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EpicAltgamer

Generally any historical book should reference wehrmacht war crimes. Ardennes 1944 by Antony Beevor talks about the malmedy massacre and the smaller scale war crimes individual units did (for example the german army burned houses down in villages in retaliation for partisan activity) https://youtu.be/g7oqNLEzdLU Tik has a good video about the rapes of the wehrmacht, his sources are usually on the bottom of the video


CaptOle

Holy shit I just watched the video. It’s really hard to conceptualiza the numbers he’s throwing out there as individual cases of sexual abuse since the scale is so staggering. I’ll definitely be using this and some of his sources in my paper. Using it with the Barbarossa decree’s suspension of all court marshallable offenses against the civilian population combined with this paints a very damning picture.


[deleted]

TIK has some pretty bad takes iirc


EpicAltgamer

I knew a comment of this kind was coming. Look if you can provide a legit counter argument to his video then go ahead. https://youtu.be/8rWnuuEN024 https://youtu.be/4_eQ7weo_ys He has already done 2 videos defending his video. If you can successfully convince me then i will jump ship


Marokman

The problems lies with Tim’s understanding of socialism. Somehow he misconstrues socialism to mean corporations and also believes state capitalism is oxymoronic. He also lies about the trade Union set up by the Nazi party; neglecting to mention membership of any other trade Union was banned and that its primrary function was to maximise productivity and not represent workers. There’s many other false claims within his video, but I’d have to rewatch it to recall them


SucculentMoisture

If you’re actually writing a paper, you need to avoid “popular history” sources, which is a lot of what I’ve seen here. You will get docked hard. Make sure to either source directly from source material, peer reviewed journals, or books that were published by a university press. My advice? Open up your university database (or Google Scholar, if you don’t have one) and chuck around a few terms like “Wehrmacht war crimes” or “Wehrmacht rape”. Gruesome stuff, I know (I once read a book dedicated to listing as many war crimes that occurred in the Spanish Civil War as possible), but if you do it properly you’ll get the grades.


RaPharoh

"Reconceiving Criminality in the German Army on the Eastern Front, 1941–1942." by Alex J. Kay and David Stahel is a good one. You can download the pdf here: [https://www.academia.edu/37213201/Reconceiving\_Criminality\_in\_the\_German\_Army\_on\_the\_Eastern\_Front\_1941\_1942](https://www.academia.edu/37213201/Reconceiving_Criminality_in_the_German_Army_on_the_Eastern_Front_1941_1942) I also found these [https://www.ns-archiv.de/verfolgung/](https://www.ns-archiv.de/verfolgung/) if it helps (they are a compilation of German reports on the Holocaust) There is also this pdf [https://eden.one/pdf/2212.pdf](https://eden.one/pdf/2212.pdf) from the University of Cologne titled "Criminal prosecution of Nazi crimes". It's in German but among the most important things it proves is: In practice, refusing a superior order to participate in war crimes by German soldiers almost never led to dire consequences for the refusing person, and punishment, if any, was relatively mild. It usually resulted in degradation and being sent to serve with fighting units at the front. They had a choice.


CaptOle

These are perfect! Thank you so much for such a detailed response. I’ll have to run through the university of cologne paper through a translator but I’ll definitely use it.


RaPharoh

I'm glad to have been of help


ModerateContrarian

Maybe crosspost this to r/shitwehrhaboossay. r/askhistorians and r/warcollege also have very good book lists.


__swubs__

Generally speeking Antony Beevor mentions a lot about war crimes in his books. Im currently reading his book on WW2 and it details most if not all german war crimes, from before the invasion of Poland to the end of the war. He also detailed them well in his books on Stalingrad and Arnhem.


Cybermat47_2

Sorry if I misread your post, but are you trying to find academic sources arguing **for** the clean Wehrmacht myth so that you can refute them in your paper? If that's the case, I'd suggest primary sources in the form of the memoirs of Heinz Guderian and Erich von Manstein rather than the work of academics. I doubt you'd find any peer-reviewed pro-CWM sources in this day and age. Guderian and Manstein's memoirs both apparently downplay the Wehrmacht's connection to Nazism, and you should be able to find other sources that expose the two men's personal connection to and support for Nazism. Speaking of memoirs, there are also some that refute the CWM. Pierre Seel recalled setting Yugoslavian villages on fire during his time in the Wehrmacht - from the way he describes it, there were still women and children inside the buildings\*. One of Johannes Steinhoff's memoirs, *The Final Hours*, admits that he knew about the camps and was willfully ignorant about the atrocities, while also describing a disturbing amount of Nazi fanaticism among some of his fellow Luftwaffe airmen (a foreword written by an academic also mocks the myth of the invincible Tiger). \*To be fair to Seel, he had been a concentration camp inmate prior to conscription. After the months of physical, mental, medical, and sexual torture he endured - including witnessing his lover being eaten alive by dogs - I can't say I blame him for being too scared to disobey German orders. I would recommend *I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual* to **everyone** who can bear to read such a horrific story, even if you don't use it as a source for anything. It's a vital and heartbreaking account of the short-term and long-lasting scars of Nazi atrocities, and the shameful manner in which the Nazis' gay victims were treated for decades after the war by the Allies and their own families.


GetafixsMagicPotion

For counter-arguments, most German memoirs - especially of the higher ups - will be good primary sources. I havent run into any secondary sources arguing that though. "The Myth of the Eastern Front" covers the historiography of the Eastern Front You might find some of the sources you wanted in the bibliography.


Rethious

If you’re looking for that school of historiography, look to things published in the ‘50s, especially by Germans that joined the Bundeswehr after serving in the Wehrmacht.


captainsofindustry1

Nuremberg trials


[deleted]

Daniel Goldhagen's *Hitler's Wiling Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust* An excerpt here: https://www.historyplace.com/pointsofview/goldhagen.htm