Massaker, Vergewaltigungen, Kriegsverbrechen. Die Wehrmacht war die Spitze des Nazi-Staates. Sie hielten den Nazis die Front. Hinter der Front wurden von der deutschen Wehrmacht ungeheuerliche Kriegsverbrechen begangen. Dörfer wurden niedergemacht, Massaker wurden begangen. Willig folgte die Wehrmacht dem selbsternannten Strategen, ihrem Führer, bis in den Untergang. Erst als alles zu spät war, formierte sich eine Minderheit unter den Wehrmachtsoffizieren zu einer Widerstandsbewegung. Die Mehrheit hielt dem kleinen Wichser aus Braunau die Treue, die Fahne und die Front. Nicht immer stand ein direkter Befehl oder die Angst vor Strafe dahinter. Die meisten Generäle, Offiziere und Soldaten störten sich nicht an der grenzenlosen Dummheit, Kulturlosigkeit und Selbstgefälligkeit Hitlers und seiner Verbrecherbande in den Ministerien. Zusammengestellt aus Wikipediaseiten und publiziert von Dr. Googelberg
This book discusses the experience of nearly 100,000 French colonial prisoners of war captured by Nazi Germany during World War II. Raffael Scheck shows that the German treatment of French colonial soldiers improved dramatically after initial abuses, leading the French authorities in 1945 to believe that there was a possible German plot to instigate a rebellion in the French empire. Scheck illustrates that the colonial prisoners' contradictory experiences with French authorities, French civilians, and German guards created strong demands for equal rights at the end of the war, leading to clashes with a colonial administration eager to reintegrate them into a discriminatory routine.
This book is a profound reexamination of the role of the German army, the Wehrmacht, in World War II. Until very recently, the standard story avowed that the ordinary German soldier in World War II was a good soldier, distinct from Hitler's rapacious SS troops, and not an accomplice to the massacres of civilians. Wolfram Wette, a preeminent German military historian, explodes the myth of a "clean" Wehrmacht with devastating clarity. This book reveals the Wehrmacht's long-standing prejudices against Jews, Slavs, and Bolsheviks, beliefs that predated the prophecies of Mein Kampf and the paranoia of National Socialism. Though the sixteen-million-member German army is often portrayed as a victim of Nazi mania, we come to see that from 1941 to 1944 these soldiers were thoroughly involved in the horrific cleansing of Russia and Eastern Europe. Wette compellingly documents Germany's long-term preparation of its army for a race war deemed necessary to safeguard the country's future; World War II was merely the fulfillment of these plans, on a previously unimaginable scale. This sober indictment of millions of German soldiers reaches beyond the Wehrmacht's complicity to examine how German academics and ordinary citizens avoided confronting this difficult truth at war's end. Wette shows how atrocities against Jews and others were concealed and sanitized, and history rewritten. Only recently has the German public undertaken a reevaluation of this respected national institution--a painful but necessary process if we are to truly comprehend how the Holocaust was carried out and how we have come to understand it.
The final volume in Richard J. Evans's masterly trilogy on the history of Nazi Germany traces the rise and fall of German military might, the mobilization of a ?people's community? to serve a war of conquest, and Hitler's campaign of racial subjugation and genocide Already hailed as ?a masterpiece? (William Grimes in The New York Times) and ?the most comprehensive history? of the Third Reich? (Ian Kershaw), this epic trilogy reaches its terrifying climax in this volume. Evans interweaves a broad narrative of the war's progress with viscerally affecting personal testimony from a wide range of people'from generals to front-line soldiers, from Hitler Youth activists to middle-class housewives. The Third Reich at War lays bare the dynamics of a nation more deeply immersed in war than any society before or since. Fresh insights into the conflict's great events are here, from the invasion of Poland to the Battle of Stalingrad to Hitler's suicide in the bunker. But just as important is the re-creation of the daily experience of ordinary Germans in wartime, staggering under pressure from Allied bombing and their own government's mounting demands upon them. At the center of the book is the Nazi extermination of Europe's Jews, set in the context of Hitler's genocidal plans for the racial restructuring of Europe. Blending narrative, description and analysis, The Third Reich at War creates an engrossing picture'at once sweeping and precise'of a society rushing headlong to self-destruction and taking much of Europe with it. It is the culmination of a historical masterwork that will remain the most authoritative work on Nazi Germany for years to come.
Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2020 in the subject History of Europe - Colonialism, grade: 2,3, University of Hildesheim (Geschichte), language: English, abstract: This doctoral thesis starts with a general introduction and will end with a general conclusion, which summarizes the main output of the entire work. Each chapter will begin with a special introduction and finish with a partial conclusion. The study set off a description of the historical background of Germany's colonial policy in Africa and the circumstances which surrounded its conquest and exit. Furthermore the question of multiple collective memories will be raised up from the interwar to the post war period. In a next step the strategic goals of West and East Germany's Africa policies since 1949 will be analyzed especially with regard to their interests. The EC-ACP relationship became much more relevant starting up with 1960. This process already exist until today. Taken together, in 2016 the 28 EU member states and 79 ACP countries constitute more than fifty percent of the 193 UN members states1. In the last part, this work demonstrates the German contribution to development policies in general and how mechanism worked within the framework of the association policies pursued by Germany with the so called ACP countries. Germany began its colonial expansion in the 1880s under Bismack's leadership, encouraged not only by bourgeoisie but also by gentry. Germany occupies a place in Africa's historical contemporary experiences. It was in Berlin in 1884/85 when the European great powers met in order to split up Africa into a patchwork of colonial possessions which later became states in theory. It was called the “Scramble” for Africa. The Conference also marked the dawn of one of the most brutalising and humiliating experiences endured by Africans: colonization. And although Germany was only a “minor” player at the Berlin Conference, the meeting had profound impact on the African governance, economics, culture politics and psyche. There is a lot of merit in the argument that Africa's position in the global economy, its place among other continents, its role in world politics and international relations in general, are related to the decisions in 1884/85. In short, it is not possible for Africa and Africans to say “good-bye to Berlin” because its legacies-tangible and intangible-continue to stare us in the face both within and outside Africa. In the Cold War period (1945-1989), the “German Question”, that is, the division of Germany into communist east and capitalist west, also had an impact directly and indirectly on Africa and its populations.
On June 22, 1941, Germany launched the greatest land assault in history on the Soviet Union, an attack that Adolf Hitler deemed crucial to ensure German economic and political survival. As the key theater of the war for the Germans, the eastern front consumed enormous levels of resources and accounted for 75 percent of all German casualties. Despite the significance of this campaign to Germany and to the war as a whole, few English-language publications of the last thirty-five years have addressed these pivotal events. In Ostkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the East, Stephen G. Fritz bridges the gap in scholarship by incorporating historical research from the last several decades into an accessible, comprehensive, and coherent narrative. His analysis of the Russo-German War from a German perspective covers all aspects of the eastern front, demonstrating the interrelation of military events, economic policy, resource exploitation, and racial policy that first motivated the invasion. This in-depth account challenges accepted notions about World War II and promotes greater understanding of a topic that has been neglected by historians.
During the first half of the twentieth century, European countries witnessed the arrival of hundreds of thousands of colonial soldiers fighting in European territory (First and Second World War and Spanish Civil War) and coming into contact with European society and culture. For many Europeans, these were the first instances in which they met Asians or Africans, and the presence of Indian, Indo-Chinese, Moluccan, Senegalese, Moroccan or Algerian soldiers in Europe did not go unnoticed. This book explores this experience as it relates to the returning soldiers - who often had difficulties re-adapting to their subordinate status at home - and on European authorities who for the first time had to accommodate large numbers of foreigners in their own territories, which in some ways would help shape later immigration policies.
The Second World War affected the lives and shaped the experience of millions of individuals in Germany - soldiers at the front, women, children and the elderly sheltering in cellars, slave labourers toiling in factories, and concentration-camp prisoners and POWs clearing rubble in the Reich's devastated cities. Taking a 'history from below' approach, the volume examines how the minds and behaviour of individuals were moulded by the Party as the Reich took the road to Total War. The ever-increasing numbers of German workers conscripted into the Wehrmacht were replaced with forced foreign workers and slave labourers and concentration camp prisoners. The interaction in everyday life between German civilian society and these coerced groups is explored, as is that society's relationship to the Holocaust. From early 1943, the war on the home front was increasingly dominated by attack from the air. The role of the Party, administration, police, and courts in providing for the vast numbers of those rendered homeless, in bolstering civilian morale with 'miracle revenge weapons' propaganda, and in maintaining order in a society in disintegration is reviewed in detail. For society in uniform, the war in the east was one of ideology and annihilation, with intensified indoctrination of the troops after Stalingrad. The social profile of this army is analysed through study of a typical infantry division. The volume concludes with an account of the various forms of resistance to Hitler's regime, in society and the military, culminating in the failed attempt on his life in July 1944.
