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34 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Sweeping Condemnation of Crimes of the Wehrmacht, June 16, 2007
This review is from: The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality (Hardcover)
Wolfram Wette's book, "The Wehrmacht", is an attempt to take a simple question (Were all members of the Wehrmacht guilty of war crimes under international law?) and assert a simple answer (Yes. All but a dozen of the claimed 20 million members of the Wehrmacht were guilty of war crimes.). The problem is sometimes there are no simple answers, only simple questions, as Mr. Wette uses too broad a brush to review and condemn equally the actions of each member of the Wehrmacht. In one sense, all members of the Wehrmacht were equally responsible in that they were all engaged in wars of agression. But that does not take into account the individual actions, and responsiblities, of each member of the Wehrmacht. Nor does it take into account the fact that, beginning as early as 1935, Germany had universal conscription and most men had no choice but to serve in its armed forces in one capacity or another. Nor does it factor in that all members of the German population, including especially members of the Wehrmacht, were inundated daily with messages of hate and fear dissemininated by the first modern master of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. Nor does it make any allowance for the fact that after the war started in 1939 it was a crime against the state to criticize Hitler or the war effort, and later it became a crime of treason, punishable by death, for anyone, including members of the Wehrmacht, to mention appeasement in any form. Nor does it even mention that direct threats against the regime were dealt with summarily, e.g., the murder of S.A. leader Ernst Roehm (who at the time led a personal army of 2-3 million men), his associates, and others on 30 June 1934 in the "Knight of the Long Knives." Nor does it mention that by 1939 the regime had the current U.S. equivalent (i.e., by proportion of the population) of 1,000,000 people held in concentration camps or in "protective custody" for political crimes. Nor does it mention that all political parties were banned by 1935. In other words, life in Hitler's Germany was not the bastion of freedom of expression and freedom of choice the author would lead you to believe. The inherent problem with the author's conclusions is that they stem from his faulty premises: Over and again he cites an example of how one officer (or even several) believed or acted, which he supports with a citation, but presumptuously, and too generously, he goes on to apply it to each and every member of the Wehrmacht, which conclusion he does not support with any authority other than his own opinion. The author also repeatedly misstates the facts he does cite. For example, he refers to Rommel's memoirs as a post-war attempt by him to whitewash the Wehrmacht. Unfortunately, Rommel died before the end of the war so it's a bit of a stretch to claim he wrote them after the war. He also constantly refers to an exhibition of war crimes put on by the Hamburg Institute for Social Research. But what he does not tell you is that the entire exhibition was withdrawn under claims of fraud and forgery, then put on again in a redacted, less conclusory format. In addition, he claims there was really only one attempt to assassinate Hitler, the July 20, 1944 plot, when in fact there were at least three dozen documented plans to assassinate Hiter. Further, he claims the Soviets treated German prisoners of war well, i.e., much better than the Germans, but the figure he provides for the number of German soldiers who died as Soviet prisoners of war is off by a factor of ten and does not even equal the number of German prisoners who died after surrendering at Stalingrad. I could go on. Admittedly, the Wehrmacht's policies were racist, and the Wehrmacht participated in, and at times initiated, horrible acts. In addition, there was of course a coverup after the war by everyone who participated in such atrocities. Moreover, there was a reluctance by Germany after the war to come to grips with its past. Nonetheless, the author does not present a convincing argument why the acts of several hundred thousand, or even a million, men in either orchestrating or participating in wartime atrocities, should ipso facto condemn by association 19 million others. While this book is useful to further discussion about the extent of the participation of the Wehrmacht in heinous acts and to what extent the blame for it should lie, it should not be viewed as the last word. That awaits a more thorough and probative examination, which may very well demonstrate that all 20 million members of the Wehrmacht are equally guilty for the crimes of any one member or group of members. (This is an extremly well-written book, for which the translator, an historian in her own right, deserves special mention.)
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
On the origins, evolution and cover-up of the Wehrmacht's anti-Semitism, January 14, 2011
The English title "History, Myth, Reality" is rather misleading since this book does not cover the military history of the Wehrmacht but that of its "purported" anti-Semitism. So if you're looking for a history of for example the campaigns of the Wehrmacht, this book will disappoint you. The German title is accurate but it was poorly translated. My own translation reads "Perceptions of the Enemy, War of Annihilation, and Legends" which better reflects the organization and contents of the book. The crimes of the Wehrmacht were already publicized some 15 years before this book (Hillgruber in 1984, Omer Bartov in 1991 in his Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich, and the 1995 Wehrmacht exhibition "Vernichtungskrieg"). Wolfram Wette synthesizes those works but his better contribution centers on the cover-up of the Wehrmacht crimes after the war, and on the origins of, separately, anti-Semitism and anti-bolshevism, combined by the Nazis into their murderous "Judeo-Bolshevism" propaganda. ORIGINS ("Perceptions of the Enemy"): Wette traces the origins of a more virulent anti-Semitism to the middle of WWI (the "Jewish head count" of 1916) when Germans needed a scapegoat for the economic hardships at home and the military stalemate at the front. Wette traces the origins of anti-bolshevism to the bolshevist revolution blamed for the retreat of a supposedly undefeated army which still occupied enemy territory (the "stab in the back" legend). Even before the Nazis, Ludendorff wrote that Germany must be made "judenfrei" before the next war. EVOLUTION ("War of Annihilation"): Wette paints the canvas of exterminations conducted or at least assisted by the Wehrmacht using the examples of Serbia, Lithuania and especially the Ukraine. There some 30,000 Jews were murdered at Babi Yar in September 1941 with the assistance of the Wehrmacht. Here, Wette's arguments are weak since he assigns the lack of Wehrmacht records to its official cover-up (rather than its innocence) supported by SS records documenting Wehrmacht participation. In other words Wette chooses which documents to trust based on the conclusion he wants to derive. The conclusion is valid (see for example the report "Bericht der Kommission zur Überprüfung der Ausstellung Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1944") but the proof is not. COVER-UP ("Legends"): The legend of the "clean hands" Wehrmacht lasted some fifty years. It began with Doenitz's final Wehrmacht report of May 9 1945 ("In the end the Wehrmacht succumbed honorably", etc). It was consolidated by the "Generals' Memorandum", the decision of the IMT not to try the OKW/ OKH as criminal organizations, the results of the "High Command Trial", and numerous Wehrmacht officers' memoirs. By 1949, historical truth was sacrificed to the Cold War in order to win the Germans over to a North Atlantic Defense. A new West German army had to be created with veteran Wehrmacht officers which led to two exculpatory declarations in 1951 (Eisenhower and Adenauer). In the 70s and 80s scholarly research findings contradicted the legend. A touring Wehrmacht exhibition started in 1995 and was the catalyst for a revision of the legend. Finally, although there are copious notes on 61 pages, surprisingly and annoyingly, there is no bibliography. The reader has to write its own from the sources used in the notes.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
The ugly german Wehrmacht?, December 9, 2011
Hello from Germany. Wette's simple conclusion (and it's not only his conclusion) could you describe like this: Most of the german Wehrmacht-soldiers were guilty, because they were all participating in a criminal war of aggression and determination. I don't want to deny the crimes, which were commited by germans during WW2. I have to make clear that I'm talking about that kind of crimes, which had to do with the national socialist ideology. I'm not talking about "normal" war crimes, which will be committed by every army in every war all over the world (taking into account that only the victors are able to investigate and to condemn these crimes!). It is wrong to mix both things. I don't want to deny that the Wehrmacht indeed was playing a role in crimes, which had to do with the national socialist ideology. But this role was far away from being a central role. A few units of the Wehrmacht were sometimes supporting the SS-Einsatzgruppen with weapons, ammunition and other logistics, which was needed to conduct mass-executions. There were also soldiers of the Wehrmacht, who were commiting executions on their own account, or who were participating in mass-executions of the SS. It was always crucial what kind of guy the leader of a unit was, if he was a Nazi or not (the majority of the Wehrmacht-officers were no nazis). But even among the no-Nazi-Wehrmacht-soldiers did exist some brutalized men, who were considering the executions of civilians as legitimate repressions in the context of a ruthless anti-partisan-war (like it was the view of Lt. Calley and his soldiers in My Lai, which was no isolated case!). And there really was a threat from at least equally brutalized partisans, especially in Russia. At this point did exist an overlap of interests between some Wehrmacht-soldiers and the SS-Einsatzgruppen. But such cases of Wehrmacht-soldiers commiting mass executions, or participating in mass executions, were the exception rather than the rule. It is true that Hitler was discharging no-Nazi-officers from the general staff and replacing them with people like Wilhelm Keitel, who gave criminal and unsoldierly orders during the war, but although you can't declare the overall organization of the Wehrmacht as a criminal organization. Here are just a few facts about the Wehrmacht, which are a little bit contrary to Wette's the-whole-Wehrmacht-was-evil-thesis: 1. The "Commissar Order" (the order to shoot every captured communist commissar of the soviet army) was taken back by Hitler because of the fact that in many cases the order was either ignored or even severely criticized by officers of the Wehrmacht. 2. The death of soviet POWs did happen under the legal responsibility of the Wehrmacht, but it's a fact that the soldiers of the Wehrmacht themself were seriously undersupplied during the first year of the russian campaign. That undersupply was part of Hitlers plan to "motivate" his troops to be in Moscow quickly before the winter. That's why the german soldiers were not getting any winter clothes in 1941, even when it grew terribly cold. The supply with food was insufficient too. Hitler wanted to force the soldiers to loot the civil population in the occupied territories, because those people were "Untermenschen" in his racist worldview. That's why the Wehrmacht-units at the Eastern Front had very little resources to supply the masses of russian POWs during the first months of the campaign. 3. Several officers of the Wehrmacht (Rommel is just one example) rigorously ignored criminal orders, which could be considered as being unsoldierly. 4. The most dangerous resitance against Hitler came from officers of the Wehrmacht ("Operation Valkyrie" was not the only attempt by Wehrmacht-officers to kill Hitler and to make a coup d'etat). By the way: Not every campaign of the Wehrmacht was an aggression. It is true that Hitler was planning to invade Russia since his early years, but it is also true that France and Great Britain were declaring war to Germany and that Stalin's (and already Lenin's) Bolsheviks were threatening Germany (the next objective of the Comintern after the October Revolution in 1917 was Germany). It is also a fact that Stalin was prosecuting a very aggressive policy too (in Finland and also in Poland) and that he had a lot of combat-ready troops operating close behind the border. That's why some historians do define the german invasion in Russia as a preventative-strike (I think that isn't correct, but if you define the Iraq War in 2003 as an US-preventative-strike, like it even the UN later did, then the invasion of Russia in 1941 was it more than ever). Most of the Wehrmacht-soldiers were not feeling themself as being aggressors. In no way. They were really believing that they had to defend their fatherland against a bolshevist threat, a threat to all Europe, which was unfortunately not recognized by the western allies, so that the western allies were declaring war to germany and the germans had to fight a hopeless two-front war. That was the general view, influenced and heated-up by the NS-propaganda. There is no question about the fact that the national socialist intentions of the war were criminal and that the Nazi-leadership was absolutely fanatic. But the Nazi-leadership did not come to power because the german people were sharing these criminal and fanatic intentions. The Nazis were able to destroy the german democracy of Weimar and able to install a totalitarian dictatorship in Germany for very special and different reasons, but not because most of the germans were Nazis! At the last free elections in 1932 the NSDAP received only 37 percent of the votes, although the political terror of the SS and the SA against the other parties and their voters was already very strong at this time. Figured up, the democratic parties, who were loyal to the Republic of Weimar, received a higher percentage of the votes than the anti-democratic NSDAP. Even the voters of the other anti-democratic parties, for example those who wanted to re-install the monarchy or those who wanted to establish an authoritarianism, were most of the time no nazis (although they made the big mistake to form a coalition with Hitler). You have also to consider that not even every voter of the NSDAP was a real Nazi, which means that you are a convinced anti-Semite and racist. The real followers of the Nazis were always a minority. But (especially over the course of the following years) there were many germans who were impressed with the economic upturn, the decreasing number of unemployed, the building of the Autobahn, the nonviolent recapture of the Rhineland, the nonviolent foreclosure of the unfair "Treaty" of Versailles, the nonviolent Anschluss of Austria (which was the wish of many Austrians, too), the nonviolent occupation of the Sudetenland, and (in 1940) the unbelieveable quick victory over the archenemy France. Most of the germans never applauded to Hitler for being anti-Semitic or for being a racist. In fact anti-Semitism and racism were parts of Hitler's speeches just very rarely, pretty much never during the 1930s (in his early years Hitler quickly understood that he would be more succesful in Germany with other topics: see above). Without any doubt, there was anti-Semitism in Germany, but no more than in other European countries or in the USA at this time. There was a discriminatory anti-Semitism, especially within the german middle class, but, in most of the cases, without any consequently demolishing character. De facto, the german Jews were much more integrated and emancipated than the jewish population in other countries. In fact there would have been no reason for the NS-regime to commit the Holocaust in secrecy if most of the germans would have been Nazis and demolishing anti-Semites. In fact there were no spontanous encroachments against Jews (pogroms) from the ordinary german people, even when the Jews were effectively without rights after the Nuremberg Laws. There were much more spontanous encroachments from white US-americans against the black population in the South during the 1960s. The violence against the Jews was almost invariably commited by organisations of the NS-state! And in fact the first victims of the NS-state were no Jews but germans! Of course the german Jews were german citizens too, but I mean the thousands of "Aryan" social democrats, unionists, socialists, also conservative rivals or other opponents and also the disabled persons, who were murdered during the euthanasia-program. The deportation of the Jews did begin later and were seen as measures of resettlement by most of the ordinary german people. Such kind of measures were not unusual during a war at this time. Even the government of the United States were detaining a lot of japanese US-citizens after Pearl Harbor, without any legal basis. In Germany even the Jews themself were thinking that they would be resettled and that's it. Because of that fallacy they never made a stand against the measures. It was very difficult to see through that what was really going on. Most of the people couldn't realize the general view before 1945/46. Don't forget that the press was completely under the control of the NS-regime. Even the democratic foreign countries with their free press needed a long time to figure out the whole dimensions of the crimes. The Vatican got a message about the killing of the jews and other people (from a SS-man with the name Kurt Gerstein!). What did the Vatican to stop it? What did the allies to stop the Holocaust when they realized what was going on? No single one bomb was dropped on the track to Auschwitz, but millions of bombs on german civilians! Did have the ordinary german population more power than the Vatican or the western allies? After 1945, when those germans who were no perpetrators realized what had been done in their names, they...
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