::: context (may contain mistakes) context: This mocks the myth of the clean Wehrmacht, the idea that only the SS committed war crimes. In reality, the Wehrmacht took part in brutal atrocities on the Eastern Front. :::

  • square@lemmy.zip
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    8 days ago

    Is this actually a thing with younger people? I’m not doing some generation war “young people dumb hur dur” bullshit, I’m wondering if time has allowed normal, but low information, people to think this due to having more history to learn, and therefore spending less time on WWII in primary and secondary school. Because when I was a kid, and a young man, we were well aware of the atrocities normal German soldiers perpetrated in occupied territories and anyone who said shit like this was basically outing themselves as a moron at best, and a nazi at worst, to anyone with even a somewhat below average amount of information.

  • Jiral@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    The Wehrmacht was a draft army, the SS was an elite force that picked people for being true believers. Both committed war crimes but one of the two had only true believers while the other had everything from a believer to just some guy trying to not get killed.

    US Americans should know a thing or two about war crimes committing draft armies. Was every US soldier in Vietnam a war criminal?

  • drolex@sopuli.xyz
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    8 days ago

    My grandfather was in the French Resistance and took part in some nasty action (see Royan pocket) towards the end of the war. Strangely enough, he was the first to concede that Wehrmacht were ‘honorable’ guys, contrary to the SS (he hated them with a passion). I wonder, if depending on the theater of operations, they had different types of indoctrinated soldiers. France must have been a relative heaven compared to Eastern Europe; or if the propaganda was somewhat already at work at the time.