as sexual attacks on women, children, and even intercourse with animals.

The corrupting effects of occupation, the example given by the SS in Poland, and the highly ideological context in which the war was being fought, all made it extremely difficult to control the troops

present conditions is the boundless brutalization and the moral depravity which in the shortest time will spread like an epidemic among the best German human material.

Discipline was thus increasingly becoming a political issue. To be sure, long before the outbreak of war expressions of political criticism were a punishable offense in the army

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that the troops should expect to be confronted with “inner enmity” from all civilians who are not “members of the German race.” Moreover, he went on to say, “The behavior toward Jews needs no special mention for the soldiers of the National Socialist Reich.

. Moreover, the officer's wife too must not only be a good spouse to him and a devoted mother to his children, but should also assist him in his professional capacity by serving as an example to the rank and file.9

the troops were rarely punished for unauthorized crimes against the enemy, both because of their commanders' underlying sympathy with such actions, and because they constituted a convenient safety valve for venting the men's anger and frustration caused by the rigid discipline demanded from the men and by the increasingly heavy cost and hopelessness of the war.

he new Wehrmacht was supposed to do away with the social barriers between officers and men, on the one hand, and to demand “blind” obedience and unquestioning loyalty from the troops, on the other.