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Wehrmacht - War crimes

Wehrmacht - War crimes: Encyclopedia II - Wehrmacht - War crimes

While the predominant number of war crimes were attributed to Nazi organizations like the Schutzstaffel (SS), a number of Wehrmacht officers were charged with war crimes at the end of the war. In particular, OKW commander-in-chief Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and chief of operations staff Alfred Jodl were indicted and tried for war crimes by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremburg in 1946. Both were convicted of all charges, sentenced to death and executed by hanging. The International Military Tribunal's judgement, however, ...

Wehrmacht: Encyclopedia II - Wehrmacht - War crimes

Wehrmacht - War crimes

While the predominant number of war crimes were attributed to Nazi organizations like the Schutzstaffel (SS), a number of Wehrmacht officers were charged with war crimes at the end of the war. In particular, OKW commander-in-chief Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and chief of operations staff Alfred Jodl were indicted and tried for war crimes by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremburg in 1946. Both were convicted of all charges, sentenced to death and executed by hanging. The International Military Tribunal's judgement, however, was that the neither the Wehrmacht General Staff nor High Command itself were criminal organisations in the same sense as other state or party organizations like the Gestapo and SS.

Other lesser Wehrmacht commanders were tried for war crimes by U.S. military courts in the High Command Trial.

The war crimes of which Wehrmacht officers were accused include:

September Campaign in Poland Wehrmacht units killed at least 16,376 (confirmed Polish civilian losses) Poles during the September Campaign through executions, field incidents, terror bombing of open cities or murder. After the end of hostilities, during the Wehrmacht's administration of Poland, which went on until October 25 1939, 531 towns and villages were burned, the Wehrmacht carried out 714 mass executions and a number of other crimes. Altogether, it is estimated that 50,000 civilians had perished including 7000 Jews^[1]. Destruction of Warsaw Up to 250,000 civilians were killed. Human shields were used by German forces during the fighting. During the Wola Massacre 50,000 civilians were murdered to intimidate the Poles into surrender. Commissar Order (Kommissarbefehl) The order cast the war against Russia as one of ideologies and racial differences, and provided for the immediate liquidation of political commissars of the Red Army. The order stated that German soldiers guilty of violating international laws would be "excused". The order was formulated on Hitler's behalf by the Wehrmacht command and distributed to field commanders. Barbarossa Decree (Barbarossa-Erlass) The decree, issued by Keitel a few weeks before Operation Barbarossa, exempted punishable offences committed by enemy civilians (in Russia) from the jurisdiction of military justice. Suspects were to be brought before an officer who would decide if they were to be shot. Prosecution of offenses against civilians by members of the Wehrmacht was decreed to be "not required" unless necessary for maintenance of discipline. Wehrmacht POW camps Beginning in September 1939, prisoners from Poland and later the USSR suffered in imprisonment due to lack of food, clean water, medicine and brutality by Wehrmacht guards. As the war dragged on, the prisoners in the East were seen as a source of labor. As a result, over 750,000 men (including officers) were re-deployed starting in 1943 in mining, farms, and armament factories. Although these POWs labored under harsh conditions and although the use of such prisoners in armaments industries was a violation of international law, the need for labor saved many Russian prisoners from being marked for the concentration camps and almost-certain death. Massacres of prisoners-of-war Even in the West, a number of Allied war prisoners were killed by their captors, such as in the Malmédy massacre in Belgium. Some 50 British officers who had escaped from Stalag Luft III were shot after recapture, and 15 uniformed U. S. Army officers and men were shot without trial in Italy. Hitler's Commando Order, issued in 1942, provided "justification" for the shooting of enemy commandoes whether uniformed or not. Night and Fog Decree (Nacht und Nebel Erlass) This decree, issued by Hitler in 1941 and disseminated along with a directive from Keitel, was operative within the conquered territories in the west (Belgium, France, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands). The decree allowed those "endangering German security" to be seized and to make them disappear without a trace. Keitel's directive stated that "efficient intimidation can only be achieved either by capital punishment or by measures by which the relatives of the criminal and the population do not know his fate." Other actions In Italy, Italian soldiers not supporting the German cause were massacred by German forces on the Greek island of Cephalonia. Italian villages ware razed and their inhabitants murdered during anti-partisan operations. In a number of occupied countries, the Wehrmacht's response to partisan attacks was to take and shoot hostages, up to 100 hostages for every German killed. In issuing orders for hostage-taking, Keitel stated that "it is important that these should include well-known personalities or members of their families." A Wehrmacht commander in France stated that "the better known the hostages to be shot, the greater will be the deterrent effect on the perpetrators." Author William Shirer stated that, in all, over 30,000 hostages are believed to have been executed in the West alone, and the Wehrmacht's hostage policy was pursued in Greece, Scandinavia, and Poland as well.

It should be noted that some members of the Allied armed forces were also accused of war crimes (such as the Dachau Massacre) during World War II. However, these acts were not following official policy endorsed by Allied commanders, and were relatively isolated in nature.