I don’t know which forum to put this in. i don’t know if its a debate, or a factual question or what.
I was watching the history channel a few months ago and they said that German soldiers/grunts were generally respectful of the people they invaded and got along well with them. It was the SS and Gestapo that were responsible for the travesties people associate with nazi germany, not the German foot soldiers. Is there any truth to this idea? I assume that the same can’t be said for Russian and Japanese foot soldiers based on what I have heard about WW2 and what they did in mass but is there truth to the idea that the german foot soldiers themselves were not too bad, or at least not much worse than Allied soldiers in regards to conduct during the war (not including russian soldiers)?
Actually, from everything I have read about the Eastern Front, most authors agree that the Russian front line (or assault troops) were generally well behaved in regard to civilians, it was the second-line occupation troops that gave them the bad reputation.
The inhabitants of the baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia at first looked to the German invaders as liberators from the Russians.
The communists had invaded those countries in (I beleive) 1937 and forced collectivization, redistributing things like tractors and automobiles, immigrating Poles and Russians into those countries to supervise the collectivization and form a new government. When the SS came along to exterminate the Jews, gypsies, mental patients and communists in many Lithuanian towns the local police actually carried out the work and the SS only had to observe and report. They were glad the Nazis were removing their oppressors, having no idea how repressive the Nazi regime would become.
Some SS einsatzgruppe personnel involved in this were sadists. Some requested transfer and were sent to combat units in Russia with no questions asked. Some considered it a ‘sacred duty’ and carried it out with fanatic zeal. Some tried to be professional and leave a decent impression of German culture.
Later, beginning in (once again, too lazy to look it up) 1942 SS units were formed from local peoples: All Latvian, all Dutch, all Belorussian, all Ukranian SS units to fight the Russians. In the end Hitler’s bodyguard was composed of entirely non-germans from these units.
If I’m wrong, I trust that Tamerlane will be along to correct me.
In general I believe that the OP has it pretty much right. I would add that until D-Day there wasn’t much action on the western front, which may put a different light on the threat of being sent to the eastern front. Germans and Russians don’t have a history of getting along, plus it boiled down to a war between two of the villians in world history, Hitler and Stalin. Not the setting for a pretty picture.
The regular army, the Heer, killed a huge number of innocent people - millions of them, in all likelihood. They also supervised and commanded “armies” from places like Croatia and Ukraine that were more interested in settling old scores against civilians than in fighting other soldiers. While the SS was responsible for the organized apparatus of genocide, the old story that the regular army didn’t murder copious numbers of people is one hundred percent fiction, which has carried a persistent popularity in part because
A) Post-war German officers liked to pretend this stuff didn’t happen, and
B) People like to think it’s only a minority of people who would ever do that sort of thing.
On the Eastern Front, especially, the army showed very little regard for the humanity of those they conquered.
I think the answer is somewhat mixed. If the Germans regarded you as civilized (France) or distantly related to old Prussia (Lith, Lat, Est) and happy to be Jew and Communist-free, the regulars were about as decent as any army could be. The French certainly fell in line well enough. In North Africa, the Afrika Korps was known to be very “honorable” in exchanging captives and letting medics do their thing, but to be honest, I don’t know how much that had to do with Rommel’s policy, as much as it had to do with the fact that the North African campaign went back and forth across hundreds of miles of desert, and holding captives just wasn’t a reality for either side - but the Brits still regarded the AK as decent enough after the war.
But if you were a non-German (namely, Slavic) person, you were pretty boned. Based on Soviet policy, you were a Communist if you lived there, and the Germans regarded them as such. There was a lot of suffering on that front, caused by both sides. Basically, the Germans came in and killed everyone who didn’t support them, then the Russians came back and killed everyone who supported the Germans, and if you happened to live through that, you were plain lucky.
I don’t know if I would villify the German footsoldier that much. SS, certainly, and the “conventional” German divisions had SS folk with them. Most of them were probably just soldiers. It is curious to hear interviews with soldiers who served in Hitler’s army. Hell, it is curious to hear interviews with anyone who lived under Hitler.
The Arabs and Muslims were loved by Hitler (He referred to Arabs as his ‘Aryan brothers’) and the Bosnian and Albanian Muslims happily organized into SS death-squads and exterminated thousands of innocent Serbs and Greeks with great glee. Egypt and Jordan proudly flew the swastika flag and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem pledged to Hitler that he would to to the Jews in Israel what Hitler had done to the Jews in Europe. (He even toured the death camps personally.)
It is no surprise that most of the Arab world hates Israel and the Jews with such Nazi-like hatred: the whole Arab and Muslim world was SOLIDLY on the side of the Nazis during that war.
Well, as far as treatment of POW’s went, the Germans were better than the Japs or the Russians. Really, the Heer tried to fight a “legal” war. As many atrocities can be laid to the feet of the Allies.
Still there was a large volume of war crimes by regular German forces, as documented by the Verbrechen der Wehrmacht exhibition of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research - not everything can be blamed on SS, Einsatzgruppen and local allies. Soviet POWs were not accorded Geneva Convention rights and treated much worse than Western Allied prisoners. For example, Bergen-Belsen was was a camp for Soviet POWs before it became a concentration camp. It could be used for the latter purpose because it was not needed anymore for the former.
Exactly so. My father was a British POW in the hands of the Germans from 1940-1945 (he was part of the rearguard at Dunkirk whose task was to slow down the Germans while the bulk of the forces made good their escape).
He often told me that the prison guards (regular German army) were friendly and treated them as equals. Not so the poor Russian POWs, who were regarded as <i>untermenschen</i> and dealt with accordingly.
I saw the same program. They did all the major foot soldiers in a series starting with ancient Egyptians. I believe it was on Discovery Time, a channel owned by the New York Times.
My Grandparents, Aunt, Uncle and Father survived WWII in Belgium. My grandparents and Father and Brother would tell stories of the occupation. The German soldiers, for the most part treated them poorly and all pretty much looted anything they had. My Grandparents were part of a human(read Jewish or political ememy of Germany) smuggling ring. There were some close calls but luckily they survived, or I wouldn’t be writing this.
We should be wary of revisionism… its been quite common to exempt the regular army of the worst atrocities and to blame the SS “fanatics”. Its a way of saying the german people weren’t commiting war crimes… or they were unaware. Its hard to imagine there wasn’t some complicity at some level. Though I’d hardly say germans were fervent nazis one and all.
Still overall I imagine german troops were well disciplined and professional… not wanton destroying except against those propaganda made to be less than sub humans. (slavs) I don’t think there was much control in order to avoid abuse though.
I read the book on French wine during the war... and clearly the occupation troops in France slowly but steadily became bothersome... and as resistance increased... so did German heavy hand too. The presence of the troops itself makes for rising conflicts (hhmmm I've seen this recently ?)
My uncle was captured in Normandy and spent the remainder of the war in a German POW camp. He said he was well treated and ate as well as the guards did. One factor may have been that the guards were mostly combat veterans that had been too badly inured to return to the fighting - a bit of “There but for the grace of God” perhaps.
Panzer Division “Das Reich” massacred civilians in the towns of Tulle and Oradour-sur-Glane in reprisal for French resistance.
In Oradour-sur-Glane the men were locked in barns, shot and burned. The 400 women and children were locked in the church which was razed to the ground.
Reporter Max Hastings, who interviewed the commanders after the war found that they were not only unapologetic, but that they expressed surprise that anyone should expect them to be, since “that was the kind of thing that happened all the time on the eastern front”
