Talk:War crimes of the Wehrmacht

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'Destruction of Warsaw' part

"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. "

I really would like to see some evidence that the Wehrmacht did all ths. Remember this should be about the crimes of the Wehrmacht.

129.13.186.1 23:41, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure about Wola, but during the Vinkt Massacre on the Western front civilians were definitely used as human shields by the Wehrmacht. Of course, 27 dead Belgians is a bit less than 50,000 dead Poles - I agree there. User_talk: Pan_Gerwazy--pgp 19:26, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Merge

The article should be merged with Wehrmacht. Reasons: 1.War Crimes of Wehrmacht are integral part of its history. 2.Removal of war crimes obscures the atrocious nature of Wehrmachts role in WW2. 3.The massive war crimes of Wehrmacht overshadow every other possible activity of the organisation. --Molobo 01:56, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment at Talk:Wehrmacht#Merge so all discussion will be in the same place. — JonRoma 09:03, 3 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wehrmacht crimes on the Western front

I am working on the may 1940 Vinkt_Massacre at this very moment. The article her seems to imply that such war crimes by the Wehrmacht on the Western Front did not exist before 1944, but I am a bit too timid to add Vinkt here - as, with the present construction of the article, that would mean adding an entire chapter. User_talk:Pan_Gerwazy--pgp 19:37, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't think I'm a revisionist

I consider the information in this article to be accurate, encyclopedic, and relevant...however, an article titled "War Crimes of the Wermacht"....? I never thought I'd say this, but I think Wikipedia is repeating itself here. A few helpful suggestions which could improve this...A) merge this and other articles into a new article entitled "War crimes committed by Nazi Germany" which, although it would be rather long, would remove superfluous articles such as this one. B) dissolve this article entirely but retain the information in the respective articles about each particular atrocity. C) turn this into a disambiguation page that simply links to full articles about the atrocities, getting rid of the descriptions of the events on this page...there is some rather subjective language used in these brief descriptions and some editors may take that as an NPOV conflict (I won't go so far as to say it is, yet). Regardless, this article is borderline unacceptable in its current form. We should mull this over for a few days, of course, so please let me know if you think I'm mistaken or if you have any other comments. I will take it upon myself to make the appropriate edits if no one else wants to, but of course this is a process and I want to avoid reverts if possible. Naturally, if I hear a solid argument against mine, I will be deferential. However, please, at the very least, take this into consideration. Antimatter 23:40, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Allied War Crimes

Is there also an article dealing with allied war crimes?! If yes, where is it?

Luftwaffe

Greetings. When people here discuss about the Wehrmacht, they’re thinking it’s a synonym of the German Army (Heer). It is not. It means Armed Forces which also includes the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine. This article only mentions das Heer and other German atrocity articles only mention SS and gestapo. However, I remember reading in a book (I forgot the title) that some Luftwaffe ground airmen helped the SS massacre or help round up some civilians in Poland or Soviet Union to be executed by the SS. Does anybody have information on this or can they confirm this? Thanks for any response I get. --James 12:56, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

BTW Some Wehrmacht officers and enlisted servicemen did help Jewish people escape from the Holocaust or help hide some of their fellow servicemen who were considered “half-jewish” from the SS and gestapo. http://www1.yadvashem.org/righteous/bycountry/germany/battel_dr_albert.html

http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/righit.html

problem with this article

this article has serious POV problems. Whereas other articles give the benefit of the doubt. for instance, in this article under invasion of Poland it states 50000 civilians were killed, which is the total, then claims they were all murdered/terrorbombed/executed. that is a bald-faced lie, of course a majority was actually collateral damage, not every single one of them was murdered as claimed.

don't even get me started on the Vinkt section, it doesn't even match what that article states.

the POW camps section is horrendous, it simply states that 2 million were taken captive, not that the logistics required to intern those 2 million are complicated to say the least, and the Germans were not expecting to be keeping them in camps that long. Of course there was the Nazi ideas of Russian inferiority, but that wasn't why a lot of them died. this article wreaks of Molobo

--Jadger 03:40, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what Molobo is, but I do agree that it has serious POV problems. Every single civilian killed by the Wehrmacht during the invasion of Poland is counted as a murder and warcrime. The allies entirely get the benefit of the doubt for the bomibing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki(!). If Germany had, for example, nuked Belfast it would be remembered as a horrible warcrime and no one would question it's injustice. Indeed, if we applied this same standard to coalition forces during the invasion and occupation of Iraq then the US army is guilty of more warcrimes in Iraq then the Wehrmacht was in Poland.

Ontop of that the "Allied War Crimes" article doesn't even mention the fire-bombing of dresden. The fire-bombing was terror-bombing, but I suppose it's ok if the winners of the war do it. If the loosers do it, then it's a war crime. This double-standard isn't really surprising though, the winners write the history. 130.71.96.23 06:34, 12 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Overview on Partisan operations against Wehrmacht?

Apart from the articles I linked, is there any overview on partisan activity in general, and against Wehrmacht in special? I think that Gestapo, SD, SS, Waffen-SS were prime targets of at least the hate, if not the actions of "freedom fighters" or "terrorists". On the other hand, I try to imagine how the everyday life of e.g. a small troop of Wehrmacht soldiers in charge of guarding/maintaining a railway line or a bridge somewhere in the hinterland might have looked like.

Did they get bored and killed civilians to have "some action"?
Or were they the easy target of constant possible harassment, having to expect a sniper bullet or hand grenade any moment?
Or, after successful sabotage acts, were they subject to santions for failing to ensure the usability of the bridge, like getting send to the front, to a firing squad, mine field clearing etc.?
Where there any official warnings of reprisals in case a soldier gets harmed or a bridge gets damaged?

One would expect that the heroic acts of resistance fighters either get praised afterwards (Robin Hood, Wilhelm Tell, ...), or get covered up in order not to reveal the reasons that triggered reprisals. Or is all that well documented? -- Matthead ^discuß! O 06:50, 12 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Atrocities during the Invasion of Poland

Wehrmacht units killed over 16,000 Polish civilians during the 1939 September campaign through executions. 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, and the Wehrmacht carried out 714 mass executions and a number of other crimes. Altogether, it is estimated that 50,000 Polish civilians had perished including 7000 Jews.^[1]

sorry this is wrong these AB Measurements (AB= Außerordentliche Befriedungsmassnahme = extraordinary pacification measurements) were carried out by the SS Division ZBV under the direct command of nazi party (heinrich himmler the high commander of the police and SS forces). they were not attached or included in the wehrmacht chain of command --131.173.252.9 19:47, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

^ Davies, Norman. Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation 1939-1944. Richard C. Lukas. Hippocrene Books. ISBN 0-7818-0901-0.

[forgotten-1] Davies, Norman. Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation 1939-1944. Richard C. Lukas. Hippocrene Books. ISBN 0-7818-0901-0.

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