The image is seared into the historical consciousness: endless columns of grey-clad soldiers, the roar of Panzer divisions, and the scream of Stuka dive-bombers. The German military of World War II, the Wehrmacht, has been remembered for its fearsome efficiency, its tactical brilliance, and its devastating blitzkrieg campaigns that conquered much of Europe in a staggeringly short time. For decades, a persistent myth—carefully cultivated during and after the war—sought to separate the “clean” Wehrmacht from the “criminal” SS, portraying the professional soldier as an apolitical actor merely doing his duty for his country.
Modern historical scholarship has utterly dismantled this fiction. The role of the German military in World War II cannot be understood through a purely operational lens of battles and maneuvers. It was an integral, willing, and essential component of the Nazi regime’s pursuit of a racial-ideological war of annihilation. To examine the Wehrmacht is to explore a deeply troubling nexus of professional militarism and criminal ideology, where operational skill served genocidal ends.
The Instrument of Blitzkrieg: A New Kind of War
Emerging from the restrictive confines of the Treaty of Versailles, the Reichswehr, and later the Wehrmacht, was not just rebuilt; it was reimagined. Under the leadership of visionary officers like General Heinz Guderian, it pioneered the concept of Bewegungskrieg (war of movement), which would become known to the world as blitzkrieg, or “lightning war.”
This was not a formal doctrine, but a combined-arms approach that integrated fast-moving tanks (Panzers), tactical air power (the Luftwaffe), and mobile infantry. The goal was not to grind down the enemy in static warfare, as in World War I, but to achieve Kesselschlachten (cauldron battles)—mass encirclements that shattered enemy formations, destroyed their logistics, and led to rapid, decisive victories.
The success of this model was terrifyingly effective:
- Poland (1939): The first demonstration, overwhelming Polish courage with speed and coordination.
- France (1940): A stunning victory that humiliated a major European power in just six weeks, achieved by bypassing the static Maginot Line and driving through the Ardennes.
- The Early Phase of Operation Barbarossa (1941): The Wehrmacht achieved encirclements of staggering scale, capturing millions of Soviet soldiers in the opening months.
This operational brilliance, however, was not an end in itself. It was the sharp end of a spear whose shaft was forged in Nazi ideology. The very speed of these victories was designed to facilitate the regime’s broader, criminal objectives.
The War of Annihilation: The Wehrmacht and Nazi Ideology
The defining context for the Wehrmacht’s role was the nature of the war it was ordered to fight, particularly on the Eastern Front. The war against the Soviet Union was not a conventional conflict; it was a Vernichtungskrieg—a war of annihilation. This was articulated clearly in a series of criminal orders issued before the invasion.
- The Commissar Order: Mandated the immediate execution of captured Soviet political commissars, directly involving the regular army in war crimes.
- The Barbarossa Decree: Effectively decriminalized atrocities against civilians by granting soldiers immunity from prosecution for crimes committed against the Soviet populace.
- Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars: Framed the conflict as an ideological struggle against “Judeo-Bolshevism,” painting the entire campaign as a crusade for civilization.
The Wehrmacht High Command (OKW) and the Army High Command (OKH) did not merely relay these orders; they actively participated in their drafting and enthusiastically endorsed their implementation. The military leadership shared the Nazi regime’s view of the East as a realm of “subhumans” (Untermenschen) destined for enslavement and exploitation under Generalplan Ost.
The practical consequences were systematic and widespread:
- Complicity in the Holocaust: The Wehrmacht was not the primary executioner in the Holocaust—that was the role of the SS Einsatzgruppen—but it was an indispensable accomplice. Military units provided logistical support, secured areas for massacres, and sometimes directly participated in the rounding up and shooting of Jews. Army propaganda units produced antisemitic material, and the military administration in occupied territories facilitated the identification and isolation of Jewish populations.
- The “Hunger Plan”: A calculated economic strategy that called for the deliberate starvation of millions of Soviet civilians to feed the German army and homeland. The Wehrmacht’s logistics were planned around this mass murder by famine, seizing food and condemning entire regions to starvation.
- Treatment of POWs: The war against the Soviet Union ignored the rules of the Geneva Convention. Of the approximately 5.7 million Soviet soldiers captured by the Germans, an estimated 3.3 million died in captivity—a death rate of over 57%. They were starved, left to die in open-air pens, and worked to death. This was not a logistical failure but a deliberate policy of neglect and murder.
The Myth of the “Clean Wehrmacht”
In the war’s immediate aftermath, former German generals, seeking to rehabilitate their reputations and secure roles in the nascent Cold War West German Bundeswehr, actively promoted the myth of the “clean Wehrmacht.” This narrative claimed that the regular army had fought honorably and was unaware of the crimes of the SS and the Nazi party. The war crimes, they argued, were the work of a criminal few, while the millions of conscripts and professional officers were blameless.
This myth was politically convenient for both the Germans and the Western Allies, who now saw a rearmed Germany as a necessary bulwark against the Soviet Union. It allowed for a collective exoneration and a swift integration of West Germany into the NATO alliance.
However, decades of historical research, including the groundbreaking “Wehrmacht Exhibition” in the 1990s, have presented irrefutable evidence to the contrary. Personal letters, unit diaries, and photographs prove that knowledge of and participation in war crimes were not the exception but a pervasive reality. From generals to common soldiers, the Wehrmacht was deeply implicated in the criminal nature of the war, from the execution of commissars and partisans to the complicity in the Holocaust and the brutal occupation policies.
A Force Transformed: From Victor to Vanquished
As the war progressed, the character of the Wehrmacht changed. The early, heady days of blitzkrieg gave way to a brutal war of attrition on the Eastern Front. The army became increasingly reliant on its allies, such as the Romanians and Hungarians, and its own increasingly desperate measures, including the conscription of older men and younger boys in the Volkssturm in the war’s final days.
The war on the Eastern Front ground down the Wehrmacht’s strength and, in many cases, hardened its brutality. The fear of Soviet retaliation for their own crimes, stoked by Nazi propaganda, fueled a desperate, last-ditch resistance. The defense of Germany itself in 1944-45 was characterized by a ferocity that prolonged the war and caused immense destruction.
Yet, even in its final act, the Wehrmacht’s leadership remained bound to the regime. The failed July 20, 1944, assassination plot against Hitler was a notable but isolated act of resistance, involving a small number of officers. The vast majority of the military command structure, including figures like Field Marshal Keitel and General Jodl, remained loyal to the very end, executing orders that they knew were leading to the nation’s total ruin.
Conclusion: A Legacy of Complicity
The role of the German military in World War II is a story of profound moral failure. It is the story of a proud, professional institution that willingly subordinated itself to a criminal regime. Its operational genius and tactical innovations are undeniable parts of military history, but they cannot be celebrated in isolation. They were the means by which the Nazi regime unleashed the most destructive war in human history and enabled the Holocaust.
The Wehrmacht was not a neutral tool. It was a co-conspirator. Its leaders shared the ideological goals of the regime, and its rank-and-file, through a combination of ideological indoctrination, peer pressure, and the brutalizing nature of the war itself, participated in and facilitated a campaign of unprecedented violence.
The enduring lesson of the Wehrmacht is a warning about the dangers of militarism divorced from a moral compass, and of the abdication of professional ethics in the face of ideological fervor. It stands as a stark reminder that military excellence, when placed in the service of an evil cause, does not absolve sin—it magnifies tragedy. To study the Wehrmacht is to understand that in the calculus of war, how you fight is ultimately inseparable from why you fight.