Reddit reviews War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II (War and Genocide (3))

The Clean Wehrmacht myth is a blatant lie. The Wehrmacht were repeatedly involved in war crimes, including the extermination of undesirables, and at the very least most, if not all, members were aware that their government was pursuing a campaign of violence against civilians and had purged undesirables (such as cripples and mentally ill) from society back home. The Wehrmacht may have been normal men, but that does not mean they are free of the blame for what occurred during World War 2.

Here are some resources regarding the Clean Wehrmacht Myth:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht

https://www.amazon.com/The-Wehrmacht-History-Myth-Reality/dp/0674025776

https://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Eastern-Front-Nazi-Soviet/dp/0521712319

https://www.amazon.com/War-Extermination-Military-Studies-Genocide/dp/1571814930

I'd also add Ordinary Men to that list, as it's a very interesting study/discussion of how plain people like you and me can become bloodthirsty exterminators of other people in the right circumstances. https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492122897&sr=1-1&keywords=ordinary+men

Edit: Done replying to comments in this thread, it's exhausting. None of the argumentation is new. To quote the Duke of Wellington, "they came on in the same old way...". The materials are there for you to explore and read. You can form your own judgments based on facts and rigorous research, that's the beauty of a free and open society, the kind of society Nazi Germany was actively trying to prevent. The reason the Clean Wehrmacht myth needs to be refuted is because, as I've said in another comment, it presents an ignorant view of history that allows us to avoid the hard truth, learned largely from World War Two, that ordinary men who would otherwise be considered honorable, decent people can take part in atrocious crimes or, at the very least, hear about them and be permissive or even supportive of them. If we deny that, we can't learn to prevent such things happening again.

Edit 2: Honestly last thing, I just want to add a comment by one of the mods of r/askhistorians specifically relating to this subject. It's honestly the best comment on Reddit I've ever seen regarding this subject and it has a list of plenty of resources for those who want to investigate this issue further: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3xc03h/just_how_much_of_the_wehrmacht_was_dirty/cy3cxs0/

The idea that the Wehrmacht engaged in an honourable war and the SS committed the atrocities is known as the "clean wehrmacht myth". There's lots of books and sources available, some good starting points would be https://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Eastern-Front-Nazi-Soviet/dp/0521712319 and https://www.amazon.com/War-Extermination-Military-Studies-Genocide/dp/1571814930

There's also a wikipedia page that might be more accessible on the "clean wehrmacht myth". The gist is that we needed allies for the war against communism, so we rehabilitated the German Army and let them have a scapegoat. We literally let them write the history of the war in the East.

Part II:

For Stalingrad/Leningrad:

STALINGRAD: How the Red Army Survived the German Onslaught

Leningrad: State of Siege

Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad

To the Gates of Stalingrad: Soviet-German Combat Operations, April-August 1942

Armageddon in Stalingrad: September-November 1942

Stopped at Stalingrad: The Luftwaffe and Hitler's Defeat in the East, 1942-1943

The 900 Days: The Siege Of Leningrad

Kursk:

The Battle of Kursk

Demolishing the Myth: The Tank Battle at Prokhorovka, Kursk, July 1943: An Operational Narrative


Air War:

Barbarossa: The Air Battle July-December 1941

Stalingrad: The Air Battle: 1942-January 1943

Kursk: The Air Battle, July 1943

Bagration to Berlin: The Final Air Battles in the East 1944-1945

Black Cross/Red Star : Vol. 1, Operation Barbarossa 1941

Black Cross / Red Star: The Air War Over The Eastern Front, Vol. 2 - Resurgence: January - June 1942

Black Cross Red Star: The Air War Over the Eastern Front Volume 3


German Army:

War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II

Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich

The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture

The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality

The Unknown Eastern Front: The Wehrmacht and Hitler's Foreign Soldiers

Death of the Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of 1942

The Wehrmacht Retreats: Fighting a Lost War, 1943

Partisans:

Defiance

Stalin's Guerrillas: Soviet Partisans in World War II

Holocaust/Genocide:

Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule

Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine

Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine

The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization

The Holocaust in the Soviet Union

> Biggest load of shit I've ever heard.

[Well if you want to read it by all means] (https://www.amazon.com/War-Extermination-Military-Studies-Genocide/dp/1571814930), War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II by Hannes Heer is a fantastic book on the subject I find. Gathering valued insight from a collection of historians of the subject of the "Clean Wehrmacht" myth you're trying to perpetuate.

> You do realized the Wehrmacht FEARED the Nazi party and therefore felt like they had to do everything the Nazis requested?

Once again, this is the [Clean Wehrmacht Myth] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Wehrmacht) I just mentioned. The belief that the Wehrmacht were an apolitical organisation that were "pushed around" by the Nazi Party, and considered themselves independent from the Nazi Party's political ideology. This narrative is generally pushed around by far-right authors and a select few activist groups, despite being proven false by the Wehrmacht's own documents. The above mentioned book and provide further insight if you're willing to pick it up.

I literally just said he was an average one plucked from Austria, actually, small town, put on the frontline. And for the most part, the Wehrmacht were very much aware and complicit with such going ons.

See this Wikipedia article here, or if you'd prefer, Hannes Heer's "War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II", or Wolfram Wette's "The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality" for further reading.

https://www.amazon.com/The-Wehrmacht-History-Myth-Reality/dp/0674025776

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht

https://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Eastern-Front-Nazi-Soviet/dp/0521712319

https://www.amazon.com/War-Extermination-Military-Studies-Genocide/dp/1571814930

> Why does my roll as a player matter at all? Its a video game and a multiplayer one at that.

I think your inability to see the difference between watching a story in a movie vs participate in it as a player invalidates everything you say automatically. But I digress.

>Nice strawman. Nobody is saying we want to kill jews in game.

??? I wasn't saying that, I'm saying it's the same logic of "if something is in a movie, we should be able to play as characters in that event"

>This is LAUGHABLY wrong. Many german soldiers in the german military did not enjoy what was demanded of them. They weren't all nazi's like you think they were. A lot of them hoped to just defend germany against the allies and never be asked to shoot or gas jews. Very few were willing to risk saying no to the gestapo when they commanded such actions to be done. FEAR is a powerful tool.

That is literally nazi propaganda. Do Some Research. These are the only good german soldiers.

>A lot of them hoped to just defend germany against the allies

You're so historically illiterate, Germany attacked Poland and France first. This isn't even to mention the dehumanization and hate crimes against people before the war began. The average person in Germany in the 1930's was totally racist and okay with terrible things happening to "undesirables" my great grandfather's friend was murdered in frankfurt for being jewish and none of the police would investigate and people said he deserved it. You're so ignorant.

>Alone it wouldn't matter but when stacked upon the unholy mess that of which BFV is its just yet another thing that they fucked up. And for a lot of people here thats enough reasoning.

That doesn't even make sense "If there was nothing wrong with the game no one would care but since the game is in a bad state we need more things to complain about"

>Your argument reminds me of that retarded EXTRA SENSITIVE "Extra Credit" channel on youtube with their most downvoted video yet. "Stop normalizing nazis"

I don't know who that is, but I can take a wild guess who would disagree that normalizing nazis is a good thing.

>HeRe YoU aRe PLaYinG tHe PVp In yOUr FaVoItE Ww2 ViDeO gAmE WiTh ThE NaZi FlAG As yOuR fAcTiOnS SyMbOle. AnD aLL oF a SuDDeN, YoU'Re A nAzI!.

Damn you got me, now spell ICUP

Stop with this Wehraboo revisionist bullshit. It doesn't matter if they were a good person or a bad person, they were all standing over the same mass graves. The average German civilian knew what was happening, let alone the soldiers carrying out the work. If they didn't defect or resist, they were as guilty as the rest.

 

EDIT: Since I'm already catching downvotes, if you're not a Nazi apologist and maybe just misinformed, here are some great resources that go into explicit detail how the average German soldier was far from clean:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3xc03h/just_how_much_of_the_wehrmacht_was_dirty/?st=jse6fwxk&sh=c852a62b

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/480hnc/were_the_nazis_encouraged_to_use_terror_as_a_form/?st=jse6fxso&sh=835b61d6

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5vc22s/how_much_did_the_wehrmacht_on_the_eastern_front/?st=jse6g0af&sh=7fb522db

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5voi0y/is_it_true_that_the_wehrmacht_generally_treated/?st=jse6g1dz&sh=d2a96c8a

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht

http://www.amazon.com/The-Wehrmacht-History-Myth-Reality/dp/0674025776

http://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Eastern-Front-Nazi-Soviet/dp/0521712319

http://www.amazon.com/War-Extermination-Military-Studies-Genocide/dp/1571814930