Poll: Do we demonize the Wehrmacht?

[Cmwissy]

I've just got done watching Tarantinos' Inglorious and how he has portrayed the Ally forces as just as brutal and unlikeable as the Axis forces are portrayed in most World War 2 movies. (which are usually comparable to Star Wars black vs white morality of straight up America vs Germany forsaking everything else.)


With Pitts' character calling every single Wehrmacht soldier 'Natzies' and making him unlikeable (As Nazi was just a political party, no different from Conservative, Liberal or Labour in our government, I believe)

And I've come to expect that the winners write the history and I'm thinking if maybe we as a society demonize the Axis (Although primarily Wehrmacht) forces.

I personally think that every soldier is *ofcourse* his own man and may not have even supported Hitler, but still had to carry out his job.


What do you think?

 

[Two Angels]

It makes it easier to justify the killing of all the Axis soldiers in WW2 if you just tar them with the same brush as the leadership and just like in today's worlds Soldiers do as their told otherwise I doubt we'd have invaded Iraq seeing as there was no real good reason too.

During WW2 a lot of German nationals were killed by the Nazi party, this wasn't a Germany & Allies vs The World sort of thing that WW1 was, this was a group who gained power and then made sure that they always looked good. A lot of people who opposed the Nazi's died and this stopped people opposing them. Also, much like in todays world, people don't know what's going on. They just keep their heas down and keep going on. And remember in this era TV was still new and something like the internet was Sci-fi and so all information was gathered either second hand from others or through radio and newspapers, guess who kept a tight leash on those .

 

[Oskar K]

SEIG HEIL.. I think we need to kill everybody who says that.

 

[Katherine Kerensky]

I think they probably do.
Some people don't realise the difference between the Wehrmacht and the SS.
And the Einsatzgruppen. I may have spelled that wrong.
But yes, it seems they have been demonised, along with everything else to do with Nazi Germany...

 

[mchoueiri]

while some of the soldiers fighting in europe may have not known of the evil things that hitler was doing. They still fought to protect that society so to a degree I agree that most of the german army were evil since it was not just the SS that were committing these horrible acts.

 

[Anachronism]

Some people don't realise the difference between the Wehrmacht and the SS.

This is the problem. The SS deserve all the flak they get; they did some genuinely horrifying things in the War which I would have preferred to think people weren't capable of doing. The Death's Head units who supervised the concentration camps are a particular example of this.

The Wehrmacht, by contrast, were, for the most part, little different from the Allied soldiers. They were mostly people who had joined the army out of patriotism, or people who had been conscripted and given no choice in the matter. Granted, not everything they did was honourable, but there was nothing comparable to what the SS did. Besides, there are just as many criticisms that could be made of the Allies' conduct during the War. There's no point criticising the Wehrmacht when our armies were no better.

 

[Davrel]

SEIG HEIL.. I think we need to kill everybody who says that.

What is wrong with praising victory?

 

[Simonism451]

Its (as alway's in history) not so easy to decide, like the poll suggests. Yes, they only followed orders but that is a rather weak excuse if you slaughter hundreds of civillians and defenseless Prisoners of War:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_in_Ciepiel%C3%B3w
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cz%C4%99stochowa_massacre

About the Nazi thing: Nazi is short for "Nationalsozialist", which is in fact a political thing, but more a statesystem like communism than just a party.

But yes the popcultural view of the Wehrmacht is rather unrealistic. They seldom ate babies.

 

[Simonism451]

SEIG HEIL.. I think we need to kill everybody who says that.

What is wrong with praising victory?

Context,baby,context...

Edit:Oh, and by the way its Sieg

 

[Oskar K]

SEIG HEIL.. I think we need to kill everybody who says that.

What is wrong with praising victory?

Nothing. Not just the kind of victory that brings a madman closer to killing off a whole race.

 

[arrjay93]

Its (as alway's in history) not so easy to decide, like the poll suggests. Yes, they only followed orders but that is a rather weak excuse if you slaughter hundreds of civillians and defenseless Prisoners of War:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_in_Ciepiel%C3%B3w
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cz%C4%99stochowa_massacre

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

It's not that clear cut. Really, they arent demonised for the acts they committed, although I'm not denying that soldiers from the Wehrmacht did some pretty terrible things. After all, the soviet army perpetrated its fair share of atrocities - but its not seen in the same negative light. The Wehrmacht is tainted by its association with Nazism mroe than anything else, and perhaps rightly so. For all that you can say the soldiers weren't Nazis, they were still part of an entity that was a tool of the Nazi regime, used to try and build a German empire. So, yes, judge the soldiers on their individual circumstances - and by the end of the war they were conscripts fighting for the survival of their nation more than anything else - but the Wehrmacht as an entity probably deserves the bad press.

 

[mastermarty]

the wehrmacht was just like any other army, but just with a different leader and a different phillosofy. the did the things that by there culture at the time was morely sound. they wern't evil, or anything of the kind.

 

[Doug]

I don't really know what level of involvement with the genocide they had, but regardless, they cost everyone lives, homes, and money that didn't need to be wasted by continuing to fight in regardless of the fact that the war was utterly lost for months before the Hitler did everyone a favour and shot himself.

Also, if they weren't involved with it, at least some of them had to have known what was going on and continued to follow Hitler inspite of what was happening.

 

[Sebenko]

I don't really know what level of involvement with the genocide they had, but regardless, they cost everyone lives, homes, and money that didn't need to be wasted by continuing to fight in regardless of the fact that the war was utterly lost for months before the Hitler did everyone a favour and shot himself.

Even if they had invaded all of Europe, they still wouldn't want to see their homeland invaded. Once they reached the point of "war was lost", they're not fighting for a loony dictator, they're fighting for their homes and families, and no-matter what they'd done, they'd want to defend that.

 

[Omikron009]

I've always imagined that most German soldiers were just regular people, although with all of the brainwashing and propaganda and Hitler youth and so forth there was probably a fairly large number who were evil Nazi bastards.

 

[RyQ_TMC]

Depends on what part of the Wehrmacht you're talking about... Or rather, of the entire German forces in WW2, since there were some others.

But the ironic thing is that your standard "Nazi soldiers" found as adversaries in countless films and games, i.e. the Heer infantrymen, were the LEAST ideological of the bunch. Pretty much all of them were conscripts, and they committed the least war crimes of everyone. Well, except the Luftwaffenhelfer, which were the kids employed in anti-air defense.

The SS, of course, were much, MUCH worse. And the Waffen-SS are only slightly excused because of their badass status.

About German war crimes? Yes, there were many. But the Soviets perpetrated as many, and don't get all the flak. Why? It all comes from the fact that American and British propaganda in the later stages of the war was anti-German and pro-Soviet. It just stuck.

There is also another side of the same coin - since the WW2-era Germans are usually demonized, anyone who opposed Hitler is elevated to a paragon status. Von Stauffenberg is often portrayed as heroic and selfless... Well, look him up. The Soviet partisans, who were not above pillaging villages and massacring their inhabitants, get a similar treatment.

On the other hand, however, a lot of German soldiers went through the brainwashing in Hitlerjugend and the NSDAP had an almost 10 million membership. And as far as I know, the membership in NSDAP wasn't enforced like in Communist parties in the East.

It's all complicated, way more complicated than the usual black-and-white imagery would have you believe.

 

[Good morning blues]

We can say that Nazism is evil, but we need to be careful about saying that Hitler was evil because it encourages us to see him as this monstrous figure that was completely different from us. Certainly, Hitler was a monstrous figure and destroying him and Nazism was completely imperative, but looking at him as some sort of demon encourages us to say that we are different, that evil is outside of us, that we could never be capable of such evil. It encourages moral carelessness.

I don't think that German soldiers or civilians were evil. I do think that Nazism was an expression of an especially abhorrent evil, however.

 

[Wardnath]

SEIG HEIL.. I think we need to kill everybody who says that.

Obligatory:

Spoiler

SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL SIEG HEIL

Okay, I'm done being funny.

 

[Doug]

I don't really know what level of involvement with the genocide they had, but regardless, they cost everyone lives, homes, and money that didn't need to be wasted by continuing to fight in regardless of the fact that the war was utterly lost for months before the Hitler did everyone a favour and shot himself.

Even if they had invaded all of Europe, they still wouldn't want to see their homeland invaded. Once they reached the point of "war was lost", they're not fighting for a loony dictator, they're fighting for their homes and families, and no-matter what they'd done, they'd want to defend that.

Against the Russians, I could understand that - the Russian's where in a revenging mood, after all - but the Americans and Brits? Sure, we weren't keen on the Germans at the time, but we weren't going to murder them or nowt. In fact, if the German army on the western front had just surrendered or only offered token resistance, the Western allies would have reached Berlin before the Russians and stopped the Russians from murdering, raping, and generally wrecking that half the the country - let alone occupting it for 50-odd years.

 

[Sebenko]

I don't really know what level of involvement with the genocide they had, but regardless, they cost everyone lives, homes, and money that didn't need to be wasted by continuing to fight in regardless of the fact that the war was utterly lost for months before the Hitler did everyone a favour and shot himself.

Even if they had invaded all of Europe, they still wouldn't want to see their homeland invaded. Once they reached the point of "war was lost", they're not fighting for a loony dictator, they're fighting for their homes and families, and no-matter what they'd done, they'd want to defend that.

Against the Russians, I could understand that - the Russian's where in a revenging mood, after all - but the Americans and Brits? Sure, we weren't keen on the Germans at the time, but we weren't going to murder them or nowt. In fact, if the German army on the western front had just surrendered or only offered token resistance, the Western allies would have reached Berlin before the Russians and stopped the Russians from murdering, raping, and generally wrecking that half the the country - let alone occupting it for 50-odd years.

I doubt the troops had any more information to go on than propaganda, so they wouldn't be able to tell which was worse.