On May 13, 1941, the Wehrmacht High Command issued an order that became known as the Barbarossa Jurisdictional Decree. It was virtually a license to kill Russians of any age or gender and the Whermacht were a part of it, a war of extermination.
The commissar-order provided for the immediate execution of political commissars of the Red Army, by the Wehrmacht, a definite war crime. The order was formulated on Hitler's behalf by the Wehrmacht command and distributed to units among usual command channels.
Apart from shooting thousands of Soviet commissars and other political officals out of hand,
in a mere eight months of 1941-42, the invading German armies killed an estimated 2.8 million Soviet prisoners-of-war through starvation, exposure, and summary execution. This gendercide is one of the most concentrated mass killings in human history.
Although many POWs from the eastern fronts ended up in death camps run by the SS, the P.O.W. camps were run by the Wehrmacht.
The Whermacht not knowing or being involved in the exterminations in Russia is one of the many myths that has come out of the second world war.
Hitler's high command carefully planned the extermination campaign on the eastern front, drawing up directives for mass killings, and distributing them to Wehrmacht and SS commanders. They established special SS teams devoted exclusively to mass murder, the Einsatzgruppen and their subgroups, the Sonderkommandos and Einsatzkommandos, and set up liaison between the killing teams and the army commanders at the front to ensure that the killing teams received the necessary intelligence and logistical support.
Many Wehrmacht commanders willingly helped the Einsatzgruppen find the best sites, and transported and guarded the prisoners, at times even helping with the exterminations.
Over seven million Russian civilians were killed, how many of those were murdered, nobody knows.
The Wehrmacht didn't just fight to defeat Russias armies, they were a part of a war of extermination, in which many were more then willing to participate.
Below are just some of the Wehrmacht officers convicted of war crimes................
Field Marshal Albert KESSELRING:
Tried by a British court at Venice for being concerned in the massacre of 335 Italians in the Ardeatine caves and other war crimes; sentenced to death on 7.5.47. Sentence commuted to life imprisonment 4.7.47.
Field Marshal Erich von MANSTEIN:
He was convicted by a British tribunal and sentenced to eighteen years in prison.
General Hermann HOTH: After the war, he was put on trial at the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, found guilty of war crimes in the High Command Trial, and on 27 October 1948 sentenced to 15 years in prison.
General VON KLEIST: was captured by United States forces in 1945. He was sent to communist Yugoslavia to face alleged war crimes charges in 1946. In 1948 he was then extradited to Soviet Russia where he was condemned to a 10-years sentence in 1952 for war crimes and he died in captivity in Vladimir prison in 1954.
General Eberhard von MACKENSEN:
Tried by British war crimes court in Rome, as responsible for the massacre, by way of reprisals, of over 300 Italian civilians in the Ardeatine Caves, near Rome. Sentenced to death by shooting on 30.11.46. (Sentence commuted to life imprisonment 4.7.47.)
Major-General Karl von OBERKAMP:
Former Commander of Prinz Eugene Division. Tried by a Yugoslav military court at Belgrade on 27.3.47 for massacres of civilians. Sentenced to death and executed 1.4.47.
General Wilhelm LIST: . . . . . . . Life imprisonment
General Lothar RENDULIC: . . . . . .20 years imprisonment
Lt.-General Walter KUNTZE: . . . . .Life imprisonment
Lt.-General Helmuth FELMY: . . . . .15 years imprisonment
Lt.-General Hubert LANZ: . . . . . .7 years imprisonment . . . .
Lt.-General Ernst von LEYSER: . . . 10 years imprisonment
Lt.-General Wilhelm SPEIDEL: . . . .20 years imprisonment
Field Marshal von WICHES, a defendant, was withdrawn from the trial on account of illness. Lt.-General Franz BOEHME, another defendant, committed suicide.
As for the Waffen S.S., where do you start, suffice to say only the Einsatzgruppen were worse when it came to committing atrocities.
Apart from the imfamous atrocities of the Normandy massacre by the ‘Hitler Jugend’, the Le Parades massacre by the SA 'Totenkopf', the Wormhoudt atrocity by the 'SA Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler'', of British, Canadian and American P.O.W's, there is a huge list of other atrocities on record on the western front.
Below is just a few samples of a list of repeated atrocities by virtually all major Waffen S.S. units, and this is just on the western front, the war in the east was probably 10 times worse...........................
ORATOR-SER-GLANE
(Central France, June 10, 1944)
In the town of St. Junien the 'Dar Führer Regiment' of the 2nd SA Panzer Division, 'Das Reich', was regrouping. Following many encounters with the local maquis in which two German soldiers were killed, a unit of the regiment arrived at Oradour, in a convoy of trucks and half-tracks. The 120 man SS unit surrounded the village, ordering all inhabitants to parade in the market square for an identity check. Women and children were separated from the menfolk and herded into the local church. The men were herded in groups into six local garages and barns and shot. Their bodies were then covered with straw and set on fire. The 452 women and children in the church were then suffocated by smoke grenades lobbed in through the windows and shrapnel grenades that were thrown down the nave while machine-guns raked the interior. The church was then set on fire.
SANT' ANNA MASSACRE
(August 12, 1944)
On August 12, the 6the Panzergrenadieren 'Reichsführer-SS' Division reached the outskirts of SAINT' Anna, their orders to shoot on sight all partisans found in the area. Believing that the inhabitants of the Sant'Anna were all partisans, or partisan sympathizers, the SA herded the entire village together into the village square, where all of them, men, women and children, were shot. In all, 560 people were massacred, including 110 children. The houses in the village were then burned to the ground. Many of the corpses were doused with petrol and then set alight before the SS unit departed.
THE MARZABOTTO MASSACRE
[September 29th, 1944]
The Marzabotto massacre was a massacre that took place in the small Italian town of Marzabotto. Between September 29 and October 5, 1944, soldiers of SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Reichsf?SS, led by Sturmbannf? Walter Reader, killed 955 people in the territory of Marzabotto, Monzuno and Grizzana, in the largest civilian massacre perpetrated by Nazis in Western Europe.
Among the victims, 45 were less than 2 years old, 110 less than 10 years old, 95 less than 16 years old, 142 were more than 60 years old, 316 were females, 5 were priests.
And the list goes on and on.
It wasn't just the odd isolated shooting of prisoners now and then , it was systematic repeated war crimes on a gigantic scale.
There was the holocaust by extermination in the death camps, and another holocaust by extermination in the attack on Russia.