German War crimes in Russia

[Gebirgsjaeger]

Hi folks!

I am a little bit confused. Several times a week there´s shows on German TV here that tell the people that the Wehrmacht (not the SS!) committed unbelievable atrocities during the war on the eastern front.

I was wondering about the evidence for this. I´ve tried for several weeks now to find specific evidence. It´s easy to find stuff about Oradour sur Glane or Wormhoudt. But why didn´t I find any SPECIFIC evidence about crimes on the eastern front? No city-names, no units - nothing!

Then I started to search in Russian and Polish sites (my wife´s from Poland and also speaks Russian) but I never found anything specific. Nothing like the pictures and documents the Germans provided about Katyn or Nemmerdorf.

So, can anyone at feldgrau give me some hints?

Thanx
GJ

[Nibelung]

Hi Gebirgsjaeger!

The reason that you can't find any specific evidence perhaps lies in the fact that the actions of that kind were never (?) mentioned in the reports. The western front was completely different from the cruel and total war on the east. Hitler didn't give those people no right to live anyway (just as slaves) so the crimes would be treated as just. I know that the Wehrmacht soldiers didn't all commit crimes, but every army has people like that... I hope you will find some evidence sooner or later, I wish you luck!!


best,
Nibelung

[Igorn]

Gebirgsjaeger,

I advise you the new book of Antony Beevor STALINGRAD in this regard:
...The idea of Rassenkampf or ‘race war’, gave the Russian campaign its unprecedented character. Many officers were affronted by the Wehrmacht’s abandonment of international law on the Ostfront, but only tiny minority voiced disgust at the massacres, even when it became clear that they belonged to the programme of racial extermination. The degree of ignorance claimed after the war by many officers, especially those of staff, is rather hard to believe in the light of all the evidence that has now emerged from their own files. 6th Army headquarters, for example, cooperated with SS Sonderkommando 4a, which followed in its tracks almost all the way from the western frontier of the Ukraine to Stalingrad. Not only were staff officers well aware of its activities, they even provided troops to assist in the round-up of Jews in Kiev and transport them to the ravine of Babi Yar. The massacre of the innocents in Belaya Tserkov in September 1941 was soon dwarfed by a far greater atrocity. Following the capture of Kiev, 33,771 Jews were rounded up to be slaughtered by Sonderkommando 4a. This action was entirely within the 6th Army area of responsibility. The commander of the Army General Reichenau, along with certain key officers from his headquarters was fully aware about this action and assisted Sonderkommando 4a in its bloody ‘implementation’.
The Reichenau notorious order to the 6th army of 10 October 1941, which was supported by Field Marshal von Rundstedt, quite clearly makes the Wehrmacht chain of command jointly responsible for atrocities against Jews and civilians in the Ukraine. ‘ In this eastern theatre of war, the soldier is not only a man fighting in accordance with the rules of war, but also the ruthless standard-bearer of a national ideal and the avenger of all the bestialities perpetrated on the German people. For this reason the soldier must fully appreciate the necessity for the severe but just retribution that must be meted out to the subhuman species of Jewry’. Their duty was to ‘free the German people forever from the Jewish-Asiatic threat’

Reprisal burnings and executions did not end with Reichenau’s death. For example, on 29th January 1942, the village of Komsomolsk near Kharkov with 150 houses was burned to the ground. During this operation, 8 people were shot and 2 children were burned to death.

General Erich von Manstein issued an order shortly after taking over command of the 11th Army in which he declared’ the jewish-bolshevik system must be rooted out once and for all. He even went on to justify ‘the necessity of harsh measures against Jewry’ There was little mention of this in his post war memories Lost Victories.
The acceptance of Nazi symbols on uniform and the personal oath of allegiance to Hitler had ended any pretence that the army remained independent from politics.

The terrible truth, which very few officers could bear to recognize, was that the army’s tolerance or support for the Nazi doctrine of a ‘race war’ on the eastern front, exempt from normal military and international law, was bound to turn it into a semi-criminal organization. The failure of generals to protest demonstrated a total lack of moral sensibility, or a moral courage.

The German Army itself, not the SS nor any other Nazi organization, was responsible for prisoners of war. Its attitude was reminiscent of Kaiser Wilhelm’s remark in 1914 that the 90,000 prisoners captured at Tannenberg ‘ should be left to starve’
An Italien journalist, who had seen many columns of Russian POW who were seen by German solders and officers as little better than herds of animals, wrote: ‘ most of them are wounded. They wear no bandages, their faces are caked with blood and dust, their uniforms are in rags, their hands blackended. They walk slowly supporting one another’. The wounded generally received no medical assistance, and those who could not march or who collapsed from exhaustion were shot. It should not be forgotten that 600 Soviet prisoners of war were gassed in Auschwitz on 3 September 1941. This was the first experiment there with Zyklon B.

Stalin knew the right response to Hitler’ speeches and actions. ‘If they want a war of extermination’, Stalin said, they shall have one’. As the war progressed, Russian ourage and a terrible desire for revenge was fired much more by news of German acts in the occupied territories: villages burned to the ground in reprisals, civilians starved, massacred or deported to worl camps. This impression of genocide against the Slavs aroused, along with the desire for revenge…

Best Regards from Russia,

[Nibelung]

Igor,

are there any written evidence of Wehrmacht (not Einsatzgruppen) reports about these crimes?

best,
Nibelung

[Der Untermensch]

Do you live in Germany? Have you heard about “The War of Extermination: Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941-44” exhibition, which toured key German cities in 2001-2002? It was intended exactly for people like you, who asked “give me the evidence please”. There were front-page politicians weeping in front of TV-cameras, people collapsing inside, Nazi demonstrations on the streets and riot police engaged, public debate which swamped all key German papers.

Does your wife speak Polish? Than suggest you ask her to go to any of the Polish search engines, be it onet.pl, wp.pl, interia.pl, gazeta.pl, even go to google, and write “zbrodnie Wehrmachtu w Polsce” – but I am afraid your wife will have to spent months translating all sites you would get in return.

First things first, so maybe you would start with http://wilk.wpk.p.lodz.pl/~whatfor/zbro ... ia_wrz.htm, which is on September 1939 (please ignore later parts, there are mostly on Warsaw Uprising crimes, and relations are usually not very credible since civilians were not in position to distinguish between different German and German-allied units). Lots of pictures, some of them confronted with the “10 Gebote fur die Kriegsfuhrung des deutschen Soldaten”. If you want books, suggest you start with Szymon Datner, “55 dni Wehrmachtu w Polsce; zbrodnie na polskiej ludnosci cywilnej w okresie 1.IX – 25.X.1939” – this is just September 1939 and just crimes against the civilians. I do not have it handy, so can not give you any quotations. But I have Moczulski and his key September 1939 book next to me. Here it goes, starting from day one: Sep 1: 41 civilians (incl. childredn under 5) murdered in Zimnowoda; 7 civilians killed in Koszecin; 4 civilians shot in Zawisc; 4 dead in Szczyglowice; unspecified number executed in Mokre, Gostyn, Warszowice, Laziska Górne, Szymankowo, Wyszanów, Torzeniec and other. Now comes Sep 2: mass executions registered in Gostyn, Laziska Dolne, Woszczyce, Klikuszowa, Laziska Górne, Nieborowice, Czarny Dunajec, Skomielna, Sidzina, Chorzenice, Rybnik, Wieruszów. Now comes Sep 3.... and so on (this is not Einsatzgruppen, this is Wehrmacht!). Official German statistics quoted by Moczulski is Sep 8 – 39 executions, Sep 9 – 24, Sep 10 – 40, Sep 11 – 20, Sep 12 – 29, Sep 13 – 21, Sep 14 – 19. And do not forget Luftwaffe, which efficiently decimated columns of civilians, blocking the roads. When touring the largest battlefield of Fall Weiss, the Bzura area, in many villages you find small monuments counting how many POWs and civilians well shot dead after the battle.

At http://www.preventgenocide.org/pl/edu/biblio.htm you will just recent publications on German crimes, some of them are about the Wehrmacht only.

The last resort s to write to Instytut Pamieci Narodowej (http://www.ipn.gov.pl). They absorbed an institution which was once named "Glówna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce" (Main Committee to Investigate Hitlerite Atrocities in Poland), an institution whose name tells it all; it started to suck in 1990s, so they have re-organised it and broadened its scope to cover also the Soviet crimes.

[Helmut]

[quote="Der Untermensch"]Do you live in Germany? Have you heard about “The War of Extermination: Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941-44” exhibition, which toured key German cities in 2001-2002? It was intended exactly for people like you, who asked “give me the evidence please”. There were front-page politicians weeping in front of TV-cameras, people collapsing inside, Nazi demonstrations on the streets and riot police engaged, public debate which swamped all key German papers.


quote]
I believe that most everyone will agree that the exhibit of which you speak is a phony and full of half truths and outright lies. I am not saying that atrocities didn't occur but I wouldn't use this as evidence.

Regards,
Helmut

[Der Untermensch]

I believe that most everyone will agree that the exhibit of which you speak is a phony and full of half truths and outright lies. I am not saying that atrocities didn't occur but I wouldn't use this as evidence

Hi Helmut,

if you have a look at http://www.his-online.de/veranst/ausstell/vernicht.htm, which is a review of the "Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1944" reception in 33 German cities, you might find that "everyone will agree" is a bit of an overstatement.

[Nibelung]

The link is false, it doesn't work...

[Der Untermensch]

The link is false, it doesn't work... :?

apologies, just drop the coma at the end and it will, http://www.his-online.de/veranst/ausstell/vernicht.htm

[Gebirgsjaeger]

Thanx guys!

The Wehrmacht exibit it totally out of question for me. I learned during the last years that it´s full of lies and fakes.

But still not a bit of specific evidence, maybe except the report by Igorn conerning the 8 people shot and 2 children burnt.

I wonder why the Soviets didn´t document those Wehrmacht crimes! The Germans whenever possible documented Soviet crimes to the detail. I think that Soviet propaganda would have done so or not?

[Der Untermensch]

But still not a bit of specific evidence, maybe except the report by Igorn conerning the 8 people shot and 2 children burnt

takes little to convince you, just a simple post with a date and a city name and that's it! Beware, this might be a fake! Children might have been playing with matches and the adults might have been Red commissars shot by the Russians themselves!

[Sebastian Pye]

I think they especially committed crimes in belarus actually. I read they burned down many villages, and Im talking a crazy amount here. Too bad I dont have any figures.

[Gebirgsjaeger]

Untermensch (yahoo, what a @#%**g stupid name....),

I guess that was sarcastic....

[Kitsune]

@Untermensch:

Sep 1: 41 civilians (incl. childredn under 5) murdered in Zimnowoda; 7 civilians killed in Koszecin; 4 civilians shot in Zawisc; 4 dead in Szczyglowice; unspecified number executed in Mokre, Gostyn, Warszowice, Laziska Górne, Szymankowo, Wyszanów, Torzeniec and other. Now comes Sep 2: mass executions registered in Gostyn, Laziska Dolne, Woszczyce, Klikuszowa, Laziska Górne, Nieborowice, Czarny Dunajec, Skomielna, Sidzina, Chorzenice, Rybnik, Wieruszów. Now comes Sep 3.... and so on (this is not Einsatzgruppen, this is Wehrmacht!). Official German statistics quoted by Moczulski is Sep 8 – 39 executions, Sep 9 – 24, Sep 10 – 40, Sep 11 – 20, Sep 12 – 29, Sep 13 – 21, Sep 14 – 19. And do not forget Luftwaffe, which efficiently decimated columns of civilians, blocking the roads. When touring the largest battlefield of Fall Weiss, the Bzura area, in many villages you find small monuments counting how many POWs and civilians well shot dead after the battle.

Untermensch, there is a certain selfdestructive tendency in Germany, when it comes to the topic of German crimes during the war. Those numbers above are not overly impressive, sry. English and American bombers killed on average about 1000 German civilians per day from 1943 on. And these were not bombs "missing the mark" or "collateral damage", it was the deliberate attempt to kill civilians (the British started with it, the Americans did at first indeed attack industrial and logistical facilities but later joined the attacks on civilian areas). and British and American fighters did systematically attack any civilians, pedestrians and byciclists with their MGs.
As far as the German Luftwaffe is concerned, it is true that they targetet cities that were defended, with few regards of civilians. But look at the losses given for D-Day: 7000 German soldiers, 12.000 Allied soldiers, 20.000 French civilians. As you can see, because of considerable bombing of civilian area the civilians (from a people that was about to be liberated) was quite high. (The German bombing of Great Britain during the war killed somewhere between 35.000 and 50.000 people).

That leaves the question wether the conduct of the German armed forces during the Polish campaign was really of such an unusual brutality. The treatment of Polish as slave workers or the Holocaust who was to an large extend committed on Polish soil are another matter however. (But, let me add this: after the war about 10 million Germans were expelled from their homes in Poland in what is one of the biggest ethnic cleansing of history. About 1,5 million of them died of "various" causes, like starvation or Polish...resentment. While these numbers are not as high as those of the Holocaust, they are nonetheless impressive. Impressive is also the difference in admittance: The Germans have largely stood by their deeds. Ask a typical Pole and he will say about the expulsion that it was totally justified. The Krauts had it coming after all).



@Igorn:
While there is no denying that huge astrocities were committed by German forces. Around 17 million Soviet civilians perished during WWII (and about 12 million Soviet soldiers ). But I think that there is an attempt to downplay the significant Soviet role in it. To sum it up a bit:

Stalins regime, before WWII, was one of the most oppressive regimes of all time. Lots of people had been shot or had been send to concentration camps known as "gulag" (these camps were every bit as cruel as their German pendants). The number of murdered people under Stalin as the war broke out: circa 12 million. The NKVD actually had a quota to fulfill how many people they had to execute or send to a gulag for any month and region of the Sovietunion. Aditionally, under Stalin millions of Soviets had starved to death during the thirties because his agricultural reforms.
If one compares Hitlers and Stalins regime in, lets say, 1939 when WWII started, one would have come to the conclusion, that Hitler (whose regime had killed a few tens of thousands) was downright harmless compared to Stalins. This even holds true to quite an extend in 1941 when Barbarossa began (mass executions of Polish Officers by the Germans notwithstanding, the Soviets did this too).

This was the situation when the Germans invaded the Sovietunion.
Stalin had ordered his army not to resist an attack during the first 24 hours after the attack (he had ordered them not to defend themselves because he did not believe the reports of an attack and this order would stand for a period for ca 24 hours, to be more precise). It is said that soldiers were shot who did it nonetheless. On the next day his order was "specified": Resist to the last man! (The order not to resist was treated as nonexistent...Stalin did not make mistakes after all). Soldiers now were shot if they did not resist. After the war Red Army soldiers "liberated" from German captivity were treated as criminals and traitors (since they had allowed the Germans to take them captive), some were shot, many were send to a gulag.

During their defense the Soviets used a tactic of "scorched earth". This led to an mass starvation of people in many areas. Those who died here are among those 17 million Soviet civilian causalties.

As said, Stalin had killed millions of Soviet citizens, among them lots of Ukrainians or people from the Baltic states. As the Soviets withdraw, these people took terrible revenge on their former (Russian) masters. The Germans, admittedly, let them or even encouraged it. Ukrainian SS units were among the most brutal (for them it was a personal matter, after all) and committed terrible astrocities. Those who were killed by them are among those 17 million Soviet civilian causalties.

Later in the war, when the Soviets came back, all of it played in reverse: Now the Russian took terrible rvenge on those who had taken terrible revenge on them. The Russians committed terrible astrocities. Those who were killed by them are among those 17 million Soviet civilian causalties.

To defend, Stalin tried to rally the civilian population. The citizens of Stalingrad, for example, were forbidden to leave the city, when the Germans drew close. Admittedly that didn't stop the Germans from bombing the city as long it was defended (and it did not stop defending itself as we all know), but many of the civilian deaths could have been avoided if Stalin had cared to do so. Similiar orders were given for other cities as well. Those who were needlessly killed are among those 17 million Soviet civilian causalties.

Stalin had certain smaller ethnic population groups deported, because he thought they would possibly support the Germans. This led to more than a million people who were translocated. And when Stalin had people deported, the deathtoll was between 25% and 60%, depending. Journey was per cattle wagon. Destination was usually Siberia, and there was no houses waiting for these people. Either they were put into a camp, or they were dropped off somewhere to look after themselves. Death came thorugh starvation, illnesses or cold. Those who died are among those 17 million Soviet civilian causalties.

To motivate people, quite a few "cowards" were executed by NKVD and Red Army alike. And of course, those who were seen as collaborateurs, because they had helped the Germans, met a similiar fate. Punishing operations of Red Army and NKVD could led to the eradication of whole villages. How many civilians wer killed is anyones guess, no precise numbers are given and the Soviet regime downplayed or denied such things (in fact much of the above) as long as it existed.


The question is: How many of those Soviet civilans who died during WWII died at the hands of the various German soldiers and killer kommandos and how many died because of indigenous causes: Red Army, NKVD, starvation, Stalin...? One thing seems to be certain: A SIGNIFICANT portion.


Last remark: I do not inted to belittle the German committed astrocities in any way, since it is my firm belief that one crime can never justify another. But I wanted to put the German doings in the right perspective. And I have ahearty dislike for those who try to hide their own crimes behind the heap of Nazi crimes or even inflate the latter one for that purpose...(and quite afew do so, until today).

[Kitsune]

Edit: I knew I forgot something!

There was of course the significant partisan activity behind German lines. There was also considerable partisan activety behind Soviet lines (in the Baltic states there was a veritable war after their "liberation" through the Red Army, which lasted until the mid-fifties, only then it was crushed).
All these Partisans killed during WWII, or civilians killed by them, were of course also among those 17 million dead Soviet civilians.