War Crimes of The Wehrmacht - Analysis of Photos and Letters

Analysis of Photos and Letters

“	Rumors immediately began circulating of appalling crimes committed in the occupied territories – wholesale deportations and systematic massacres ... A story solemnly made the rounds of the world's newspapers that storks migrating from Holland to South Africa had been found with messages taped to their legs that read, "Help us! The Nazis are killing us all!"	”

The attitude of German soldiers towards atrocities committed on Jews and Poles in World War II was also studied using photographs and correspondence left after the war.

Photographs serve as a valuable source of knowledge; taking them and making albums about the persecution of Jews was a popular custom among German soldiers. These pictures are not the official propaganda of the German state but represent personal experience. Their overall attitude is antisemitic.

German soldiers as well as police members took pictures of Jewish executions, deportations, humiliation and the abuse to which they were also subjected. According to researchers, pictures indicate the consent of the photographers to the abuses and murders committed. "This consent is the result of several factors, including the anti-Semitic ideology and prolonged, intensive indoctrination." Archival evidence as to the reaction to policies of racial extermination can also be traced in various letters that survived the war. Many letters from Wehrmacht soldiers were published in 1941 and entitled "German Soldiers See the Soviet Union"; this publication includes authentic letters from soldiers on the Eastern front. To give an example of the intensive indoctrination "that transcends the mere results of military service", researchers Judith Levin and Daniel Uziel quote a German soldier writing:

The German people is deeply indebted to the Fuehrer, because if these animals, our enemies here, had reached Germany, murders of a nature not yet witnessed in the world would have occurred.... No newspaper can describe what we have seen. It verges on the unbelievable, and even the Middle Ages do not compare with what has transpired here. Reading Der Stuermer and observing its photos give only a limited impression of what we have seen here and of the crimes committed here by the Jews.

Judith Levin and Daniel Uziel state that this type of writing and opinion was very common in correspondence left by German soldiers, especially on the Eastern Front.

Other samples of German soldiers' letters were sent home and copied during the war by a special Polish Home Army cell that infiltrated the German postal system. These letters have been analyzed by historians and the picture they paint is similar to views expressed by Judith Levin and Daniel Uziel. Many soldiers wrote openly about the extermination of Jews and were proud of it. Support for "untermensch" and "master race" concepts were also part of the attitude expressed by German soldiers. Presented examples reflecting this trend include samples such as:

I'm one of those who are decreasing number of partisans. I put them against the wall and everyone gets a bullet in his head, very merry and interesting job. ...My point of view: this nation deserves only the knaut, only by it can they be educated; a part of them already experienced that; others still try to resist. Yesterday I had possibility to see 40 partisans, something like that I had never encountered before. I became convinced that we are the masters, others are untermenschen.

Much more evidence of such trends and thoughts among Wehrmacht soldiers exists and is subject to research by historians.

The historians responsible for the exhibition assume that the anti-Semitic climate and propaganda in Nazi Germany had an immense impact on the entire population and emphasize the importance of the indoctrination.