War Crimes Of The Wehrmacht

WAR CRIMES

The war crimes of Wehrmacht include:

Atrocities during invasion of Poland

Wehrmacht units killed over 16,000 Polish civilians during the 1939 September campaign through executions, Terror Bombing of open cities or murder. After the end of hostilities, during the Wehrmacht's administration of Poland, which went on until October 25 1939, 531 towns and villages were burned, the Wehrmacht carried out 714 mass executions and a number of other crimes. Altogether, it is estimated that 50,000 Polish civilians had perished including 7000 Jews.¹

Destruction of Warsaw

Up to 250,000 civilians were murdered by German led forces during the Warsaw Uprising . Human shields were used by German forces during the fighting and during the Wola Massacre 50,000 civilians were executed to intimidate the Poles into surrender.

Commissar Order

The order cast the war against Russia as one of ideological and racial differences, and provided for the immediate liquidation of political commissars of the Red Army. The order stated that German soldiers guilty of violating international laws would be "excused". The order was formulated on Hitler's behalf by the Wehrmacht command and distributed to field commanders.

Barbarossa Decree

The decree, issued by Keitel a few weeks before Operation Barbarossa , exempted punishable offences committed by enemy civilians (in Russia) from the jurisdiction of Military Justice . Suspects were to be brought before an officer who would decide if they were to be shot. Prosecution of offenses against civilians by members of the Wehrmacht was decreed to be "not required" unless necessary for maintenance of discipline.

POW Camps

While the Wehrmacht's prisoner of war camps in the West generally satisfied the humanitarian conditions prescribed by international law, prisoners from Poland and the USSR were incarcerated under significantly worse conditions. These prisoners suffered from malnutrition and diseases like Typhus that resulted from the Wehrmacht's failure to provide sufficient food, shelter, proper sanitation and medical care for the prisoners. Prisoners were regulary subject to torture, beatings and humiliation. Between the launching of Operation Barbarossa in summer 1941 and the following spring, more than two million Soviet prisoners of war died while in German hands. The German failure to attain their anticipated victory in the east led to significant shortages of labor for German war production and, beginning in 1942 , prisoners of war in the eastern POW camps — primarily Soviets — were seen as a source of slave labor to keep Germany's wartime economy running.

Massacres of prisoners-of-war

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War Crimes Of The Wehrmacht