When the Nazi Party came to power, this was welcomed by almost the entire officer corps of the Reichswehr because of the Nazis' support for Wiederwehrhaftmachung (remilitarization) of Germany, the total militarization of German society in order to ensure that Germany did not lose the next war. Kay and David Stahel argue that, including crimes such as rape, slavery, wanton destruction, and looting in addition to murder, "it would be reasonable to conclude that a substantial majority of the ten million Wehrmacht soldiers deployed at one time or another in the German-Soviet War were involved or complicit in criminal conduct". While the Nazi Party's own SS forces (in particular the SS-Totenkopfverbände, Einsatzgruppen and Waffen-SS) was the organization most responsible for the genocidal killing of the Holocaust, the regular armed forces of the Wehrmacht committed many war crimes of their own (as well as assisting the SS in theirs), particularly on the Eastern Front.Įstimates of the percentage of Wehrmacht soldiers who committed war crimes vary greatly, from the single digits to the vast majority. ĭuring World War II, the German Wehrmacht (combined armed forces - Heer, Kriegsmarine, and Luftwaffe) committed systematic war crimes, including massacres, mass rape, looting, the exploitation of forced labor, the murder of three million Soviet prisoners of war, and participated in the extermination of Jews. Soviet prisoners of war were often subjected to forced marches without adequate food or water and commonly shot. ( July 2023) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Please consider using named references to ensure each citation appears only one time. This article lists the same citations more than once.
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