Description
Book Synopsis Among the many myths about the relationship of Nazism to the mass of the German population, few proved more powerful in postwar West Germany than the notion that the Wehrmacht had not been involved in the crimes of the Third Reich. Former generals were particularly effective in spreading, through memoirs and speeches, the legend that millions of German soldiers had fought an honest and "clean" war and that mass murder, especially in the East, was entirely the work of Himmler's SS. This volume contains the most important contributions by distinguished historians who have thoroughly demolished this Wehrmacht myth. The picture that emerges from this collection is a depressing one and raises many questions about why "ordinary men" got involved as perpetrators and bystanders in an unprecedented program of extermination of "racially inferior" men, women, and children in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union during the Second World War. Those who have seen these terrible photos of mass executions and other atrocities, currently on show in an exhibition in Germany and soon to be in the United States, will find this volume most enlightening.
Trade Review "... provides new information and excellent analyses." · Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Table of Contents List of Abbreviations
Preface
Volker R. Berghahn
Introduction
Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann
Chapter 1. The Concept of the War of Annihilation: Clausewitz, Ludendorff, Hitler
Jan Philipp Reemtsma
PART I: CRIMES
Chapter 2. “Coming Along to Shoot Some Jews?” The Destruction of the Jews in Serbia
Walter Manoschek
Chapter 3. Killing Fields: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belorussia, 1941–42
Hannes Heer
Chapter 4. Soviet Prisoners of War in the Hands of the Wehrmacht
Christian Streit
Chapter 5. The Logic of the War of Extermination: The Wehrmacht and the Anti-Partisan War
Hannes Heer
Chapter 6. Men of 20 July and the War in the Soviet Union
Christian Gerlach
Chapter 7. Military Violence and the National Socialist Consensus: The Wehrmacht in Greece, 1941–44
Mark Mazower
Chapter 8. Civitella della Chiana on 29 June 1944: The Reconstruction of a German “Measure”
Michael Geyer
PART II: FORMATIONS
Chapter 9. Local Headquarters Liepaja: Two Months of German Occupation in the Summer of 1941
Margers Vestermanis
Chapter 10. On the Way to Stalingrad: The 6th Army in 1941–42
Bernd Boll and Hans Safrian
Chapter 11. Incident at Baranivka: German Reprisals and the Soviet Partisan Movement in Ukraine, October–December 1941
Truman Anderson
Chapter 12. Korück 582
Theo J. Schulte
Chapter 13. How Amorality Became Normality: Reflections on the Mentality of German Soldiers on the Eastern Front
Hannes Heer
Chapter 14. Emptying the Gaze: Framing Violence through the Viewfinder
Bernd Hüppauf
PART III: AFTERMATH
Chapter 15. Forward Defense: The “Memorandum of the Generals” for the Nuremberg Court
Manfred Messerschmidt
Chapter 16. Whose History Is It, Anyway? The Wehrmacht and German Historiography
Omer Bartov
Chapter 17. The “Unblemished” Wehrmacht: The Social History of a Myth
Klaus Naumann
Notes on Contributors
Appendix: Charts and Maps
Index of Names
Index of Locations
