Wehrmacht - Taschenbuch

Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 50. Chapters: Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, War crimes of the Wehrmacht, List of German divisions in World War II, World War II German uniform, Hunger Plan, Deutsche Dienststelle, List of German corps in World War II, Operation Almenrausch, Wehrmachtsausstellung, Reichssicherheitsdienst, Gaugefechtsstand Wien, Hitler oath, Panzerwaffe, List of foreign vehicles used by Nazi Germany in World War II, Wehrmachtbericht, List of World War II military units of Germany, Nomenclature used by the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS, Führerreserve, List of German Army Groups in WWII, Heerespersonalamt, Balkenkreuz, Die Wehrmacht. Excerpt: War crimes of the Wehrmacht were those carried out by the German armed forces during World War II. While the principal perpetrators of the Holocaust amongst German armed forces were the Nazi German 'political' armies (the SS-Totenkopfverbände and particularly the Einsatzgruppen), the regular armed forces represented by the Wehrmacht committed war crimes of their own, particularly on the Eastern Front in the war against the Soviet Union. The Nuremberg Trials at the end of World War II judged that the Wehrmacht was not an inherently criminal organization, but that it had committed crimes during the course of the war. More recently, the judgement of Nuremberg has come under question. The Israeli historian Omer Bartov, a leading expert on the Wehrmacht wrote in 2003 that the Wehrmacht was a willing instrument of genocide, and that it is simply untrue that the Wehrmacht was an apolitical, professional fighting force that had only a few "bad apples". Bartov argues that far from being the "untarnished shield", as successive German apologists stated after the war, the Wehrmacht was a criminal organization. When the National Socialists (Nazis) came to power, it was welcomed by many officers of the Wehrmacht as a way of creating the Wiederwehraftmachung of Germany, namely the total militariztion of German society in order to ensure that Germany did not lose the next war. As such, what both the Nazis and the German Army wanted to see was a totally militarized Volksgemeinschaft that would be purged of those perceived internal enemies like the Jews who it was believed had "stabbed" Germany in "the back" in 1918. As such, many officers willingly embraced National Socialist ideology in the 1930s. Acting on his own initiative, the Defence Minister Werner von Blomberg had purged the Army of all its Jewish personnel in February 1934. On December 8, 1938, the Army leadership had instructed all officers to be thoroughly well versed in National Socialism and to apply its values in all s