that “Hitler's war” had been waged first and foremost against communism and consequently, as some will have it, that the Third Reich had served as the main bulwark against “Bolshevism” and ought to be given its due for having “saved” Western civilization from Asiatic barbarism

even the Western powers will not be able to prevent the fulfilment of that which Christ had said of his resurrection,” namely, the rebirth of the German Reich

a quarter of the letters contained complaints regarding the general situation, the men's direct superiors and the higher leadership, as well as on lesser issues such as provisions, friction within the units, and postal delays

The need of soldiers under constant danger of death for some kind of spiritual support, provided in the Wehrmacht first and foremost by a quasi-religious belief in Hitler, was thus powerfully demonstrated in this period of profound military and psychological crisis.

ailed Putsch attempt served as a particularly powerful indication of the reserves of “belief” in the Führer still remaining among the troops of the Wehrmacht only months before the Third Reich finally collapsed. Indeed, Hitler's “salvation” even further enhanced his divine aura and appeared conclusively to prove God's approval of the Führer and his actions, as he himself so often asserted.

ronically, even men who claimed that the “time of fanaticism and intolerance of other views is over,” and that “if we want to win the war, we must become more rational” concluded that all this was necessary “so that we will not be delivered to the revenge of the Jews.

Göring has said, with the rising sun the fortunes of war will again return to our side.203

Increasingly during the last two years of the war, the troops at the front came to see themselves as the missionaries of the entire German nation, indeed of Western civilization as a whole

Not a few historians, perhaps because most of them have also not experienced battle at close quarters, believe that combat soldiers are the first to see through the glorification of war commonly associated with “soldiers of the pen”; there is good reason to doubt whether this is the case in any army, especially regarding national conscript forces

Thus belief became both a personal, psychological need among the troops, and a weapon which would strengthen the Führer and enable him to wring from history the now increasingly mythical Endsieg.

As the fortunes of the Ostheer rapidly deteriorated, the troops' “belief” in Hitler did not falter, but rather increased in direct proportion to the hopelessness of the situation.

Well, of course, what they [the Nazis, rather than “us,” the Wehrmacht] did to the Jews was revolting. But we were told over and over again that it was a necessary evil. … No, I must admit, at the time I had ho idea we had fallen into the hands of criminals. I didn't realize that until much later, after it was all over.

/Thus there was a much less distorted, dehumanized image of the Greek inhabitants. More important, perhaps, is the fact that we depend here on testimonies given in the course of a police inquiry thirty years after the event.

Indeed, the most important aspect of this incident is that the men acted precisely as they had been ordered and massacred over half the population of the village, in spite of the fact that many of them were allegedly aware of the criminal nature of the operation/Moreover, as this reprisal action was carried out in 1943 by a unit which had previously served on the Eastern Front, where such massacres were quite common, it is unlikely that it was the troops' first experience with Wehrmacht atrocities.

Wehrmacht among the soldiers than the official documents and, for that matter, private correspondence betray. As far as the troops' letters are concerned, this is not surprising, for negative comments about the regime and the implementation of its policies could and did lead to prosecution and heavy punishment

Retrospectively, at a distance of thirty years, and particularly when questioned by police officials, soldiers sometimes described events differently than in their letters from the front.

This reaction to reality as a confirmation of propaganda was evident concerning other aspects of the Soviet Union as well. Thus early on in the campaign Private W. Lämmert wrote that “if in the past I thought that our propaganda had in this respect [conditions in Russia] somewhat exaggerated, today I can say that it had rather embellished conditions, for reality here is still far worse.”1

Thus while it is true that initially it was easier to create hatred and fear of an abstract enemy, once this image had been internalized soldiers applied it to real living human beings, apparently believing that they actually resembled the caricatures of “the Jew” in Nazi newspapers.

Private Reinhold Mahnke furnished a detailed description of Bolshevik-Jewish atrocities against the Lithuanians. Not only did they eject them from their houses and then burn them down, they also “cut off their feet and hands, tore out their tongues. … They even nailed men and children to walls. Had these criminals come to our country,” Mahnke now realized, “they would have torn us to pieces and mangled us, that's clear. But the Lithuanians have taken revenge,” he concluded, referring to the anti-Jewish pogroms

“One may not allow oneself to feel any compassion for these people, because they are all very cowardly and perfidious.”1

soldiers who have been roving about in the forests dressed as civilians and who have committed acts of terrors

his also made the troops feel that they were actually liberating the Russian people from “Bolshevism, the world's enemy, which had made the Russians into its mercenaries.” The Russians' suffering was therefore blamed not on the Wehrmacht, but on the “Bolsheviks,” who “do not care whether the Russian people is bled to death,” and “have no sense of responsibility.”156Close

Quite apart from their deep-seated racism and anxiety, the soldiers' letters also betray a need to justify the criminal actions of the army in the East, o

Now I know what war really means. But I also know that we had been forced into the war against the Soviet Union. For God have mercy on us, had we waited, or had these beasts come to us. For them even the most horrible death is still too good. I am glad that I can be here to put an end to this genocidal system.145

ndicative of this inversion was la letter by a captain who must have known of the wide-scale maltreatment of Soviet POWs, and yet maintained that “[t]he Russians had been completely stultified and persuaded that the Germans would massacre all prisoners,”142Close implying that they had been lied to and that nothing of the sort was actually taking place.

Yesterday, for instance, we saw our first women soldiers. … And these pigs fired on our decent German soldiers from ambush positions.

of events to the ideological incitement of the Red Army by Jewish Bolsheviks as well as to the generally savage nature of the Russian race

he Reich's alleged biological and political enemies came to resemble the stereotype of the Untermensch promulgated by the regime.

Yet it never occurred to this officer that these Jews were being starved to death by his fellow-countrymen

while the atrocities committed by the Wehrmacht and the SS were attributed to the enemy's malicious character rather than the murderous policies of the Nazi regime.

incorporated these arguments in their private correspondence, given the fact that censorship was concerned with incidents of criticism, not with the absence of Nazi phraseology.

Fuchs, like many of his generation, saw his love to his wife and his love to Hitler as a single entity symbolizing the spirit which united the whole German Volk.

He has fulfilled the most beautiful duty of a soldier and has become an example for us all, which we have to follow.

You can't imagine what junk and pornography we saw!

There was certainly something wrong in the state of France!”119Close Karl Fuchs wrote his new bride on 15 July:

A particularly interesting letter repeated almost word for word what could be read in most propaganda sheets of the period,

een from this perspective, it was inevitable that after years of premilitary and army indoctrination the Wehrmacht's troops would be able to assess and describe reality only by constant reference to the Nazi Weltanschauung, which in their case literally constituted their view of the world. Considering its consequences, the creation of this consensus among the troops was probably the single most significant achievement of the Nazi regime's educational efforts.

The most striking aspect of the soldiers' letters is the remarkable similarity between their terminology, modes of expression, and arguments and those which characterize the Wehrmacht's propaganda. In complete contradiction to Mommsen's above quoted assertion, the fact that these men, who were indeed closer than any of the propagandists to the reality of the war, saw and described it through the distorting lenses of the regime's ideology, is the true measure of the extent to which they had been made into Hitler's soldiers in the most profound sense of the term

Naturally, it would be false to describe the troops' “mystical belief in the Führer” as a firm commitment to an articulate and coherent ideology; Nazism never made such claims to begin with.

Indeed, as von Herwarth explains, the very decision to assassinate Hitler rather than arrest and try him as had previously been suggested was based on the general conviction that German troops would never be willing to accept a different command as long as Hitler lived, but that news of his death would instantly bring about the collapse of the myth that surrounded his name. Hence there was no way of gaining the support of large numbers of German troops without eliminating Hitle

hould not to be taken at face value, it is well worth considering that even those who did find the courage to plot against Hitler were evidently much disheartened to discover that virtually no military units existed which could knowingly be deployed in a Putsch attempt

ur soldiers at the [Eastern] front are now completely convinced of the necessity of this war,”101Close and added a few days later: “Morale of our men at the front [is] very good. The soldiers now realize that this campaign was necessary.”

Studies of morale in the Third Reich have stressed that until late in the war combat troops remained in higher spirits than the population in the rear, their firsthand knowledge of military setbacks notwithstanding.

Studies of morale in the Third Reich have stressed that until late in the war combat troops remained in higher spirits than the population in the rear, their firsthand knowledge of military setbacks notwithstanding.

ndividual German soldier was a committed National Socialist; rather, it is to say that the vast majority of the troops internalized the distorted Nazi presentation of reality, and consequently felt that they had no other alternative but to fight to the death.

The only redeeming feature of this presentation, and it is an important one in this context, is that it supplies us with powerful proof of the lingering effects Nazi views have had not only on veterans, but also on scholars

The ultimate defeat of the Wehrmacht inevitably spelled the defeat of Europe, whose heart was torn but and whose body was left at the mercy of the superpowers in the periphery. Put differently, both in the “elementary sense” of fighting for their own and the civilian population's survival in the face of a barbaric invasion, and in the politico-strategic sense of defending Europe from the domination of non-European powers, the troops of the Ostheer were, as Nazi propaganda had claimed all along, fighting for a just cause.

this was not merely a battle for survival, but also a fight to retain Germany's greatness. In these last months of the war, he writes,

Nazi regime that bad as Hitler might have been, he was by far better than Stalin.

German army was engaged in a fight for two noble goals, precisely those, incidentally, ascribed it by Nazi propaganda. First, writes Hillgrube

and that although the Soviet Union established ruthless dictatorships in the East, it did not have the same genocidal intentions partly carried out by the Third Reich.

Finally, in 1986 a respectable German scholar could claim that the Ostheer's battles of 1944–45 had been a heroic effort to stem that same “flood” and should consequently be seen as a glorious chapter in German history, even if this chapter had been written during the Nazi regime's most frenzied period.

key arguments and terms employed by the regime during the war have recently resurfaced in the Federal Republic under the guise of an attempt to give the Germans back their history and allow them to regain their national identity by recognizing the positive aspects of even the murkiest periods in their past. Most disturbingly, ideological, geopolitical, and nationalist justifications for the role played by the Third Reich,

But the Nazi Weltanschauung had a considerable effect on some of the regime's domestic opponents as well, reflecting as it did in a more radical form some of the aspirations and hopes of German nationalism as it had been molded at least since Bismarck

Rudel describes the fate and role of Hitler's regime in Europe using precisely the same propagandistic terms so prevalent during the war. The Third Reich is not the terrible destroyer of human beings and moral values, but their defender; the German soldier is not Hitler's instrument of genocide, but a sort of Germanic St. George spearing the communist dragon. Postwar knowledge of the real essence of the Nazi dictatorship seems to have had little impact on such men, who in any case must have known a great deal about the regime's murderous nature long before it was finally destroyed.

the Red hordes are devastating our country … we must fight on. We shall only lay down our arms when our leaders give the order. This is our plain duty according to our military oath, it is our plain duty in view of the terrible fate which threatens us if we surrender unconditionally as the enemy insists

Western scholars and soldiers to go on considering such men as mere professionals certainly is. The influential British military historian Liddell Hart was among those who set the tone for this approach, when he wrote soon after the fighting ended how much he had been taken by the supposed “gentlemanliness” in war of the German generals he had spoken with.82Close

If we understand that what many of these officers believed to be “patriotic theories” were actually National Socialist notions of geographical expansion and “racial” destruction, we can view the above passage as a candid statement of the extent to which the regime had succeeded to implant its world-view into the minds of its soldiers.

the opposition within the Army was continually weakened, since the new age groups that were now called to the colors had already served in the Hitler Youth,

Whereas regarding the army's involvement in the implementation of criminal policies he takes a familiar apologetic line and simply falsifies the evidence,

Similarly, examples of the manner in which Nazi arguments were still being used to justify the Wehrmacht's actions long after the war was over are not difficult to come by.

azi indoctrination in fact had a major and insufficiently acknowledged impact on the perception of reality of all ranks in the German army during the war, and its effects can be seen to have lingered on for many years after the “capitulation.”

Wehrmacht's propaganda which had presented it as the bulwark of civilization against Bolshevism now appeared admirably suitable for the needs of the Western Allianc

it also created the basis for the resurrection of German military institutions, which in turn made it politically necessary to repress the notion of Nazi penetration into the army of the Third Reich

Western experience and memory was different, and was thus differently reflected in the writings of Western historians. Not unrelated was also the fact that the liberal tradition of rigidly separating between politics and the military hampered a clearer understanding of the radically different tradition in Germany or, for that matter, also in Russia. I

young man's civilian background was just as crucial to his conduct as a soldier as the experience of six years in war was crucial to molding his civilian identity upon release from military service.

Thus while historians dealing with civilian society pay little attention to the army, military historians are mainly concerned with military matters, touching on the contact between soldiers and civilians only at the higher levels of either hierarchy, in matters concerning strategy, politics, and economy. Consequently the junior ranks of the army are treated as a gray, faceless mass, devoid of both a civilian past and an individual identity, will, and consciousness. This makes it possible to ascribe to this mass conscript army whatever characteristics one chooses without, however, providing much evidence to sustain one's opinion.

hodgepodge of nonsense which paraded itself as the Nazi Weltanschauung

Asia has never defeated Europe. We will break the Asiatic tidal wave this time too.

“Front-credo” (Frontbekenntnis), which compressed the essence of the National Socialist Weltanschauung into a pseudo-religious statement of belief:

, but also makes demands upon the power of resistance of each individual soldier. This mental power of resistance has to be repeatedly strengthened, particularly during rest periods

an interest in instruction in political and other current issues, which comes to show that he is more preoccupied with them than one usually thinks.67

Neither the officers nor the rank and file seem to have been particularly disturbed by the inherent contradictions of their propaganda.

The gist of the argument was in all cases that the attack against the Soviet Union had merely been a preventive measure, intended to thwart the approaching invasion of “Asiatic barbarism,” led by “Judeo-Bolshevism,” which had aimed at devastating Europe and destroying its “culture.”

n the East the soldier is not only a fighter according to the rules of warfare, but also a carrier of an inexorable racial conception [völkischen Idee] and the avenger of all the bestialities which have been committed against the Germans and related races.

Once the fighting began, rather than attempt to temper their troops' brutality, many commanders seemed to think that the soldiers were still showing too much compassion for the enemy, and strove to instill into them a greater understanding for, and a firmer will to participate in, the brutalities deemed essential for the victorious outcome of this “war of ideologies.”

told his divisional commanders: “A deep ideological and racial abyss separates us from Russia,” which was, after all, “an Asiatic state.” Therefore, he stressed, “the aim must be to destroy European Russia.”

e saw what one expected to see, and one smashed it so as not to have to see it any longer. This process was greatly accelerated due to the fact that such propagandistic portrayals of the enemy were not disseminated merely by the party's organs and the army's high command in the rear, but also by combat commanders at the front, many of whom, moreover, did not view ideology cynically as one more means to motivate their troops, but seem to have believed it with precisely that sort of fervor demanded from the Führer's disciples. I

Quite on the contrary: reality did not disprove myth, but was rather molded so as to fit it

n the Eastern Front, however, the troops found no contradiction between the “Judeo-Bolshevik Asiatic hordes” which sprang from the propagandists' imagination and the enemy soldiers they were actually fighting.

ideological and racial qualities, of his fanaticism and will for revenge, was doubtlessly the Soviet commissar. The Mitteilungen für die Truppe painted a particularly nightmarish picture of this monstrous angel of death accepted, as we shall see, by many of the soldiers as an accurate reflection of reality:

eat, especially powerful because for some at least it was perhaps tinged with a sense of guilt, with a feeling that such revenge would be well deserved.

Any weakling can put up with victories. Only the strong can stand firm in battles of destiny. But heaven gives the ultimate and highest prize only to those who are capable of withstanding battles of destiny.”

oldier could well imagine what these demonic hordes might wreak on his land, for his own army's actions in Russia had provided him with an appropriate example. Indeed, it was fear of vengeance

Only an unquestioning belief in the Führer and the final victory would save the world from subjugation by the devil's hordes

e are filled with the responsibility to God to defend the land which had been given us, to save His property and to multiply it, and therefore we mobilize not only our weapons … but also the weapons of the soul. …

the tone of the army's propaganda changed from ecstatic to frantic, often verging on the hysterical; technology and skill were now to be increasingly replaced by devotion and fanaticism, rational thought by “blind” belief.

and with all the passion of which we are capable, sacrifice [hingeben] ourselves to this Führer and strive to be worthy of the historical epoch molded by a heaven-storming will.47

His genius, in which the whole strength of Germandom is embodied with ancient powers [mit Urgewalt verkörpert], has animated the souls of 80,000,000

redefined as a spiritual phenomenon, created by the Nazi party and directed by a God-sent Führer.

o one who has not added to tradition by his own life and action may speak of tradition

conscious and concerted effort to associate Hitler with God, to present “his mission”

and served the troops as a model for articulating their own feelings in private correspondence,

powerful need for belief among soldiers living in conditions of constant danger, and catered to it with an endless stream of leaflets, brochures, speeches, radio talks, newspaper articles, and all other forms of propaganda directed at the troops throughout the war

True and vigorous faith cannot exist in the abstract, it reaches its fulfilment only in the deed.

et the purpose of the Nazi sacralization of ideology was not merely to achieve abstract belief, but rather to harness faith as a motivating engine for concrete action

nd she dismissed all whispered rumours of atrocities as stupid, malicious gossip.

. As religious faith waned, the secular (the nation or the Volk) was sanctified

“Belief” in Hitler, in an increasingly religious, metaphysical sense of the term, was a central element in Nazi ideology.

Second, it provided the soldiers with an image of the enemy which so profoundly distorted their perception that once confronted with reality they invariably experienced it as a confirmation of what they had come to expect

. The indoctrination of the soldiers was of crucial importance in two related ways. First, it taught the troops totally to trust Hitler's political and military wisdom, and never to doubt either the morality of his orders or the outcome of his prophecies.

the Wehrmacht chose a radically new path by its decision to devote a considerable effort to the political, that is, National Socialist education of the troops, and its particular insistence on instilling into them a mystical belief in Hitler.

acute joy from the actual act of destruction, from the killing of others and the prospect of one's own death.

“we loved him and felt we had a true leader, as well as a friend on whom we could count.”

“life is war, and war is life. Liberty doesn't exist.”

His greatest hope was “to show German youths German values and German greatness and to educate them into real Germans, in whom spirit and mind, will and soul are equally well learned.”

war will go on for many years, if not for centuries! Oh well, one will not be put to sleep and will not rust, will not find boredom, will not be satisfied with phrases and flattering lies; perhaps precisely this time will lead toward truth and knowledge.28

ndeed an outstanding example of the type manufactured by that powerful combination of the Nazi regime's ideology, the Wehrmacht's system of values, and the reality of the war, enhanced by the youthfulness of the soldiers, the manifest weakness of family and school in the face of totalitarian rule, and the tremendous impact of a highly appealing youth movement, which deliberately mobilized the rebellious spirits of the young against their parents and teachers, providing them instead with military trappings, power over their elders, and an opportunity to sacrifice themselves for a “good cause.”21Close Such idealistic junior officers in turn had a substantial influence on the rank and file, while simultaneously generating a feeling of pride in the Wehrmacht's achievements among the population in the rear.

Describing himself in his memoirs as a “150 percent idealistic-believing officer,” he kept fighting even after the capitulation was formally announced. Significantly, although he totally internalized the regime's value system and conformed to the new ideal type of the Wehrmacht's combat officer, Döbler did not consider himself a party member; indeed, just like the younger Heck, he saw himself as being of a higher quality than the staid and corrupt “Alte Kämpfer.” His energetic and self-sacrificial devotion to the regime was expressed in a will to conform to its models of heroism and action.

But while this woman simply went on leading a normal life, hardly noticing the changes taking place around her as long as they did not touch her personally, others were far from indifferent, especially the young men who ended up in fieldgray uniforms.

t was not uncommon for young people in Germany to reject their families' convictions and follow the Nazis, and many fathers and mothers, themselves strongly opposed to the Hitler regime, were denounced by their own children as enemies of the state or even turned over to the Gestap

ept returning to the fighting. Moreover, as some of his early postwar stories revea

“For me a whole world came apart,” he maintained, especially because “I was then … quite earnest,” and “[a]lthough they naturally tried to explain to us … that these were Untermenschen, Russian POWs, Jews, I don't know who they rounded up there.”

ome were soon old enough to exercise these powers against the Reich's real or alleged exterior enemies; the younger generation was confined to the family circle and the school, where it functioned as the regime's corps of agents and informers. Th

Heck's is a Bildungsroman concerned with the making of an innocent child into a zealous Hitler Youth leader whose greatest desire is to sacrifice himself for the Führer.

The HJ gained much of its appeal by openly opposing the traditional foci of authority, the family and the school, and by presenting itself both as a rebel youth movement

This was of particular importance because the regime was first and foremost concerned with indoctrinating Germany's young generation, both in the official educational system and especially within the ranks of the Hitlerjugend and the Arbeitsdienst

Most of the men who served as the Wehrmacht's combat troops during the Second World War were either children or teenagers when Hitler came to power in 1933

its roots lay in a much longer preparation going back to the soldiers' prewar, premilitary experiences.

, for this was no ordinary war between two opposing armies, but a campaign of murder and destruction which dispensed with all previously accepted norms of conduct, and intentionally mobilized the unavoidable sense of guilt for killing innocent civilians and unarmed soldiers as an engine even further to enhance its barbarity, punishing its victims for having made their persecutors into monsters

. To be sure, soldiers often cope with the destruction of enemy lives and property by shifting the responsibility for their actions to their opponents. Dehumanizing the enemy is an inherent element of war

Hence, only by physically annihilating the victims and erasing their memory could one salvage one's own humanity

self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby acting in a manner perceived as necessary for the situation one expected actually created that situation, confirming one's expectations and justifying one's actions.

through Nazi ideological filters.

few essential and unchangeable beliefs and dogmas which no amount of empirical evidence could disprove, particularly as they were not based on rational examination or logical construction, but on faith

idealize battle as the supreme test of the individual, and to view the comradeship in arms of the soldiers,

This striking inversion of reality, which ascribed the unprecedented brutality of the Wehrmacht and the SS to their victims, was the most characteristic feature of the German soldier's “coming to terms” with his actions in the Soviet Union. Indeed, it can be said that this was probably the most effective means of overcoming the moral scruples many of the Wehrmacht's troops and officers may still have retained in spite of their long years of ideological training.

that is only a weak illustration of what we see here and the crimes committed here by the Jews.

The German people owes a great debt to our Führer, for had these beasts, who are our enemies here, come to Germany, such murders would have taken place that the world has never seen before.

r actions was distorted by the conditions and circumstances of their existence. Yet it must be emphasized that it was the years of premilitary and army indoctrination which molded the soldiers' state of mind, prepared them for the horrors of war, and instilled into them such determination and ruthlessness.

ndeed, one can say that the typical Landser was a very frightened man, scared of his commanders, terrified of the enemy; this is probably why he seems to have enjoyed so much watching others suffer. The photographs of smiling Wehrmacht troops, each with his little camera, busily taking pictures of hanged “partisans,” or of piles of butchered Jews, this horrific “Exekutions-Tourismus,”

Mutiny and disintegration tend to have a contagious effect on armies and to spread with remarkable speed; the Wehrmacht protected itself from most breakouts by harsh discipline, but completely inoculated its troops from a panic epidemic by huge counter-injections of terror from the enemy.

while discipline was aimed at instilling into the troops fear of their superiors, indoctrination increasingly terrorized the soldiers by horror tales about what they could expect from the “Judeo-Bolshevik” and “Asiatic flood” threatening the cradle of culture.

so too this ideological cohesion of the troops assumed a major role in preventing the organizational disintegration of the army when the disciplinary system crumbled.

From all this it is clear that at critical moments, when terror from the enemy became even greater than fear of one's superiors, incidents of breakdown among combat units did occur, and no amount of disciplinary brutality could prevent them

fighting with a great deal of devotion and determination. Only when everything was lost did the soldiers finally give up, and even then their officers still tried to keep them in their positions.

uite apart from the sense common to so many soldiers and officers of having to stick together precisely because they shared a common guilt.

Harsh discipline thus played a far more important role in preserving unit cohesion than “primary groups.” It was particularly effective within the context of a brutal war in which soldiers were not only ordered to commit crimes against the enemy, but also allowed to get away with breaches of discipline toward prisoners and civilians.

Having legalized the murder of civilians, it was really only a matter of time and circumstances before the army would sanction the murder of its own troops.

expect every officer, NCO and man, who has retained his soldierly honor, to do everything in order to control such outbreaks of pan

ndeed, from this stage on, the Wehrmacht experienced a growing incidence of cases whereby discipline was enforced not merely by court martials and heavy punishments, but also by the application of force without any prior legal proceedings. For this reason it is also impossible accurately to estimate the actual number of soldiers executed for real or perceived offenses during the war

valent sense of pessimism among the troops, discipline still held was mainly fear.

But although it was obvious that these were manifestation of exhaustion due to heavy combat and lack of manpower, the corps insisted:

It thus became standard policy to terrorize the troops from evading a likely death at the front by promising them certain execution if they were caught in the act.

As the chaos at the front made for a rise in breaches of combat discipline, lesser offenses were also punished with great harshness.

As the war dragged on, the number of trials per month rose by a factor of 3.5, from 12,853 in December 1939 to 44,955 in October 1944, but the number of death sentences rose by a factor of no less than eight, from 519 in 1939–40 to 4118 in 1943–44.

The astonishing number of executions in the Wehrmacht was mainly due to the politicization of martial law, whereby such offenses as desertion and self-inflicted wounds came under the heading of treason and subversion (Wehrkraftzerseztung), and were consequently punishable with death.

hereas during the Great War the Kaiserheer executed only forty-eight of its soldiers, in the Second World War between 13,000 and 15,000 men were put to death by their own army

Weltanschauung

Discipline in the German army Was always harsh; but in the Wehrmacht, and especially in the Ostheer of 1941–45, it became positively murderous

but it may well have prepared the background for their brutal behavior and indifference to the fate of helpless women and children when the occasion arose during “anti-partisan” operations.

hildren were supplied with unlikely “stories,” such as that they were looking for their parents, while their real object was to spy for the enemy

agent” was found to be very handy indeed. In October 1941, for instance, the 12th Infantry warned its troops that “information is usually carried by youngsters aged 11 to 14,” and recommended “flogging [as] the most advisable measure for interrogation.”

Now while the generals had little scruples about issuing orders to shoot men and uproot whole populations, they feared that executing women and children might cause disciplinary problems among the troops, and normally preferred the SS and SD to carry out such unsavory tasks

evertheless, when the term “partisan” seemed insufficient to legitimize brutality, especially where obviously helpless civilians were concerned, the army sometimes resorted to the euphemism “spy” or “agent,”, a uniquely useful term precisely because it was based on the assumption that innocence was the best indication of guilt.

. And, as what constituted guerrilla activity included a wide-range of actions or lack of actions, and as the term “partisan” denoted not merely active or passive resisters, but also people belonging to “undesirable” political and “racial” categories

The fact that the division found only a few obsolete firearms among the population, and that it sustained almost no casualties, indicated that this operation was merely one more feast of destruction against defenseless civilians.

“Zigeunerbaron,” a “cleansing” action in the forest regions south of Briansk. Troops were ordered to arrest all male civilians between the ages of fifteen and sixty-five, and to drive out the remaining population, whose property was to be confiscated and villages burned down.

as should their hiding places [i.e., villages]

it is obvious that this frenzied extermination policy had very little to do with actual guerrilla activity

By then the 12th Infantry decreed that anyone “tolerating” partisans would be hanged, and a few days later it was announced that civilians caught without the recently issued passes would be shot on the spo

“Partisans,” or “bandits,” was a term used to describe all civilians deemed unworthy of life by the army, whether due to guerrilla activity or to political and “racial” affiliation.

Especially in winter, combat divisions also ordered their troops to confiscate from the prisoners all items of clothes deemed useful for their own protection from the cold, condemning POWs to death by exposure

or was the indiscriminate shooting of prisoners limited to soldiers who had grown used to operating according to the dictates of the “commissar order.” The GD Division, which came to the front after the order was rescinded, behaved in precisely the same manner, demonstrating that this was more a question of ideological preparation and unwillingness on the part of commanders to enforce their will as regards Russian lives.

At this stage one could no longer expect them to alter their conduct toward an enemy still described as a devilish Untermensch

Whereas the recognition by the generals that the killing and maltreatment of POWs merely stiffened the enemy's resistance, coupled with the need for forced labor in the Reich, finally caused the abolition of the Kommissarbefehl and brought about some improvement in conditions for prisoners by 1942, commanders failed entirely in their efforts to put a stop to the indiscriminate shootings by their troops.

This meant that both the political officers in uniform, and anyone described as a partisan by the army, a category which included “racially undesirable elements” such as Jews, were to be done away with

his own thinking had been molded by that combination of ideology and ruthless, indeed cynical practicality typical of National Socialism: “We want to free the civilian population from the yoke of Bolshevism and We need their labor force.” The Russians were to be freed from Bolshevism so that the Germans could enslave them for their own purposes

particularly as they were normally accompanied by orders to kill a great many other Russians belonging to a growing list of political, “racial,” and military categories. Indeed, as the army's propaganda represented all Russians as Untermenschen not deserving of life in any case, the soldiers saw no reason to distinguish between them and those slated to be shot outright.

and even more so the officers on the ground, tended to choose the most radical interpretation of the “criminal orders.” For

To this killing of POWs was added the “destruction” of so-called political and biological enemies, mostly simply described as “bandits” or “partisans,” without much effort to distinguish between real guerrillas, political “suspects,” and Jews.

ommanders at the front repeatedly warned their men of the “treacherous behavior especially of prisoners of war of Asian descent,” ordered them to “act ruthlessly and energetically against the slightest sign of insubordination” and “totally to eliminate any active or passive resistance” by making “immediate use of weapons,” and reminded them to “take into account the animosity and inhuman brutality of the Russians.”

his unprecedented death rate was related to the execution of commissars by the troops upon capture; to the delivery to the Einsatzgruppen for “special treatment” of so called “politically intolerable” (

indiscipline in the former was just as rare as it was frequent in the latter.

Of arguably even deadlier consequences was the manner in which the Wehrmacht's orders regarding Soviet soldiers and politically or “racially” dangerous elements not only officially sanctioned a campaign of organized murder, but also opened the way for a massive wave of indiscriminate shooting by soldiers who refused to distinguish between the various categories of enemies dictated from above

and ordering the women and children “to wander off to the area north-west of the desert-zone” in temperatures reaching 40° Celsius below freezing point

“desert zone” some ten miles deep, by driving out the population and laying waste its settlements

eeling under the weight of the first Soviet counter-offensive, the 18th Panzer burned all the villages it was forced to evacuate, destroyed or consumed their entire livestock, arrested and sent to the rear their adult male population, and drove the women and children out into the snow

he 12th Infantry employed other “young childless girls and women” in various domestic chores within the camps, and there is evidence to suggest that they were used for sexual purposes as well,

In the course of this recruitment the division also took the opportunity to point out Jews and other “suspects” found in the villages to the SD for further “treatme

It is quite astonishing that even at this late stage of the war the corps commander failed to grasp that the “wild” behavior of his troops was merely a product of the organized exploitation of the land; indeed, that what had made the individual German soldier into “a thief and a robber” was the fact that his commanders at the highest echelons of the military hierarchy had sent him into the Soviet Union on a campaign of robbery, destruction, and murder.

But the poverty of the population merely induced these formations officially to sanction “wild” requisitions by instructing their men to resort to “selfhelp.

booty-registration-units

or reasons of control and discipline, the officers tried to draw a clear distinction between what they called “organized” and “wild” requisitions, but with singular lack of success

convincing even more inhabitants that they had no choice but to join the partisans, a major cause for the growth of resistance to the Germans also in Western Europe.

Yet the ideological basis of the occupation prevented any far-reaching practical changes in economic policy even then

one question remains unanswered: who then is supposed to produce economic goods?

ut also as a means to settle all of Germany's domestic problems

the Wehrmacht's policy left Russia's civilians with little choice but to resist with ever greater tenacity an invader who promised them only suffering and death. This had the effect of a self-fulfilling prophesy, for the war in the East soon became precisely the kind of savage struggle for survival Hitler had said it would be.

but also as an unprecedented campaign of enslavement and plunder.

Weltanschauungskrieg. The Osthee

it became possible to enforce such brutal combat discipline on them without stirring any visible spirit of rebellion, let alone actual mutiny. On one level, it was easier to bear the officers' brutality by being allowed to act brutally toward others; on another, brutal enforcement of will came to be seen as the norm;

Verwilderung

atrocities have often also had a powerful unifying effect on the perpetrators.

Conversely, as compared with previous campaigns, soldiers on the Eastern Front became the target of an ever harsher policy of punishment for breaches of discipline related to actual combat activity, as the dramatic rise in long prison terms and executions demonstrates.

In the Soviet Union, however, we no longer hear of soldiers being tried, let alone executed, for acts of violence and plunder against Soviet citizens. Indeed, according to the “Barbarossa” decree, such prosecution was legally possible only if it was shown that by committing these offenses a soldier had simultaneously breached military discipline

camouflaging brutalities behind a series of euphemisms and pseudolegal terms. Ultimately, the army reverted to the crudest moral code of war, according to which everything which ensured one's survival was permitted (and thus considered moral), and everything even remotely suspect of threatening it must be destroyed (and was by definition immoral).

e generals reminded them of the image and honor of German arms, which their own orders had done so much to besmirch.

By legalizing murder, robbery, torture, and destruction, these instructions put the moral basis of martial law, and thereby of military discipline, on its' head. The army did not simply pretend not to notice the criminal actions of the regime, it positively ordered its own troops to carry them out, and was distressed when breaches of discipline prevented their more efficient execution.

large soldiers who committed offenses against members of the civilian population were brought to justice and severely punished, on the other.29Close There were only two, though highly significant exceptions: those perceived as the Reich's political enemies, be they former German citizens, foreign political opponents, or resistance fighters, and those labelled as the German Volk's biological enemies, and especially Jews, were treated not only by the SS, but also by the Wehrmacht, in an entirely different manner and could not expect any legal protection. Here military discipline showed its capacity not only to prevent crimes, but also to legalize them.