How guilty is the entire Wehrmacht of war crimes?

Objective research on factual information regarding German military related warcrimes.
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Re: How guilty is the entire Wehrmacht of war crimes?

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Also, note my caveat there.
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Re: How guilty is the entire Wehrmacht of war crimes?

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phylo_roadking wrote:Also, note my caveat there.
Not sure if this was referring to me or not. I looked at my last post and realized that it could be missinterpreted. To elaborate a bit. The German leadership condoned, encouraged, and/or ordered some war crimes. Others they did not. So depending on what kind of war crime they may actually have been punished by the German military. If not they may have come to the notice of the alllied investigators after the war. I'm pretty sure that some concentration camp guards were tried and punished although these were SS if you are talking about Wehrmact soldiers (as opposed to officers) I suspect some were but really don't know.
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Re: How guilty is the entire Wehrmacht of war crimes?

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THE wehrmacht is not guilty of warcrimes;some individuals are.
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Re: How guilty is the entire Wehrmacht of war crimes?

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If war crimes were condoned or ordered by the high command then the Wehrmact as an orgainization is indeed guilty of war crimes. I believe that there is substantial evidence that this is the case.
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Re: How guilty is the entire Wehrmacht of war crimes?

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lwd wrote:If war crimes were condoned or ordered by the high command then the Wehrmact as an orgainization is indeed guilty of war crimes. I believe that there is substantial evidence that this is the case.
Well as far as I remember the entire Wehrmacht was NOT declared a criminal organization by the Nuremburg Trials - contrary to the SS. Going with your argumentation then the Red Army is surely entirely guilty because Katyn was codoned AND ordered and so would even be the US Army because My Lai was at least covered until they couldn´t cover it no more....
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Re: How guilty is the entire Wehrmacht of war crimes?

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Hello Gents:
It would have been wise if this thread had not been started at all. The question is too broad and "War Crime" needs to be defined. The "entire Wehrmacht" was not guilty of war-crimes, but individual units or members were. No war was ever fought without a war-crime being committed. We in the West base our values on the Bible, but if you look in the Old Testament you will find war-crimes galore done at God's behest. War-crimes come with war; it is a given. Best wishes.
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Re: How guilty is the entire Wehrmacht of war crimes?

Post by Gebirgsjaeger »

John W. Howard wrote:Hello Gents:
It would have been wise if this thread had not been started at all. The question is too broad and "War Crime" needs to be defined. The "entire Wehrmacht" was not guilty of war-crimes, but individual units or members were. No war was ever fought without a war-crime being committed. We in the West base our values on the Bible, but if you look in the Old Testament you will find war-crimes galore done at God's behest. War-crimes come with war; it is a given. Best wishes.
Very well written John! There´s nothing to add.
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Re: How guilty is the entire Wehrmacht of war crimes?

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Gebirgsjaeger wrote:
lwd wrote:If war crimes were condoned or ordered by the high command then the Wehrmact as an orgainization is indeed guilty of war crimes. I believe that there is substantial evidence that this is the case.
Well as far as I remember the entire Wehrmacht was NOT declared a criminal organization by the Nuremburg Trials - contrary to the SS. Going with your argumentation then the Red Army is surely entirely guilty because Katyn was codoned AND ordered and so would even be the US Army because My Lai was at least covered until they couldn´t cover it no more....
Not really. First of all there is a difference between an orgainzation commiting crimes and being a criminal organization. The latter implies that criminal activities are a fundamental component of the organization the other just that an organization commited crimes as an organization. In the two cases you gave above the orders or even knowledge of the events were restricted to a fairly small part of the organization and indeed in the case of My Lai there is not even evidence that it was ordered or condoned at very high levels. Now whether the "entire Wehrmact" is guilty of war crimes can easily become an exercise in semantics. Clearly many and I believe (though I have no proof of it) the vast majority of the members of the Whermact were not guilty of war crimes. If this is what is meant by "entire Wehrmact" then the answer is no (note that even though the SS was declared a criminal organization not all members were considered guilty of war crimes). However since orders like the "Commisar order" were propagated through most if not all the Wehrmact it is not unreasonable to say that the "entire Wehrmact" as an organization was guilty of war crimes. Now it could be argued that some significant components did not follow the order either through lack of opertunity, consious, or knowledge and to this extent the "entire Wehrmact" was not guilty of war crimes. That's one reason I didn't use that phrasing.
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Re: How guilty is the entire Wehrmacht of war crimes?

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LWD, this whole issue WAS actually covered IN DETAIL at the IMT - for not ONLY did they declare the SS a criminal organisation... this was dovetailed with an implicit admission that responsibility rises to the top of the command chain by the prosecution of Kietel etc. :wink:

So there were no grey areas left for interpretation or re-interpretation. Responsibility for a criminal act rises to the level of ..."corporate" responsibility?...in a recognised hierarchy - like a military command structure. Thus the Wehrmacht as an organisation is not criminal - but people occupying niches of responsibility IN that organisation can be, and can be held responsible for the actions of those beneath them in the organisation; and also by implication for NOT preventing any wrongdoing on the part of lower levels of an organisation.
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Re: How guilty is the entire Wehrmacht of war crimes?

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My understanding is that in US law anyway you can have an organization convicted of a criminal act. That doesnot make the organization a "criminal orgainzation". That term is reserved for organizations whose buisness model is inherently criminal. If an organization is convicted of a criminal act the oranziation as a whole may be penalized (via fines or other strictures) as well as the responsible parties. In this case individuals in the firm who had no responsability for the crimes are not considered guilty or punishable. Now it's still not clear to me how to answer the original question. For one thing it seams to me either you are guilty or you are not guilty of a war crime where the orginal question implies degrees of guilt. It's also not clear if by "entire" they mean the organization as a whole or the organization and everyone in it.
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Re: How guilty is the entire Wehrmacht of war crimes?

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Re: How guilty is the entire Wehrmacht of war crimes?

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lwd wrote:
Gebirgsjaeger wrote:
lwd wrote:If war crimes were condoned or ordered by the high command then the Wehrmact as an orgainization is indeed guilty of war crimes. I believe that there is substantial evidence that this is the case.
Well as far as I remember the entire Wehrmacht was NOT declared a criminal organization by the Nuremburg Trials - contrary to the SS. Going with your argumentation then the Red Army is surely entirely guilty because Katyn was codoned AND ordered and so would even be the US Army because My Lai was at least covered until they couldn´t cover it no more....
Not really. First of all there is a difference between an orgainzation commiting crimes and being a criminal organization. The latter implies that criminal activities are a fundamental component of the organization the other just that an organization commited crimes as an organization. In the two cases you gave above the orders or even knowledge of the events were restricted to a fairly small part of the organization and indeed in the case of My Lai there is not even evidence that it was ordered or condoned at very high levels. Now whether the "entire Wehrmact" is guilty of war crimes can easily become an exercise in semantics. Clearly many and I believe (though I have no proof of it) the vast majority of the members of the Whermact were not guilty of war crimes. If this is what is meant by "entire Wehrmact" then the answer is no (note that even though the SS was declared a criminal organization not all members were considered guilty of war crimes). However since orders like the "Commisar order" were propagated through most if not all the Wehrmact it is not unreasonable to say that the "entire Wehrmact" as an organization was guilty of war crimes. Now it could be argued that some significant components did not follow the order either through lack of opertunity, consious, or knowledge and to this extent the "entire Wehrmact" was not guilty of war crimes. That's one reason I didn't use that phrasing.
I know it´s way off-topic, but it might be interesting to look at this link

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles9 ... ietnam.htm

and this

http://www.democracynow.org/2003/10/29/ ... t_uncovers
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phylo_roadking
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Re: How guilty is the entire Wehrmacht of war crimes?

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My understanding is that in US law anyway you can have an organization convicted of a criminal act. That doesnot make the organization a "criminal orgainzation". That term is reserved for organizations whose buisness model is inherently criminal. If an organization is convicted of a criminal act the oranziation as a whole may be penalized (via fines or other strictures) as well as the responsible parties. In this case individuals in the firm who had no responsability for the crimes are not considered guilty or punishable. Now it's still not clear to me how to answer the original question. For one thing it seams to me either you are guilty or you are not guilty of a war crime where the orginal question implies degrees of guilt. It's also not clear if by "entire" they mean the organization as a whole or the organization and everyone in it.
The problem is that that's a relatively recent development, when bit by bit various cases and of course events and crimes have required more and more legislation covering corporate responsibility etc. Hence you can have "corporate manslaughter" if a company's working practices across the board (small "b") can be shown to have caused a death or deaths - an alrline's unsafe practices, for example. But there's two problems with this - first of all and of course, no form of this was in place in 1945 - and the second thing there's a better than good case to be made that Wehrmacht officers who committed war crimes did so in contravention of various codes and orders.

There are of course exceptions to that - like the Commando Order, or the orders issued for Norway and Crete about shooting francs-tireurs and hostages without the need for even military courts-martial which is specifically against the Hague Conventions...which DO provide for them to be shot :shock: but only AFTER investigations and at the very least drum-head trials. And quite rightly therefore - this exception was covered by the execution of Kietel, with the Commando order specifically among the charges laid against him.

So "corporately" - war crimes were seen as aberrations rather than the norm in 1945.
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Re: How guilty is the entire Wehrmacht of war crimes?

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phylo_roadking wrote: ...So "corporately" - war crimes were seen as aberrations rather than the norm in 1945.
You've even managed to make the "how guilty" part look reasonable! And I thought that was one of the worst formed parts of the title of this thread.
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Re: How guilty is the entire Wehrmacht of war crimes?

Post by lwd »

Gebirgsjaeger wrote: ...I know it´s way off-topic, but it might be interesting to look at this link
...and this

http://www.democracynow.org/2003/10/29/ ... t_uncovers
Sorry I've heard enough of democracy now on NPR to know that it is totaly untrustworthy.
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