WikiMili
unified armed forces of Germany from 1935 to 1945
Emblem of the Wehrmacht, the Balkenkreuz , a stylized version of the Iron Cross seen in varying proportions
Reichskriegsflagge , the war flag and naval ensign of the Wehrmacht (1938–45 version)
Gott mit uns [1]
Disbanded
20 September 1945 [2] [lower-alpha 1]
Service branches
Heer (army)
Kriegsmarine (navy)
Luftwaffe (air force)
Maybach II, Wünsdorf
Adolf Hitler (first)
Karl Dönitz (last)
Werner von Blomberg (last)
Minister of War
Chief of the Armed Forces High Command
Military age
Reaching military
age annually
700,000 (1935) [5]
Active personnel
18,000,000 (total served) [6]
19 billion ℛℳ (1939) (€72 billion in 2009)
89 billion ℛℳ (1944) (€304 billion in 2009) [lower-alpha 2]
Percent of GDP
25% (1939) [8]
Domestic suppliers
Alkett
Henschel & Son
MAN SE
Foreign suppliers
History of Germany during World War II
Army ranks
Kriegsmarine ranks
Luftwaffe ranks
The Wehrmacht (German pronunciation: [ˈveːɐ̯maxt] ( listen ), lit. defence force) was the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer (army), the Kriegsmarine (navy) and the Luftwaffe (air force). The designation "Wehrmacht" replaced the previously used term Reichswehr , and was the manifestation of the Nazi regime's efforts to rearm Germany to a greater extent than the Treaty of Versailles permitted. [11]
Personnel and recruitment
Women in the Wehrmacht
Coexistence with Waffen-SS
Theatres and campaigns
Eastern theatre
Western theatre
Mediterranean theatre
Cooperation with the SS
Crimes against civilians
Crimes against POWs
Criminal and genocidal organization
Resistance to the Nazi regime
Military operational legacy
Post war militaries
After the Nazi rise to power in 1933, one of Adolf Hitler's most overt and audacious moves was to establish the Wehrmacht, a modern offensively-capable armed force, fulfilling the Nazi regime's long-term goals of regaining lost territory as well as gaining new territory and dominating its neighbours. This required the reinstatement of conscription, and massive investment and defense spending on the arms industry. [12]
The Wehrmacht formed the heart of Germany's politico-military power. In the early part of the Second World War, the Wehrmacht employed combined arms tactics (close cover air-support, tanks, and infantry) to devastating effect in what became known as a Blitzkrieg (lightning war). Its campaigns in France (1940), the Soviet Union (1941), and North Africa (1941/42) are regarded as acts of boldness. [13] At the same time, the far-flung advances strained the Wehrmacht's capacity to the breaking point, culminating in the first major defeat in the Battle of Moscow (1941); by late 1942, Germany was losing the initiative in all theatres. The operational art was no match to the war-making abilities of the Allied coalition, making the Wehrmacht's weaknesses in strategy, doctrine, and logistics readily apparent. [14]
Closely cooperating with the SS and the Einsatzgruppen , the German armed forces committed numerous war crimes and atrocities, despite later denials and promotion of the myth of the Clean Wehrmacht. [15] The majority of the war crimes were committed in the Soviet Union, Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece and Italy, as part of the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, the Holocaust and Nazi security warfare.
During the war about 18 million men served in the Wehrmacht. [16] By the time the war ended in Europe in May 1945, German forces (consisting of the Army, Navy and Luftwaffe, the Waffen-SS, the Volkssturm and foreign collaborateur units) had lost approximately 11,300,000 men, [17] about half of whom were missing or killed during the war. Only a few of the Wehrmacht's upper leadership were tried for war crimes, despite evidence suggesting that more were involved in illegal actions. [18] [19] The majority of the three million Wehrmacht soldiers who invaded the USSR participated in committing war crimes. [20]
The German term "Wehrmacht" stems from the compound word of German : wehren, "to defend" and Macht, "power, force". [lower-alpha 3] It has been used to describe any nation's armed forces; for example, Britische Wehrmacht meaning "British Armed Forces". The Frankfurt Constitution of 1849 designated all German military forces as the "German Wehrmacht", consisting of the Seemacht (sea force) and the Landmacht (land force). [21] In 1919, the term Wehrmacht also appears in Article 47 of the Weimar Constitution, establishing that: "The Reich's President holds supreme command of all armed forces [i.e. the Wehrmacht] of the Reich". From 1919, Germany's national defense force was known as the Reichswehr , a name that was dropped in favor of Wehrmacht on 21 May 1935. [22]
Reichswehr soldiers swear the Hitler oath in August 1934
In January 1919, after World War I ended with the signing of the armistice of 11 November 1918, the armed forces were dubbed Friedensheer (peace army). [23] In March 1919, the national assembly passed a law founding a 420,000-strong preliminary army, the Vorläufige Reichswehr. The terms of the Treaty of Versailles were announced in May, and in June, Germany signed the treaty that, among other terms, imposed severe constraints on the size of Germany's armed forces. The army was limited to one hundred thousand men with an additional fifteen thousand in the navy. The fleet was to consist of at most six battleships, six cruisers, and twelve destroyers. Submarines, tanks and heavy artillery were forbidden and the air-force was dissolved. A new post-war military, the Reichswehr , was established on 23 March 1921. General conscription was abolished under another mandate of the Versailles treaty. [24]
The Reichswehr was limited to 115,000 men, and thus the armed forces, under the leadership of Hans von Seeckt, retained only the most capable officers. The American historians Alan Millet and Williamson Murray wrote "In reducing the officers corps, Seeckt chose the new leadership from the best men of the general staff with ruthless disregard for other constituencies, such as war heroes and the nobility". [25] Seeckt's determination that the Reichswehr be an elite cadre force that would serve as the nucleus of an expanded military when the chance for restoring conscription came essentially led to the creation of a new army, based upon, but very different from, the army that existed in World War I. [25] In the 1920s, Seeckt and his officers developed new doctrines that emphasized speed, aggression, combined arms and initiative on the part of lower officers to take advantage of momentary opportunities. [25] Though Seeckt retired in 1926, the army that went to war in 1939 was largely his creation. [26]
Germany was forbidden to have an air force by the Versailles treaty; nonetheless, Seeckt created a clandestine cadre of air force officers in the early 1920s. These officers saw the role of an air force as winning air superiority, tactical and strategic bombing and providing ground support. That the Luftwaffe did not develop a strategic bombing force in the 1930s was not due to a lack of interest, but because of economic limitations. [27] The leadership of the Navy led by Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, a close protégé of Alfred von Tirpitz, was dedicated to the idea of reviving Tirpitz's High Seas Fleet. Officers who believed in submarine warfare led by Admiral Karl Dönitz were in a minority before 1939. [28]
By 1922, Germany had begun covertly circumventing the conditions of the Versailles Treaty. A secret collaboration with the Soviet Union began after the treaty of Rapallo. [29] Major-General Otto Hasse [ de ] traveled to Moscow in 1923 to further negotiate the terms. Germany helped the Soviet Union with industrialization and Soviet officers were to be trained in Germany. German tank and air-force specialists could exercise in the Soviet Union and German chemical weapons research and manufacture would be carried out there along with other projects. [30] In 1924 a training base was established at Lipetsk, where several hundred German air force personnel received instruction in operational maintenance, navigation, and aerial combat training over the next decade until the Germans finally left in September 1933. [31] However, the arms buildup was done in secrecy, until Hitler came to power and it received broad political support. [32]
Further information: Nazism and the Wehrmacht and German re-armament
After the death of President Paul von Hindenburg on 2 August 1934, Adolf Hitler assumed the office of President of Germany, and thus became commander in chief. In February 1934, the Defence Minister Werner von Blomberg, acting on his own initiative, had all of the Jews serving in the Reichswehr given an automatic and immediate dishonorable discharge. [33] Again, on his own initiative Blomberg had the armed forces adopt Nazi symbols into their uniforms in May 1934. [34] In August of the same year, on Blomberg's initiative and that of the Ministeramt chief General Walther von Reichenau, the entire military took the Hitler oath, an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler. Hitler was most surprised at the offer; the popular view that Hitler imposed the oath on the military is false. [35] The oath read: "I swear by God this sacred oath that to the Leader of the German empire and people, Adolf Hitler, supreme commander of the armed forces, I shall render unconditional obedience and that as a brave soldier I shall at all times be prepared to give my life for this oath". [36]
By 1935, Germany was openly flouting the military restrictions set forth in the Versailles Treaty: German re-armament was announced on 16 March with the "Edict for the Buildup of the Wehrmacht" (German : Gesetz für den Aufbau der Wehrmacht) [37] and the reintroduction of conscription. [38] While the size of the standing army was to remain at about the 100,000-man mark decreed by the treaty, a new group of conscripts equal to this size would receive training each year. The conscription law introduced the name "Wehrmacht"; the Reichswehr was officially renamed the Wehrmacht on 21 May 1935. [39] Hitler's proclamation of the Wehrmacht's existence included a total of no less than 36 divisions in its original projection, contravening the Treaty of Versailles in grandiose fashion. In December 1935, General Ludwig Beck added 48 tank battalions to the planned rearmament program. [40] Hitler originally set a time frame of 10 years for remilitarization, but soon shortened it to four years. [41] With the Remilitarization of the Rhineland and Anschluss of Austria, the German Reich's territory increased significantly, providing a larger population pool for conscription. [42]
Inspection of German conscripts
Recruitment for the Wehrmacht was accomplished through voluntary enlistment and conscription, with 1.3 million being drafted and 2.4 million volunteering in the period 1935–1939. [43] [5] The total number of soldiers who served in the Wehrmacht during its existence from 1935 to 1945 is believed to have approached 18.2 million. [16] The German military leadership originally aimed at a homogeneous military, possessing traditional Prussian military values. However, with Hitler's constant wishes to increase the Wehrmacht's size, the Army was forced to accept citizens of lower class and education, decreasing internal cohesion and appointing officers who lacked real-war experience from previous conflicts, especially World War I and the Spanish Civil War. [44]
Common themes in Nazi propaganda revolved around national humiliation after the Treaty of Versailles, seen as a diktat (dictation) by Germans. This poster expresses that the corridor of "Danzig is German"; ceded to Poland as maritime access, it simultaneously divided East Prussia from the rest of Germany.
As the Second World War intensified, Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe personnel were increasingly transferred to the Army, and "voluntary" enlistments in the SS were stepped up as well. Following the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, fitness and physical health standards for Wehrmacht recruits were drastically lowered, with the regime going so far as to create "special diet" battalions for men with severe stomach ailments. Rear-echelon personnel were more often sent to front-line duty wherever possible, especially during the final two years of the war where, inspired by constant propaganda, the oldest and youngest were being recruited and driven by instilled fear and fanaticism to serve on the fronts and, often, to fight to the death, whether judged to be cannon fodder or elite troops. [45]
An African soldier of the Free Arabian Legion
Prior to World War II, the Wehrmacht strove to remain a purely ethnic German force; as such, minorities within and outside of Germany, such as the Czechs in annexed Czechoslovakia, were exempted from military service after Hitler's takeover in 1938. Foreign volunteers were generally not accepted in the German armed forces prior to 1941. [45] With the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the government's positions changed. German propagandists wanted to present the war not as a purely German concern, but as a multi-national crusade against the so-called Jewish Bolshevism. [46] Hence, the Wehrmacht and the SS began to seek out recruits from occupied and neutral countries across Europe: the Germanic populations of the Netherlands and Norway were recruited largely into the SS, while "non-Germanic" people were recruited into the Wehrmacht. The "voluntary" nature of such recruitment was often dubious, especially in the later years of the war, when even Poles living in the Polish Corridor were declared "ethnic Germans" and drafted. [45]
After Germany's defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad, the Wehrmacht also made substantial use of personnel from the Soviet Union, including the Caucasian Muslim Legion, Turkestan legion, Crimean Tatars, ethnic Ukrainians and Russians, Cossacks, and others who wished to fight against the Soviet regime or who were otherwise induced to join. [45] Between 15,000–20,000 anti-communist White émigrés who had left Russia after the Russian Revolution joined the ranks of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS, with 1,500 acting as interpreters and more than 10,000 serving in the guard force of the Russian Protective Corps. [47] [48]
Army 3,737,000 4,550,000 5,000,000 5,800,000 6,550,000 6,510,000 5,300,000
Luftwaffe 400,000 1,200,000 1,680,000 1,700,000 1,700,000 1,500,000 1,000,000
Kriegsmarine 50,000 250,000 404,000 580,000 780,000 810,000 700,000
Waffen–SS 35,000 50,000 150,000 230,000 450,000 600,000 830,000
Source: [49]
Main article: Wehrmachthelferin
See also: Women in Nazi Germany
Wehrmachthelferinnen in occupied Paris, 1940
In the beginning, women in Nazi Germany were not involved in the Wehrmacht, as Hitler ideologically opposed conscription for women, [50] stating that Germany would "not form any section of women grenade throwers or any corps of women elite snipers." [51] However, with many men going to the front, women were placed in auxiliaries positions within the Wehrmacht, called Wehrmachtshelferinnen (lit. Female Wehrmacht Helper), [52] participating in tasks as:
telephone, telegraph and transmission operators,
administrative clerks, typists and messengers,
operators of listening equipment, in anti-aircraft defense, operating projectors for anti-aircraft defense, employees within meteorology services, and auxiliary civil defense personnel
volunteer nurses in military health service, as the German Red Cross or other voluntary organizations.
They were placed under the same authority as (Hiwis), auxiliary personnel of the army (German : Behelfspersonal) and they were assigned to duties within the Reich, and to a lesser extent, in the occupied territories, for example in the general government of occupied Poland, in France, and later in Yugoslavia, in Greece and in Romania. [53]
By 1945, 500,000 women were serving as Wehrmachtshelferinnen, half of whom were volunteers, while the other half performed obligatory services connected to the war effort (German : Kriegshilfsdienst). [52]
Structure of the Wehrmacht (1935–1938)
Legally, the Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht was Adolf Hitler in his capacity as Germany's head of state, a position he gained after the death of President Paul von Hindenburg in August 1934. With the creation of the Wehrmacht in 1935, Hitler elevated himself to Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, [54] retaining the position until his suicide on 30 April 1945. [55] The title of Commander-in-Chief was given to the Minister of the Reichswehr Werner von Blomberg, who was simultaneously renamed the Reich Minister of War. [54] Following the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair, Blomberg resigned and Hitler abolished the Ministry of War. [56] As a replacement for the ministry, the Wehrmacht High Command Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), under Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, was put in its place. [57]
Placed under the OKW, were the three branch High Commands: Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH), Oberkommando der Marine (OKM), and Oberkommando der Luftwaffe (OKL). The OKW was intended to serve as a joint command and coordinate all military activities, with Hitler at the top. [58] Though many senior officers, such as von Manstein, had advocated for a real tri-service Joint Command, or appointment of a single Joint Chief of Staff, Hitler refused. Even after the defeat at Stalingrad, Hitler refused, stating that Göring as Reichsmarschall and Hitler's deputy, would not submit to someone else or see himself as an equal to other service commanders. [59] However, a more likely reason was Hitler feared it would break his image of having the "Midas touch" concerning military strategy. [59]
With the creation of the OKW, Hitler solidified his control over the Wehrmacht. Showing restraint in the beginning of the war, Hitler also became increasingly involved in military operations at every scale. [60]
Additionally, there was a clear lack of cohesion between the three High Commands and the OKW, as senior generals were unaware of the needs, capabilities and limitations of the other branches. [61] With Hitler serving as Supreme Commander, branch commands were often forced to fight for influence with Hitler. However, influence with Hitler not only came from rank and merit, but also who Hitler perceived as loyal, leading to inter-service rivalry, rather than cohesion between his military advisers. [62]
Main article: German Army (1935–1945)
The Wehrmacht's "foot-mobile" infantry, 1942
The German Army furthered concepts pioneered during World War I, combining ground (Heer) and air force (Luftwaffe) assets into combined arms teams. [63] Coupled with traditional war fighting methods such as encirclements and the "battle of annihilation", the German military managed many lightning quick victories in the first year of World War II, prompting foreign journalists to create a new word for what they witnessed: Blitzkrieg . Germany's immediate military success on the field at the start of the Second World War coincides the favorable beginning they achieved during the First World War, a fact which some attribute to their superior officer corps. [64]
The Heer entered the war with a minority of its formations motorized; infantry remained approximately 90% foot-borne throughout the war, and artillery was primarily horse-drawn. The motorized formations received much attention in the world press in the opening years of the war, and were cited as the reason for the success of the invasions of Poland (September 1939), Denmark and Norway (April 1940), Belgium, France, and Netherlands (May 1940), Yugoslavia and Greece (April 1941) and the early stage of Operation Barbarossa in the Soviet Union (June 1941). [65]
After Hitler declared war on the United States in December 1941, the Axis powers found themselves engaged in campaigns against several major industrial powers while Germany was still in transition to a war economy. German units were then overextended, undersupplied, outmaneuvered, outnumbered and defeated by its enemies in decisive battles during 1941, 1942, and 1943 at the Battle of Moscow, the Siege of Leningrad, Stalingrad, Tunis in North Africa, and the Battle of Kursk. [66] [67]
A tank destroyer battalion, part of the 21 Panzer Division of the Afrika Korps
The Germans' army military was managed through mission-based tactics (rather than order-based tactics) which was intended to give commanders greater freedom to act on events and exploit opportunities. In public opinion, the German Army was, and sometimes still is, seen as a high-tech army. However, such modern equipment, while featured much in propaganda, was often only available in relatively small numbers. [68] Only 40% to 60% of all units in the Eastern Front were motorized, baggage trains often relied on horse-drawn trailers due to poor roads and weather conditions in the Soviet Union, and for the same reasons many soldiers marched on foot or used bicycles as bicycle infantry. As the fortunes of war turned against them, the Germans were in constant retreat from 1943 and onward. [69] :142 [70] [71]
The Panzer divisions were vital to the German army's early success. In the strategies of the Blitzkrieg, the Wehrmacht combined the mobility of light tanks with airborne assault to quickly progress through weak enemy lines, enabling the German army to quickly and brutally take over Poland and France. [72] These tanks were used to break through enemy lines, isolating regiments from the main force so that the infantry behind the tanks could quickly kill or capture the enemy troops. [73]
Main article: Luftwaffe
German paratroopers landing on Crete
Originally outlawed by the Treaty of Versailles, the Luftwaffe was officially established in 1935, under the leadership of Hermann Göring. [38] First gaining experience in the Spanish Civil War, it was a key element in the early blitzkrieg campaigns (Poland, France 1940, USSR 1941). The Luftwaffe concentrated production on fighters and (small) tactical bombers, like the Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter and the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bomber. [74] The planes cooperated closely with the ground forces. Overwhelming numbers of fighters assured air-supremacy, and the bombers would attack command- and supply-lines, depots, and other support targets close to the front. The Luftwaffe would also be used to transport paratroopers, as first used during Operation Weserübung. [75] [76] Due to the Army's sway with Hitler, the Luftwaffe was often subordinated to the Army, resulting in it being used as a tactical support role and losing its strategic capabilities. [62]
The Western Allies' strategic bombing campaign against German industrial targets, particularly the round the clock Combined Bomber Offensive and Defence of the Reich, deliberately forced the Luftwaffe into a war of attrition. [77] With German fighter force destroyed the Western Allies had air supremacy over the battlefield, denying support to German forces on the ground and using its own fighter-bombers to attack and disrupt. Following the losses in Operation Bodenplatte in 1945, the Luftwaffe was no longer an effective force. [78]
Main article: Kriegsmarine
See also: Blockade of Germany (1939–1945) and Plan Z
Karl Dönitz inspecting the Saint-Nazaire submarine base in France, June 1941
The Treaty of Versailles disallowed submarines, while limiting the size of the Reichsmarine to six battleships, six cruisers, and twelve destroyers. [24] Following the creation of the Wehrmacht, the navy was renamed the Kriegsmarine. [79]
With the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, the Germany was allowed to increase its navy's size to be 35:100 tonnage of the Royal Navy, and allowed for the construction of U-boats. [80] This was partly done to appease Germany, and because Britain believed the Kriegsmarine would not be able to reach the 35% limit until 1942. [81] The navy was also prioritized last in the German rearmament scheme, making it the smallest of the branches. [82] [83]
In the Battle of the Atlantic, the initially successful German U-boat fleet arm was eventually defeated due to Allied technological innovations like sonar, radar, and the breaking of the Enigma code. [84]
Large surface vessels were few in number due to construction limitations by international treaties prior to 1935. The "pocket battleships" Admiral Graf Spee and Admiral Scheer were important as commerce raiders only in the opening year of the war. [85] No aircraft carrier was operational, as German leadership lost interest in the Graf Zeppelin which had been launched in 1938. [86]
Following the loss of the German battleship Bismarck in 1941, with Allied air-superiority threatening the remaining battle-cruisers in French Atlantic harbors, the ships were ordered to make the Channel Dash back to German ports. [87] [88] [89] Operating from fjords along the coast of Norway, which had been occupied since 1940, convoys from North America to the Soviet port of Murmansk could be intercepted though the Tirpitz spent most of her career as fleet in being. [90] After the appointment of Karl Dönitz as Grand Admiral of the Kriegsmarine (in the aftermath of the Battle of the Barents Sea), Germany stopped constructing battleships and cruisers in favor of U-boats. [91] Though by 1941, the navy had already lost a number of its large surface ships, which could not be replenished during the war. [92]
The Kriegsmarine's most significant contribution to the German war effort was the deployment of its nearly 1,000 U-boats to strike at Allied convoys. [92] The German naval strategy was to attack the convoys in an attempt to prevent the United States from interfering in Europe and to starve out the British. [93] Karl Doenitz, the U-Boat Chief, began unrestricted submarine warfare which cost the Allies 22,898 men and 1,315 ships. [94] The U-boat war remained costly for the Allies until early spring of 1943 when the Allies began to use countermeasures against U-Boats such as the use of Hunter-Killer groups, airborne radar, torpedoes and mines like the FIDO. [95] The submarine war cost the Kriegsmarine 757 U-boats, with more than 30,000 U-boat crewmen killed. [96]
Main article: Waffen-SS
An Oberleutnant from the army sitting with a SS-Hauptsturmführer from the Waffen-SS in 1944
In the beginning, there was friction between the SS and the Army, as the Army feared the SS would attempt to become a legitimate part of the armed forces of the Third Reich, partly due to the fighting between the limited armaments, and the perceived fanaticism towards Nazism. [97] However, on 17 August 1938, Hitler codified the role of the SS and the army as to the end the feud between the two. [98] The arming of the SS was to be "procured from the Wehrmacht upon payment", however "in peacetime, no organizational connection with the Wehrmacht exists." [99] The army was however allowed to check the budget of the SS and inspect the combat readiness of the SS troops. [100] In the event of mobilization, the Waffen-SS field units could be placed under the operational control of the OKW or the OKH. All decisions regarding this, would be at Hitler's personal discretion. [100]
Though there existed conflict between the SS and Wehrmacht, many SS officers were former Army officers, which insured continuity and understanding between the two. [101] Throughout the war, Army and SS soldiers worked together in various combat situations, creating bonds between the two groups. [102] Guderian noted that every day the war continued the Army and the SS became closer together. [102] Towards the end of the war, Army units would even be placed under the command of the SS, in Italy and the Netherlands. [102] The relationship between the Wehrmacht and the SS improved, however, the Waffen-SS was never considered "the fourth branch of the Wehrmacht". [101]
The Wehrmacht directed combat operations during World War II (from 1 September 1939 – 8 May 1945) as the German Reich's Armed Forces umbrella command-organization. After 1941 the OKH became the de facto Eastern Theatre higher-echelon command-organization for the Wehrmacht, excluding Waffen-SS except for operational and tactical combat purposes. The OKW conducted operations in the Western Theatre. The operations by the Kriegsmarine in the North and Mid-Atlantic can also be considered as separate theatres, considering the size of the area of operations and their remoteness from other theatres.
The Wehrmacht fought on other fronts, sometimes three simultaneously; redeploying troops from the intensifying theatre in the East to the West after the Normandy landings caused tensions between the General Staffs of both the OKW and the OKH – as Germany lacked sufficient materiel and manpower for a two-front war of such magnitude. [103]
Main article: Eastern Front (World War II)
German troops in the Soviet Union, October 1941
Major campaigns and battles in Eastern and Central Europe included:
Czechoslovakian campaign (1938–1945)
Austrian Anschluss (1938)
Invasion of Poland campaign (Fall Weiss)
Operation Barbarossa (1941), conducted by Army Group North, Army Group Centre, and Army Group South
Battle of Moscow (1941)
Battles of Rzhev (1942–1943)
Battle of Stalingrad (1942–1943)
Battle of the Caucasus (1942–1943)
Battle of Kursk (Operation Citadel) (1943)
Battle of Kiev (1943)
Operation Bagration (1944)
Nazi security warfare – largely carried out by security divisions of the Wehrmacht, by Order Police and by Waffen-SS units in the occupied territories behind Axis front-lines.
German soldiers in occupied Paris
Main article: Western Front (World War II)
Phoney War (Sitzkrieg, September 1939 to May 1940) between the invasion of Poland and the Battle of France
Operation Weserübung
German invasion of Denmark – 9 April 1940
The Norwegian Campaign – 9 April to 10 June 1940
Fall Gelb
Battle of the Netherlands – 10 to 17 May 1940
Battle of France – 10 May to 25 June 1940
Battle of the Atlantic (1939–1945)
Battle of Normandy (1944)
Allied invasion of southern France (1944)
Ardennes Offensive (1944–1945)
Defense of the Reich air-campaign, 1939 to 1945
German tanks during a counter-attack in North Africa, 1942
Main article: Mediterranean Theatre of World War II
For a time, the Axis Mediterranean Theatre and the North African Campaign were conducted as a joint campaign with the Italian Army, and may be considered a separate theatre.
Invasion of the Balkans and Greece (Operation Marita) (1940–1941)
Battle of Crete (1941)
North African Campaign in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt between the UK and Commonwealth (and later, U.S.) forces and the Axis forces
The Italian Theatre (1943–45) was a continuation of the Axis defeat in North Africa, and was a campaign for defence of Italy
Main article: German casualties in World War II
The Wehrmacht suffered 80% of its military deaths in the Eastern Front.
German war cemetery in Estonia
More than 6,000,000 soldiers were wounded during the conflict, while more than 11,000,000 became prisoners. In all, approximately 5,318,000 soldiers from Germany and other nationalities fighting for the German armed forces—including the Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and foreign collaborationist units—are estimated to have been killed in action, died of wounds, died in custody or gone missing in World War II. Included in this number are 215,000 Soviet citizens conscripted by Germany. [105]
According to Frank Biess,
German casualties took a sudden jump with the defeat of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad in January 1943, when 180,310 soldiers were killed in one month. Among the 5.3 million Wehrmacht casualties during the Second World War, more than 80 per cent died during the last two years of the war. Approximately three-quarters of these losses occurred on the Eastern front (2.7 million) and during the final stages of the war between January and May 1945 (1.2 million). [106]
Jeffrey Herf wrote that:
Whereas German deaths between 1941 and 1943 on the western front had not exceeded three per cent of the total from all fronts, in 1944 the figure jumped to about 14 per cent. Yet even in the months following D-day, about 68.5 per cent of all German battlefield deaths occurred on the eastern front, as a Soviet blitzkrieg in response devastated the retreating Wehrmacht. [107]
In addition to the losses, at the hands of the elements and enemy fighting, at least 20,000 soldiers were executed as sentences by the military court . [108] In comparison, the Red Army executed 135,000 [109] [110] , France 102, the US 146 and the UK 40. [108]
Main articles: War crimes of the Wehrmacht, Consequences of German Nazism, and Nazi human experimentation
Nazi propaganda had told Wehrmacht soldiers to wipe out what were variously called Jewish Bolshevik subhumans, the Mongol hordes, the Asiatic flood and the red beast. [111] While the principal perpetrators of the civil suppression behind the front lines amongst German armed forces were the Nazi German "political" armies (the SS-Totenkopfverbände , the Waffen-SS , and the Einsatzgruppen , which were responsible for mass killings, primarily by implementation of the so-called Final Solution of the Jewish Question in occupied territories), the traditional armed forces represented by the Wehrmacht committed and ordered war crimes of their own (e.g. the Commissar Order), particularly during the invasion of Poland in 1939 [112] and later in the war against the Soviet Union.
Prior to the outbreak of war, Hitler informed senior Wehrmacht officers that actions "which would not be in the taste of German generals", would take place in occupied areas and ordered them that they "should not interfere in such matters but restrict themselves to their military duties". [113] Some Wehrmacht officers initially showed a strong dislike for the SS and objected to the Army committing war crimes with the SS, though these objections were not against the idea of the atrocities themselves. [114] Later during the war, relations between the SS and Wehrmacht improved significantly. [115] The common soldier had no qualms with the SS, and often assisted them in rounding up civilians for executions. [116] [117]
The Army's Chief of Staff General Franz Halder in a directive declared that in the event of guerrilla attacks, German troops were to impose "collective measures of force" by massacring entire villages. [118] Cooperation between the SS Einsatzgruppen and the Wehrmacht involved supplying the killing squads with weapons, ammunition, equipment, transport, and even housing. [115] Partisan fighters, Jews, and Communists became synonymous enemies of the Nazi regime and were hunted down and exterminated by the Einsatzgruppen and Wehrmacht alike, something revealed in numerous field journal entries from German soldiers. [119] Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Soviet civilians died from starvation as the Germans requisitioned food for their armies and fodder for their draft horses. [120] According to Thomas Kühne: "an estimated 300,000–500,000 people were killed during the Wehrmacht's Nazi security warfare in the Soviet Union." [121]
While secretly listening to conversations of captured German generals, British officials became aware that the German Army had taken part in the atrocities and mass killing of Jews and were guilty of war crimes. [122] American officials learned of the Wehrmacht's atrocities in much the same way. Taped conversations of soldiers detained as POWs revealed how some of them voluntarily participated in mass executions. [123]
Civilians executed by German paratroopers in Kondomari
German troops marching civilians to execution
Main articles: Anti-partisan operations in World War II and German military brothels in World War II
See also: Category:World War II massacres
During the war, the Wehrmacht committed numerous war crimes against the civilian population in occupied countries. This includes massacres of civilians and running forced brothels in occupied areas.
Massacres would in many cases come as reprisals for acts of resistance. With these reprisals, the Wehrmacht's response would vary in severity and method, depending on the scale of resistance and whether it was in East or West Europe. [124] Often, the number of hostages to be shot was calculated based on a ratio of 100 hostages executed for every German soldier killed and 50 hostages executed for every German soldier wounded. [125] Other times civilians would be rounded up and shot with machine guns. [126]
To combat German officials' fear of venereal disease and onanism, [127] the Wehrmacht established numerous brothels throughout Nazi Germany and its occupied territories. [128] Women would often be kidnapped off the streets and forced to work in the brothels, [129] with an estimated minimum of 34,140 women being forced to serve as prostitutes. [130]
Main article: German mistreatment of Soviet prisoners of war
Sixteen blindfolded Partisan youth await execution by German forces in Serbia, 20 August 1941
While the Wehrmacht's prisoner-of-war camps for inmates from the west generally satisfied the humanitarian requirement prescribed by international law, [131] prisoners from Poland and the USSR were incarcerated under significantly worse conditions. Between the launching of Operation Barbarossa in the summer of 1941 and the following spring, 2.8 million of the 3.2 million Soviet prisoners taken died while in German hands. [132]
See also: High Command Trial
The Nuremberg Trials of the major war criminals at the end of World War II found that the Wehrmacht was not an inherently criminal organization, but that it had committed crimes in the course of the war. [133] Among German historians, the view that the Wehrmacht had participated in wartime atrocities, particularly on the Eastern Front, grew in the late 1970s and the 1980s. [134] In the 1990s, public conception in Germany was influenced by controversial reactions and debates about the exhibition of war crime issues. [135]
More recently, the judgement of Nuremberg has come under question. The Israeli historian Omer Bartov, a leading expert on the Wehrmacht [136] wrote in 2003 that the Wehrmacht was a willing instrument of genocide, and that it is untrue that the Wehrmacht was an apolitical, professional fighting force that had only a few "bad apples". [137] Bartov argues that far from being the "untarnished shield", as successive German apologists stated after the war, the Wehrmacht was a criminal organization. [138] Likewise, the historian Richard J. Evans, a leading expert on modern German history, wrote that the Wehrmacht was a genocidal organization. [111] The historian Ben H. Shepherd writes that "There is now clear agreement amongst historians that the German Wehrmacht ... identified strongly with National Socialism and embroiled itself in the criminality of the Third Reich." [139] British historian Ian Kershaw concludes that the Wehrmacht's duty was to ensure that the people who met Hitler's requirements of being part of the Aryan Herrenvolk ("Aryan master race") had living space. He wrote that:
The Nazi revolution was broader than just the Holocaust. Its second goal was to eliminate Slavs from central and eastern Europe and to create a Lebensraum for Aryans. ... As Bartov (The Eastern Front; Hitler's Army) shows, it barbarised the German armies on the eastern front. Most of their three million men, from generals to ordinary soldiers, helped exterminate captured Slav soldiers and civilians. This was sometimes cold and deliberate murder of individuals (as with Jews), sometimes generalised brutality and neglect. ... German soldiers' letters and memoirs reveal their terrible reasoning: Slavs were 'the Asiatic-Bolshevik' horde, an inferior but threatening race. [20]
Several high-ranking Wehrmacht officers, including Hermann Hoth, Georg von Küchler, Georg-Hans Reinhardt, Karl von Roques, Walter Warlimont and others, were convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the High Command Trial given sentences ranging from time served to life. [140]
Main article: German Resistance
Martin Bormann, Hermann Göring, and Bruno Loerzer surveying the damaged made by the 20 July plot
Originally, there was little resistance within the Wehrmacht, as Hitler actively went against the Treaty of Versailles and recovering the Army's honor. [141] The first major resistance began in 1938 with the Oster conspiracy, where several members of the military wanted to remove Hitler from power, as they feared a war with Czechoslovakia would ruin Germany. [142] However, following the success of the early campaigns in Poland, Scandinavia and France, belief in Hitler was restored. [141] With the defeat in Stalingrad, trust in Hitler's leadership began to wane. [143] This caused an increase in resistance within the military. The resistance culminated in the 20 July plot (1944), when a group of officers led by Claus von Stauffenberg attempted to assassinate Hitler. The attempt failed, resulting in the execution of 4,980 people [144] and the standard military salute to being replaced with the Hitler salute. [145]
Some members of the Wehrmacht did save Jews and non-Jews from the concentration camps and/or mass murder. Anton Schmid – a sergeant in the army – helped between 250 and 300 Jewish men, women, and children escape from the Vilna Ghetto in Lithuania. [146] [147] [148] He was court-martialed and executed as a consequence. Albert Battel, a reserve officer stationed near the Przemysl ghetto, blocked an SS detachment from entering it. He then evacuated up to 100 Jews and their families to the barracks of the local military command, and placed them under his protection. [149] Wilm Hosenfeld—an army captain in Warsaw—helped, hid, or rescued several Poles, including Jews, in occupied Poland. He helped the Polish Jewish composer Władysław Szpilman, who was hiding among the city's ruins, by supplying him with food and water. [150]
According to Wolfram Wette, only three Wehrmacht soldiers are known for being executed for rescuing Jews: Anton Schmid, Friedrich Rath and Friedrich Winking. [151]
German Instrument of Surrender, 8 May 1945 - Berlin-Karlshorst
Following the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht, which went into effect on 8 May 1945, some Wehrmacht units remained active, either independently (e.g. in Norway), or under Allied command as police forces. [152] The last Wehrmacht unit to come under Allied control was an isolated weather station in Svalbard, which formally surrendered to a Norwegian relief ship on 4 September. [153]
On 20 September 1945, with Proclamation No. 2 of the Allied Control Council (ACC), "[a]ll German land, naval and air forces, the S.S., S.A., S.D. and Gestapo, with all their organizations, staffs and institution, including the General Staff, the Officers' corps, the Reserve Corps, military schools, war veterans' organizations, and all other military and quasi-military organizations, together with all clubs and associations which serve to keep alive the military tradition in Germany, shall be completely and finally abolished in accordance with the methods and procedures to be laid down by the Allied Representatives." [154] The Wehrmacht was officially dissolved by the ACC Law 34 on 20 August 1946, [155] which proclaimed the OKW, OKH, the Ministry of Aviation and the OKM to be "disbanded, completely liquidated and declared illegal". [156]
Immediately following the end of the war, many were quick to dismiss the Wehrmacht due to its failures and claim allied superiority. [157] However, historians have since reevaluated the Wehrmacht in terms of fighting power and tactics, giving it a more favorable assessment, with some calling it one of the best in the world [158] , partly due to its ability to regularly inflict higher losses than it received, while it fought outnumbered and outgunned. [159]
Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld, who attempted to examine the military force of the Wehrmacht in a purely military context, concluded: "The German army was a superb fighting organization. In point of morale, elan, troop cohesion and resilience, it was probably had no equal among twentieth century armies." [160] German historian Rolf-Dieter Müller comes to the following conclusion:" In the purely military sense [...] you can indeed say that the impression of a superior fighting force rightly exists. The proverbial efficiency was even greater than previously thought, because the superiority of the opponent was much higher than at that time German officers suspected. The analysis of Russian archive files finally gives us a clear picture in this regard." [161] Strategic thinker and professor Colin S. Gray believed that the Wehrmacht possessed outstanding tactical and operational capabilities. However, following a number of successful campaigns, German policy began to have victory disease, asking the Wehrmacht to do the impossible. The continued use of the Blitzkrieg also led to Soviets learning the tactic and using it against the Wehrmacht. [162]
Main article: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht
Soon after the war ended, former Wehrmacht officers, veterans' groups and various far-right authors began to state that the Wehrmacht was an apolitical organization which was largely innocent of Nazi Germany's war crimes and crimes against humanity. [163] Attempting to benefit from the clean Wehrmacht myth, veterans of the Waffen-SS declared that the organisation had virtually been a branch of the Wehrmacht and therefore had fought as "honourably" as it. Its veterans organisation, HIAG, attempted to cultivate a myth of their soldiers having been "Soldiers like any other". [164]
Former Wehrmacht generals Adolf Heusinger and Hans Speidel sworn into the newly founded Bundeswehr on 12 November 1955
Following the division of Germany, many former Wehrmacht and SS officers in West Germany feared a Soviet invasion of the country. To combat this, several prominent officers created a secret army, unknown to the general public and without mandate from the Allied Control Authority or the West German government. [165] [166]
By the mid-1950s, tensions of the Cold War led to the creation of separate military forces in the Federal Republic of Germany and the socialist German Democratic Republic. The West German military, officially created on 5 May 1955, took the name Bundeswehr (lit. Federal Defence). Its East German counterpart—created on 1 March 1956—took the name National People's Army (German : Nationale Volksarmee). Both organizations employed many former Wehrmacht members, particularly in their formative years, [167] though neither organization considered themselves successors to the Wehrmacht. [168] [169] [170]
Wehrmacht veterans in West Germany have received pensions through the War Victims' Assistance Act (German : Bundesversorgungsgesetz) from the government. [171] [172] According to The Times of Israel, "The benefits come through the Federal Pension Act, which was passed in 1950 to support war victims, whether civilians or veterans of the Wehrmacht or Waffen-SS." [173]
Bribery of senior Wehrmacht officers
German Resistance
Glossary of German military terms
Glossary of Nazi Germany
Clean Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht Propaganda Troops
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
Nazism and the Wehrmacht
↑ The official dissolution of the Wehrmacht began with the German Instrument of Surrender of 8 May 1945. Reasserted in Proclamation No. 2 of the Allied Control Council on 20 September 1945, the dissolution was officially declared by ACC Law No. 34 of 20 August 1946. [3] [4]
↑ Total GDP: 75 billion (1939) & 118 billion (1944) [7]
↑ See the Wiktionary article for more information.
Related Research Articles
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, which started on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. The operation put into action Nazi Germany's ideological goal of conquering the western Soviet Union so as to repopulate it with Germans. The German Generalplan Ost aimed to use some of the conquered as slave labour for the Axis war effort, to acquire the oil reserves of the Caucasus and the agricultural resources of Soviet territories, and eventually to annihilate the Slavic peoples and create Lebensraum for Germany.
The Schutzstaffel was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It began with a small guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz made up of NSDAP volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. In 1925, Heinrich Himmler joined the unit, which had by then been reformed and given its final name. Under his direction (1929–1945) it grew from a small paramilitary formation during the Weimar Republic to one of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany. From 1929 until the regime's collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, surveillance, and terror within Germany and German-occupied Europe.
The Waffen-SS was the military branch of the Nazi Party's SS organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with volunteers and conscripts from both occupied and unoccupied lands.
Wilhelm Bodewin Johann Gustav Keitel was a German field marshal and war criminal during the Nazi era who served as Chief of the Armed Forces High Command during World War II. In this capacity, Keitel signed a number of criminal orders and directives that led to a war of unprecedented brutality and criminality.
Ferdinand Schörner was a German army officer and Nazi war criminal. He was a general and later Field Marshal in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany during World War II. He commanded several army groups and was the last Commander-in-chief of the German Army.
The Commissar Order was an order issued by the German High Command (OKW) on 6 June 1941 before Operation Barbarossa. Its official name was Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars. It instructed the Wehrmacht that any Soviet political commissar identified among captured troops be summarily executed as a purported enforcer of the "Judeo-Bolshevism" ideology in military forces. It is one of a series of criminal orders issued by the leadership.
Paul Hausser was a German general and then a high-ranking commander in the Waffen-SS who played a key role in the post-war efforts by former members of the Waffen-SS to achieve historical and legal rehabilitation.
SS-Verfügungstruppe (SS-VT) was formed in 1934 as combat troops for the Nazi Party (NSDAP). On 17 August 1938 Adolf Hitler decreed that the SS-VT was neither a part of the police nor the German Wehrmacht, but military-trained men at the disposal of the Führer. At the time of war, the SS-VT were to be placed at the disposal of the army.
Non-Germans in the German armed forces during World War II were volunteers, conscripts and those otherwise induced to join who served in Nazi Germany's armed forces during World War II. In German war-time propaganda those who volunteered for service were referred to as Freiwillige ("volunteers"). At the same time, many non-Germans in the German armed forces were conscripts or recruited from prisoner-of-war camps.
The 3rd SS Panzer Division "Totenkopf" was one of 38 divisions of the Waffen-SS of Nazi Germany during World War II. Its name, Totenkopf, is German for "death's head" – the skull and crossbones symbol – and it is thus sometimes referred to as the Death's Head Division.
The 2nd SS Panzer Division "Das Reich" was one of 38 divisions of the Waffen-SS of Nazi Germany during World War II. Das Reich served during the invasion of France and took part in several major battles on the Eastern Front, including in the Battle of Prokhorovka against the 5th Guards Tank Army at the Battle of Kursk. It was then transferred to the West and took part in the fighting in Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge, ending the war in Hungary and Austria. Das Reich committed the Oradour-sur-Glane and Tulle massacres.
During World War II, the Germans' combined armed forces committed systematic war crimes, including massacres, mass rape, looting, the exploitation of forced labor, the murder of three million Soviet prisoners of war, and participated in the extermination of Jews. While the Nazi Party's own SS forces 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.
Wehrmachtbericht was the daily Wehrmacht High Command mass-media communiqué and a key component of Nazi propaganda during World War II. Produced by the Propaganda Department of the OKW, it covered Germany's military situation and was broadcast daily on the Reich Broadcasting Corporation of Nazi Germany. All broadcasts were authorized by the Reich Ministry of Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels. Despite the latter's attempts to temper excessive optimism, they often exaggerated the success of the German army, leading historian Aristotle Kallis to describe their tone as "triumphalist".
Hans Krebs was a German Army general of infantry who served during World War II.
During World War II, the Waffen-SS recruited significant numbers of non-Germans, both as volunteers and conscripts. In total some 500,000 non-Germans and ethnic Germans from outside Germany, mostly from German-occupied Europe, were recruited between 1940 and 1945. The units were under the control of the SS Führungshauptamt beneath Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Upon mobilization, the units' tactical control was given to the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht.
Ewald Lindloff was a Waffen-SS officer during World War II, who was present in the Führerbunker on 30 April 1945, when Hitler committed suicide. He was placed in charge of disposing of Hitler's remains. Lindloff was later killed during the break-out on 2 May 1945 while crossing the Weidendammer Bridge under heavy fire in Berlin.
The myth of the clean Wehrmacht is the fictitious notion that the regular German armed forces were not involved in The Holocaust or other war crimes during World War II. The myth denies the culpability of the German military command in the planning and preparation of war crimes. Even where the perpetration of war crimes and the waging of a war of extermination, particularly in the Soviet Union—where the Nazis viewed the population as "subhumans" ruled by "Jewish Bolshevik" conspirators—has been acknowledged, they are ascribed to the "Party soldiers", the Schutzstaffel (SS), and not the regular German military.
During World War II, the Barbarossa decree was one of the Wehrmacht criminal orders given on 13 May 1941, shortly before Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The decree was laid out by Adolf Hitler during a high level meeting with military officials on March 30, 1941, where he declared that war against Soviet Russia would be a war of extermination, in which both the political and intellectual elites of Russia would be eradicated by German forces, in order to ensure a long-lasting German victory. Hitler underlined that executions would not be a matter for military courts, but for the organised action of the military. The decree, issued by Field Marshal Keitel a few weeks before Operation Barbarossa, exempted punishable offenses committed by enemy civilians 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 the maintenance of discipline.
J.J. Fedorowicz Publishing is a Canadian publishing house that specialises in literature on the German armed forces of the World War II era. Its authors are both popular history writers such as Paul Carell and Franz Kurowski, along with the war-time veterans, including Kurt Meyer of the SS Division Hitlerjugend and Otto Weidinger of the SS Division Das Reich.
Ernst Klink was a German military historian who specialised in Nazi Germany and World War II. He was a long-term employee at the Military History Research Office (MGFA). As a contributor to the seminal work Germany and the Second World War from MGFA, Klink was the first to identify the independent planning by the German Army High Command for Operation Barbarossa.
↑ Armbrüster 2005, p. 64.
↑ Müller 2016, p. 1.
↑ Allied Control Authority 1946a, p. 81.
↑ Allied Control Authority 1946b, p. 63.
1 2 Müller 2016, p. 12.
↑ Overmans 2004, p. 215.
↑ Harrison 2000, p. 10.
↑ Tooze 2006, p. 181.
↑ Evans 2008, p. 333.
↑ Department of State 2016.
↑ Taylor 1995, pp. 90–119.
↑ Kitchen 1994, pp. 39–65.
↑ Van Creveld 1982, p. 3.
↑ Müller 2016, pp. 58–59.
↑ Hartmann 2013, pp. 85–108.
1 2 Overmans 2004, p. 215; Müller 2016, p. 16; Wette 2006, p. 77.
↑ Fritz 2011, p. 470.
↑ Wette 2006, pp. 195–250.
↑ USHMM n.d.
1 2 Kershaw 1997, p. 150.
↑ Huber 2000.
↑ Strohn 2010, p. 10.
↑ Wheeler-Bennett 1967, p. 60.
1 2 Craig 1980, pp. 424–432.
1 2 3 Murray & Millett 2001, p. 22.
↑ Murray & Millett 2001, p. 33.
↑ Wheeler-Bennett 1967, p. 131.
↑ Zeidler 2006, pp. 106–111.
↑ Cooper 1981, pp. 382–383.
↑ Müller 2016, p. 10.
↑ Förster 1998, p. 268.
↑ Kershaw 1998, p. 525.
↑ Broszat et al. 1999, p. 18.
1 2 Fischer 1995, p. 408.
↑ Stone 2006, p. 316.
↑ Müller 2016, pp. 12-13.
↑ U.S. War Department 1945, pp. I-57.
1 2 3 4 U.S. War Department 1945, p. I-3.
↑ Beyda 2014, pp. 448.
↑ Müller 2014, pp. 222.
↑ Greenwald 1981, p. 125.
↑ Sigmund 2004, p. 184.
1 2 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum n.d.
↑ Kompisch 2008, p. 219.
1 2 documentArchiv.de 2004, §3.
↑ Broszat 1985, p. 295.
↑ Stein 2002, p. 18.
↑ Megargee 2000, pp. 41–42.
↑ Hayward 1999, pp. 104–105.
1 2 Hayward 1999, pp. 105–106.
↑ Hayward 1999, p. 105.
1 2 Hayward 1999, p. 106.
↑ Palmer 2010, pp. 96–97.
↑ Mosier 2006, pp. 11–24.
↑ Frieser 2005, pp. 4–5.
↑ Atkinson 2002, p. 536.
↑ Jukes 2002, p. 31.
↑ Zeiler & DuBois 2012, pp. 171–172.
↑ Zhukov 1974, pp. 110–111.
↑ Corrigan 2011, p. 353.
↑ Bell 2011, pp. 95, 108.
↑ Trueman 2015a.
↑ History.com Editors 2010.
↑ Tooze 2006, pp. 125–130.
↑ Outze 1962, p. 359.
↑ Merglen 1970, p. 26.
↑ Darling 2008, p. 181.
↑ Girbig 1975, p. 112.
↑ documentArchiv.de 2004, §2.
↑ Maiolo 1998, pp. 35–36.
↑ Maiolo 1998, p. 60.
↑ Syrett 2010, pp. xi–xii.
↑ Bidlingmaier 1971, pp. 76–77.
↑ Whitley 1984, p. 30.
↑ Garzke & Dulin 1985, p. 246.
↑ Hinsley 1994, pp. 54–57.
↑ Richards 1974, pp. 223–225, 233, 236–237.
↑ Garzke & Dulin 1985, pp. 248.
↑ Trueman 2015b.
1 2 Müller 2016, pp. 71–72.
↑ Hughes & Costello 1977.
↑ Hickman 2015.
↑ Niestle 2014, Introduction.
↑ Christensen, Poulsen & Smith 2015, pp. 433, 438.
↑ Stein 2002, pp. 20–21.
1 2 Stein 2002, p. 22.
1 2 Christensen, Poulsen & Smith 2015, p. 438.
1 2 3 Christensen, Poulsen & Smith 2015, p. 437.
↑ Fritz 2011, pp. 366–368.
↑ Duiker 2015, p. 138.
↑ Biess 2006, p. 19.
↑ Herf 2006, p. 252.
↑ Krivosheev, G (2010). Russia & USSR at War in the 20th century(In Russian). Moscow: Veche. p.219. ISBN 9785953338776 (135,000 executed; 422,700 sent to penal units at the front and 436,600 imprisoned after sentencing)
↑ Mikhalev, S. N (2000). Liudskie poteri v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine 1941–1945 gg: Statisticheskoe issledovanie (Human Losses in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945 A Statistical Investigation). Krasnoiarskii gos. pedagog. universitet (Krasnoyarsk State Pedagogical University). p.23 ISBN 978-5-85981-082-6 (In Russian)
1 2 Evans 1989, pp. 58–60.
↑ Böhler 2006, pp. 183–184, 189, 241.
↑ Bartov 1999, pp. 146–47.
1 2 Hilberg 1985, p. 301.
↑ Datner 1964, pp. 20–35.
↑ Fritz 2011, pp. 92–134.
↑ Megargee 2007, p. 121.
↑ Smith 2011, p. 542.
↑ Christensen, Poulsen & Smith 2015, pp. 435–436.
↑ Neitzel & Welzer 2012, pp. 136–143.
↑ Marston & Malkasian 2008, pp. 83–90.
↑ Pavlowitch 2007, p. 61.
↑ Markovich 2014, s. 139, note 17.
↑ Gmyz 2007.
↑ Joosten 1947, p. 456.
↑ Lenten 2000, pp. 33–34.
↑ Herbermann, Baer & Baer 2000, pp. 33–34.
↑ Le Faucheur 2018.
↑ Davies 2006, p. 271.
↑ Lillian Goldman Law Library 2008.
↑ Wildt, Jureit & Otte 2004, p. 30.
↑ Bartov 1999, pp. 131–132.
↑ Bartov 2003, p. xiii.
↑ Bartov 1999, p. 146.
↑ Shepherd 2003, pp. 49–81.
↑ Hebert 2010, pp. 216–219.
1 2 Balfour 2005, p. 32.
↑ Jones 2008, pp. 73–74.
↑ Bell 2011, pp. 104–05, 107.
↑ Allert 2009, p. 82.
↑ Schoeps 2008, p. 502.
↑ Bartrop 2016, p. 247.
↑ Wette 2014, p. 74.
↑ Yad Vashem n.d.
↑ Szpilman 2002, p. 222.
↑ Timm 2015.
↑ Fischer 1985, pp. 322, 324.
↑ Barr 2009, p. 323.
↑ Allied Control Authority 1946a.
↑ Large 1996, p. 25.
↑ Allied Control Authority 1946b.
↑ Hastings 1985.
↑ Van Creveld 1982, p. 3; Hastings 1985; Gray 2007, pp. 148.
↑ O'Donnell 1978, p. 61; Hastings 1985; Gray 2007, pp. 148.
↑ Van Creveld 1982, p. 163.
↑ Bönisch & Wiegrefe 2008, p. 51.
↑ Gray 2002, pp. 21–22.
↑ Wette 2006, p. 236-238.
↑ Wienand 2015, p. 39.
↑ Wiegrefe 2014.
↑ Peck 2017.
↑ Knight 2017.
↑ Bickford 2011, p. 127.
↑ Christmann & Tschentscher 2018, §79.
↑ Scholz 2018.
↑ AFP 2019.
↑ Binkowski & Wiegrefe 2011.
↑ Axelrod 2019.
Allert, Tilman (2009). The Hitler Salute: On the Meaning of a Gesture. Translated by Chase, Jefferson. Picador. ISBN 9780312428303.
Allied Control Authority (1946a). "Enactments and Approved Papers of the Control Council and Coordinating Committee" (PDF). I. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
Allied Control Authority (1946b). "Enactments and Approved Papers of the Control Council and Coordinating Committee" (PDF). IV. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
Armbrüster, Thomas (2005). Management and Organization in Germany. Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7546-3880-3.
Atkinson, Rick (2002). An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943. Abacus. ISBN 978-0-349-11636-5.
Balfour, Michael (2005). Withstanding Hitler. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-00617-0.
Barr, W. (2009). "Wettertrupp Haudegen: The last German Arctic weather station of World War II: Part 2". Polar Record. 23 (144): 323–334. doi:10.1017/S0032247400007142.
Bartov, Omer (1986). The Eastern Front, 1941–45: German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-22486-8.
Bartov, Omer (1991). Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-506879-5.
Bartov, Omer (1999). "Soldiers, Nazis and War in the Third Reich". In Leitz, Christian (ed.). The Third Reich: The Essential Readings. London: Blackwell. pp. 129–150. ISBN 978-0-631-20700-9.
Bartov, Omer (2003). Germany's War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories . Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-631-20700-9.
Bartrop, Paul R. (2016). Resisting the Holocaust: Upstanders, Partisans, and Survivors. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781610698788.
Bell, P.M.H. (2011). Twelve Turning Points of the Second World War. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300187700.
Beyda, Oleg (2014). "'Iron Cross of the Wrangel's Army': Russian Emigrants as Interpreters in the Wehrmacht". The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. 27 (3): 430–448. doi:10.1080/13518046.2014.932630.
Bickford, Andrew (2011). Fallen Elites: The Military Other in Post–Unification Germany. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0804773966.
Biess, Frank (2006). Homecomings: returning POWs and the legacies of defeat in postwar Germany. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-12502-2.
Bidlingmaier, Gerhard (1971). "KM Admiral Graf Spee". Warship Profile 4. Windsor, England: Profile Publications. pp. 73–96. OCLC 20229321.
Böhler, Jochen (2006). Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg. Die Wehrmacht in Polen 1939 (in German). Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag. ISBN 978-3-596-16307-6.
Bönisch, Georg; Wiegrefe, Klaus (2008). "Schandfleck der Geschichte". Der Spiegel (in German) (15): 50–52. Retrieved 15 January 2019.
Bos, Pascale (2006). "Feminists Interpreting the Politics of Wartime Rape: Berlin, 1945; Yugoslavia, 1992–1993". Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 31: 996–1025.
Broszat, Martin (1985). The Hitler State: The Foundation and Development of the Internal Structure of the Third Reich. London: Longman. ISBN 978-0-582-48997-4.
Broszat, Martin; Buchheim, Hans; Jacobsen, Hans-Adolf; Krausnick, Helmut (1999). Anatomie des SS-Staates Vol.1 (in German). München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag.
Christensen, Claus Bundgård; Poulsen, Niels Bo; Smith, Peter Scharff (2015). Waffen-SS : Europas nazistiske soldater[Waffen-SS: Europe's Nazi soldiers] (in Danish) (1 ed.). Lithuania: Gyldendal A/S. ISBN 978-87-02-09648-4.
Cooper, Matthew (1981). The German Air Force, 1933–1945: An Anatomy of Failure. Jane's Publications. ISBN 978-0-53103-733-1.
Corrigan, Gordon (2011). The Second World War: a Military History. London: Atlantic. ISBN 978-0-857-89135-8.
Craig, Gordon (1980). Germany, 1866–1945 . Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-502724-2.
Darling, Kev (2008). Aircraft of the 8th Army Air Force 1942–1945. USAAF Illustrated. Big Bird Aviation. ISBN 978-0-9559840-0-6.
Datner, Szymon (1964). Crimes against Prisoners-of-War: Responsibility of the Wehrmacht. Warszawa: Zachodnia Agencja Prasowa. OCLC 5975828.
Datner, Szymon (1964). 55 Dni Wehrmachtu w Polsce[55 days of the Wehrmacht in Poland] (in Polish). Warszawa: Wydawn, Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej. OCLC 5975828.
Davies, Norman (2006). Europe at War 1939–1945: No Simple Victory. London: Pan Books. ISBN 978-0-330-35212-3.
Davies, W. (1973). German Army Handbook. Shepperton, Surrey: Ian Allan Ltd. ISBN 978-0-7110-0290-6.
Duiker, William J. (2015). "The Crisis Deepens: The Outbreak of World War II". Contemporary World History. Shepperton, Surrey: Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-1-285-44790-2.
Evans, Anthony A. (2005). World War II: An Illustrated Miscellany. Worth Press. ISBN 978-1-84567-681-0.
Evans, Richard J. (1989). In Hitler's Shadow West German Historians and the Attempt to Escape the Nazi Past. New York: Pantheon. ISBN 978-0-394-57686-2.
Evans, Richard J. (2008). The Third Reich at War . New York, NY: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-311671-4.
Fest, Joachim (1996). Plotting Hitler's Death—The Story of the German Resistance. New York: Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 978-0-8050-4213-9.
Fischer, Alexander (1985). Teheran - Jalta - Potsdam. Die sowjetischen Protokolle von den Kriegskonferenzen derGrossen Drei (in German). Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik. ISBN 978-3804686540.
Fischer, Klaus (1995). Nazi Germany: A New History (in German). New York, NY: Continuum. ISBN 978-0-82640-797-9.
Frieser, Karl-Heinz (2005). Blitzkrieg-legende: der westfeldzug 1940[The Blitzkrieg Legend: The 1940 Campaign in the West]. Translated by Greenwood, J. T. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-59114-294-2.
Förster, Jürgen (1989). "The Wehrmacht and the War of Extermination Against the Soviet Union". In Marrus, Michael (ed.). The Nazi Holocaust Part 3 The "Final Solution": The Implementation of Mass Murder vol.2. Westpoint: Meckler Press. pp. 494–520. ISBN 978-0-88736-255-2.
Förster, Jürgen (1998). "Complicity or Entanglement? The Wehrmacht, the War and the Holocaust". In Berenbaum, Michael; Peck, Abraham (eds.). The Holocaust and History The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed and the Reexamined. Bloomington: Indian University Press. pp. 266–283. ISBN 978-0-253-33374-2.
Förster, Jürgen (2004). "The German Military's Image of Russia". In Erickson, Ljubica; Erickson, Mark (eds.). Russia War, Peace and Diplomacy. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 117–129. ISBN 978-0-297-84913-1.
Fritz, Stephen (2011). Ostkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the East. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-8131-3416-1.
Garzke, William H.; Dulin, Robert O. (1985). Battleships: Axis and Neutral Battleships in World War II. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-0-87021-101-0.
Girbig, Werner (1975). Six Months to Oblivion: The Eclipse of the Luftwaffe Fighter Force Over the Western Front, 1944/45. Schiffer Publishing Ltd. ISBN 978-0-88740-348-4.
Goda, Norman (2005). "Black Marks: Hitler's Bribery of his Senior Officers During World War II". In Kreike, Emmanuel; Jordan, William Chester (eds.). Corrupt Histories. Toronto: Hushion House. pp. 413–452. ISBN 978-1-58046-173-3.
Gray, Colin (2002). Defining and Achieving Decisive Victory (PDF). Strategic Studies Institute. ISBN 978-1-58487-089-0.
Gray, Colin (2007). War, Peace & International Relations – An Introduction to Strategic History. Routledge. ISBN 978-0415594875.
Greenwald, Maurine Weiner (1981). "Mobilizing Women for War: German and American Propaganda, 1939-1945 by Leila J. Rupp". The Business History Review. The President and Fellows of Harvard College. 55 (1): 124–126. doi:10.2307/3114466. JSTOR 3114466.
Grossmann, Atina (2009). Jews, Germans, and Allies Close Encounters in Occupied Germany. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-40083-274-3.
Harrison, Mark (2000). The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison (Studies in Macroeconomic History). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521785037 . Retrieved 9 January 2019.
Hartmann, Christian (2013). Operations Barbarossa: Nazi Germany's War in the East, 1941–1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-966078-0.
Hastings, Max (5 May 1985). "Their Wehrmacht was better than our Army". Washington Post.
Hayward, Joel (1999). "A case study in early joint warfare: An analysis of the Wehrmacht's Crimean campaign of 1942". Journal of Strategic Studies. 22 (4): 103–130. doi:10.1080/01402399908437771.
Hebert, Valerie (2010). Hitler's Generals on Trial: The Last War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-1698-5.
Herbermann, Nanda; Baer, Hester; Baer, Elizabeth Roberts (2000). The Blessed Abyss: Inmate #6582 in Ravensbruck Concentration Camp for Women (Google Books). Detroit: Wayne State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8143-2920-7 . Retrieved 12 January 2011.
Herf, Jeffrey (2006). The Jewish enemy: Nazi propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-02175-4.
Hilberg, Raul (1985). The Destruction of the European Jews. New York: Holmes & Meier. ISBN 978-0-8419-0832-1.
Hinsley, F. H. (1994) [1993]. British Intelligence in the Second World War. Its influence on Strategy and Operations. History of the Second World War. abridged (2nd rev. ed.). London: HMSO. ISBN 978-0-11-630961-7.
Huber, Ernst Rudolf (2000). Dokumente zur deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte. Band 2. Deutsche Verfassungsdokumente 1851 - 1918 (in German). Kohlhammer. ASIN B0000BQQHL.
Hughes, Terry; Costello, John (1977). Battle of the Atlantic. HarperCollins Distribution Services. ISBN 978-0002160483.
Jones, Nigel (2008). Countdown to Valkyrie: The July Plot to Assassinate Hitler. Philadelphia, PA.: Casemate. ISBN 9781848325081.
Joosten, Paul A., ed. (1947). Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal (PDF). 7. Nuremberg, Germany: International military tribunal – Nuremberg. OCLC 300473195.
Jukes, Geoffrey (2002). The Second World War: The Eastern Front 1941–1945. Oxford: Osprey. ISBN 978-1-84176-391-0.
Kershaw, Ian (1997). Stalinism and Nazism: dictatorships in comparison. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-56521-9.
Kershaw, Ian (2001). Hitler: 1936–1945, Nemesis. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-39332-252-1.
Kershaw, Ian (2008). Hitler: A Biography. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-06757-6.
Killen, John (2003). The Luftwaffe: A History. South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Military. ISBN 978-1-78159-110-9.
Kitchen, Martin (1994). Nazi Germany at War. London & New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-582-07387-6.
Kompisch, Kathrin (2008). Täterinnen. Frauen im Nationalsozialismus (in German). Böhlau Köln. ISBN 978-3-412-20188-3.
Lampe, John R. (2000) [1996]. Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country (2nd ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-77401-7.
Large, David Clay (1996). Germans to the Front: West German Rearmament in the Adenauer Era. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-80784-539-4.
Lenten, Ronit (2000). Israel and the Daughters of the Shoah: Reoccupying the Territories of Silence. Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1-57181-775-4.
Maiolo, Joseph (1998). The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany, 1933–39 A Study in Appeasement and the Origins of the Second World War. London: Macmillan Press. ISBN 0-312-21456-1.
Markovich, Slobodan G. (2014). "Memories of Victimhood in Serbia and Croatia from the 1980s to the Disintegration of Yugoslavia". In El-Affendi, Abdelwahab (ed.). Genocidal Nightmares: Narratives of Insecurity and the Logic of Mass Atrocities. New York City: Bloomsbury. pp. 117–141. ISBN 978-1-62892-073-4.
Marston, Daniel; Malkasian, Carter, eds. (2008). Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84603-281-3.
Megargee, Geoffrey P. (1997). "Triumph of the Null: Structure and Conflict in the Command of German Land Forces, 1939-1945". War in History. 4 (1): 60–80. doi:10.1177/096834459700400104.
Megargee, Geoffrey P. (2000). Inside Hitler's High Command. Lawrence, Kansas: Kansas University Press. ISBN 978-0-7006-1015-0.
Megargee, Geoffrey P. (2007). War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941. Rowman & Littelefield. ISBN 978-0-7425-4482-6.
Merglen, Albert (1970). Geschichte und Zukunft der Luftlandetruppen (in German). Rombach. ASIN B0000BSMDD.
Mosier, John (2006). Cross of Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German War Machine, 1918–1945. New York: Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 978-0-80507-577-9.
Müller, Klaus-Jürgen (1987). The Army, Politics and Society in Germany 1933–1945: Studies in the Army's Relation to Nazism. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-1071-2.
Müller, Rolf-Dieter (2014). The Unknown Eastern Front: The Wehrmacht and Hitler's Foreign Soldiers. New York: I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-1780768908.
Müller, Rolf-Dieter (2016). Hitler's Wehrmacht, 1935–1945. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-81316-738-1.
Murray, Williamson; Millett, Allan Reed (2001). A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-00680-5.
Neitzel, Sönke; Welzer, Harald (2012). Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying – The Secret WWII Transcripts of German POWs. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-30795-812-9.
Niestle, Axel (2014). German U-Boat Losses During World War II: Details of Destruction. London: Frontline Books. ISBN 978-1848322103.
O'Donnell, H. K. (June 1978). Smith, Robert W. (ed.). "A GENIUS FOR WAR: Review". Marine Corps Gazette . 62 (6): 60–61. ISSN 0025-3170.
Outze, Børge (1962). Danmark under anden verdenskrig (in Danish). Copenhagen: Hasselbalch. ISBN 978-87-567-1889-9.
Overmans, Rüdiger (2004). Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg (in German). München: Oldenbourg. ISBN 978-3-486-20028-7.
Palmer, Michael A. (2010). The German Wars: A Concise History, 1859–1945. Minneapolis, MN: Zenith Press. ISBN 978-0-76033-780-6.
Pavlowitch, Stevan K. (2007). Hitler's New Disorder: The Second World War in Yugoslavia. New York City: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-1-85065-895-5.
Richards, Denis (1974) [1953]. "VI The Struggle at Sea: The First Battle of the Convoy Routes, the Anti-Shipping Offensive and the Escape of the 'Scharnhorst' and 'Gneisenau'". Royal Air Force 1939–1945: The Fight at Odds. History of the Second World War, Military Series. I (pbk. ed.). London: HMSO. pp. 94–116. ISBN 978-0-11-771592-9 . Retrieved 15 October 2016.
Schoeps, Karl-Heinz (2008). "Holocaust and Resistance in Vilnius: Rescuers in "Wehrmacht" Uniforms". German Studies Review . 31 (3): 489–512. JSTOR 27668589.
Schulte, Theo (1989). The German Army and Nazi Policies in Occupied Russia. Oxford: Berg. ISBN 978-0-85496-160-3.
Shepherd, Ben H. (2003). "The Continuum of Brutality: Wehrmacht Security Divisions in Central Russia, 1942". German History. 21 (1): 49–81. doi:10.1191/0266355403gh274oa.
Shepherd, Ben H. (2004). War in the Wild East: the German Army and Soviet Partisans. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-01296-7.
Sigmund, Anna-Maria (2004). Les femmes du IIIe Reich (in French). Jean-Claude Lattès. ISBN 978-2709625418.
Smelser, Ronald; Davies, Edward (2008). The Myth of the Eastern Front: the Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-83365-3.
Smith, Helmut Walser (2011). The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-923739-5.
Stackelberg, Roderick (2007). The Routledge Companion to Nazi Germany. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-41530-861-8.
Stein, George (2002) [1966]. The Waffen-SS: Hitler's Elite Guard at War 1939–1945. Cerberus Publishing. ISBN 978-1841451008.
Stone, David J. (2006). Fighting for the Fatherland: The Story of the German Soldier from 1648 to the Present Day. Herndon, VA: Potomac Books. ISBN 978-1-59797-069-3.
Strohn, Matthias (November 2010). The German Army and the Defence of the Reich. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521191999 . Retrieved 15 May 2015.
Syrett, David (2010). The Defeat of the German U-Boats: The Battle of the Atlantic. Studies in Maritime History. University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1570039522.
Szpilman, Władysław (2002). The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939–1945 (2nd ed.). Picador. ISBN 978-0-312-31135-3.
Taylor, Telford (1995). Sword and Swastika: Generals and Nazis in the Third Reich. New York: Barnes & Noble. ISBN 978-1-56619-746-5.
Tooze, Adam (2006). The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy. New York: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-67003-826-8.
U.S. War Department (1945). "Chapter I: The German Military System". Handbook on German Military Forces, 15 March 1945, Technical Manual TM-E 30-451.
Van Creveld, Martin (1982). Fighting power: German and US Army performance, 1939–1945. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-31309-157-5.
von Bischofhausen, Otto (1950) [1941]. "The Hostage Case" (PDF). Report to Commanding Officer in Serbia, 20 October 1941 Concerning Severe Reprisal Measures. Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. Nuremberg, Allied-occupied Germany: Nuremberg Military Tribunals. OCLC 312464743.
Wette, Wolfram (2006). The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-02213-3.
Wette, Wolfram (2014). "Ein Judenratter aus der Wehrmacht. Feldwebel Anton Schmid (1900–1942)" (PDF). In Müller, Julia (ed.). Menschen mit Zivilcourage. Mut, Widerstand und verantwortliches Handeln in Geschichte und Gegenwart (in German). Lucerne: Kanton Luzern. pp. 74–82.
Wheeler-Bennett, John (1967). The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics 1918–1945. London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-1812-3.
Whitley, M.J. (July 1984). "Warship 31: Graf Zeppelin, Part 1". London: Conway Maritime Press Ltd. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
Wienand, Christiane (2015). Returning Memories: Former Prisoners of War in Divided and Reunited Germany. Rochester, N.Y: Camden House. ISBN 978-1571139047 . Retrieved 22 September 2018.
Williamson, David G. (2002). The Third Reich (3rd ed.). London: Longman Publishers. ISBN 978-0-58236-883-5.
Zeidler, Manfred (2006). "The Strange Allies – Red Army and Reichswehr in the Inter-War Period". In Schlögel, Karl (ed.). Russian-German Special Relations in the Twentieth Century: A Closed Chapter?. New York: Berg. pp. 106–111. ISBN 978-1-84520-177-7.
Zeiler, Thomas W.; DuBois, Daniel M. (2012). A Companion to World War II. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-118-32504-9.
Zhukov, Georgy (1974). Marshal of Victory, Volume II. Pen and Sword Books Ltd. ISBN 9781781592915.
AFP (28 February 2019). "Germany struggles to stop Nazi war payment suspicions". The Local.
Axelrod, Toby (27 March 2019). "German Jewish leader urges cancellation of pension payments to former SS members". timesofisrael.com. The Times of Israel. Retrieved 12 June 2019.
Binkowski, Rafael; Wiegrefe, Klaus (21 October 2011). "How Waffen SS Veterans Exploited Postwar Politics". Der Spiegel.
Christmann, Rainer M.; Tschentscher, A. (5 February 2018). "BVerfGE 36, 1 - Grundlagenvertrag". servat.unibe.ch. Das Fallrecht. Retrieved 17 January 2019.
Department of State (15 August 2016). "RG 84: Switzerland". National Archives. Retrieved 16 May 2019.
documentArchiv.de, ed. (3 February 2004) [1935]. "Wehrgesetz Vom 21. Mai 1935" [Military Law of 21 May 1935]. Reichsgesetzblatt (in German). Berlin: Reich Ministry of Interior. I: 609–614. Retrieved 6 April 2019.
Gmyz, Cezary (22 November 2007). "Seksualne niewolnice III Rzeszy" [Sex Slaves of the Third Reich] (in Polish). Wprost. Retrieved 11 March 2019.
Hickman, Kennedy (2015). "Battle of the Atlantic in World War II". Thoughtco. Dotdash publishing. Retrieved 20 May 2015.
History.com Editors (4 March 2010). "Germans invade Poland". History. A&E Television Networks. Retrieved 21 May 2015.
Knight, Ben (16 May 2017). "The German military and its troubled traditions". Deutsche Welle.
Le Faucheur, Christelle (23 July 2018). "Were US POWs Starved to Death in German Camps?". The National WWII Museum . Retrieved 11 February 2019.
Lillian Goldman Law Library (2008). "Judgement : The Accused Organizations". Avalon. Lillian Goldman Law Library. Retrieved 17 January 2019.
Peck, Michael (4 February 2017). "Exposed: The Secret Ex-Nazi Army That Guarded West Germany". Center for the National Interest. The National Interest. Retrieved 11 January 2019.
Reichsgesetzblatt (1935). "Die Verfassungen in Deutschland I, no. 52" (in German).
Scholz, Kay-Alexander (28 March 2018). "German army instills new traditions to move away from troubled history". Deutsche Welle. DW News. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
Timm, Sylvia (4 May 2015). "Verdienstorden der Bundesrepublik für Historiker Wolfram Wette" [Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for Historian Wolfram Wette] (in German). Badische Zeitung . Retrieved 22 December 2016.
Trueman, Chris N. (14 May 2015). "Blitzkrieg". historylearningsite.co.uk. HistoryLearningSite. Retrieved 20 May 2015.
Trueman, Chris N. (18 May 2015). "The Battle of Barents Sea". historylearningsite.co.uk. HistoryLearningSite. Retrieved 13 May 2015.
USHMM (n.d.). "The German Military and the Holocaust". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum—Holocaust Encyclopedia. Retrieved 13 January 2019.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (n.d.). "Women in the Third Reich" . Retrieved 8 September 2019.
Wiegrefe, Klaus (14 May 2014). "Nazi Veterans Created Illegal Army". Der Spiegel. Spiegel Online. Retrieved 11 January 2019.
Wildt, Michael; Jureit, Ulrike; Otte, Birgit (2004). "Crimes of the German Wehrmacht" (PDF). Hamburg Institute for Social Research. Retrieved 28 November 2008.
Yad Vashem (n.d.). "The Righteous Among The Nations". Yad Vashem. The World Holocaust Remembrance Center. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
The Wehrmacht: A Criminal Organization? Review of Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann's 1995 work Vernichtungskrieg – Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941–1944 by Jörg Bottger
Wehrmacht Propaganda Troops and the Jews – an article by Dr. Daniel Uziel
"How the Red Army Defeated Germany: The Three Alibis": Video on YouTube—lecture by Jonathan M. House of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, via the official channel of Dole Institute of Politics.
"Fighting a Lost War: The German Army in 1943": Video on YouTube—lecture by Robert Citino, via the official channel of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center.
"Mindset of WWII German Soldiers": Video on YouTube—interview with the historian Sönke Neitzel discussing his book Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing and Dying, via the official channel of The Agenda, a programme of TVOntario, a Canadian public television station.
"A Blind Eye and Dirty Hands: The Wehrmacht's Crimes" – lecture by the historian Geoffrey P. Megargee, via the YouTube channel of the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide
Access related topics
Military of Germany portal
World War II portal
Find out more on Wikipedia's
from Commons
Declarations of war
Allied cooperation
Art and World War II
North and Central Pacific
South-West Pacific
Greek Civil War
Osoaviakhim
Keelhaul
Division of Korea
German war crimes
Wehrmacht war crimes
Nuremberg trials
Genocide of Serbs
Persecution of Jews
Romanian war crimes
Sook Ching
Ianjo
Rape of Manila
Rape during the Soviet occupation of Poland
Free France
Italian protectorate of Albania (1939–1943)
Wang Jingwei regime
Vichy France
Finnish prisoners in the Soviet Union
German prisoners in the Soviet Union
German prisoners in the United States
Italian prisoners in the Soviet Union
Japanese prisoners
In the Soviet Union
Soviet prisoner mistreatment by Germans
Polish prisoners in the Soviet Union
Romanian prisoners in the Soviet Union
Soviet prisoners in Finland
Armistice of 22 June 1940
Shanggao
Borneo (1941–1942)
Greek famine of 1941–1944
Attu (occupation)
Zhejiang-Jiangxi
Chinese famine of 1942–1943
Northern Burma and Western Yunnan
Ruzagayura famine of 1943–1944
Dutch famine of 1944–1945
Vietnamese famine of 1945
End of World War II in Asia
NKC: kn20020423007
This page is based on this Wikipedia article