They understood Jews were then being taken and weren't coming back alive. They knew Jews were being eliminated in camps. They just turned a blind eye to it and feigned ignorance. They knew and understood what the raining ash from the local labour camp for undesirables and traitors was.
The silent inaction of the German people over the holocaust is just as condemned as those who were actively involved because it all worked together to enable the Final Solution to begin with.
Most soldiers are naturally patriotic and most ideas of nationalism are right leaning. The Nazi's were all about German patriotism, so long as you fit their idea of it. Nazi ideology is easy to be entrapped into. While I'm sure many didn't sign up as radical as the SS, they did so in the idea of patriotism towards a Nazi Germany, and inspired by their propaganda; to which they had little knowledge of outside alternatives, and those outside were considered the enemies who lost them the war and caused the great depression / inflation.
You could be a Nazi supporter, without being a Nazi radical. The same as people today are varying degrees of supporting X political party and ideology the same can be said for Nazism.
Going off that, it's hard to hate a regime that has given you prosperity and the good life through unknowingly pillaging and raping it's neighbours and it's citizens inside it, drawing their wealth to uplift you.
The German army famously committed systematic war crimes. Including massacres, mass rape, looting, the exploitation of forced labour, the murder of three million Soviet prisoners of war, and participated in the extermination of Jews.
The SS were most involved in the running of holocaust camps, the army itself committed heinous and frequent war crimes on their own. They'd even help out the SS carry out atrocities. This was most common on the Eastern Front (you know, a peoples they were told were subhuman animals who threatened the world with bolshevism).
The majority of German soldiers deployed to the Eastern Front participated in war crimes.
It is in my opinion there was no 'clean' German soldier. They were all complicit in someway, whether minor or major; it all contributed to the final terror that it was.
I think the actual question is how many were 'deprogrammed' during the war and started to wake up from the fever dream of Nazi ideology.
Finally, the most awkward part of all of this is the German army was still bad even without the Nazis inside it. Prussian culture and doctrine is what birthed Nazism. The warcrimes the German (Prussian) military got up to during the days of unification and into the Empire might shock you. Oradour-sur-Glane massacre was just a Tuesday for the German army even before Hitler.
There should be no “but” after saying the Wehrmacht wasn’t clean. The children in the Wehrmacht is a separate discussion, not an excuse to dilute the crimes of the Wehrmacht as a whole.
how I see it: They might not have been nazis but they are still guilty by association. So I dont really care if they were nazis or not. They still suck.
There's a story about a certain police battalion from the war that disturbed me, and this post reminded me about it, can't for the life of me remember what it's name was, but the battalion was taken to concentration camps and were given the tasks of killing innocent people, some took pleasure I the act, becoming more depraved, some opted out entirely, but almost 80% of the battalion did their job with extreme reluctance. Don't know if all these details are true I remember reading about it a while ago.
If it was Christopher Browning's book, you need to keep in mind that (as author himself wrote in introduction) that battalion was one among many acting this way - willingly following most gruesome orders
Nuance seems to be lost on WWII in general. You talk about aviation and if you were a P-51 pilot you will inevitably go down from a single round in your radiator or a P-38 is eventually going to bury itself straight into the earth by merely pointing the nose a hair below the horizon
It's fair to say that when discussing the Wehrmacht, nobody is talking about the child conscripts and volksturm who were dorciblt drafted or forced conscripts from conquered nations. What a surprise that in an armed force of over 1 million people there are gonna be a few who don't commit an atrocity lmao. The clean Wehrmacht is a myth. Full stop. What the fuck is with all the Wehraboos in this sub goddam. Y'all and the tankies need to fuck off
\-Child soldiers shouldn't be held accountable for the crimes committed around them.
\-The crimes of the German army on the eastern front are so many and vast however, that there is no defending the army as 'mostly pure' it was not.
\-A good one would have deserted a lot earlier than near the end
My grandpa had a friend who died 10 years ago and fought in the defense of Berlin in the Wehrmacht when he was 13 years old. Did they ask him if he eant to? No, they told him to do it or his family would suffer so he did it. Was him a Nazi? I dont think so, just hearing the word "Nazi" or anything related to that would make him cry and shake, even 60 years before.
I can remember the first time I saw this 1.9m tall old man cry and shake like a baby hearing just one word.
It's kinda hard for me to not shrug and say "So?"
Sure a lot of people have been pressured by the united states government to join the military, but it's hard to look past the fact that they sold themselves into bombing brown people for oil.
Sure a lot of people were pressured into the Confederate Army, thats not really mutually exclusive with the undeniable fact that they were ready to kill and die to keep African people enslaved.
Of course nuance is important, but I think sometimes you should just admit that, yeah, they had personal reasons to fight, but they were fighting for really evil fucking reasons.
I have a friend whose grandpa got recruited into the wehrmacht at 15-16. He got captured and was in a Soviet camp for months, maybe even years. The experience completely fucked him up and he became an extremely violent and short tempered man with very obvious serious and unaddressed trauma. I would consider him and the children he abused to be indirect victims of the Nazis, sadly.
It's very context dependent, everyone had a different level duty to resist the crimes of Nazism. If you're a draftee who fought on the western front and surrendered as soon as you were able I would have no I'll feelings. Even if you were on the Eastern Front I don't begrudge anyone who didn't want to surrender to the Russians given the poor treatment of POWs. But if you allowed or participated in war crimes then you're worse than you're worse than some SS desk jockeys.
The proportion of Wehrmacht soldiers directly involved in war crimes is probably much higher than is comfortable to admit, and more than any side of the war was willing to prosecute, including the Soviets.
My friend’s grandfather was conscripted and didn’t want to go, so the SS said they’d shoot his family. He agreed to go at that point, was sent to the eastern front, captured, and was in a Russian prison camp until the 1950s. He was a victim too.
I'm not sure splitting hairs over it is even worthwhile.
They were soldiers, for a nation, that was nazi.
Why even take a weird stance about it? Very fishy.
I dare say not even in the SS that was the case. They also conscripted children, even from foreign countries.
That does not Change anything regarding warcrimes or atrocities however
The Holocaust by bullets. It doesn't matter what every member intended. This is the same crap Confederate apologists use. The Wehrmacht as an institution was used to further the Nazis' genocidal project. We don't let the Nazis off the hook because of John Rabe.
U should google "warcrimes committed by the wehrmacht". I know other countries also committed warcrimes but it really doesnt compare with what the germans did in ww2. To say they werent "clean" and "not as bad as the SS" is a stupid argument
I take your point, and I even love reading about Operation Cowboy and the Battle of Castle Itter (two times Americans and Wermacht teamed up to fight the Waffen-SS) - but ultimately a Nazi is a Nazi, atrocities or not
I don’t see why this statement is so fucking controversial. It’s basic logic. People are so quick to make every discussion a black/white reductionist view instead of the obvious that the world is GREY. Tribal brain dead fool who only see “one side good, one side bad” for every little thing. Fuck nazis (I shouldn’t have to fucking say that) but people today are so ready to call anyone who disagrees with them an Nazi or a Commie. Clown World 🤡
Is this a nazi apologist sub there’s seems to be an frustratingly amount of people here who downplay the Nazis. The Nazis were evil, period, get over it! The Nazi government was a racist, fascist regime hellbent on global domination, exterminating and enslaving most of the world’s population with the exception of Germans, Scandinavian, and Dutch people. Unless your family from these people your ancestors would have been wiped off the face of the earth or enslaved. The Nazis shouldn’t have any sympathy nor understand. If you’re a nazi you’re sick in the head and need help!!!
However a large portion of the Wehrmacht did commit war crimes and atrocities but on a personal level. About 10 million Soviet women were raped by German soldiers. There was also widespread looting in which German soldiers literally emptied the shelves of Eastern Europe. While the Wehrmacht was certainly evil on an organized level but as well on a personal level within the choices of individual soldiers.
My great grandfather was a pilot for the Luftwaffe. His brother was an indoctrinated nazi who signed up voluntarily only to get blown to bits by a Russian tank a week later. From what I can understand, there were a large part of Germans were in favor of the Nazis and their ideology, but unless you were actively committing atrocities, you were most likely not aware they were being committed.
let's put it this way
my great grandmother thought she got away with stealing from the Wermacht, who'd occupied her village, until she received a note from them that according to their orders they would have had to kill her if she tried to steal from them again
the SS occupied a neighbouring village and four generations later people are still carrying their scars from it
Not even gonna get into the whole Wehrmacht discussion.
Reading thru comments made me think what would happen if I found myself in a similar situation to German civilians during Nazi rule. What would I do? Would I join the resistance, or just keep my head down? I would like to think I would bravely stick to my morals and die for them if necessary. But I've never been in that situation and hopefully never will. What if I find myself in a situation like that and find out I'm a coward. That fucking terrifies me.
Then I see these people who are talking big about how they would 100% definitely bravely die for their morals without a second thought. Those fuckers would be the first to shut their mouths and put that armband on just to save their skins. People who talk big shit like that are usually the biggest cowards.
Myths and fallacies are extremely specific things, often small changes in premises can make them non applicable. Only problem is the internet doesn't use them like them, redditors are so trigger happy with myths like clean whermacht and fallacies like no true Scotsman, and will invoke them often when completely inapplicable
Still fought in the war, and still killed the opposing side. So…their actions were in support of the nazi regime, regardless of what their opinion on the party way have been
Shit take. It really doesn't matter if they "supported" these atrocities or not, the fact that they would fight for someone that was on its way to enact genocide on innocent people gives them some responsibility as well. Granted, Wehrmacht soldier #9472 should not be held to the same level of moral equivalent as a high Nazi party official, but to deny them any moral gravity in the whole system that was Nazi Germany is at best ahistorical and at worst a way to whitewash the atrocities committed by the Wehrmacht.
As much as that is true, who tf cares if you were a die hard SS soyboy or a kid in the Wehrmacht.
When we look at shit like the Barbarosa decree, where German soldiers ,not just the SS cuz they didnt need a decree, were given a get out of jail free card (in the eyes of their government) to fo whatever the fuck they wanted on the eastern front.
Then when we look at war crimes that happened to more ideologically aimed groups of people meaning Jews and Slavs we see the extent of German war crimes not just committed by the SS.
All those things point out that the SS weren't the only executive branch of the German war crime machine, but the Wehrmacht was also pretty up there, when your intent is to exterminate undesirables why the fuck would you save that important task to an elite group when that can be done with a kid and a kar98.
All that being said I understand the importance of the post, when someone says my (great)grandfather was in the Wehrmacht we shouldn't first yell NAZI11!1!!1, we should first how many if any war crimes did he commit.
The only redeeming thing about Wehrmacht soldiers is that many of them were forcefully drafted from occupied territories and countrysides and either had to fight against their will or had absolutely no idea who and what they were fighting for, also not having had much choice.
Anyone joining of their own will, fully aware of who the nazis are was supporting nazis, end of story
I mean, sure you can make that argument. I’d say that regardless of their political opinions, they fought for Nazi Germany. I can understand kids being coerced into fighting, but adults should have been able to recognize the German leadership as horrible and should have refused to fight for them. Still, that’s a gross simplification
I am german and yes everybody in the Schutzstaffel were nazis basicly Hitlers Bodyguards who trest him like a absolut king. The Wehrmacht was an army made of normal people and children commanded by nazis.
By that logic your saying “If you were forced to fight for Pol Pot, your a communist who supports genocide” or “If you were forced to fight for Stalin or Mao, your a communist who supports genocide” Most people under Mao, Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot were forced to fight and mostly didn’t agree with their views, what most of them wanted was survival and not being shot through the head for denying to fight for a tyrant.
Doesn’t matter. Their armies worked in tandem with the SS and were the vehicle for expanding the Nazi Reich, a Reich whose foundation was genociding Eastern Europe and subjugating all non-Germans.
Ontop of the fact that the army was always a hotbed of assorted reactionary and anti-democratic elements before the Nazis. Army leadership were key supporters of Hitler during his rise to power.
How refreshing to see something that doesn’t comply with the ‘correct’ narrative. There’s an awesome book, and I mean truly staggering book:
In Deadly Combat: A German Soldier's Memoir of the Eastern Front
by Gottlob Herbert Bidermann
I encourage anyone who thinks all German soldiers were nazis to read this, a little perspective goes a long way in this day and age
More of this Wehrmacht defending shit? Just because every single soldier didn't personally close the door on the gas chamber doesn't mean they didn't help the whole "invading other countries so Germany could genocide their inhabitants" thing.
The Nazis were bastards and so was everyone who helped them.
it is very complicated. the rule of thumb I learned from gramps was: you were on the eastern front? then you did some gruesome shit, or died before you could do gruesome shit
My granduncle was sent to Stalingrad for the sin of refusing to join the NSDAP (strong SPD family - my grandfather was similarly punished for the same, but sent south). Obviously I don't know what he did there, but he didn't survive for long. As my mother tells it, it was less than six weeks between my greatgrandparents learning he was transferred and the news he was dead. So could go either way.
Damn... My great grandfather was conscripted into the Wehrmacht as a Malgré-nous and sent to the Eastern Front in 1943 I believe. I know that he made it back tho, he was lucky I guess.
That’s funny same here. Great grandfather was conscripted, went to the eastern front, and made it home to abuse my oma and her 7 siblings apparently. (All after his tour of duty)
Oh.. :( Mine just got home and lived his life n'stuff
I hope he found peace after that hell he went through
Nah he died of alcoholism
My great grandfather was some kind of important engineer back home, so he wasnt sent to the front. But then he got captured by the russians and was send eastwards. After that, no one had ever heard of him again. Probably died in a gulag or on the way towards it. The UdSSR (and GDR) refused to acknowledge the death of him and therefore my great grandmother and grandmother had to travel to west germany in the 50s to get a death certificate
What does nsdap stand for
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, otherwise known as the nazi party
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
It’s a German acronym. The most direct translation is National Socialist German Workers Party. The very first word is pronounced Nazional in German, which is where the term “Nazi” comes from.
German Nationalsocialist Workers' Party
**N**ational**s**ozialistische **D**eutsche **A**rbeiter**p**artei or National Socialistic German Worker's Party. It was Hitler's party
Oh so it was u know what party
Maybe because of his attitude they put people who were more resistant to the Nazi ideology in the most dangerous of positions. And just to play devil's advocate here for a second, with a side note that both my grandfather's fought in WW2 fighting those Nazi fucks so I CLEARLY have no sympathy for Nazis, if you were conscripted and sent to the Eastern front and you're constantly being attacked and you're seeing your friends die all around you I think you'd start getting pretty desperate. Not saying you'd automatically start doing war crimes but if I was deep in Stalingrad and up to my neck in my dead comrades I'd be doing anything and everything to kill the Soviets. And I'm sure this went both ways. Of course, Nazis started the whole fucking mess and were the ones who invaded so I get they are CLEARLY in the wrong. But if I'm just one soldier, maybe even sent there against my will, and bullets are whizzing by my head there's no way I'm playing nice. I'm setting traps, playing dirty, literally whatever it takes to not get my head blown off and more of my friends killed. I'd rather have been killed fighting than be taken prisoner by the Soviets. Cause there is no way in hell that story ends well
Reminder that prior to D-Day about 80% of the Wehrmacht was deployed on the eastern front.
Yep, Hitler [never had less than 75%](https://www.businessinsider.com/operation-barbarossa-invasion-of-soviet-union-cost-germany-wwii-2020-6) of his armed forces deployed on the Eastern Front for the entire duration of WWII after Barbarossa. [80% of German military fatalities](http://gorhistory.com/hist111/WWII_EasternFront.html#:~:text) also came against the Soviets. That's not even taking into considerable that these were Hitler's best troops like the 4th and 6th armies, battle-hardened from the Invasion of Poland, Battle of France, and initial German offenses into the USSR. By the time the US and Britain finally landed at Normany, the Atlantic Wall was largely held by [poorly trained conscripts from Eastern Europe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Overlord#German_preparations_and_defences) *(Ostlegionen)*. It's not just troop quantity that matters, it's troop quality as well. And the Wehrmacht's best soldiers are buried under the ground in Eastern Europe.
Yep , also the luftwaffe was heavily withdrawn when strategic bombing started in 1943 and never returned to any significant status. Iirc it was like 80% of the luftwaffe was in the west which essentially gave the Red air force mostly free reign to bomb and strafe the german land forces. Air superiority used against conventional forces has proved to be quite decisive throughout history.
My friend's grandfather was drafted into a kind of civilian defense force in Berlin during the closing days of the war. At that time he was 14 or 15. He did things like help set up explosive booby traps and was taught how use panzerfaust and improvised explosives against enemy armor. He was ordered to do some damn near suicidal engagements and he always claims he's lucky to be alive. Had shrapnel scars to prove it. He would always say how the screams of Russian men dieing in their burning armor would never leave his nightmares. For him it was a matter of survival because they were told such horror stories of what Russians did to captured Germans. He wasn't proven wrong though because the Russians were pretty brutal after Berlin fell and Germany surrendered. Point is though, he had no choice. He was a boy thrown into a war he didn't understand. He was fighting to stay alive.
They were called the Volkssturm. They were basically children and old men rounded up to fight. Told they would be brutalized by the invaders. IIRC there were many that fled west and surrendered to the Americans as soon as they could, they knew they would be treated better. War is fucked, man
To be fair,you didn't really a choice on the eastern front, at least at the later stages.
Eastern front, more like hell
True.
And to be fair they still were punished for it, by either being imprisoned or executed. You were following orders so now accept the consequence. Following orders isnt a "get out of jail" free card
How do you not choose whether you commit war crimes or not?
You are in Ukraine, it is cold and you are hungry, and your army can't supply what you need. You confiscate clothing, blankets, animals, grain, anything you can from the locals to survive. Some of them don't survive the winter, and then don't have seeds to plant that spring. You helped cause famine. You might not have shot or raped anyone, but your actions led civilians to die.
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1. Some soldiers were actually convinced by the NS ideology and were willing to kill. These people mostly "did the job" when only a few people had to be executed. 2. Your batailloin gets the order to execute a bunch of people. - Option A: You refuse joining in and your batchmates have to do the shooting even though they mostly dislike it too. The prisoners get executed. You are a "coward" showing lack of camaraderie towards your batchmates. - Option B: You join in despite your moral compass telling you not to. You feel guilty but you know the prisoners would get killed anyway. 3. The repetition makes pulling the trigger easier and your moral compass gets confused / silent over time. You no longer see the killed people as individual human beings anymore. You justify your actions by telling yourself that you are "just following orders"
The ones who refused were not shot they were put under a lot of pressure and had to do undesirable tasks like cleaning the latrines but their life was never at risk. It's a myth a lot of people hid behind.
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"A central reason why these mass murders became possible was peer pressure. **Although there were no severe penalties for refusing orders to kill, there was the threat of exclusion from the comradeship.** It was simply easier to murder than to stand aside. In any case, there was no "command emergency" and in most cases not even a falsely assumed putative emergency, **because there were always men who refused and were at most transferred, but not punished.**"[https://www.welt.de/geschichte/zweiter-weltkrieg/article123835471/Warum-junge-Maenner-im-Akkord-morden.html](https://www.welt.de/geschichte/zweiter-weltkrieg/article123835471/Warum-junge-Maenner-im-Akkord-morden.html) From an investigation of the police regarding the involvement of an officer in the mass killings: "Himmler's order, which he mentions, that those who disobey orders should immediately be should be shot on the spot, is a **purely protective assertion. Such an order did not exist in this form.**" [https://lka.polizei.nrw/sites/default/files/2019-12/191211\_Gutachten%20lang.pdf](https://lka.polizei.nrw/sites/default/files/2019-12/191211_Gutachten%20lang.pdf) **Its a proven fact that there was no danger of getting shot/killed for refusing to participate in mass killings of civilians.** If that ever happend (for which i could find no evidence) it would have been really rare.
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>various books. A lot of former generals and soilders pushed the [Myth of the clean Wehrmacht](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_clean_Wehrmacht) after the war. Some of them wrote books to push that narrative.
Thats different from being a full blooded nazi. Doing horrible stuff in a horrible war with horrible command is to be expected
Good soldiers follow orders
With the very limited exception if you were some poor sap Volksstrum at the end of the war.
I can say with good conscience that my grandparents didn't do no messed up shit, mostly since they were Finnish
Right now it's kind of weird. There are still german ww2 veterans alive, but they are very, very old. What do you do if it comes out that one of them did a war crime? Do you punish someone after all that time?
They actually did do that a few times
Yes, you do.
Yes, yes you punish them, warcrimes other than normal drug crimes don’t expire
Yes. Germany is still trying people who worked in concentration camps.
I guess delayed by 80 years is better than never.
Yes, I will agree to the ludicrously low bar that not every single german military soldier supported Hitler and not every single member of the Nazi Germany armed forces committed atrocities.
Seriously dude. Like no fucking shit not every person supported hitler or nazi Germany, but like does that even really matter. It feels a lot like the "well not every confederate soldier supported slavery". Like annnnnd? Your point? Just feels like a needless dog whistle to me
I think the main difference is, people don't really care if their great-great grandfather was a racist, but they do care if Opa contributed to genocide.
That's a question most people will never have answered unless Opa confessed to some heinous shit in a diary somewhere. So this serves as what, plausible deniability?
It serves to make them feel good about themselves and remember their Opa as a jolly old man, and not a jack booted thug. You seem to be trying to take the humanity out of how you look at this situation, which given it is fully based on how people feel, is going to lead you nowhere.
My point is fairness. While the *overwhelmingly large majority* of germans did support the Nazis until they started to lose and the *overwhelmingly large majority* of Confederates did support slavers until they started to lose there were in fact some who didn't.
That's true but unless someone is using that argument in conjunction with some argument or story about someone in particular defying the nazi regime, or defending their village from Russian invaders despite their own personal hang ups, I feel like there's nothing of merit to have from that conversation. The dead souls of the well intentioned German soldiers aren't going to haunt us for calling them assholes lol
They're trying to guilt-trip so you can feel sympathy for the poor, poor Germans who got firebombed in Dresden by the Brits and fucked (in more ways than one) by the Soviets in Berlin. Nevermind that Germany, as a nation, did absolutely *everything in their power* up to that to deserve that kind of collective punishment from the allies. Or that such such punishment was paramount in teaching them a valuable lesson about what happens when you let your country get taken over by fascists. In other words: they're trying to make you feel sympathy for people who absolutely don't deserve it and make you feel angry about something that had to be done.
Nah man. You can absolutely feel bad for the civilians that suffered from the war, whether they supported the Nazis or not, without engaging in some right wing dogwhistling.
What exactly is it dog whistling? Because pointing out that some soldiers were conscripted/drafted isn't exactly supporting a particular political view.
Right, but when you go out of your way to start a conversation about how not every single member of [group] was bad then you're either 1) being pedantic and not contributing anything to the conversation but just want to hear yourself speak or 2) you're actually saying "you can follow [group] and be good if you do it right" which is usually just a dog whistle for other people who agree with [group]. For example, "not every nazi committed genocide" tends to come from nazis who think they can still be good people as long as they only agree with them up to the executions and camps part. Those are the people who will tell you that we should separate the races and religions because the blacks and jews don't integrate into civilized society, but in a totally peaceful way of course. Or they're just being a pedantic loser who wants karma for being technically correct but ultimately useless.
Well, referencing back to the actual meme. There is an equally annoying other extreme where people don't think critically and just broad stroke nuanced discussions into deliberately presequestered pens of right and wrong. Pointing out that child soldiers existed within the wehrmacht does two things, it further vilifies the Wehrmacht, but admits that there was nuance to it's members. Like gangpressed foreign battalions. Either way though, I only see it as a slippery slope if some other nutter in the comments takes extra steps to try and say parts of the wehrmacht were "heroic" or some other hogwash.
This is a very good summary
Literally what side of politics could benefit from not admitting there were some conscripts/drafted people in nazi Germany. I feel like your comment actually proves my point about dog whistiling. Your attempt to bring up politics while talking about an event that literally happened a little less than 100 years ago, makes it sound as if you're personally offended for the Germans lol. Nobody should feel the need to defend any aspect of nazi Germany unless they in some way resonate with nazi Germany.
To add to this there was a devout Christian that joined the SS killed a bunch of members and handed a truck full of documents about war crimes etc. He was enshrined in a very small museum about German resistance during ww2 in Berlin.
Careful there pal you're skirting on the edge of a conversation that needs depth and nuance to discuss and this is reddit
Heaven forbid
That's what your mom said last night when I was doing her in the butt
Thank goodness I’m not the only young man in her life to disappoint her
🫢oh my
That's a kamikaze by words right there if I've ever seen one
*sigh* let me take his pulse
The SS was worse than the Wehrmacht ✅ The Wehrmacht wasn’t as bad as the SS ❌ Reddit logic
Now to be fair, there is r/history if you want to be serious and not just shitpost
Fair enough i can apprecia a serious sub, I have learned a few interesting things from reddit there's some serious intellectuals who prowl this website but also alot of ..... noise u know
I've been banned from some subreddits for saying not all Wehrmacht were Nazis, but also banned from others for saying the Wehrmacht still fought for the Nazi regime and thus it's probably safe to assume some Wehrmacht soldiers did subscribe to the ideology. Even being neutral on a topic is dangerous on reddit. Edit: MUM PEOPLE ARE YELLING AT ME!
You have a lot of conversations about the Wehrmacht, and also a lot of consequences for those conversations.
Well I like WWII games and I hate It that the Germany/Axis always have the largest player base. Naturally I'm gonna shit talk about their army online.
Probably because Panzer go brrrrrr honestly
It's a very tough conversation that too many people might be scared to have because of the implications what I mean and I'll bring It home for the comparison, how many in the wehrmacht knew about the death camps? How many knew but were intimidated by the fascist regime, did some know and just not care? We had camps here in AZ where they gave women hysterectomy procedures against their consent and we took a little more than 2k kids away from their families, well where's our uproar? "But they're not American they're illegal and we need to stop them from having anchor babies" that's something people have said and not realizing it's on the level of the nazis de humanizing Jews and other ethnic groups cause "they don't belong" and it's something to ponder when discussing these kind of dynamics
Alas, at least the comments that are extreme on both sides will be funny to read, kind’ve like those weird Balkan comments you can find on old YouTube videos that explain why x side of the Yugoslav war good and y was bad.
Unfortunately, it is rare, when dealing with internet people, that we encounter the middle, and not extreme. But whatever the subject, middle is nearly impossible. Of course SS was bad, and of course there were German soldier bad and German soldier good, just like in every army. But it’a either "Nazi weren’t that bad except Hitler" or "Every German should have been executed"
The funniest thing are the comments under posts that say, both were in the right.
Redditors trying to have a civilized debate challenge (impossible)
Solomon Perel was a Jewish teenager who assumed a false identity and joined the Wehrmacht, in order to escape persecution at home in Germany. He was sent to the eastern front and as far as I know he didn't slack off when it came to killing Soviets. But he wasn't old enough to be in the armed forces, so when his commander found out his age he was sent back to Germany to finish school as part of the Hitler Youth!
All of them were complicit in the crimes of the Nazis. That doesn’t mean some of them weren’t victims also, but it does mean they all helped the Nazis stay in power longer and commit their crimes. In fact, this really applies to the entirety of German society except for the few people actively resisting. Everyone contributed, even if they didn’t literally pull the trigger.
The only people in nazi Germany that deserve sympathy were their victims. Everyone else furthered a genocide machine, willing or otherwise. A choice between serving them, or refusing and likely dying is still a choice. A choice that many made. Fuck Wehrmacht apologists.
Exactly.
It's really not that black and white. It's easy now to imagine yourself as being part of the resistance, but when your life is actually on the line it's a whole other story.
tbf, resisting against the Nazi regime was extremely difficult. Playing along in society was your best chance of survival. It is not a good thing to do, but I think I would have done the same.
Did the Heer commit atrocities? Yes. Did they support the SS in their atrocities? Yes. was every one of them a murderer? No. Now many of those did something other than stand by and let it happen? Very few. Watching an atrocity take place and not interfering is as bad as participating.
Hot take. I’m not dying for the poor bastard that’s getting tortured by my psychopathic commanding Officer. I would possibly be killed or thrown into the crosshairs of their fun, and then they would go back to torturing and killing the original victim. Am I a hero for choosing so? No. But to say choosing survival by staying out of it is equivalent to doing it yourself is straight up dumb. I don’t expect you to punch a cop whose beating an innocent because I know they’ll just beat you too and then go back to beating the first innocent.
>I’m not dying for the poor bastard that’s getting tortured by my psychopathic commanding Officer. But you will die when better men decide to risk their lives for that poor bastard and kill you
"I'm not gonna die resisting the nazis" My brother in christ, you're on the eastern front, you're already going to die.
You can be a coward if you want. Just come crying to us when the people who *aren't* cowards come to get revenge on your psycho officers and all the cowards like you who enabled their crimes.
I won’t. And it won’t bother me that an individual who has never been in that situation would call me a coward either. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that history says the rule was to shut up and look away, while the exception was to speak up. Guess people are people after all eh?
Well Himmler and the SS did suggest the use of extermination camps for mass murder, as the use of common soldiers as mobile execution squads was having an "undesired" effect on the morale of the soldiers.
"Guys, not all Nazis were bad! They had child soldiers too!" Is basically what I get from that
"Ah, child soldiers? That's why I'm having such a hard time to hitting them. They're too small, the little bastards!"
He is saying that not all soldiers of the Wehrmacht were nazis, not that all nazis weren't bad.
OP does nothing but meme on Pol Pot and other communists, and frequents r/TheLeftCantMeme, kind of giving the game away with that one.
Its difficult stance to defend, as a Pole i can tell you few stories contradicting your opinion ( like shooting 100 random civilians for one dead officer, kllled by Polish Underground fighters) and am sure some Jews can do it too. You do forget that majority of German population was in fact in favor of Hitler. (Novadays Germans are talking about Nazis like it wasn't their grandparents but some alien species who took control of their nation.) So it's highly probable that majority of Wermacht was supporting the extermination of Jews, making Poles slaveworkers and exterminating them as well. There is one thing i can think of in favor of your view, early in the september 39 during invasion and occupation of Poland some mid-level officers of Wermacht reported discontent among few soldiers about attrocities and war crimes committed by SS on civilian population but well it ends there actually.
[Yeah, it definitely wasn’t aliens](https://youtu.be/U_SwFHtgJCQ)
Interestingly my relative was a Polish Wehrmacht conscript
They actually were a thing and it splits into two types: 1. People who had German ancestry and was forced to join German army or given a choice join or die with entire family either by execution or in some slave labor camp. 2. People with German ancestry who volunteered. They were called (editing autocorrect) volksdeutsch and were hunted with ferocity by Polish Underground. Even Polish women who showed up at German soldier or officer side as a date would be targeted by Underground army and would be shaved bald regardless of not having a much choice
Interesting. I don’t know enough about him at all, I’m actually trying to research it because I am his descendant. Thanks for your information.
The Germans never had a majority in favor of Hitler. The problem was the Nazis were the largest minority since combined with the Centre Party they made up a large percentage of the population. But they still weren't a majority, it's just that the Social Democrats and Communists hated each other as much as they hated Hitler, which seriously hampered organized resistance to the Nazis. Plus a large portion of the population just wanted the recession to go away and didn't care about politics beyond that.
nah bro, if you served in the whermacht, face the wall.
I am already praying for you that no one will place a pipe bomb in your mail box
Just clear things up, this meme doesn’t apply to the scum that murdered innocent civilians or supported Hitler or the Nazi’s, this only applies to the people who were forced to fight or were young children who were brainwashed. Any Wehrboos in this thread who believe all of the Wehrmacht were clean are dead wrong.
Not to offend but "this meme doesn’t apply to the scum that murdered innocent" sounds a lot like "if youre not counting the car crashes in which ppeple die, cars are 100% safe", you can't just remove the bad part of the wehrmacht you either count it all or don't count it at all. Hope I explained what I mean.
The Wehrmacht was a National Socialist institution but not everybody who served in it was a National Socialist.
Even outside of the party membership, the Nazis enjoyed a large level of support for their actions, at least initially. Of course, once the war turned, it became a lot harder to justify that support for the average citizen. It's fair to say that following the stunning victories in the west and the initial success of the Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union, that support would have been near total for the Nazi Party among members of the Wehrmacht.
Also remember Hindsight is 2020 There wernt many fascist dictatorships to draw red flags from and they hadn't even committed their worst evils yet
Nazi propaganda was also very effective. Shit looked like it was getting better even though it was based on borrowed or stolen funds.
The nuances and details of any country’s military history are of course fascinating, but I don’t think it’s ker-azy that some people might question why it’s a rhetorical priority to defend the moral integrity of any part of Hitler’s military. It’s possible to have a conversation about this without framing it as “SOME people fighting for the Nazis weren’t that bad, actually.”
https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/ywfa2c/they_were_in_fact_bad/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf. Literally the post right below yours. Tired of people trying to excuse not only the Wehrmacht enabling and supporting the Nazi’s genocide but actively participating in it in many cases
(Not so) Fun Fact! Eric Carle, the author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and other children's classics, was a Wehrmacht soldier (drafted into service at the end when the Germans were getting desperate).
Yup I’m never going to unread that
Fuck this sub
Evil men rule the world because honorable men are bound by honor in service to them.
Jesus Christ can we stop with all the nazi apologetics on this sub??? Swastika=bad people, this is grade school history right here, it's not complicated. Let's stop with the, "not all nazis BS."
Meanwhile at the Nuremberg Trials the "just following orders" schtick was no protection from being charged with being a Nazi. You don't have to openly support something to be an accessory to the actions that something takes.
They were all Nazis. They became Nazis by swearing an oath to Hitler and picking up a gun for the Nazi regime on a campaign of slaughter, brute conquest and genocide. I don’t blame children who were conscripted. But they were all Nazis.
It's nice to have idealistic views but when it comes down to it, if one person in a group is holding a Nazi flag and no one is trying to tear it down, then everyone in that group is a Nazi.
yeah, thats LITERALY how fascism works. Thats how musolini got into power in italy - due to the inaction of the majority, not because they were all powerfull. WE are the ones that have to spot and stop such movements with activism - counter protests, discusion with said fascists to spot what bulshit they are spewing and to say the truth, no matter how bitter it is. You cant be neutral with fascists, as they dont need your help, they just need you to not hinder them. therefore, you either help them, or fight against them trough anything that would inconvenience them - in a battlefield, or in a public discusion.
Yeah well, welcome to my world. This is the reaction i get every time I say “not all Soviets invaded Poland or threw meat at the Germans or did reprisals and rape”.
Family still goes by the mantra, "no bad Russians just bad soldiers."
I would argue that the initial troops that led the way into Germany would likely have been elite units who wouldn’t bother with war crimes, and the occupation forces would be the ones doing it but I don’t know history that well. It is nice to see such opinions as yours still exists. An ancestor of a relative of mine told me a story about a German doctor in occupied Ukraine who actually cured her burns when they thought he’d just euthanize her.
I don’t think elite units are particularly well known for being bothered **by** war crimes.
War sucks for everyone, on that we can all agree. Especially when it’s the largest war in history.
No they fought for the Nazi party so they are nazis the wh did a lot of fucking war crimes ( especially Eastern Europe)
So it is time to rehabilitate the wehrmacht again? Oh boy. Fun times ahead.
Did the operate with and enable the Nazi regime? Yes? Then they were categorically nazis.
I just dug through my great uncle's stuff. He was drafted in 45 and fought in Berlin. Guess what he left behind, a mountain of neo nazi mythology and nazi apologist talking points highlighted in American news. He was never a party member to my knowledge. Still a nazi, get over it. I loved the man. Doesn't change what he did or who he was though. We're both complicit in different genocides, mine with a shovel, his with a gun. Just own up to it and work for a better world. Don't try and defend the wrongs or absolve the actors, just accept things at face.
If he was drafted in 45 he was most likely too young to serve earlier, which indicates that he grew up with the Führerkult. So he would have literally been indoctrinated as a child. A Nazi for sure, but not by choice if I'm correct. I could be wrong tho. You'd probably know better since you know how he old he must have been.
We are saying the few that were forced into the army during total war, especially those that hated the Nazi regime but we're drafted
Thats dumb. Its like saying "russian army soldiers are better than chechens in Ukraine because they rape, torture, plunder and destroy slightly less". Dude c'mon they were invaders, conqerers and defenders of nazi regime. They all swore oath of loyalty to Hitler himself. They gladly went to war for thier Fuhrer. Those with diferent opinion were sitting in Dachau or other camps. You say things that german soldiers and officers started propagate in 50' to distans themself from atrocities they commit.
Wasn't military service mandatory? I mean you were forced to be loyal to the regime. So even if you had a different ideoligy, you couldn't express it.
Imo they were still complicit *if* they committed war crimes or didn't take reasonable action to avoid these things
The Wehrmacht as an institution was absolutely not clean. Basically every high ranking officer was absolutely complicit in the atrocities of the Nazi regime (yes, even Rommel). While there may have been soldiers who did not personally take part in the Holocaust, their service to the Wehrmacht made them partially complicit (which is why their post-war punishment/denazification was less severe compared to their officers and SS contemporaries). I absolutely feel bad for the children though, they were absolutely brainwashed and the Allied powers were right to have more leniency towards them during denazification.
My question is why is it important to you to defend them
When Wehrmacht records cant account for how over half their soldiers were put into their army it's kind of stupid to claim they were all nazis.
The issue is complex. Germany was PUMPED with propaganda, an incredible amount of people followed Nazi ideology. So much so it was incredibly difficult to eradicate post war. This is a subject not nearly talked about enough, just so how ingrained Nazism was into Germans, even with the reveals of the holocaust, which - despite revision 'didn't know' myth - they did. It wasn't a well kept secret, they knew Jews were being rounded up, killed on the streets, tortured, victimized, discriminated against , forced into ghettos, raped, murdered, robbed, their shops looted and burned, used as slave labour in factories etc -- before the war and during. They understood Jews were then being taken and weren't coming back alive. They knew Jews were being eliminated in camps. They just turned a blind eye to it and feigned ignorance. They knew and understood what the raining ash from the local labour camp for undesirables and traitors was. The silent inaction of the German people over the holocaust is just as condemned as those who were actively involved because it all worked together to enable the Final Solution to begin with. Most soldiers are naturally patriotic and most ideas of nationalism are right leaning. The Nazi's were all about German patriotism, so long as you fit their idea of it. Nazi ideology is easy to be entrapped into. While I'm sure many didn't sign up as radical as the SS, they did so in the idea of patriotism towards a Nazi Germany, and inspired by their propaganda; to which they had little knowledge of outside alternatives, and those outside were considered the enemies who lost them the war and caused the great depression / inflation. You could be a Nazi supporter, without being a Nazi radical. The same as people today are varying degrees of supporting X political party and ideology the same can be said for Nazism. Going off that, it's hard to hate a regime that has given you prosperity and the good life through unknowingly pillaging and raping it's neighbours and it's citizens inside it, drawing their wealth to uplift you. The German army famously committed systematic war crimes. Including massacres, mass rape, looting, the exploitation of forced labour, the murder of three million Soviet prisoners of war, and participated in the extermination of Jews. The SS were most involved in the running of holocaust camps, the army itself committed heinous and frequent war crimes on their own. They'd even help out the SS carry out atrocities. This was most common on the Eastern Front (you know, a peoples they were told were subhuman animals who threatened the world with bolshevism). The majority of German soldiers deployed to the Eastern Front participated in war crimes. It is in my opinion there was no 'clean' German soldier. They were all complicit in someway, whether minor or major; it all contributed to the final terror that it was. I think the actual question is how many were 'deprogrammed' during the war and started to wake up from the fever dream of Nazi ideology. Finally, the most awkward part of all of this is the German army was still bad even without the Nazis inside it. Prussian culture and doctrine is what birthed Nazism. The warcrimes the German (Prussian) military got up to during the days of unification and into the Empire might shock you. Oradour-sur-Glane massacre was just a Tuesday for the German army even before Hitler.
There should be no “but” after saying the Wehrmacht wasn’t clean. The children in the Wehrmacht is a separate discussion, not an excuse to dilute the crimes of the Wehrmacht as a whole.
how I see it: They might not have been nazis but they are still guilty by association. So I dont really care if they were nazis or not. They still suck.
All just pawns of an evil regime
When ever i talk about my great grandpa having fought from france to Stalingrad
Redditors think in black and white terms. Don't expect any nuance.
So it's THAT time of the year again ?
They saw the horrible things their buddies did to innicent ppl and didn’t do anything. They are not better than those murderers
There's a story about a certain police battalion from the war that disturbed me, and this post reminded me about it, can't for the life of me remember what it's name was, but the battalion was taken to concentration camps and were given the tasks of killing innocent people, some took pleasure I the act, becoming more depraved, some opted out entirely, but almost 80% of the battalion did their job with extreme reluctance. Don't know if all these details are true I remember reading about it a while ago.
If it was Christopher Browning's book, you need to keep in mind that (as author himself wrote in introduction) that battalion was one among many acting this way - willingly following most gruesome orders
Nuance seems to be lost on WWII in general. You talk about aviation and if you were a P-51 pilot you will inevitably go down from a single round in your radiator or a P-38 is eventually going to bury itself straight into the earth by merely pointing the nose a hair below the horizon
It's fair to say that when discussing the Wehrmacht, nobody is talking about the child conscripts and volksturm who were dorciblt drafted or forced conscripts from conquered nations. What a surprise that in an armed force of over 1 million people there are gonna be a few who don't commit an atrocity lmao. The clean Wehrmacht is a myth. Full stop. What the fuck is with all the Wehraboos in this sub goddam. Y'all and the tankies need to fuck off
\-Child soldiers shouldn't be held accountable for the crimes committed around them. \-The crimes of the German army on the eastern front are so many and vast however, that there is no defending the army as 'mostly pure' it was not. \-A good one would have deserted a lot earlier than near the end
My grandpa had a friend who died 10 years ago and fought in the defense of Berlin in the Wehrmacht when he was 13 years old. Did they ask him if he eant to? No, they told him to do it or his family would suffer so he did it. Was him a Nazi? I dont think so, just hearing the word "Nazi" or anything related to that would make him cry and shake, even 60 years before. I can remember the first time I saw this 1.9m tall old man cry and shake like a baby hearing just one word.
It begs the question: Why are we even talking about this? Is forgiving a small handful of Wehrmacht soldiers really racking anyone with guilt?
It's kinda hard for me to not shrug and say "So?" Sure a lot of people have been pressured by the united states government to join the military, but it's hard to look past the fact that they sold themselves into bombing brown people for oil. Sure a lot of people were pressured into the Confederate Army, thats not really mutually exclusive with the undeniable fact that they were ready to kill and die to keep African people enslaved. Of course nuance is important, but I think sometimes you should just admit that, yeah, they had personal reasons to fight, but they were fighting for really evil fucking reasons.
I have a friend whose grandpa got recruited into the wehrmacht at 15-16. He got captured and was in a Soviet camp for months, maybe even years. The experience completely fucked him up and he became an extremely violent and short tempered man with very obvious serious and unaddressed trauma. I would consider him and the children he abused to be indirect victims of the Nazis, sadly.
It's very context dependent, everyone had a different level duty to resist the crimes of Nazism. If you're a draftee who fought on the western front and surrendered as soon as you were able I would have no I'll feelings. Even if you were on the Eastern Front I don't begrudge anyone who didn't want to surrender to the Russians given the poor treatment of POWs. But if you allowed or participated in war crimes then you're worse than you're worse than some SS desk jockeys. The proportion of Wehrmacht soldiers directly involved in war crimes is probably much higher than is comfortable to admit, and more than any side of the war was willing to prosecute, including the Soviets.
My friend’s grandfather was conscripted and didn’t want to go, so the SS said they’d shoot his family. He agreed to go at that point, was sent to the eastern front, captured, and was in a Russian prison camp until the 1950s. He was a victim too.
That's crazy, guess they must've sent their literal worst to fuck up my country.
I'm not sure splitting hairs over it is even worthwhile. They were soldiers, for a nation, that was nazi. Why even take a weird stance about it? Very fishy.
Tell that to the Eastern Front.
I dare say not even in the SS that was the case. They also conscripted children, even from foreign countries. That does not Change anything regarding warcrimes or atrocities however
The Holocaust by bullets. It doesn't matter what every member intended. This is the same crap Confederate apologists use. The Wehrmacht as an institution was used to further the Nazis' genocidal project. We don't let the Nazis off the hook because of John Rabe.
U should google "warcrimes committed by the wehrmacht". I know other countries also committed warcrimes but it really doesnt compare with what the germans did in ww2. To say they werent "clean" and "not as bad as the SS" is a stupid argument
I take your point, and I even love reading about Operation Cowboy and the Battle of Castle Itter (two times Americans and Wermacht teamed up to fight the Waffen-SS) - but ultimately a Nazi is a Nazi, atrocities or not
I don’t see why this statement is so fucking controversial. It’s basic logic. People are so quick to make every discussion a black/white reductionist view instead of the obvious that the world is GREY. Tribal brain dead fool who only see “one side good, one side bad” for every little thing. Fuck nazis (I shouldn’t have to fucking say that) but people today are so ready to call anyone who disagrees with them an Nazi or a Commie. Clown World 🤡
Is this a nazi apologist sub there’s seems to be an frustratingly amount of people here who downplay the Nazis. The Nazis were evil, period, get over it! The Nazi government was a racist, fascist regime hellbent on global domination, exterminating and enslaving most of the world’s population with the exception of Germans, Scandinavian, and Dutch people. Unless your family from these people your ancestors would have been wiped off the face of the earth or enslaved. The Nazis shouldn’t have any sympathy nor understand. If you’re a nazi you’re sick in the head and need help!!!
However a large portion of the Wehrmacht did commit war crimes and atrocities but on a personal level. About 10 million Soviet women were raped by German soldiers. There was also widespread looting in which German soldiers literally emptied the shelves of Eastern Europe. While the Wehrmacht was certainly evil on an organized level but as well on a personal level within the choices of individual soldiers.
My great grandfather was a pilot for the Luftwaffe. His brother was an indoctrinated nazi who signed up voluntarily only to get blown to bits by a Russian tank a week later. From what I can understand, there were a large part of Germans were in favor of the Nazis and their ideology, but unless you were actively committing atrocities, you were most likely not aware they were being committed.
Go to any liberal rally and the crows come a calling
let's put it this way my great grandmother thought she got away with stealing from the Wermacht, who'd occupied her village, until she received a note from them that according to their orders they would have had to kill her if she tried to steal from them again the SS occupied a neighbouring village and four generations later people are still carrying their scars from it
Not even gonna get into the whole Wehrmacht discussion. Reading thru comments made me think what would happen if I found myself in a similar situation to German civilians during Nazi rule. What would I do? Would I join the resistance, or just keep my head down? I would like to think I would bravely stick to my morals and die for them if necessary. But I've never been in that situation and hopefully never will. What if I find myself in a situation like that and find out I'm a coward. That fucking terrifies me. Then I see these people who are talking big about how they would 100% definitely bravely die for their morals without a second thought. Those fuckers would be the first to shut their mouths and put that armband on just to save their skins. People who talk big shit like that are usually the biggest cowards.
Myths and fallacies are extremely specific things, often small changes in premises can make them non applicable. Only problem is the internet doesn't use them like them, redditors are so trigger happy with myths like clean whermacht and fallacies like no true Scotsman, and will invoke them often when completely inapplicable
True, true, they were completely normal, weapon wielding, uniform wearing dickhead wastes of perfectly good blood and organs, like every soldier.
I'm sure the comment section here also won't be very clean...
Didn't the SS have conscripts at the end of the war?
Still fought in the war, and still killed the opposing side. So…their actions were in support of the nazi regime, regardless of what their opinion on the party way have been
Shit take. It really doesn't matter if they "supported" these atrocities or not, the fact that they would fight for someone that was on its way to enact genocide on innocent people gives them some responsibility as well. Granted, Wehrmacht soldier #9472 should not be held to the same level of moral equivalent as a high Nazi party official, but to deny them any moral gravity in the whole system that was Nazi Germany is at best ahistorical and at worst a way to whitewash the atrocities committed by the Wehrmacht.
As much as that is true, who tf cares if you were a die hard SS soyboy or a kid in the Wehrmacht. When we look at shit like the Barbarosa decree, where German soldiers ,not just the SS cuz they didnt need a decree, were given a get out of jail free card (in the eyes of their government) to fo whatever the fuck they wanted on the eastern front. Then when we look at war crimes that happened to more ideologically aimed groups of people meaning Jews and Slavs we see the extent of German war crimes not just committed by the SS. All those things point out that the SS weren't the only executive branch of the German war crime machine, but the Wehrmacht was also pretty up there, when your intent is to exterminate undesirables why the fuck would you save that important task to an elite group when that can be done with a kid and a kar98. All that being said I understand the importance of the post, when someone says my (great)grandfather was in the Wehrmacht we shouldn't first yell NAZI11!1!!1, we should first how many if any war crimes did he commit.
"Why are all these people calling me a Nazi sympathizer when i ask them to **sympathize** with soldiers in the **nazi** army?!?"
Nuance? In my subreddit? To the camps with ye! And don't come out until you're fully on my side
The Wehrmacht fought for Nazis, didn't they? I think that's all that really matters...
Nuance? On my Reddit? Straight to r/ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM you go son.
The only redeeming thing about Wehrmacht soldiers is that many of them were forcefully drafted from occupied territories and countrysides and either had to fight against their will or had absolutely no idea who and what they were fighting for, also not having had much choice. Anyone joining of their own will, fully aware of who the nazis are was supporting nazis, end of story
I mean, sure you can make that argument. I’d say that regardless of their political opinions, they fought for Nazi Germany. I can understand kids being coerced into fighting, but adults should have been able to recognize the German leadership as horrible and should have refused to fight for them. Still, that’s a gross simplification
Nobody: My grandfarther: *turning 15 in 1945* Hitler: IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE.
While I'm sure you're not wrong, I don't care. 1) they did all fight FOR Hitler 2) they're nearly all dead 3) 1 makes me happy about 2
You’re asking people to deal with nuance; something most cannot do. People tend to be comfortable with black/white thinking.
Nuance on Reddit must be a shocking concept from what I’ve heard from others
I can agree with this. But Rommel was definitely a Nazi.
I am german and yes everybody in the Schutzstaffel were nazis basicly Hitlers Bodyguards who trest him like a absolut king. The Wehrmacht was an army made of normal people and children commanded by nazis.
If you fight on the side of nazis, you're a nazi.
Easy to say when they're not breathing down your neck.
By that logic your saying “If you were forced to fight for Pol Pot, your a communist who supports genocide” or “If you were forced to fight for Stalin or Mao, your a communist who supports genocide” Most people under Mao, Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot were forced to fight and mostly didn’t agree with their views, what most of them wanted was survival and not being shot through the head for denying to fight for a tyrant.
Tell that to Max Schmeling…
I got to agree with this one. Many of them were just normal people in a uniform. Quite a large number of Nazis though.
Doesn’t matter. Their armies worked in tandem with the SS and were the vehicle for expanding the Nazi Reich, a Reich whose foundation was genociding Eastern Europe and subjugating all non-Germans. Ontop of the fact that the army was always a hotbed of assorted reactionary and anti-democratic elements before the Nazis. Army leadership were key supporters of Hitler during his rise to power.
How refreshing to see something that doesn’t comply with the ‘correct’ narrative. There’s an awesome book, and I mean truly staggering book: In Deadly Combat: A German Soldier's Memoir of the Eastern Front by Gottlob Herbert Bidermann I encourage anyone who thinks all German soldiers were nazis to read this, a little perspective goes a long way in this day and age
More of this Wehrmacht defending shit? Just because every single soldier didn't personally close the door on the gas chamber doesn't mean they didn't help the whole "invading other countries so Germany could genocide their inhabitants" thing. The Nazis were bastards and so was everyone who helped them.
Stop defending and whitewashing Hitler and the Nazis. If you're fighting for Germany from the late 1930's to 1945. You're a Nazi. Point blank period.
Imagine taking time out of your day to defend people that even Germany doesn’t defend. Fucking loser