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German historian Jürgen Förster, a leading expert on the subject of Wehrmacht war crimes, argued the Wehrmacht played a key role in the Holocaust and it is wrong to ascribe the Shoah as solely the work of the SS while the Wehrmacht were a more or less passive and disapproving bystander. [91] Einsatzgruppen murder Jews in Ivanhorod, Ukraine, 1942.
German mistreatment and war crimes against prisoners of war began in the first days of the war during their invasion of Poland, with an estimated 3,000 Polish POWs murdered in dozens of incidents. The treatment of POWs by the Germans varied based on the country; in general, the Germans treated POWs belonging to the Western Allies well, while ...
Crimes against prisoners of war were exposed to the German public in the Wehrmacht exhibition around 2000, which challenged the still popular myth that the German military was not responsible for Nazi crimes. [260] [261] Memorials and markers have been established at cemeteries and former camps by state or private initiatives. [262]
More significantly, the Holocaust of the European Jews, the extermination of millions of Poles, the Action T4 killing of the disabled, and the Porajmos of the Romani are the most notable war crimes committed by Nazi Germany during World War II. Not all of the crimes committed during the Holocaust and similar mass atrocities were war crimes.
The German historians' Manfred Messerschmidt and Fritz Wüllner in a 1987 study of Wehrmacht justice have argued that the figure of 15,000 executed is too low, as it only records verdicts handed down by military courts and that in the last months of the war, the Wehrmacht abandoned even the pretence of holding trials, and simply executed ...
Waffen-SS veterans in post-war Germany played a large role, through publications and political pressure, in the efforts to rehabilitate the reputation of the Waffen-SS, which had committed numerous war crimes during World War II. High ranking German politicians courted former Waffen-SS members and their veteran organisation, HIAG.
0–9. 1st Mountain Division (Wehrmacht) 1st Parachute Division (Germany) 2nd Panzer Army; 2nd Parachute Division (Germany) 3rd Infantry Division (Wehrmacht)
Criminal orders is the collective name given to a series of orders, directives and decrees given before and during the German invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II by the Wehrmacht High Command. [1] [2] [3] The criminal orders went beyond established codes of conduct and led to widespread atrocities on the Eastern Front.