War of Extermination

by Heer, Hannes; Naumann, Klaus; Shelton, Roy

• ISBN13: 9781571812322
• ISBN10: 1571812326
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-10-01
• Publisher: Berghahn Books

Summary

Among the many myths about the relationship of Nazism to the mass of the German population, few proved more powerful in postwar West Germany than the notion that the Wehrmacht had not been involved in the crimes of the Third Reich. Former generals were particularly effective in spreading, through memoirs and speeches, the legend that millions of German soldiers had fought an honest and "clean" war and that mass murder, especially in the East, was entirely the work of Himmler's SS. This volume contains the most important contributions by distinguished historians who have thoroughly demolished this Wehrmacht myth.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations	viii
Preface	xii
Volker R. Berghahn
Introduction	1	(12)
Hannes Heer
Klaus Naumann
The Concept of the War of Annihilation: Clausewitz, Ludendorff, Hitler	13	(26)
Jan Philipp Reemtsma
PART I - Crimes
``Coming Along to Shoot Some Jews?'' The Destruction of the Jews in Serbia	39	(16)
Walter Manoschek
Killing Fields: The Wehrmacht and the HOlocaust in Belorussia, 1941-1942	55	(25)
Hannes Heer
Soviet Prisoners of war in the Hands of the Wehrmacht	80	(12)
Christian Streit
The Logic of the War of Extermination: The Wehrmacht and the Anti-Partisan War	92	(35)
Hannes Heer
Men of 20 July and the War in the Soviet Union	127	(19)
Christian Gerlach
Military Violence and the National Socialist Consensus: The Wehrmachat in Greece, 1941-44	146	(29)
Mark Mazower
Civitella della Chiana on 29 June 1944: The Reconstruction of a German ``Measure''	175	(44)
Michael Geyer
PART II - Formations
Local Headquarters Liepaja: Two Months of German Occupation in the Summer of 1941	219	(18)
Margers Vestermanis
On the Way to Stalingrad: The 6th Army in 1941-42	237	(35)
Bernd Boll
Hans Safrian
Incident at Baranivka: German Reprisals and the Soviet Partisan Movement in Ukraine, October-December 1941	272	(42)
Truman Anderson
Koruck 582	314	(15)
Theo J. Schulte
How Amorality Became Normality: Reflections on the Mentality of German Soldiers on the Eastern Front	329	(16)
Hannes Heer
Emptying the Gaze: Framing Violence through the Viewfinder	345	(36)
Bernd Huppauf
PART III - Aftermath
Forward Defense: The ``Memorandum of the Generals'' for the Nuremberg Court	381	(19)
Manfred Messerschmidt
Whose History Is It, Anyway? The Wehrmacht and German Historiography	400	(17)
Omer Bartov
The ``Unblemished'' Wehrmacht: The Social History of a Myth	417	(13)
Klaus Naumann
Notes on Contributors	430	(3)
Appendix: Charts and Maps	433	(11)
Index of Names	444	(10)
Index of Locations	454