Outline
1) The intro paragraph is very subjective and needs to be changed.
War crimes of the Wehrmacht were those carried out by the German armed forces during World War II. While the Schutzstaffel (SS) (in particular the SS-Totenkopfverbände, Einsatzgruppen and Waffen-SS) of Nazi Germany was the organization most responsible for the genocidal killing of the Holocaust, the regular armed forces represented by the Wehrmacht committed war crimes of their own, particularly on the Eastern Front in the war against the Soviet Union.
The Nuremberg Trials at the end of World War II initially considered whether the Wehrmacht high command structure should be tried, however the OKW was judged not to be a criminal organization under the legal grounds that because of very poor co-ordination between the German Army, Navy and Air Force high commands, which operated as more or less separate entities during the war. the OKW did not constitute an organization as defined by Article 9 of the constitution of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) which conducted the Nuremberg trials. Had it not been for these legalistic reasons, the OKW would have been judged a "criminal organization" by the IMT. This has often been misconstrued, not the least by German World War Two veterans that the IMT ruled that the OKW was not a "criminal organization" because the Wehrmacht committed no war crimes.
Most Wehrmacht war crimes were committed against Jews, Romani, and Slavs.
2)
Prior to the developments of the Second World War there was a history of the German Army committing violent acts against civilians in previous conflicts[1]. During a rebellion by the Herero and Nama natives of a German African Colony in 1904, the German Army was tasked to quell the uprising[2]. General Lothar Von Trotha, the Commander tasked with eliminating the uprising, remarked "against ‘nonhumans’ one cannot conduct war ‘humanely.’"[3] This conflict resulted in the death of 66-75 percent of the entire native Herero population and 50 percent of the Nama population. By contrast the German army lost only 676 soldiers in combat over the course of the conflict.[4] Then, in the First World War the pattern of civilian brutality continued. [5] During just the German invasion of Belgium in 1914 the Germans were recorded to have deliberately killed 6,427 Belgian and French civilians.[6]
"The Nuremberg Trials at the end of World War II judged that the Wehrmacht was not a criminal organization under the very technical legal grounds that because of very poor co-ordination between the German Army, Navy and Air Force, which operated as more or less separate fiefdoms during the war that the Wehrmacht did not constitute an "organization" as defined by Article 9 of the constitution of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) which conducted the Nuremberg trials.[6] Had it not been for these very narrow legalistic reasons, the Wehrmacht would have been judged a "criminal organization" by the IMT.[6] This has often been misconstrued, not the least by German World War Two veterans that the IMT ruled that the Wehrmacht was not a "criminal organization" because the Wehrmacht committed no war crimes.[7]" This is a passage from the intro paragraph describing how the Wehrmacht were considered a non-partisan organization and not culpable in the acts of the Nazi party but contains extremely subjective language.
2) Before The War
- This section that is discussing the structure of the Wehrmacht prior to WWII hasn't been fully developed. This is an integral part of the article as it should discuss the stereotype of the non-partisan nature of the Wehrmacht prior to the start of the war. Currently it only discusses extremely specific examples of the Wehrmacht's turn towards antisemitism and racism prior to the start of WWII. But there are examples of the Wehrmacht committing violent acts prior to WWII which is a necessary point to be made.[7]
3) War crimes
- This section is organized in an extremely illogical manner. It simply states War Crimes as the title but then goes on to discuss a whole range of topics regarding the Wehrmacht during WWII. For example, the Barbarossa Decree and Commissar Order sections are policies that were adopted by the Wehrmacht and show their ruthlessness and brutality during the war. But then in sections both before and after it discusses specific examples of brutality committed by the Wehrmacht such as widespread rape, and civilian death statistics.
- Thus, for this section I will likely completely rearrange the structure to make it have a more logical flow and eliminate redundancies in the points being made.
Notes
edit- ^ Beorn, W. W. (2011). A Calculus of Complicity: The Wehrmacht, the Anti-Partisan War, and the Final Solution in White Russia, 1941–42. Central European History (Cambridge University Press / UK), 44(2), 308-337. doi:10.1017/S0008938911000057
- ^ Hull, I. V. (2013)
- ^ Hull, I. V. 2013, Page 33
- ^ Hull, I. V. 2013, Page 88
- ^ Horne (2001)
- ^ Horne (2001), Page 74
- ^ Beorn, W. W. (2011). A Calculus of Complicity: The Wehrmacht, the Anti-Partisan War, and the Final Solution in White Russia, 1941–42. Central European History (Cambridge University Press / UK), 44(2), 308-337. doi:10.1017/S0008938911000057
References
edit- Hull, Isabel V. (2013). Absolute Destruction : Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (1st ed.). Cornell University Press. ISBN 9780801472930.
- Horne, John (2001). German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300089752.