Wehrmacht responsability for murder, Another german soldier testimony

http://www.realitatea.net/imi-placea-sa-im...an_1014043.html
and a more detalied view: http://youtu.be/KL0VwGWYhko

Unfortunately such cases can be encountered in every army during time of war.

Some well known examples of US Army shooting women and children:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Gun_Ri_Massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre

Given the involvement of Wehrmacht was on a totally different scale, the number of such cases is expected to be relatively high.

Also, in France and Germany – Autumn 1944, occasionally the U.S. soldiers shot German soldiers after the latter had surrendered (execution platoon style), and that was before the notorious cases when during the Battle of the Bulge some SS soldiers shot some American soldiers after the latter had surrendered.

Not to mention the "liberator" army of the Soviet Union... what Polish would ever forget about Katyn?
When in war, it is really difficult not to take it personally, to "draw the line", so to say. Also, not everyone handling a weapon in times of war gets to keep his sanity, especially if that sanity isn't 100% at the beginning.
It is so easy to pass judgements from our comfortable armchairs (in a manner of speaking, as right now I'm still at work, waiting for others to finish their classes... ), without having the slightest idea of a "partisan war" or "defeatism" or such things...
WAR IS CRUEL. PERIOD.

This post has been edited by MMM on September 26, 2012 10:52 am

that one is not on the red army account though.

that one is not on the red army account though.

Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to say that the Red Army of Workers and Peasants has murdered the Poles at Katyn (and the other two less famous locations). I know it was the NKVD at Beria and Stalin's command. I just wanted to underline there's no such thing as "good guys", not in WWII...
PS: even Poland had its sins pre-invasion, anti-semitism and Teschen being only the most visible ones.
The interesting "line" that must be drawn is at the point where the institution of the army in itself does not punish killing, raping, looting etc. and AFAIK all the armies (Soviet and German alike) were not oficially condoning such behaviour.

Ilya Ehrenburg: "Kill"
"The Germans are not human beings.
From now on the word German means to us the most terrible oath. From now on the word German strikes us to the quick.
We shall not speak any more. We shall not get excited.
We shall kill.
If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day...
If you cannot kill your German with a bullet, kill him with your bayonet.
If there is calm on your part of the front, or if you are waiting for the fighting, kill a German in the meantime.
If you leave a German alive, the German will hang a Russian and rape a Russian woman.
If you kill one German, kill another - there is nothing more amusing for us than a heap of German corpses. Do not count days, do not count versts. Count only the number of Germans killed by you.
Kill the German - that is your grandmother's loud request. Do not miss. Do not let through.
Kill."
[From The War, published in 1943]

Note: he specifically says that if there is no combat in one's area, pass the time by killing a German. If there was no fighting then there were no soldiers to kill, so that leaves ethnic German civilians to be killed.

Ehrenburg was a Soviet writer, journalist, translator and cultural figure in the USSR and Russia.

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on September 26, 2012 06:35 pm

Ehrenburg is and is not a very good example. In the beginnings of his career, he wavered between communism and other ideas, but after seeing the advantages of being a "court writer", my guess is that he decided to be a Stalinist until the end. Hence the propaganda creation you've quoted. I wonder what would the contemporary Russian leadership feel about this kind of "hate speech"...
Back on topic: looting and raping were actually mentioned as "forbidden" in the Red Army, but I sincerely do not know whether there were many cases (if any) put on trial and finalized with convictions.
After all, Nurnberg Trials were "losers-only"!

This post has been edited by MMM on September 26, 2012 07:04 pm

Nevertheless, it is a very famous example.

Wow, that is interesting... OK, I am joking: I am assuming that in the 20th Century most armies had this written in their manuals and training text.
Others did the same as the soldiers of the Red Army - the difference is in the scale (the magnitude) of this phenomenon. What Soviet soldiers did dwarfed anything else - maybe Japan came close to that in China. Another particular thing with the people of the Red Army: they did not spare the women of the countries never allied with Germany - the Polish and Czech women, for example.

This post has been edited by Florin on September 28, 2012 02:45 am