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We know more about 9th Infantry than about other regiments in the Wehrmacht. Its 'Prussian' officer cadre produced two wartime field marshals, 27 generals, and a president of Germany in 1984–94. Several erstwhile officers conspired ahead of the putsch on 20 July 1944. Traditional accounts suggested that the regiment was 'untarnished' and not implicated in National Socialist crimes. This paper tests this by drawing on unexplored or little-known German, Polish, Jewish, and ex-Soviet sources. It finds that 9th Infantry did not differ from peers in supporting and joining illegalities in 1939–41. Moreover, in facilitating repression and Jewish ghettos in Poland and in shooting Soviet POWs it exceeded 'typical' criminality. Distortions seen in the traditional accounts are deconstructed. Some persist today in Germany's public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Friedrich Wegener was the author of a comprehensive description of a disease that was named Wegener's granulomatosis. In 2010, its name was changed to granulomatosis with polyangiitis (GPA), the reason being that Wegener's links to Nazism were revealed. The research was conducted between May 2021 and August 2023 and was based on the historical method (understood as defining the subject of research, critical analysis of collected historical source materials, and historiographical synthesis) using the methods of direct and indirect inference ascribed to the historical method. Wegener and his wife were members of numerous Nazi organizations. He was rewarded for his stance by the German Reich. Together with his family, he lived in very comfortable conditions for the standards of the time, unattainable for the average person. He described himself as a frontline combatant in the Nazi invasion of Poland. Friedrich Wegener's links with Nazism were more extensive than has hitherto been known. The links involved his professional and private life. They testify to his membership in numerous Nazi organizations, as well as his active involvement in the activities of various institutions and communities of the German Reich and his overt expression of support for Hitler. Wegener's numerous accolades from the German Reich providing him with professional, material and personal benefits were proof of his links with the Nazi movement. Wegener's association with Nazism helped him to advance his career, and to attain a high social status and quality of life, both before the outbreak and during the Second World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the Europeanization of West German associations of Wehrmacht veterans in the 1950s. Using archival sources concerning the foundation of a European veterans' umbrella organisation, the article argues that the veterans' attempts at political reassertion in the post-war decades cannot be understood without accounting for their European dimension. Indeed, the veterans considered their European outreach to be a core pillar of their 'politics of honour', which manifested itself mainly in the agitation for the war criminals in Allied custody. Thus, aiming to establish themselves as effective and legitimate interest representatives, the veterans Europeanized. This process was consciously modelled after the ongoing process of integration while simultaneously exhibiting distinct characteristics stemming from the veterans themselves. The article tracks the veterans' transnational interactions, their competitive dynamics in West German associational politics and the veterans' associational interests to explain their specific form of an alternative Europeanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In January 1940, the Wehrmacht had only a two-month supply of torpedo oil, an irreplaceable lubricant derived solely from the feet and shinbones of slaughtered cattle. The Wehrmacht resolved this shortage by appointing the man responsible for its supply during the First World War: Alfons Knetsch. This case study shows not only the importance of knowledge transfer from one war to the other but also how competing industrial interests shaped Nazi recycling policy and how an efficient, vigorously managed recycling organization could buy time for the research and development of substitutes, overcoming seemingly impossible raw material bottlenecks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the scope of the offered publication, the author states that the battles of Kryvyi Rih and Nikopol are a component of the Battle of the Dnieper, as their course is connected with the elimination of the Nikopol bridgehead, the overcoming of the river south of the Dnieper, the expansion of bridgeheads on its right bank, and the establishment of Soviet control over the Nikopol and Kryvyi Rih industrial basins German-Soviet confrontation in the Kryvyi Rih and Nikopol directions is much wider in time than is generally considered in the historiography of the war, and covers the events not from the end of January to the end of February 1944, but dates back to October 15, 1943 — February 29, 1944. The researcher proves that the extremely difficult and long-term struggle of the opponents for Kryvyi Rih and Nikopol was due to two reasons — a possible Wehrmacht counterattack in the lower reaches of the Dnieper to unblock the 17th German Army in the Crimea and the need to control iron ore and manganese ore deposits, as the main resources for the defense industry of both the USSR and Germany. The author emphasizes that the battle of Kryvyi Rih and Nikopol lasted two and a half times longer than the “world-historical” battle of Kursk. Within the scope of the article, the issue of revising the postulates rooted in Soviet and post-Soviet historical science about the turning point in the German-Soviet confrontation on the Eastern Front, which allegedly took place near Stalingrad and the Kursk salient in the first half — the middle of 1943, is raised. The article suggests that the Red Army actually succeeded in breaking the German military machine not at the Kursk Offensive, but during the Battle of the Dnieper. The study was prepared on the basis of previously unknown (once secret) archival documents and materials published in the post-Soviet period, which makes the arguments and conclusions presented here relevant.

The article examines the phenomenon of the “deserters of the flag,” i.e. the defection of the Wehrmacht soldiers to the Red Army. The chronological scope of the article is limited to the period between 1941 and 1943, which is due to the existence of a significant number of archival documents that contain information about the facts of deflection of the enemy’s military personnel to the Red Army during this specific period in the fonds of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (TsAMO) as well as the corresponding captured Wehrmacht documents stored in the US National Archives. This circumstance allows us to compare the attitude of the warring parties to the phenomenon under study. In particular, the questionnaires filled in by the Soviet side for prisoners of war necessarily contained information about voluntary surrender or defection to the Red Army. Based on the analysis of documents from Russian and foreign archives, the number of defectors was determined and the motives for such a strategy of behavior of military personnel of the German army and its allies were identified. It is noted that instances of defection of Wehrmacht military personnel to the enemy’s side were recorded even during the period of the most successful German operations in 1941–42. It is emphasized that the number of defectors increased significantly during any crises at the Eastern Front. According to the authors, when the decision to cross the front line was made, personal rather than ideological motives played the main role. A significant part of the Wehrmacht defectors included military personnel of non-German ethnicity, who were less resistant to the effects of unfavorable developments at the front.

In this article, the author examines little-studied and controversial aspects of the issue of defectors from among soldiers of the German army and its allies on the Eastern Front during the Great Patriotic War. Special attention is given to the methodology and source study of the problem under consideration as well as to the analysis of the ideological and psychological prerequisites for the phenomenon of defecting to the enemy. The author comes to the conclusion that a comprehensive study of the problem of defectors opens up new perspectives for studying the history of military captivity during the Great Patriotic War.

Captive Red Army soldiers made up the majority of victims of Nazi Germany's starvation policy against Soviet civilians and other non-combatants and thus constituted the largest single victim group of the German war of annihilation against the Soviet Union. Indeed, Soviet prisoners of war were the largest victim group of all National Socialist annihilation policies after the European Jews. Before the launch of Operation Barbarossa, it was clear to the Wehrmacht planning departments on exactly what scale they could expect to capture Soviet troops. Yet, they neglected to make the necessary preparations for feeding and sheltering the captured soldiers, who were viewed by the economic staffs and the military leadership alike as direct competitors of German troops and the German home front for precious food supplies. The number of extra mouths to feed was incompatible with German war aims. The obvious limitations on their freedom of movement and the relative ease with which large numbers could be segregated and their rations controlled were crucial factors in the death of over 3 million Soviet POWs, the vast majority directly or indirectly as a result of deliberate policies of neglect, undernourishment, and starvation while in the 'care' of the Wehrmacht. The most reliable figures for the mortality of Soviet POWs in German captivity reveal that up to 3.3 million died from a total of just over 5.7 million captured between June 1941 and February 1945 — a proportion of almost 58 percent. Of these, 2 million were already dead by the beginning of February 1942. In English, there is still neither a single monograph nor a single edited volume dedicated to the subject. This article now provides the first detailed stand-alone synthesis in that language addressing the whole period from 1941 to 1945. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In 1935, the Nazi Party promulgated the Reich citizenship law, which, to protect the purity of the Volksgemeinschaft , denaturalized numerous people who perceived themselves as German. Despite this perceived threat to the national body, the Third Reich drafted some mixed-race men to serve in the Wehrmacht during World War II. Traditionally, scholars have focused their studies of mixed-race veterans on the so-called Jewish Mischlinge who served in the Wehrmacht. This article expands the aperture by examining the oral history testimony of Hans Hauck, a Black German Wehrmacht veteran whose wartime experiences present a complex story of a man who claimed to be German despite legal structures and normative ideals about Germanness that excluded him. Drawing on Hauck's oral history testimonies regarding two periods of his military service, I argue that Hauck used his body, symbols, and physical spaces to seek recognition as a legitimate claimant of Germanness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The key to the successful operation of any army is the well-organized work of its units responsible for counterintelligence. In the Wehrmacht, this function was assigned to abwehr-3 – one of the departments of abwehr (German military intelligence and counterintelligence). The source base is based on captured German documents, a set of which was found in the funds of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time documents are introduced into scientific circulation that were previously inaccessible to the scientific community and the public. The article analyzes the methods used by the Abwehr-3 in the period from June 1941 to February 1942 in the occupied Soviet territories. The activities of the German counterintelligence to suppress enemy propaganda, the Abwehr method of preserving state secrets, and instructions on the behavior of Wehrmacht soldiers in captivity that were in force during the Second World War are considered. Such an Abwehr-3 method as conspiracy is considered in detail, the main requirements for the storage of secret documents in the Wehrmacht are given. It is shown that officers of the Abwehr-3 performed the role of censors in Nazi Germany. The main scientific result: the authors showed that the work of the German counterintelligence was strictly regulated and placed on a fairly high methodological level. This conclusion emphasizes the fact that on the fields of the secret war, Soviet intelligence was confronted by a serious enemy, which was possible to defeat only with high professionalism and devotion to duty.

This article examines the role of local, female propagandists utilized by the German army on the Eastern Front during WWII. Although the work they undertook aligned with postwar notions of collaboration, the propagandists' experiences at the hands of the Wehrmacht, in a context of a violent war and repressive occupation, constitutes coerced labour in multiple forms. Regardless of the women's motivations for working for the Wehrmacht, they entered a relationship of domination and dependence with the occupation force. While female propagandists numbered far fewer than their male counterparts, they held a particular importance for German high command who believed that their "feminine" traits, such as empathy and charm, helped the Wehrmacht influence and control the largely female civilian population. At the same time, their work on the frontlines encouraging Red Army soldiers to defect crossed traditional gender boundaries. In this task too, the women were valued for their gender with German authorities believing that Soviet soldiers, largely deprived of female contact, would be particularly receptive to the charm of a woman's voice. Such coerced labor on behalf of the Wehrmacht rendered these women vulnerable not only to German violence, but also to Soviet accusations of collaboration and its associated reprisals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last months of the Second World War, as the Red Army approached Berlin, the Wehrmacht suffered catastrophic losses, resulting in thousands of war graves on East German soil. In the aftermath of the war, the Soviet Occupation Zone (1945–9) and the German Democratic Republic (1949–90) committed to a socialist 'politics of history' which centred on the liberation of Germany by the Red Army, disowning the German fallen. This article, based on my PhD research and current British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, outlines how the central authorities of the Soviet Occupation Zone and the GDR managed the thousands of German Wehrmacht war burials on East German territory. I focus, in particular, on how Wehrmacht war burials came to constitute political and ideological liabilities, prompting concerns about their appropriations by the German Lutheran Church and West Germany. In doing so, I uncover a little-known yet highly significant dimension of the transition between the Third Reich and the German Democratic Republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial, as forças armadas alemãs incorporaram às suas forças um número significativo de homens (voluntários e conscritos) sem a cidadania alemã, especialmente alemães étnicos e cidadãos de países ocupados pela Alemanha. O presente artigo visa apresentar o complexo sistema pelo qual milhões de estrangeiros acabaram participando do esforço de guerra alemão, suas motivações e a do Estado alemão. Uma especial ênfase é dedicada às especificidades do sistema nazista (especialmente a presença ostensiva da pirâmide racial e à divisão dos estrangeiros entre o Exército regular e a Waffen-SS) e à comparação com outros sistemas de incorporação de estrangeiros nas forças militares (como os Aliados ocidentais e a União Soviética), de forma a levantar elementos para discutir o caráter dual do Estado nazista e suas especificidades.

Copyright of Kaunas History Chronicle is the property of Vytautas Magnus University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The essay focuses on one of the many factors at play in the summer of 1943 in Italy: the arrival of German troops. Using mainly sources conserved in the BundesarchivMilitärarchiv (BA-MA) in Freiburg, it outlines the dynamics with which some of the Wehrmacht units were deployed in the weeks following 25 July in two sectors of Italian territory: South Tyrol and western Liguria. The first case highlights the German commands’ concern over the equipment and effective preparation of their troops and their fear of possible Italian reactions to German disarmament. The second case shows how the Germans’ attention was largely catalysed by the possible Allied landing on the Ligurian coast and the directives received for the disarmament of the Regio Esercito in the event of a failure to react against the landing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is dedicated to the key issues of the run-up and beginning of the first period of the German-Soviet war, which are reflected in foreign historiography. The authors of the publication tried historically reconstruct the events that preceded Nazi Germany’s attack on the USSR, the military confrontation on the Soviet-German battlefield from June 22 to December 1941 based on the most famous works of researchers from neighboring countries and beyond.The publication attempts to cover a wide range of problems: secret diplomacy, political maneuvers of the USSR and Germany in advance of the war, strategic plans of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army and the Wehrmacht, the course of military operations on the Eastern Front in the summer and winter of 1941.The authors of the publication mainly focus on documents and materials belonging to direct participants of the events, well-known scholars and politicians. The facts and analysis of historical events presented by them cannot remain outside the scientific controversy. The geopolitical plans of the Nazis, who posed a threat to the entire world civilization, seem impressive.The article refutes most of the assessments and key conclusions from the times of Soviet historiography. Important historical sources included in the scientific discourse deny the conceptual issues of the Soviet historical narrative about the nature of international relations on the run-up of the war and the initial period of the war with Nazi Germany. The authors explain their critical attitude to the publications of the post-Soviet era, which, first, do not pass the source test, and second, do not meet the principles of humanism, democracy and tolerance, which are inherent in the ideas of the 21st century.To obtain unbiased results and conclusions, the authors of the publication relied on various methods of scientific research: content analysis, synthesis, historical-comparative, historical-chronological, critical and comparative analyses.The authors believe that this publication is not only of scientific and cognitive interest, but provides a deep understanding of the lessons of the past war, which are important for the current security of the Ukrainian state and formation of patriotic consciousness of society, unbiased evolvement of its historical memory. The presented results of research in foreign historiography are a strong argument for modern Ukrainian discourse.The main visions of the authors meet the consolidation of the current scientific trend of Ukraine — glorification of the significant role of the Ukrainian people in the victory over Nazi.

The article presents a generalized experience of technical re-equipment of the Red Army artillery on the eve and during the Great Patriotic War. Attention is focused on the role and significance of scientific artillery schools in the technical re-equipment of scientific artillery schools, new facts and documents little-known to the general reader are presented, an assessment of Soviet artillery by the allies and its enemies is given. The authors come to the conclusion that this experience has not lost its significance in modern conditions, especially when the bodies of state power and military administration solve problems of further increasing the firepower and improving the missile forces and artillery of the Land Forces of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, their rearmament with highly effective means of firepower. defeat and automated control systems for reconnaissance. In preparing the material, historical-genetic, historical-comparative, historical-retrospective and other methods of historical research were used.

In October 1943, the three Müller brothers fled across the Alps to neutral Switzerland. During their leave from the front, they had decided to desert the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS. One of the brothers, Erwin Mailer, returned to Vorarlberg in June 1944, where he successfully hid until the end of the war. Upon his return, he shot and killed an auxiliary border employee. This case study examines the social, military, and geographical spaces of experience that led to the three brothers' successful desertion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents results of a case study on draft evasion in the Vorarlberg village of Krumbach during World War Two. A remarkable number of conscripted men from this agrarian and conservative Catholic community deserted from the Wehrmacht during the war or tried to avoid military service by committing self-mutilation or applying for indispensability. Before the arrival of the French army in early May 1945, they also participated in resistance actions against the SS and then in the political reconstruction of the communal administration. Based on files of the Wehrmacht justice system and the special justice system of the Nazi state as well as documents from local archives and interviews, five cases are here reconstructed. The study shows that the conscripts' possibilities for action depended both on solidarity in their social environment and on the behavior of functionaries of the Nazi state at the regional and local levels. Conforming and nonconforming actions did not confront each other abruptly. Rather, the actions of the local commander of the gendarmerie illus trate how his ambivalence enabled draft evictions or mitigated persecution. Moreover, the article shows that the deserters of Krumbach were not necessarily socially marginalized. Rather, they belonged to families that had formed part of mainstream society before 1938 and again after 1945. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is estimated that between 25,000 and 30,000 German-speaking South Tyroleans served in the German armed forces during World War Two, including up to 5,000 in the Waffen-SS. There is also talk of 8,000 fallen soldiers. Meanwhile, the number of South Tyrolean deserters was last estimated at 400. Based on the literature and with recourse to the extensive collection of material of the South Tyrolean project funded by the South Tyrolean Provincial Archives, the article first highlights the (structural) history of the mobilization and assignment of German-speaking (and also Ladin-speaking) South Tyroleans. An attempt is then made to classify the case histories documented so far in the project with regard to acts of refusal according to certain central factors and characteristics. For this purpose, archival sources that have been unused to date will also be consulted. In conclusion, the negotiation of the phenomenon of "refusal" in the region after the end of the war will be examined against the background of the region-specific history and post-history of National Socialism and in relation to the German and Austrian examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents results from empirical research on deserters from the Wehrmacht and draft evaders in the former Alpine regions of Nazi Germany during World War Two. Based on research in state and private archives in Austria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, and Slovenia, a sample of more than 2,000 cases of desertion and draft evasion was formed in order to outline the extent and basic structures of the phenomenon. The focus of the study is on the territory of the present-day Austrian provinces of Tyrol and Vorarlberg and the Italian Autonomous Province of Bolzano/South Tyrol. About 1-2 percent of the soldiers from the study area evaded service in the Wehrmacht. The interregional comparison shows region-specific variants of the escape movements: Vorarlberg was mostly a transit area for military service refugees from the entire Reich due to its border with Switzerland while in Tyrol and South Tyrol, soldiers retreated to Alpine areas that were difficult to access and relied on help from their milieus of origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Apart from million fold death and suffering, the battle of Stalingrad is also a testament to the failure of the military elite who did not oppose the criminal Nazi regime even when its unscrupulous actions were directed against subordinate soldiers and their own person. This happened upon the Volga not for the first and by far not the last time. On the contrary, Stalingrad was to become the writing on the wall for a German warfare that increasingly lacked military sensibility and ideological alternatives. In this respect, it is not completely without justification that today the historical place is generally regarded as a code for the turn of World War II in the European theatre. The efficacy of the Battle of Stalingrad in the German culture of remembrance has various causes. The course of military events was just one of them. In particular, because the German military planning and conduct of operations needs to be viewed with scepticism, the staging of the collapse of the 6th Army became all the more important. From the very beginning, "Stalingrad" was more of a "felt" turn of the war than an actual one. This was another reason why the perishing of an entire German army put the Nazi regime under pressure for an explanation which they wanted to solve primarily with pathos. The heroisation of "fighting to the last" worked surprisingly well until 1945 and was reflected in the Germans persevering until the end of the war despite the increasingly obvious defeat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article examines the role of Soviet prisoners of war and Russian émigrés that fought in Slovenia during World War II. The largest group consisted of Red Army soldiers who switched allegiances after being captured and agreed to fight for the Third Reich. They were joined by White émigrés who remained hostile to communism. But some émigrés and Soviets joined Slovenian partisans in the struggle against the occupiers, with most of them previously serving in Germanled formations. Based on archival documents and published sources, the author provides an overview of such units and studies their impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the vast academic and popular interest in the Dieppe raid of 19 August 1942, there remains a curious oversight of the German side of the story. This contribution interrogates German sources in order to explore the Dieppe air battle and its consequences from the perspective of the German armed forces. The paper ultimately demonstrates that the Germans learnt much about the role of air power in coastal defence from their experiences at Dieppe, but that the implementation of those lessons was lacking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whenever one thinks of the World War II, the image of dark menacing panzers cutting deep swathes into enemy forces comes up to the mind. No amount of interpretation and overinterpretation can belittle the extraordinary role-played by the panzers in World War II. Similarly, despite the presence of numerous good works by various historians and introduction of exotic methodologies, Professor Dennis Showalter's place in the world of academic writings on World War II can never be marginalized. The present article humbly attempts to highlight one aspect of Professor Showalter's research: history of tanks during the World War II. This essay has two sections. The first section evaluates Showalter's three works dealing with armour during the World War II. In the next section, the present author, inspired by Showalter's works on armoured war, attempts to recount the evolution of armoured branch in the Indian Army until the end of World War II. Indian tank units, as this article argues, played a crucial role in the capture of Meiktila and the subsequent 'Race to Rangoon'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper examines the arsenal of psychological tools and methods employed by the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front in the period from May through July 1944 based on materials from the operational and intelligence reports of the headquarters of the Red Army’s 128th Rifle Division. Principal use was made of materials from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense (Podolsk, Russian Federation). This was the first time the documents had been introduced into general circulation. Methodologically, in reliance on the principles of objectivity and historicism, the author sifted through every archive material on the subject available. Importantly, use was also made of a systems approach, with all the relevant propaganda influence facts being arranged and systematized based on the chronological principle. The author’s conclusion is that the Germans’ extensive use of means of psychological influence in respect of the 128th Rifle Division between May and July 1944 suggests that the Germans were undertaking a full-scale psychological operation in the area. In that period, the Germans employed a whole range of propaganda methods and tools from leaflets and audio broadcasting to collaborationist units of the Russian Liberation Army on the front line. Neither before nor after that period had the 128th Division been subjected to a psychological impact that extensive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Of the up to eighteen million men who served in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War, ten million were deployed at one time or another between 1941 and 1944 in the conflict against the Soviet Union, a theatre of widespread and sustained mass violence. In order to determine how extensive complicity in Nazi crimes was among the mass of the regular German soldiers, it is necessary first of all to define what constitutes a criminal undertaking. The sheer brutality of the German conduct of war and occupation in the Soviet Union has overshadowed many activities that would otherwise be rightly held up as criminal acts.

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Between autumn 1943 and autumn 1944, the Wehrmacht's 2nd Panzer Army applied novel methods to stem the ever-growing tide of Yugoslavia's partisan movement. During the first two years of the uprising, the German doctrine for combating the guerrillas was based almost entirely on brute force; in battlefield terms, this amounted to persistent use of classic large-scale encirclement operations aimed at breaking particularly dangerous enemy concentrations. After it had become clear that this wasn't working, the Germans slowly began applying a more diversified approach in late 1943, including more reliance on small unit tactics, flexible operational planning, and subversive propaganda. Although initially successful, these methods came too late to make a strategic impact on the course of the Yugoslavia campaign. Furthermore, they could not offset the effects of Berlin's long-standing refusal to dedicate more resources to this secondary theater of war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of the Treaty of Versailles the provisions concerning the issue of limitation of the armed forces were imposed on Germany. These provisions were unilaterally terminated by Germany two years after Adolf Hitler had come to power. There was introduced general and compulsory military service. On 21st May 1935, Hitler – as the Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor – signed the secret Reich Defence Law, which gave the Wehrmacht command wide powers to expand the army. Thus, the intensive development of the German army was initiated. After the Nazi Party came to power in Germany, gaining new information by the Polish military intelligence became increasingly difficult. It was connected with the expansion of the German counter-intelligence services, especially the Gestapo, as well as the police supervision over the German society. Through good operational work of the Polish intelligence the Polish side already before the outbreak of the war was relatively well familiarized with the particular phases of the overall German army’s armaments, as well as the German operational doctrine and methods of warfare.

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Copyright of Journal of Contemporary History / Časopis za Suvremenu Povijest is the property of Croatia Institute for History and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

On 22 June 1941, the Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union. Although the most important strategic targets were situated in the south of the USSR, the Army High Command believed that the campaign would be decided by the conquest of Moscow. Therefore, the focal point of the German attack was in the central sector of the Eastern Front. In the southern sector, however, the Red Army had gathered its strongest forces and offered particularly tenacious resistance. Despite heavy losses, the Soviet soldiers were able to considerably delay the offensive of Army Group South already in the border battles and thus thwart the German operational plans already in the first days of the campaign. Therefore, the border battles in the southern sector of the Eastern Front contributed significantly to the failure of Operation 'Barbarossa' and ultimately to the German defeat on the Eastern Front. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Wehrmacht as institution was involved in the murder of the Jews during Operation Barbarossa. However, it was very rare that individual units participated directly in the genocide. The 707th Infantry was an exception though as approximately over 10,000 Jews were killed under its command in Belarus in 1941/42. The personal diary of Colonel Carl von Andrian, a regimental commander in this division, gives insight into the mindset of a perpetrator. Andrian harboured strict anti-semitic views and did not protest when a limited number of Jews were shot as 'reprisals'. However, he rejected systematic genocide, particularly the murder of women and children, and forbade his regiment to participate in these killings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Durante décadas el mito de la “Wehrmacht limpia” sirvió a la sociedad alemana como una forma de evitar enfrentarse a los crímenes del Nazismo, impidiendo que los soldados alemanes se viesen implicados en la guerra de aniquilación en el Este, pero evitando también que se representase la imagen del perpetrador. La exposición Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1944 (1995-1999) fue la primera ocasión en que la sociedad alemana se enfrentó directamente con esos crímenes, que implicaban a una gran parte de la misma. Y, por primera vez, se ponía rostro a algunos de los perpetradores de los crímenes. La exposición abrió nuevas líneas de investigación para los historiadores sobre la mentalidad de los soldados, fuentes materiales, motivos de los perpetradores, etc. La reacción ante la exposición fomentó un debate historiográfico que ha permitido que se enfrente más abiertamente con su pasado, un paso más en la Vergangenheitsbewältigung sobre el pasado nazi. La investigación sobre la identidad social de los perpetradores se acaba de iniciar, pero las narrativas están desarrollándose de forma similar a la del Holocausto a mediados de los 1970. La controversia demostró, una vez más y como señala Nolte, que el pasado “no ha pasado”.