Was Every German Soldier Evil?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ก.ย. 2024
- Thank you for watching, folks!
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=SOURCES=
Wolfram Wette - "The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality"
Waitman Wade Beorn - "Marching into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus"
G. J. Meyer - "A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914-1918"
Harald Welzer & Sönke Neitzel - "Soldaten: Protokolle vom Kämpfen, Töten und Sterben"
George M. Kren and Leon Rappoport - "The Holocaust and the Crisis of Human Behavior"
Christopher Browning - “The Origins of the Final Solution”
Christian Gerlach - “Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord”
Lorna Weddington - "Hitler's Crusade"
www.aclu.org/b...
"Released a bunch of response videos in book form" there is that hilarious dry German humor for you
I appreciate Dan’s humor in his videos. Brings a tasteful levity to the serious subjects he talks about
I heard that Germans go to the basement to be able to laugh, is that true ? 😁
apple's lover I believe it’s actually in their restrooms, so they have complete privacy to do so.
@@appleslover We have something called "Stammtisch" to laugh together in a restaurant. :D
@@appleslover Gemäß Standardbauvorschrift für Familienheime every German home is required to have a specialized room in the basement, whereto the inhabitants can go to eleviate unappropriately light mood by emitting laughter. No other nation prepares as efficently for fun and lighthearted situations as the German!
The thing about the 'bad apples' argument is that it does not consider how the rest of the apples deal with the rotten ones. If they are tossed out as soon as they're found and they're a fringe group hiding within their own community, then MAYBE you could argue that it's not a problem with the whole group.
But, more often than not, the rest of the group protects the rotten ones, support them and never punish them for their rotten behavior unless absolutely forced to do so. A group is only so moral as the least moral people they tolerate within them.
Perfectly put. In both cases (Police and Wehrmacht), there seems to be a perverted sense of "brotherhood" that they use to justify their protection of the bad apples.
The Nazis didn’t lead with “we’re gonna start a genocide.” The people that would and could resist did. Very few had the ability to meaningfully resist.
The funny thing is that the full quote is “one bad apple spoils the bunch,” which says that having bad people is dangerous to any organization because the good apples can be complacent.
Bad apples lower the bar for "good" apples, so good apples benefit from the existence of bad apples.
This applies to all forms of unjustifiable power position. Cops, colonials, and landlords.
Bad apples grow on bad trees.
The phrase is literally "a few bad apples spoil the bunch" not "a few bad apples but the rest are totally fine I swear"
And what do you do when there are rotten apples in your barrel? You don't go "Eh, it's fine, it's just a couple", you fucking throw them out!
A few good apples don't redeem the bio-waste bin.
In the police they get promoted and put in charge of all the other apples (okay the metaphor isn't working anymore...)
How do good apples in say Alaska, get rid of bad apples in say Florida?
The problem isn't the apples. It's the barrel.
“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”
― Hannah Arendt
"Just following orders" doesn't make you morally exempt from your actions.
"The opposite of good is not evil, it is the indifference to good and evil."
@BLUE DOG what?
Sounds like your average commic book villian
Grey area of life
"response video in book form" is an outstanding phrase
Gotta put in words the zoomers understand
Made all the better by Arrows' dry delivery
Yo, thanks for watching my book. If you like what you've seen, make sure to subscribe to your library, and let me know what you think by sending a self-addressed stamped envelope to...
@@Green-tf8uw😮😮
Exactly what I was going to say
When studying Nazi Germany at university, one of the documents that stuck with me was an account of Russian prisoners of war. The Wehrmacht starved them to the point that they were forced to eat the flesh of their dead friends. The German soldiers then filmed this as proof of the Russians' "inhumanity".
I'm glad that you mentioned the treatment of Russian POWs. It's hard to read about this and still argue that the Wehrmacht were faultless.
I remember a Russian survivor saying that once, two German soldiers threw bread over the fence. All the Russians rushed to get some, and fought. A few seconds later, they threw a grenade, and people rushed not knowing.
It made them laugh
The movie “come and see” really opened my eyes as to the utter horror of the nazis from the perspective of a Russian teenager.
Prière Panda wow you’re very gullible. Any more fantastical anecdotes you want to tell? Maybe you want to send me survivor testimonies where they claim to have cremated 3 bodies in 20 minutes and to the extent of a couple thousand bodies in a day.
Jenn Baker apparently the soviets were incapable of producing propaganda.. 😂🤦🏻♂️
Sam Bacon I can’t tell if you’re playing around. You must be very behind current events. Just like your IQ is behind room temperature.
"oh boy that maneuver through the Ardennes sure was daaaaaaaringggggg" killed me
Kten the funny thing about Guderian’s advance after crossing the Meuse is he never would have considered it if he knew about the French army that was on his flank defending Paris. Had that French army attacked, then Guderian would likely have been forced to retreat, and there is no Dunkirk.
I love the subtle dig at people who focus on just the German tactics and equipment of the war. Yeeeeeep. Saying the King Tiger is the bestest thing ever doesn't at all advance questionable beliefs.... noooooo problem here.
@@LadyTylerBioRodriguez OOHH, BUT JUST LOOK AT THESE MARVELOUS GIANT-SIZE TANKS AND JET PROTOTYPES AND GERMANIA MAQUETTES...!
@@minaverry ME 262 could have changed the war bro!
@@LadyTylerBioRodriguez "If the Tiger was mass produced Germany could've won!!" -Wehrmacht fanboys
Tigers wrecked their driveshafts faster than they killed Allied tanks; just turned to dust at ~150 km. The tanks wouldn't survive the trip from Munich to Frankfurt but losers with a Nazi fetish still think they were made of magic bc they watched the History Channel growing up lmao
I'm an American veteran person of color, and I'm having flashbacks of being called a spick and"not a real American" while mentally preparing to kill and die for "my brothers to the left and right" who called me slurs while they drove off in trucks waving Confederate flags while being told by your commanding officer that it's not a big deal and to not make an issue out of it, has me feeling solidarity for my minority brothers from a century ago. ✊🏽 When your love is met with hate, and you can no longer align the countries propaganda to your life experience there is a hurt gaping hole in your soul.
People like you deserved better from both sides! Of the political compass
Ew an imperialist vet
@@Joaking91 have some empathy, will ya?
@@Johnny-mp2ew I have tons of it, for the victims.
and to everywhere else, you weren't liked as an american.
"A soldier without political education is a potential criminal." - Thomas Sankara.
"Don't say that he's hypocritical. Say rather that he's apolitical" Tom Lehrer
This is hilarious considering the SS was basically an arm of the Nazi party, or what the NKVD and Politroks were.
Coming from a criminal soldier who seized power in a coup...
@@kndrdfndindngoudng then put democracy and womens' rights in place and was murdered by the French for it in a counter coup a few years later
@@kndrdfndindngoudng
1) Sankara a didn't lack political views.
2) He overthrew a colonialist military dictatorship.
3) He was pretty fucking awesome for the people.
Manifest destiny is basically if the Nazi's policies worked so well we forgot they happened
Holy shit that’s right. Like we kinda did to the native Americans what Germany tried to do to the soviets
Thats an apt way of putting it.
It's a theme that goes back through multiple recursions in history, with echoes of even some of the ancient instances still reverberating today.
I’m pretty sure Hitler based Lebensraum on Manifest Destiny
@@papichulo4171 A lot said of the Nazis policies were based on America's. We've never been as opposite ideologically from the Third Reich as we'd like to think. They got a lot of their medical eugenics programs from American laws too.
"They shot and hanged. A clean thing."
Like that would make any difference.
The hypocrisy of that statement is only made worse when he slips up and says they were stabed to death "cleanly" or if you actualy see the gallows the "partisans" were hung from, it had maybe a foot (30cm) drop, nowhere near enough to snap a neck, but I guess strangulation is a "clean Death".
They were murdered by sadistic war criminals, but in a NICE way!
@@Healermain15 Nope ! Don't make that argument ! They were not sadistic, that's kinda the point of the video. They did not need to be bad people to commit horrible actions.
@Constitutionalist Monarchist They burned people alive too. And raped. Probably a lot.
@@prierepanda2186 they weren't sadists, but they were sadistic.
More Soviet PoWs died every day, than died for the rest of the allies during the entire war. That really puts the Eastern front into perspective.
Indeed
More German POWs died on the Eastern front than on the west as well. Even during the first world war, austro hungarian, german, russian and romanian etc troops fought in worse conditions than on the west. It's historically a worse theatre regarding casualties and war crimes.
@@ioanbugheanu6836 that tends to happen when you show up without an invitation.
@@monsignorerasmus.6441He kinda has a point,though.The Soviets were known to treat German POWs horribly.Though I think it's because it's revenge for what the Germans did to their people,committing rape and massacres towards civilians and mistreating Soviet POWs or killing them.The Nazis planned on committing genocide to the rest of the Soviet Union through Generalplan Ost.
@@ahmadhadi177 you'd be correct the Soviets got the info in late 43 they of course knew about the camps.
You do what you do to not succumb to the ultimate existential threat.
An actual one, not the incel basement heebee jeebees that the newbies spook themselves with.
Its not my fault they shoot blanks, take that complaint up with the local chemical company that dumps shit in the water.
The fact that my 95 year old Grandpa spent his final years constantly remembering the guilt of his actions as part of the German army, tells me all I need to know about this, tbh.
your last name is Asad, isn't it?
@@georgefloydvibrator1687 No, not that that is any of your business
@@georgefloydvibrator1687 Is your last name Vibrator?
@@Robin-jk6wz Lol
@lilith horvath Atleast he could please women
"they were just soldiers defending their country"
*Looks at Barbarossa*
Sure bud, that's clearly defense.
Those soldiers protect their loved ones by raping someone else's!
@@iliasalloune4093 which is literally also true to the almost as bad soviets.
@@mav8535 i know i'm just poking fun st the statement bro.
@Graphics don't matter GAMES do
The USSR would have invaded to protected themsleves from a future nazi invasion (goal of Mein Kampf is to create Lebensraum in the Eastern Europe in case you forgot) once Hitler deal with the Allies. Along with the fact destroying Liberalism ( still better than Islam though) is a very noble goal.
@Graphics don't matter GAMES do Nah, neckbeared neonazis are the worst. Still chasing the imaginary jew while the liberal-capitalists ruined the world.
Saddest part of saying “not all [ANYTHING] are bad” is how it admits a lack of effort/passion to get rid of bad actors. What kind of cop tolerates a criminal sharing the same badge?? What kind of soldier considers the killing of civilians and children to be, “just orders, lol.”?? Why is it okay to shift blame higher and higher up the chain of command, when you yourself are rising up the chain?? Seems like defending the country/community is a blanket excuse used by...oh, I dunno, every war criminal?
Its the same about "all (anything) are bad" thats exactly the reason the nazis got power, using the same coin. What kind of human tolerates an ideology that tell them that (anything) is the only reason of their woes?
I kinda dont understant.
@@christiangonzalez6945 Well, its why left leaning parties don't just say "Bourgeoisie bad", or well, some don't. The good ones focus on the entire system, those who put it in place, and those who defend it.
Really interesting video and really insightful. I love your videos and your perspective on these issues but I must say, in the example given about the Wehrmacht officer refusing to kill Jews in his sphere of influence I find the idea that this was somehow not sufficiently commendable to be somewhat difficult to accept. Assuming that his military service began before the Nazi leadership took control, what would a moral but patriotic leader do? Are we meant to believe that in the face of a gradually rising Nazi leadership that his only choice to be “morally adequate” (or whatever we would call our reasonable expectation of an ethical actor’s actions) is to throw his metals in the trash and join the resistance forces? I would hate to assume this was your opinion and straw man your argument but if that’s the standard for being a “moral” person it seems like that’s really rejecting any reasonable expectation of men. In my opinion (whatever it’s worth), if you’re willing to risk being persecuted by a murderous totalitarian regime even just to save a single life that says something about your character. I guess the point of my comment is that I was totally following you line of logic until that point in he video, but I feel like the example you gave completely rejected your thesis and I hope you further elaborate on this idea in the future. All the best
@@numanumaro You are missing the point. The argument around the "not all x" is about trying to redirect the conduct of an organization to that of the individual which therefore absolves the organization of wrongdoing AND provides plausible deniability to anyone who wants it.
In the case of the officer, being on board with the war at all means being on board with the destruction of all Jews and the genocide of non Germans. Saying, "this part is too far" but still actively moving forward with the campaign means he made the choice to support a military mission of extermination. That was the goal. He only objected to small segment of that goal.
This is like joining a group of men who have the goal to go indiscriminately raping then objecting when they start raping children but don't do anything yourself except keeping yourself to only raping the adults. Do you get a moral point for that? Yeah, I suppose it elevates you from complete fucked up monster to just complete monster.
Only so many Chris Dorners in this world.
one of my grandfathers volunteered as a pilot for the "luftwaffe" (3. reich air force) at age 18. I remember him, on multiple occasions, proudly recounting war stories of performing maneuvers that lead english planes to crash somewhere, or bombing enemy military and civilian buildings. He told me about it from a very young age, and it was quite a shock for me when I finally was old enough to make the connection between the Nazis and my Grandfather. My other grandfather, being only 14, was drafted as a "Flakhelfer" (a member of the auxiliary staff of the Luftwaffe) and he never spoke with anything but disdain for the nazis and his military service, he was never proud of what he had to do, never boasted and only talked to me about it until I was much older. Both my grandfathers were strict but loving and very respected by their families and peers, both were never outright racist or antisemitic and originally came from anti-hitler families, but one chose to go to war, justified his crimes with "no one knew Hitler was that bad" and boasted about them openly without shame, while the other reflected on the acts he more or less was forced to do and talked to his grandkids about them to make them understand and beware of fascists. These two ways of dealing with what happened make all the difference in my opinion.
@Melroy biju thomas Still, serving in the Luftwaffe was preferable than the U-boat forces tho
Thanks for sharing.
At the end of the day it is impossible for any of us who were not there to judge those who were.
The different stories of your two grandfathers are a perfect example of how small differences in something as meaningless as age can have such a different outcome.
Had your younger grandfather been just a few years older, his story surely had been a completely different one.
My grandfather was a teenager as well and his recollections were that of a reckless boy who was just after girls and was commanded into the Arbeitsdienst and just tried to look after himself opportunisticly throwing away his gun and a few weeks later following orders to fight against a British attack where he turned POW.
These videos on youtube unfortunately spark a lot of black and white/ yes and no discussions that do not lead anywhere.
Glad to hear something a bit more personal to which there is no answer, it is just a story of two people that had to live through that mess, very powerful.
Thanks again!
Thank you for sharing
You do know the Luftwaffe used civilians as target practice, competition, and sport right?
@@riquelmeone actually, we can and should judge what the Nazis and people who propped up the Nazi regime did. Yes, even y'all's grandfather's (who i hate, for the record unless they were actually innocent and Nazi soldiers aren't innocent). It's easy for you to say we can't judge because you took absolutely no damage from their actions. Their actions however did enable the genocide of most of my family, eradicated my culture almost entirely and traumatized my community for generations. I'm the one who carries the weight of the consequences of their actions every single day, especially since I unfortunately live in Germany. So yea we, the descendants of the victims of your disgusting family members do judge their complicity with the genocide of our ancestors and it's incredibly privileged and also extremely typical German to say shit like "we can't judge". No, you can and should, y'all just can't cope with the fact you descend from people who are at the very least complicit in the most horrific genocide humans have ever committed, at the worst they were the ones literally murdering innocent people. Learn how to fucking cope and stop making excuses for murderers
The example of the speech from 'Band of Brothers' being framed in such a way as to imply 'we're not so different' between the Wehrmacht and the American soldiers left a wry smile on my face. When I recall American attitudes on race, their policies on race, the literal Manifest Destiny and their imperialism often (to this day) racially charged, I can't help but chuckle at this scene.
Oh yes, quite comparable to the Wehrmacht. Just not in the way the scene intended, probably.
We can probably somewhat blame Stephen Ambrose for moments like this. He wasn't interesting in concepts like this. It was always just personal stories, oh and stealing from other historians. He loved that.
Every superpower reach that status by doing bad things, every superpower. Some use more violence (Nazi Germany) others uses less violence (United States or Soviet Union), but every superpower (or even a regional power) has blood on it's hands.
Agreed, though some are more racially informed in their atrocities than others.
@@alexgroot2508 Maybe. I don't see those crimes caused by racism, I see those crimes being justified by racism, just like there are crimes justified by religion, ideology, gender...
@@pedrosalvador1146 No, no, definitely *caused by*. There's a feedback loop where you come up with bigotries after the fact to justify abusing a power differential, but then the bigotries take a life of their own, and, before you know it, you find yourself doing very unpragmatic, unprofitable things because the bigotries blind you, embolden you, and motivate you.
Three Arrows, from somebody who is now British and not Austrian or Hungarian due to WW2, and who lost relatives I never met in the Holocaust... Thank you.
I really do not have much to say about this, but as one Romani woman whose great-grandparents died with marks on their skin... thank you.
Just for anyone that is as ignorant of this as I am: the three arrows were used by the Social Democratic Party of Germany, and each arrow spears through each enemy: monarchy, nazism and communism.
roygalaasen The original organization was like that, yes. But I believe Three Arrows the youtuber has described himself as a socialist.
I think he covered it in a Q&A
@@goodluckgorsky3413 Although I'm confused as to how it relates to my comment about marks given to my great-grandparents by camp officials
Good Luck Gorsky yes I saw the Q&A, except I was not allowed to watch it from the UK. Geo blocked.
@@goodluckgorsky3413 is he a National socialist?
my response to "most x are good people" is typically: doesn't that make it worse? if a ton of good people trying to do the right thing are incapable of stopping the institution they work for from doing something horrible, doesn't that mean the institution itself is set up extremely poorly? we need to build systems that encourage behavior and outcomes we want, and sometimes that means tearing down things we built wrong the first time.
The people with power are rarely the ones who should wield it.
Yes, exactly. Change the system, don't demonize the cogs in the machine. Justified or not, it won't change anything.
Thats my take anyways
@@CarrotConsumer if the cogs choose to be part of the machine, then they should be demonized, be hounded until they leave the machine, so the machine will collapse.
Yep, this is a Wehraboo self-own right there.
This is off topic, but it reminds me of a story that I think is worth telling.
A few years ago I went on a short vacation with my stepdad's family. Because we were so many people, we had to share the cars and I ended up driving with my step dads uncle, who was in his 80es at that time. We went through a village and he said that he remembered the village from his childhood, because it was one of the places where he went with the "hitlerjugend" (the Nazi boyscouts). We started talking about that time and he told me how he had experienced the end of the war. He told me, that in the last days of the war, he was 13 years old and through growing up in Nazi Germany, he was a fanatical Nazi trough and trough. He had tried to join the army earlier, but was permitted because of his age. When finally the "Volkssturm" (the armament of children and old people, to defend Germany to the last man) was called out, he finally saw his chance to do his duty and as in his own words "die for Germany if necessary".
So he went to the local Garrison, where they gave him an uniform-Jacket and an army hat and kept him and the other "volunteers" (a lot of them weren't there because of their free will) there. A few days later he was send as a delivery boy to a nearby outpost. He left the garrison in the early in the morning, so he would get there before sunrise. On the way to the outpost, he passed trough the village, where he's been growing up and met the local Baker, who was the only one who was already up so early. The Baker reckond him in his uniform and asked him if he wanted some bread for breakfast. He replied with a yes and followed the Baker in to the bakery. As soon as both were inside, the Baker loked the door, grapped him and pulled him down into the basement. Down there he tied him up and gagged him and kept him down there, basically kidnapping him. The Baker did tell no one that he was keeping the boy and released him just a week after the war was over (which was basically two weeks after the kidnapping), because he did know that if anybody would found out, he would be executed immediately for undermining war effort. When released my step-dads uncle was furious, that he missed the chance to fight, called the baker a coward, traitor and "saujude"* (pig-jew), but it took him not to long to realize, that this man had probably saved his life.
He would stay in close contact with that until he died some 25 years later and he could never repay him, for what he had done.
After telling me this story, I asked him how he did feel about that time in retrospective and he answered. "... I just cannot comprehend, how you can completely turn a Human into someone like the person I was back then ... Yes I know, I was young and it was not my fault ... Everybody told me that ... But I still can't comprehend... How can put that madness into a person ... It still scares me when I think how it was and still is possible"
So sorry for that long story, but that story has until today a lot of meaning to me, so I though I might share it.
*Annotation: I also asked him later, if he was antisemitic back then and he replied: "Yes of course I was ... nearly Everybody was and I don't mean that as an excuse ... Even though nobody of us had ever in his life met one, we were just to eager to believe all that crap ... Can you believe it ... We had a teacher who teached us in racial science ... After the war he continued his job ... Just with a different school subject ... He was only fired years later, because he beat one kid bloody in the 70es [flogging was abolished in 1973], until his dead he was a full blown Nazi, but nobody did give a damn."
Interesting, thank you for that different perspective.
I will reflect on this often I believe.
Wow. Right from someone who grew up in that era. I’ve also heard that cult-like groups want to get kids during the vulnerable ages between 4 and 14, but that doesn’t make it any easier to reflect on as an adult. Thank you for sharing your great-uncle’s story.
So a 13 y old kid was drafted, but a grown up baker wasn t?
@@etienne8110 @etienne8110 he wasn't drafted, he volunteered. And as far as I know the "Volkssturm" came only in action in an area If the enemy was close by, basically a last ditch effort. And this ist just a guess, but I dont think that the Nazis at this point had the means to enforce it, because he was living in bavaria, west of munich and when the americans arrived there, the war was literally days from beeing over. Dachau, which was around 40km away, was liberated at the 29th April (as was his hometown), Hitler shot himself at the 30th of April and the war was over at the 7th of May.
@@FinianFhomhair what i mean is that the regime was desperate enough to accept 13 y olds, yet there were still grown up not mandatorily drafted around?
Still seems odd to me. But i m no specialist historian of drafting in the 40s.
All Nazi soldiers are responsible for their actions, but they are also victims of fascism.
These two things aren't contradictory.
What makes Nazi Germany so sinister to me is how it managed to turn otherwise ordinary citizens into nationalist zealots - not every nazi was bad to the bone, but in doing nothing to prevent the systemic evil around them they are still complicit.
Fascism didn't get into Germany by force however. They voted it in democratically and a lot of the Wehrmacht was voluntary in the first years of the war. To say the soldiers were victims...well.
@@evilnet1 They didn't really, though. Hitler never had a majority.
I want to make it clear that they aren't the victims of the regime in a conventional way, they are the victims in the way that poor conservative Americans are still victims of capitalism.
Duh!
@@evilnet1 In the sense that the conservative parties turned fascist in between elections, maybe.
It's important to remember that Mussolini pulled a coup, and Hitler got appointed.
cool vid nice
Big Joel is big love
@@johnarbuckle2619 That's what I always suspected.
I'd upvote but your comment has precisely 420 upvotes and that is also v nice.
Kateri Drewes right. I want it to stay at 420
Sydney Rica I was the 421st like. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to take to let Big Joel get 1k likes.
Would you consider making a german version of this?
Because I have the feeling that a lot of people could benefit from it.
Genau diese
Da muss man erst als Deutscher einem anderen Deutschen auf englisch zuhören um etwas über deutsche Geschichte zu lernen, absurd 😄
Absolut
Someone will probably do the German captions eventually. Oddly enough, TH-cam algorithm even auto-generated the German subs, even though just two short fragments are actually in that language (but well, YT's speech recognition software is kinda dumb, and it just does that sometimes).
Edit: I personally corrected and finished making the English ones, which took me a while (and wasn't an easy task). If you guys could give 'em a green light, that'd be nice.
Is it really needed? I have yet to come across a german that doesn't speak excellent english
It's like saying "the British soldiers weren't supporters of the British empire, they only obeyed orders"....
...which were given by the British empire.
There is a difference in between following orders like having to execute prisoners and willingly slaughtering entire villages just for the sake of it.
And for the record, to argue that all British soldiers fought for the empire when the Indians were promised to get out of it for supporting the war effort, is more than a bit off. Furthermore, people don’t always go to war for the same reasons although they all are in the same army. I recommend Tolstois "war & peace" on the matter.
it's far more complex than that. The Nazi party had a majority support from the nation and understanding why and how this occurred is very important, because the conditions were set for regular people to be tricked so severely. If you were convinced that an innocent person was guilty of a heinous crime and ordered to exact justice upon them, you might do it gladly.
@@Arcaryon I can't believe in a video debunking the clean Wehrmacht myth you are trying to perpetuate a myth about the cleanliness of the British Army.
@@epicgamer-hf4jb And I can not believe that people still don’t understand that it doesn’t take many people to do a lot of harm in a fairly short amount of time but here we are. The Wehrmacht was large and when one considers the time ( roughly 5 years ), if one soldier is involved in 10 accounts of w*rcrimes in a single year, in 5 years that’s already 50 war crimes. If 1 million soldiers commit 5 w*rcrimes once a year for 5 years that are 25.000.000 w*rcrimes. There were more than 13.6 million soldiers in the Nzi German army alone, not even mentioning additional Axis forces from Italy aso. - the point being that the Wehrmacht was pretty much as „clean“ as most large armies were historically. There were massacres, there was looting, there was r*pe etc. - but unfortunately, such is the nature of w*r.
@@Arcaryon did you even watch the video?
Any institute that does not allow a person to question why they are killing someone is bad.
Does the American military allow soldiers to question why they kill someone?
Not rhetorical, I'm genuinely curious about what Americans in the Armed Forces think about all the wars they're currently engaged in.
@@adas1988 Good. That sounds about right. Otherwise it would be super authoritarian.
@@adas1988 wait. That doesn't sound like a good thing?? Like, shoot now then you can ask if the person you just killed was justified.
Or did you mean in like a life or death situation?
there is something funny happening here. they are not authoritarian because they get to ask "why it happened". does this change the fact that they followed their orders, and only having followed the order to kill, they get to ask why? it seems to me like the questioning doesn't change the crime, or the authoritarian nature of recieving and following orders. the questioning seems to be only an after-the-fact addition to give it a certain flavor of freedom in an unfree environment.
That's an unrealistic way to look at the military.
Soldiers, if they are supposed to accomplish the task they are supposed to do, can not simultaniously question their actions and execute them.
It isn't the soldier who should question his orders.
It is the general population that should.
The military should be held to account by the citizens and their representatives.
Always surprised at the “few bad apples” analogy, whether with US police or WW2 German soldiers, as a defense. The whole saying is “one bad apple spoils the whole barrel”, which history has proven multiple times. Choose your metaphors carefully, y’all.
I'm also partial to the response "the whole [apple] tree is rotten", which also implies every apple on that tree will eventually spoil.
Don't also forget that "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" was originally a metaphor for the impossible. Somehow the right are pretty good at taking metaphors that are critical of them, scrubbing them clean, and just reusing them as if it supports their side.
So would you say that all Soviet soldiers were spoiled by the ones that engaged in the mass rapes of German women or were there some among them who were of redeeming qualities?
@@Crawver Same goes for "pie in the sky", originally framed as false promises offered by capitalists to workers to get them to comply, and now used by the ruling class's mouthpieces to frame the goals of socialists, or even social-democratic and liberal reformers, as utopian.
@@3112-x9r That would depend on whether the Red Army cultivated and sustained a culture which actively protected rapists among their ranks from accountability, as US police and Nazi soldiers often did. That Stalin and his co-thinkers would condone or tolerate the rape of German women is one of many symptoms of their betrayal of the Comintern's original mission of extending working class solidarity worldwide, and failure to recognize the importance of civil equality across lines of gender among the global working class.
Saarbrücken: **gets mentioned**
me, a Saarländer: "yeeaaaah nice, saarbrigge du geiler!"
Saarbrücken: **only get mentioned because of right wing terror**
me: :'\
same ahaha
Better then beeing mentioned as germanies alabama state with the family trees forming nice circles :P
Haha...Saarland
Aber immerhin ist das Saarland in etwa so groß wie die Fläche des Saarlandes. Zwinkersmiley.
@@noobster4779 literally my first thought when reading the comment.
Sorry my dear saarländer but it's just to easy to make that joke.
“And then just when we needed him the most, he vanished”
Good
Hopefully he uploads again soon. I enjoy his content
@@AD-gl2wi Check out "the iron dice", I think that's where his attention is at, and it's very entertaining.
@@AD-gl2wi he did
It is the exact same arguments used by Confederate apologists saying the soldiers didn't own slaves or fought for slavery
Which is even accurate to begin with.
More than 30% of southerners owned slaves.
@@Johncornwell103 As Cynical Historian points out, that's about the same number of Americans that are college grads. So it's not universal but not uncommon either.
The thing is, excuses like that miss the point. The point is that the effect of their actions was bad. Confederate soldiers did fight for slavery. Not matter how much people wanna cry about it. The Confederate states even said themselves they were seceding to protect slavery.
@@CaptainZlex Exactly
@Fabian Kirchgessner The still fought for slavery
I recently talked to a fraternity student who regularly attends memorials to german Wehrmacht soldiers, with torchlight processions and all. That obviously didn't quite sit right with me. He told me it was about honoring the individual soldiers that gave their lives for their country because of military draft and stuff, but I couldn't really formulate my gripes with that. Your vid has really helped me form an argument on this, much appreciated!
Burschenschaften somehow manage to be even worse than frat boys already are...
@@hubertblastinoff9001 But Burschenschaften are only a small part of the German fraternity scene. The catholic fraternities should still be by far the biggest group. Especially compared to the Deutsche Burschenschaft.
Maybe he should visit a particular Cemetry in my city. There is a section for WWII victims. Over 1.000 graves, some of them soldiers whose bodies somehow made it home, but most of them victims of bomb attacks, a huge chunk of them dying in 1945. Directly beside it (not countet in the over 1.000) are the graves of PoW, mostly Russians. Directly beside it are the graves of forced Labours and Holocaust victims. It is impossible to stand there and not to think how foolish WWII was. So next time you ask him if he also goes and honors those victims.
@@Weltenbastler2000 Yeah but Verbindungen taht aren't Burschenschaften are usually different flavors of excrement...
@@hubertblastinoff9001 What the f is wrong with you? They are just groups of students doing student stuff.
Whenever I hear the word "lebensraum" I think of the American children's educational video from Schoolhouse Rock, "Elbow Room". And it's a reminder that Hitler was directly inspired by American genocidal practices.
True, he was inspired as much by the American reservation system as the British concentration camps used in the Boer Wars. Both uses of camps were practical implementations of ethnic cleansing and its more extreme extrapolation, genocide
Henry Ford was Hitler's idol. He admires Ford's racism and anti-semitism in Mein Kampf.
Hitler REALLY admired Margaret Sanger.
@@thunderbird1921
That's a lie. And Margaret Sanger never openly supported abortion
Just watched it, holy shit. one of the most dystopian, eery vids I've seen in a while. Thnx for the rec
The brothers of my Grandfather were all in the Military. Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, my grandmother still got old pictures of them. I think one of them was even wearing one of these Gestapo coats, though my Great-Grandfather and Great-Grandmother were executed as traitors near the end of the war, because they listened to Allied Radio news. The people that ratted them out were their neighbours, who listened to the same radio news.
"They shot and hanged. A clean thing."
All I can think of is the movie "Come and see".
So very clean, hanging and shooting civilians and prisoners of war.
Even without taking in part the morality of killing prisonners of war and civilians, how hanging is a clean thing? It's an horrible way to die.....
@@krankarvolund7771 That depends on long or short drop. Among methods of execution, long drop isn't too bad, snaps your neck and you're gone in a few secods. Short drop however is a different story. Allegedly feels like your head's tearing itself apart.
Of course I'd believe it, if you argued they probably went with the latter variant for simplicity's sake.
@@krankarvolund7771 horrid, slow, and needlessly cruel.
@@deannasmith4443 Not, if you do it right. If preformed correctly (harder than it sounds) it will be completely painless.
@@darkpixel1128 Still, either way, doing it to civilians/partisans/pows is still a war crime.
If the Werhmacht honestly wanted to protect their family, they would have fought the Nazis.
PS,
You should read the excerpts quoting the German officials in Deutsch.
And dead, not that it helped my Grate grandmother, her husband left her widowed within 3 years by 1945.
Yep, a German civil war could have been a better outcome, but the Nazis manipulated the people. “The first country they conquered was their own.”
If you wanted to protect your family as a German in WW2, then you would have had to do something about the Brits and Yanks overhead. Taking up arms against the Nazi regime would have been a peripheral pursuit.
@@3112-x9r If the Werhmacht would have taken arms against the Nazis from the beginning it wouldnt have gotten to the point it did. They wouldnt have needed to protect themselves against Yankees, Brits and the other allies. They placed themselves in the wrong side of history and for that they deserve the hate they get.
Медуса The Nazis manipulated the legitimate grievances of the people. Hitler didn’t go “I’m gonna throw Anne Frank in a death camp” and the people went “yay!”
Another one of these myths from german generals was the myth of mass soviet numerical superiority. Such as "the german army only lost becuase it was outnumbered 10 to 1" etc. In reality the german army was only outnumbered by 1943 and not by anything close to 10 to 1. Such myths as this and the one you mentioned about the germans only losing the war becuase hitler was militarly incompetant, Are made up to make germany look as good as posible and blame hilter (A dead man) for all of its short comings. I know this is not the main topic of the video but I think it is always important to bring up whenm discussing these things.
Yeah its had a pervasive effect on popular culture. Everyone likes to think the Germans were the best military on Earth and had the best technology. Neither are true, the army had good and bad officers like anyone and this best tech was either in short demand or broke down so much that it's clearly not the best.
The USSR barely had enough men to fight the war, let alone win. Most were killed in Leningrad and Stalingrad. The government lowered the conscription age to 16 and also introduced women into sniper/artillery roles so the guys could be on the frontlines.
@@aegonthedragon7303 This is partially why I hate 'USSR/USA/etc. Won the war!' rhetoric, it was a joint effort. There's very few, if any, realistic scenarios where the nazis win WW2, but without the co-operation of the allies (e.g. American supplies to eastern front) it would have been a much bloodier and even more senseless conflict.
Yeah German weapons and equipment were not as superior as people like to think but still Soviet soldiers died in masses anyways being totally underequiped in the first years while later being accountable for most German losses. I am not a military historian but I would think they did so poorly at first cause of the officer purges.
@@aperson6505 "without the co-operation of the allies (e.g. American supplies to eastern front)..." and those parts of the history where the Allies starved an entire country, completely took over its infrastructure and and got 1/3 of its population killed to fund the war effort gets completely swept under the rug. Read about the occupation of Iran by the Allies some time, it's quite _fun_ but unfortunately doesn't fit the mainstream narrative that well.
WW2 is probably the ugliest thing we've done as an entire species as of yet (well, that or Colonization, can't pick one yet), but the "never forget" imperative stops working quite so well when we don't even know what it is that we are supposed to not forget.
"I'm not a Nazi...I just willingly worked with the Nazis and was an integral part in helping them achieve their awful, awful goals!" isn't really much of a defence if you ask me.
Precisely
As far as the soldiers were concerned, they weren't serving the Nazi government, they were serving their country. When a US soldier is killed in action, do you say they "died serving the democrats/republicans"?
YES GEORGE SOROS WAS BAD. NICE TRY THOUGH.
Then how do you feel about hostages taken by terrorists who are forced to cooperate in the terror plots? Would you prosecute them?
@the noah lucario nope, not everyone. My grandpa was forced to fight in that war, even if he dont want to.
Hoi4 community is so bad, it’s actually unmeasurable
Yeah especially the Soviet and Italian focus tree they need to update that shit. Maybe even balance out China and Japan. All jokes aside I have seen some cringe.
Yeah it is pretty cringe to see war crime apologists on steam is never fun
Yes I hate the hoi4 community yet I think the games alright
I enjoy the company of heroes games but boy, are there many neonazis.
gaming is bad so dont expect people who play games to be smart or thoughtful
I was one of the last generations being drafted into the Bundeswehr. All that talk about the "free liberal democratic basic order" and patriotic, but not nationalist" during basic training was quite shallow. When you went up the administrative block, the walls of the staircase were decorated with "beautiful" coal drawings... of Wehrmacht Landsers.
I am inclined to give the fair point of "not all apples", but in hindsight; it was the whole orchard which was rotten so deeply, those few good apples grew in negligible amounts. Maybe there was one guy not being okay with it, but it doesn't help it he felt bad about pulling the trigger everytime he did.
Fact is; the Wehrmacht took part in gruesome warcrimes, and they would not have been possible without willful servants. Your [insert relative here] took part in it, so did mine. I don't know about yours, but mine died for it, rightfully so.
Do you even gove moral agency to someone being brought up in a totalitarian state?
That was pretty much the same thing I experienced during my time in the Bundeswehr (was drafted in 2002). Granted our first sergeant also put up drawings of russian, american and british on the walls of our company's block. Now guess what happened: I remember clearly how a sergeant first class complained about the fact that there were "pictures of Bolsheviks". Puts things into perspective, doesn't it?
@@HasturTheTankWhisperer he probably didn't mean it that way but depends from what time those uniforms are from. Really wouldn't wanna have totalitarian states being represented in the Bundeswehr in any way.
@@mav8535 As a clarification that I should probably have given in advance: all these pictures showed world war 2 era soldiers. American, British, German and Russian (or well, from the Soviet Union" if we want to be really precise). I thought this would be obvious, since the comment mentioned pictures of Wehrmacht soldiers. My bad. And concerning the reperesentation of totalitarian states in the Bundeswehr: This is also an argument against pictures of Wehrmacht soldiers, especially since the official stance on the subject is, that the Bundeswehr does not see itself in the tradition of the Wehrmacht. Well at least that is what we were told in basic training. What I experienced afterwards was, shall we say, a bit different.
@@HasturTheTankWhisperer that still sounds really bad to me, all countries being still in the imperialism/colony game and one totalitarian state.
"They released a bunch or response videos in book form" made me laugh
The only value to saying stuff like "not all X are bad" is to point out that there isn't some sort of unique psychology to that specific organisation.
I believe it's important to keep in mind that any organisation of every civilization can be susceptible to corruption and injustice.
Saying that not every German soldier was a Nazi shouldn't be taken as "the military is never at fault for the actions it enables", but as "if German soldiers were people just as we are now, that means that our soldiers are also able to commit and enable terrible actions".
Louder for the people in the back
Yeah but no. There is a psychology called right wing authoritarianism. These people will believe any lie that supports what they already think
How can German soldiers distance themselves from their boss, Hitler?
In school we only learned about the fight with the west and we didn't look at the USSR to much. Just wow
Yeah a lot of Americans don't know that over 30 Million USSR died fighting the Germans during WW2.
@Graphics don't matter GAMES do You do know USSR was fighting against the German Nazi party right?
Really did they not even talk about Stalingrad my school at least taught a little bit about the eastern front.
@@geth7112 like I know about stalingrad but other events we weren't told about
@Graphics don't matter GAMES do Come on man! Geez! That could have been easily 30 million Americans would that have made a difference. Sorry but we needed the USSR help way more than you think
I'd highly recommed the book "ordinary men". It shows how just like the title says, ordinary men were turned by the nazis into monsters.
That's a great read. Have you ever read: "The Nazi Conscience" By Claudia Koonz
"Soldiers, don't give yourselves to brutes. Men who despise you, enslave you. Tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel. Don't give yourself to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines, you are men" -Charlie Chaplin
Amen
Cheek. - The chariot
Said the stalin apologist
@@user-sb5mr9yd8f whos the stalin apologist?
Short answer: Yes
Long answer: Yeeeeeeeeees
😂
I think the issue with the question "Was every German soldier evil" is that its an individual question aimed at a system.
The German army was evil. The German high command were evil. The average soldier is a lot more complicated because most of them had been propogandized at for their entire life, many of them had been drafted, and even if they had objections to what their commanders had done, most of them individually couldn't do anything about it. To call them evil ignores the systems that caused them and, even worse in my eyes, leads to the idea of "Well im good, so if i were alive back then i would have stopped them!", which i feel is the worst form of "It could never happen here" that a person can have
As a southerner, I see the exact same arguments constantly said with the Confederate Army. Stuff like "Oh they were just fighting for their state" and "Not all of them liked slavery" is said constantly by friends and family. No matter how evil a side of a war is, people will always want to protect their family legacy.
I find this to be some of the best evidence for humans being completely equal, people across the world keep doing the same stuff in parallel without being directly influenced by the same circumstances
History is written by the victors
@@generalchang3053 We use a lot of data from german generals to study the war... There is also a huge library of laws and documents from nazi Germany. You can’t deny this.
Germans are evil.
@@generalchang3053 Lost Cause would like to disagree
"Historians decided to clap back and released a bunch of response videos in book form."
Genius.
"Response videos in book form" - that gave me a big smile despite the topic being so serious.
When the world needed him most the avatar disappeared
He has a second channel check his community post
@@ronin2387 what is it?
It's called The iron dice
As someone who absolutely fell into the Wheraboo trap as a kid this hit *hard*.
Incendiary bombs dropped as part of an "area bombing" campaign hit a lot harder.
Deliberately killing civilians is a war crime so heinous that I would join the Wehrmacht just in time to put a stop to it.
Many of us fell into that trap. But here we are learning from our mistakes.
@@3112-x9r You mean the technique that was invented and first deployed in Rotterdam and Coventry? By the very F***ING Wehrmacht?
@@stefanb6539 Coventry doesn't fit your argument since the British conducted area bombing of German cities before then.
@@stefanb6539 who did it first is a kindergarden argument most of the time. There is always an earlier first (british terror bombing campaigns in iraq in the 20s in this case).
“Not all of them were bad apples”
*being a bad apple was literally the job description*
lol at that time it wasnt just the germans who were bad apples. Russians pillaged all of eastern europe.
@@moritzguderian8381The Soviets liberated Europe from fascism
@@Snaxolotl71 Ignore Wehrabooposting
Do not respond to wehrabooposting
Hey man been a while, hope you're doing well
Sorry you're pigeonholed into this sort of thing, but I've definitely always wanted to hear a native German address this question.
@Fabian Kirchgessner I've not yet finished the video, but I suspect Germany would be a far better place if more did. And of course there is a broad diversity of opinion in Germany as with anywhere else.
@Fabian Kirchgessner I don't think I can give Credence to any idea that this video is a simplification. The whole point of the video is to tease out the nuance.
@Fabian Kirchgessner I honestly can´t tell if you´re a troll, a wannabe Nazi or just a History Nerd who votes AFD. Mybe even nothing from that?
isn't it 'a few rotten apples spoil the barrel'?
Yes. A lot of people conveniently leave out the most important part of the quote.
Yeah, "a bad apple spoils the bunch".
As a 4th generation German-American, I greatly appreciate your videos. They have helped me navigate my American political beliefs, but also come to terms with complicated feelings about Germany. My great grandfather came to Texas as a young man in 1908 - so before either World Wars, but of course his friends and parents were still in Germany, and his parents lived almost up to World War II. His son, my grandfather, had to go pretty out of his way to show his American support during World War II. It was illegal to speak or teach German in schools for some time here.
Anyways, thank you so much for your videos. They've helped me understand some things - about history, but also modern Germany and about America.
holy shit, that interview clip of the protestor against the exhibition made the hair on my neck stand up.
ikr. his "I vas just following orders"
I find it funny, would they extend the same courtesy towards Japanese soldiers? Would Eisenhower do the not all Japanese soldiers..?
That's a really good point, the view of Imperial Japan is very coloured by stereotypes of Yellow Peril and Oriental Despotism
@@jaojao1768 Theres 100% a racist element to it.
They certainly wouldn’t do it to the red army
Dwight D. Eisenhower said basically all German soldiers were war criminals or war criminal adjacent two years before he said the quote that "they were fighting for their motherland." The reason for the complete 180 is because of the fear of the USSR. NATO needed to rehabilitate the image of the Wermacht so they could create the Bundswehr, which was made up of a huge amount of former Nazis.
The "clean Wermacht" myth is just that. A myth.
@The Icon of Sin I think that is the wrong way of looking at it, civilians do not deserve to be punished for their government's actions
Jesus Christ, I never knew this about the Wehrmacht
I really liked this piece. Having served in the Bush-Cheney war machine in Iraq (USMC, infantry, Al Anbar Province, June-December 2004), I've given a lot of thought to comparing the US in Iraq/Afghanistan to Germany in WW2. I was well educated on past US military atrocities before, after, and during WW2. I was still able to look past the obvious problems with the war, because the people I envisioned myself fighting were theocratic, patriarchal, authoritarian, and generally bigoted (I wanted to be an actual SJW). Initially I was surprised to learn that these were not uncommon traits within the US military. Even though I didn't actually join to oppress Muslims/Middle-easterners I still served under a policy and climate that killed a million of them in Iraq. There is a common saying among troops in the anglophone world: "It is better to be judged by twelve than carried by six." It's an unwritten rule that says killing is always justified if you make it home alive (and is also ignorant of that fact that tribunal literally means "judged by three"). What we are seeing is the result of this idea having been thoroughly adopted by our heavily militarized and systemically racist police forces. I would also argue that war has directly contributed to this.
PS: "corps" sounds like "core," and "corpse" sounds like "corps."
Thanks for the insight! (One note: "tribunal" comes from Latin "tribunalis", meaning roughly "(an organization) managed by the tribune". Tribunes were civil magistrates in ancient Rome, the term meaning "representative of the tribus" (a tribus was an organized community, the term "tribe" comes from there). Being judged by a tribune meant to be judged by someone acting on behalf of his (and likely yours) community, someone whose authority it was agreed to respect. Unrequested info but l like language and l thought you might be interested)
Paraphrasing a Vietnam veteran volunteered for the service (Army) knowing that he’d probably wind up over there, almost nobody joined with a conscious desire to commit mayhem. There’s no “Send me to war so I can be evil! Bazinga!”
I served with the 18th Airborne Corps in the Gulf War. Virtually every other enlisted man I knew was there because (1) they needed a job, (2) didn’t want to go to college, (3) joined for access to the GI Bill or (4) were fleeing some fairly serious home situations and the military was an escape. Most of the guys who decided to stay in decided they would be better off in uniform that going back home and starting over. Nobody wanted to “be Audie Murphy,” or had any serious thoughts about killing anyone until they (we) found ourselves facing actual combat deployment. By the way, even Audie Murphy didn’t join the military looking to be a hero. He was the oldest son in his family, his father abandoned them and he quit school to help his mother provide for younger siblings. When his mom became fatally ill, he went into the service in order to have money to send to relatives who took his siblings in. Because of his size (five feet five, 120lbs “soaking wet”), the Navy and the Marines refused to induct him and his commander in the 3rd Infantry Division wanted to discharge him before deployment because they just didn’t think he could physically “hack it” in combat. The point is, he was there for basic “bread and butter” family reasons…just like a LOT of others who have since served in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq (either time) and Afghanistan. Just saying.
29:50
I remember this video. A bunch of old Wehrmacht veterans telling a woman whose relatives have been massacred by the Wehrmacht how they were justified in targeting civilians because of partisan activity targeting the Wehrmacht. All the while getting applauded by the comment audience, especially for the 'war has it's own rules' quote.
Was does have it's own rules, and targeting civilians is not one of them.
@Melroy biju thomas Understatement much? The German occupiers usually took civilian hostages: women, children and old people and for every German solder harmed (not only killed, but also wounded) by partisans they killed 10 to 100 hostages. And they did this on the "civilized" side of WW2, the western front.
THIS is the advice ww2 veterans give when asked how to treat civilians You actually like, not the ones on the eastern front.
Do you recall the title of the video?
I think this issue is one of the reasons Johannes Blaskowitz is a figure that deserves more research and attention. He’s a promising general who - after leading the 8th army in the invasion of Poland - is given the title of Commander in Chief of Poland. During that time, he not only writes voraciously protesting the harsh treatment of Jews and Poles but even sentences SS men to death for carrying out such crimes. He’s probably the highest-ranking German commander to resist the Nazi leadership on something that wasn’t an affront to his or the OKH’s sense of authority.
Well, he’s mocked by Hitler for his “Salvation Army attitude” and removed from command and position (and those death sentences are never carried out, Himmler intervenes) - as opposed to just “being shot” as other German generals insisted would’ve happened had they raised serious concern. He’s sent to the German equivalent of Burma, the front where you send misfits you want out of the way, eventually taking charge of part of Northern France at some point. According to author Christopher Clark, Blaskowitz attempted to do in France what he was he was blocked from doing in Poland and conduct a ‘hearts and minds’-centric occupation, but the French had already experienced massacres and harsh measures and were having fucking none of it and walking the line of fighting an insurgency effectively, enforcing measures dictated from higher up, and trying to win the acquiescence of the locals proved untenable.
Anyway, here’s the kicker, later in the war, Blaskowitz - who so adamantly protested the actions going on in Poland and who knows to some degree what must be going on in the Soviet theater (enough to reportedly try and convince Rommel anyway) - goes BACK when Hitler beckons him with an army command - Army group G. Not only does he go back but after the July coup attempt Blaskowitz sends to Hitler a personal letter professing his utter loyalty. I believe only two German generals of this senior level never served on the Soviet front - Blaskowitz and this utterly-irrelevant midget tax-evader named Erwin Rommel, but I could be wrong.
Anyway, Blaskowitz commands army group G for a while and eventually ends up in charge of the still-occupied parts of the Netherlands (or maybe just Holland) during the ‘hungerwinter’ - the period of starvation that occurred there late in the war. He makes an agreement with the allied commanders that if they don’t bomb German positions he wont fire on their airlifts of food supplies to the Dutch civilians. He may or may not have gone against orders to do this, I’m not really sure.
Well, the war eventually ends and ole’ Blaskowitz is indicted at the Nuremberg trials which actually makes sense - I mean, look at his commands - Occupation of Poland, Occupation of France, Occupation of Holland during a famine. At face value it was probably safe to assume he had some dirt on his jacket, however, after an investigation is carried out he’s supposedly informed by his lawyer that he’s going to be acquitted of all the charges.
Blaskowitz promptly plunges off a balcony to his death, which is ruled a suicide - befuddling historians and conspiracy theorists ever since. His fellow prisoners said he was murdered by the SS to prevent him from providing information on their activities in Poland - Blaskowitz big ‘act of resistance’ from earlier in the war. Here’s the thing - the fucking idiots in charge of the Nuremberg trials enlisted former SS men - Hiwis - to act as guards. That gives the theory some bite and I don’t for a minute consider Blasko the type to kill himself, firstly he had YEARS to off himself during and after the war if he felt so guilty - secondly - he probably didn’t feel guilty which brings me to my goal in bringing him up.
The Blaskowitz story is pretty sad (in say the British or American or even Italian armies, he probably would’ve risen to a high rank and been a decent guy by the low low standards of generals), but he’s not a hero or a martyr and that’s the whole point. Blaskowitz not only shows that German generals could voice opposition without execution (they simply only chose to resist when their authority was undermined on strategic matters) but that despite ALL of the things Blaskowitz did to make his little pocket of hell a little less hellish, he was still a willing cog in the murder machine who justified his position, because of his position - as a soldier he went along with it all despite knowing a decent amount about what was going on.
Still, there is a tremendous amount of humanity to Blaskowitz. His story begs the question, what would you do in his situation? How much can you justify or reconcile? Blaskowitz was not an evil man and he didn’t have to be the devil,, but he was middle-management all the same. It also gives a glimpse into the psyche of the commander’s “ends justify the means” mindset, the command-blinders. Blaskowitz could’ve been any American general in the Vietnam war.
I think an interesting question to ask is whether he saved lives by staying in. If he left would more people have suffered, or less? It's probably impossible to quantify but worth asking anyway.
@@CarrotConsumer I think that question has a lot of merit when it comes to people who both participated in the war machine, and who actively saved Jews or Poles or anyway else. That’s an open debate when it comes to some Righteous Among the Nations right now.
With Blasko, his deal was all about his sense of military honor. I think he really believed that the Germans were going to march in to Poland and be like the British in India - I think he was down for that level of cruelty - which is still a cruelty. Not the ‘Manifest Destiny but in a fraction of the time’ level of cruelty.
Of all the useless, self-aggrandizing memoirs German generals inflicted on the world post-war, I think his would’ve been enlightening. Or maybe he wouldn’t resist the urge to inflate his image like the rest, the reason fewer know of him is because he died. That’s always the case with officers, throughout history.
Victors don’t write the history, just survivors.
I feel like Wilhelm Canaris is an ultimate case of this too, and he was so close to surviving the war. I think he definitely saved more than he condemned and did a lot from where he was.
@@Milkbutter Wasn’t Canaris actively involved in espionage for the Allies? If so, yeah that’s putting in some work I’d say. lol
It’s already known that higher ups could contend with orders and even shout at Hitler if they disagreed with him; like with the May 24th halt order during the fall of France, which was widely hate by almost all elements of the Wehrmacht.
The 1985 Soviet film 'Come And See' was the first film that truly disturbed me with it's depiction of the horrors of the eastern front; stayed with me.
‘Numerous historians released a bunch of response videos in book form.’
You funny fucker, you.
I'm a simple man, I see Three Arrows upload a video - I watch.
Why do people post this? Why advertise your total lack of wit or originality?
Chris Devine Is someone sensitive ;)
@@rifatwins To what? Your lack of personality?
Chris Devine It got more likes than any of your comments, maybe I should teach you how to have a personality :)
@@rifatwins Heh, that's just awesome.
EGSB
*"Expanded granular sludge bed digestion"* - Wikipedia
_An expanded granular sludge bed (EGSB) reactor is a variant of the upflow anaerobic sludge blanket digestion (UASB) concept for anaerobic wastewater . . ._
@@EggBastion Every German Soldier Bad - reference to ACAB
@@KingsandGenerals
derp *_‛8 p_* 'ACAB' was nipping at my heels while I was trying to figure it out! There I was in my head cursing _"bugger off, I'm trying to think!"_
Kings and Generals ACAB means they’re all bastards, not all killers. It’s pretty accurate for an acronym. Many cops aren’t on the ins of the corruption, but if they know about it, ehh...could at least anonymously tell the FBI.
Oof, your out here supporting breadtube channels. Disappointing.
I want to add that when we say “all x are bad” we aren’t talking about every individual person. There’s no way every individual is a horrible bad person. I believe people when they say their grandpa was a kind, loving, generous person. The system they work for is inherently corrupt. All cops are bad because the system forces them to be bad. We can’t excuse the system that permits, or enforces, corruption
If you know that not every individual is bad then why do you ask if every individual is bad? I hear this all the time about "ACAB". "Oh its about the instituation and not the actual individual people", then why do you still adress and insult the individual people by calling them bastards? As if they`re gonna be insightful about what they`re doing when literally all you do is insult them.
It seems to be the left being bad with optics as usual when they say things like ACAB or Abolish ICE or Defund the Police
Then call the system "bastard" not the cops
Except most cops are good. That is left wing propaganda that tells you all cops are bad.
@@tomtomtom6970 because All Nazis Are Bastards, even if you love your great uncle.
As a Russian, born in USSR, I haven't got enough words to thank you for this video.
Sadly lots of people outside of Eastern Europe still do not comprehend how brutal and ruthless the conduct of the Germans in the Eastern Front.
Stalin and Hitler where two sides of the same coin. Do you aknownledge that, or will your sentence inherit a "but"?
@@peterlustig6888 Stalin and Hitler were bad, but Nazi Germany was much worse than the Soviet Union
@@yahyaehsan1164 Lol good Joke the Soviets killed more people then Germany
Lol some countrys thought the Germans were the good guys becouse of the Soviet Union they are as worse as them why do you think Russia still has things of ww2 in their archive and don't show it becouse of the many war crimes they raped Murderd and stole in many countrys jet they are praised as heroes and no one says anything if you see a Soviet Flag Hypocrites
Coming from the Balkans, I certainly learned from an early age about the massacres low ranking Wehrmacht officers and small groups committed. Some of them were so bad that the higher leadership was the one actually disgusted.
Nanjing moment.
The Wehrmacht not only quantitatively committed more war crimes than their Allied counterparts but also, and this can not be emphasized enough, the way they waged war during WWII was criminal from the outset as a matter of institutional policy. And not just in the way that the IMT in Nürnberg found that they were guilty of waging a war of aggression but the very way how they fought and what forms of warfare they encouraged was steeped in Nazi ideology.
This started from the very beginning of the war when the attack on Gleiwitz was faked in order to produce a casus belli against Poland, to the regular collaboration of the Wehrmacht with the SS and Einsatzgruppen in Poland, to the attack on neutral countries in the Benelux, to the blatant disregard to the laws of war in France where e.g. Rommel both used tactics such as setting civilians' houses on fire in order to mask his troops' advance to feigning surrender in order to draw French troops in, to the anti-Partisan operations in the Balkans, to the war against the Soviet Union being planned as a war of annihilation and thus constituting a war crime in itself, down to the lowest level of the units where massive violence against civilians and their property was encouraged as a tactic of warfare on a massive level.
The Wehrmacht as an institution superseded the "normal" function of an army within your average nation state and crossed the territory into becoming an institution heavily involved and complicit in the crimes of the Nazi state.
This came to bear in that the Wehrmacht and especially its higher echelons were by the time of the attack on the Soviet Union thoroughly "nazified". The war against the Soviets was in their mind not a "normal" war but a war of annihilation. Meaning that civilians as well as the soldiers of the other side were perceived as such an existential thread that extreme violence and terror were the only appropriate measure in dealing with them.
It doesn't come as a great shock then that new research by Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer as well as Felix Römer based on newly discovered eve's dropping protocols from British and American POW camps shows that within the Wehrmacht a vast majority of soldiers considered violence against civilians, even women and children in some cases, as a legitimate form of warfare, especially when justified with Partisan warfare. Examples of this, specifically referenced by the Wehrmacht soldiers themselves, include using women and children to clear mine fields; burning down buildings with the inhabitants inside; and the use of public hangings in order to deter support for real or imagined Partisan groups.
The frequency of such happenings as well as the level of involvement on part of the individual soldier are hard to gauge but from all research up to date, it is possible to conclude that almost every unit involved in the war in the Soviet Union or the Balkans did commit atrocities in one form or another on regular basis. Similarly, it is hard to number the victims of Wehrmacht atrocities but even discounting the starved Soviet POWs the number of civilian murdered by the Wehrmacht runs in the several millions.
Japan still apología for a reason
The Whermacht also killed hundreds of civilians in retaliation to a handful of partisans being captured.
I was just doing my job.
-every single coward in history
and you'd have done the same, tough guy.
@@davidfgranger how do you know he would have did the same Nostradamus?
@@grapeshot True, a guy who hides behind an avatar on TH-cam is probably a courageous baddass.
Expecting people to throw away their lives for people they don’t even know or like ain’t too realistic. Real life heroes tend to die quickly.
@@davidfgranger Found 'em. I pity you.
We have a very similar issue in the US regarding the Confederacy, either defending the entire thing with the “states rights” argument for the cause of the war, or saying that the average Confederate soldier was just fighting for their home. The truth is that every state that seceded said they did so to protect slavery and the army was a tool in service of that goal
It's kind of the same thing with the Confederates. "Don't blame the soldiers, they didn't want the bad thing the bosses wanted, they just wanted to protect their loved ones."
From what? What did their loved ones need to be protected from? OUR soldiers? Is your point really "Hey now, you can't blame our enemy for killing us, we're THEY'RE enemy, have a little empathy!"
Lol the German Soldiers were afraid of the Soviet Soldiers and feard for their Familys becouse they know what they did in Poland and their Civilians
Well yes. That is every conflict. What are you suggesting. Anyone who fights you is evil?
Movie recommendation: "Come and See" (Иди и смотри).
On my to watch list for ages now, got to watch it already grr
Robert Stan there’s a version on reddit with English subtitles. It’s decent quality on a 17” laptop haha
That movie is phenomenal, really puts into perspective the horror of the third Reich
I'm Polish and I thank you for this video. I hate it when German crimes are being whitewashed.
When I see Germans like you I know that there can be friendship between Poland and Germany. The alternative is too sad to even contemplate
What you mean there can be? There are so many polish people here were already friends
I don't think whitewash is the right word to describe it. Calling it sanitized makes more sense.
Gdansk was never a Polish city.
@@stepbrohelpimstuck2480 it was partly polish partly german.
@@MiSt3300No, Danzig was always German. We built the city.
It's been A WHOLE YEAR since the last upload. My heart aches for your content Dan.
Yeah, I can’t imagine having to reconcile extreme war crimes committed by my country. Oh wait...
it is a sad state of affairs.
Lemme guess ur British?
@@jaydani1996 probably lmao
Japan: 😏
It's interesting how everybody seems to love the Bismarck and feel bad for the crew who died in the open water. But nobody gives a single second of thought to the British crew who died on the HMS Hood. Only 3 men got off that ship and survived.
I once made the point how the Brits died defending their country from an invading force fighting for a tyrannical, genocidal dictator. The German crew died on a mission to destroy helpless convoy ships, most of which were providing food.
Oh boy... did the whearboos get triggered by that one. XD
I remember there was an interview with one of those survivors and it was heartbreaking. Talking at length about seeing that ship snap in half along with nearly everyone he knew. Horrible tragedy.
"wehrboos" is a cursed word and I thank you for introducing me to it.
Well considering they massacred hundreds of millions of people across the empire it's hard to feel sorry for them
@@jaydani1996 in this context, no they weren't
@@Indoor_Carrot perhaps but they were also following orders of a genocidal maniacal tyrant
I will admit, I used to be in the camp that believed the majority of the Wehrmacht weren't aware or complicit or responsible for the atrocities done in the way. After I got in an argument on Reddit and found your video, I have realized my mistake.
its easy to want to believe that maybe they were just "fighting for their country" but the reality is never that simple. to try and believe that a german soldier had no idea what was really going on while also taking part in the mass murder of slavs and polish would take an superhuman level of naivety
“I’m just a soldier fighting for my country”
“So what are you doing in somebody else’s country?”
“Errr”
I was about to go to sleep but now I need this brain fuel.
You live in Asia?
You rightfully say at the end of the video, that we cannot assume, that with the end of WW2 and the punishment of the nazi leaders, german society was suddenly cleansed off nazi ideology.
I would go a bit further: We cannot assume, that nazi ideology has ever been an actually integral part of german society to begin with: We are talking about people who lived in the monarchy of the Kaiserreich first, than in the Weimarer Republik, then in the dictatorship of the nazis and then either in the BRD or the DDR (and some first in the DDR and then in the BRD). Under all of these regimes they were just ordinary, decent citizens, trying to live ordinary and decent lives. They changed there apparent beliefs just as the system of government changed. If they would have had any actual ideological beliefs, at least a sizeable amount would have wanted to return to the Kaiserreich etc., there would have been resistances trying to restore the former way of government. But that was scarcely the case, because most people don't care for ideology.
Now that may sound like some sort oft apology at first glance: Most germans were never actually convinced nazis, not even when they elected and supported the nazis. But what it actually means is that such people would just follow any ideology as long as in doing so they would secure their own standing in that society. It makes their behaviour not less evil, it merely makes their evil a trivial thing, grounded not in evil convictions, but in a lack of any conviction at all - and therefore also a lack of any moral principle. It is wrong to emphasize ideology, because by removing some evil ideology you don't make people morally better. They usually don't really care for that ideology in the first place. They just care for themselves and the possibility to live a decent life and be left alone. And if, in order to live such a life, you have to turn a blind eye against the murder of millions of jews, or the deaths of hundreds of thousends of refugees drowning in the mediterranian, well then most people do just that. The evil here is not antisemitism or racism or whatever ideology you might come up with, but indifference and lazyness. Some diehard nazis driven by hatred against jews won't be able to do much. Millions of indifferent decent citizens however provide the condition for these crimes to take place, not because of malevolence or hatred or some sadistic urge to murder and destroy, but the trivial wish to fit in and to not take any responsibility. So we don't need to argue against evil ideology. But we need to teach people take responsibility. The ideological betterment will then follow anyway.
I mostly agree brother. Too much talk of good, of bad. Our only concern is what us these animals will do when the music stops.
I don't know how I feel hearing Taft described as "an absolute unit of a boi."
There's a story about Taft when he was the governor of the Philippines. He once sent a telegram to the secretary of war about a horseback ride he took to the mountains. The reply he got said something like, "Referring to your telegram--how is the horse?"
This video made me reminisce of my time in austrian compulsory military service and a discussion I've had with one of my roommates. Given that our responsibility as soldiers in a modern context is to protect- our slogan is "Schutz und Hilfe"(=Protection and Aid)- there is an important question to be asked, which is: "What should we protect" Is it the borders, the people, an ideology or the government? I told one of my colleagues that patriotism for me means being willing to raise your weapons against your own country, if necessary. All I got was raised eyebrows to which I gave the example of The Third Reich. However the discussion led nowhere sadly as most conversations we've had were under the influence of uncountable litres of beer and most young men on military duty did not really seem to question the situation they were in. For most of us it was just 6 months of gunplay and beer.
It's always interesting to see this kind of argument being used. You frequently see people saying that "Well not all Wehrmacht/Confederate soldiers were bad..." but you never see them portraying their enemies that way. The Soviets/Chinese/Vietnamese/Iraqis are never the example being used in these arguments. If anything, the same people generally view the Soviets/Iraqis as being borderline subhuman rapists or bug people that are all responsible for the war crimes of their regimes. Or even worse, they attempt to compare the two: "Well, even though the Wehrmacht occasionally assisted in the Holocaust they were not as bad as those horrible Soviets. Look at how many people they raped!". As if the morality of conflict is decided on who is the worst, and not the fact that those things are happening at all. It's easy to justify your nation's actions through that lense, and it's a scary belief to let yourself be lost in.
You just generalized an entire demographic of people. Most people who say not all soldiers were bad are using common sense and also agree the same for their historical enemy countries.
Its just an awareness that you cant paint everyone with the same brush.
Not every white american supported the native american genocide, not every roman supported the conquest and pillaging, not every russian supported the berlin rapes, not every us soldier supported the atom bombs.
you basically just made up your own narrative and did exactly the opposite of what this video was trying to do.
generalizing everyone. you say everyone that defends the wehrmacht during WWII never portrays the enemy that way. but thats false, most people do. so do I. so do many others. you saying everyone was bad with you rant is exactly what this video is trying to make you understand
@@lightup6751 At no point did I do so. Read it again. I never accussed "everyone" who believes in "not all soldiers in x army are bad", I was just making an observation about the two most talked about ones I've seen: Confederate and Wehrmacht apologists. I think you're totally missing the point of my comment: the issue with the way the language surrounding it is often used to minimize atrocities rather than humanize soldiers for political purposes rather than moral ones. Again, reread it. Claiming I'm "generalizing a whole group of people" or "making up a narrative" is a huge stretch, I never accussed everyone who believes what you do, just some of the loudest (predominantly nationalistic ones like the "Clean Wehrmacht believers" in Germany). Your strawmanning my argument by making it into something it's not.
"Response videos in book form"
Killed me man that's a good line
I’m half austrian, on my father’s side. My great-grandfather was a soldier in the Wehrmacht, and died/disappeared in Stalingrad.
Personally, my opinion is that my grandfather had to option of either refusing to join the army, and possibly dying, or joining the army and dying later for a terrible cause.
One way of putting it is that he had the option of refusing to join and dying for a good moral cause, and the choice of joining and dying for hitler. He chose the latter, and thus cannot be remembered as anything but a nazi (and possibly a war criminal, considering how brutal the Wehrmacht were toward the slavs).
It’s important to hold your morals above most other things, including family history. If someone in your family tree was awful, or fought for a terrible cause, then you must accept that reality. This goes for all terrible causes throughout history, like nazi germany, the CSA, etc. To live in denial of the possible harm a member of your family tree has done does nothing but legitimize what they did, and increase the chance that it happens again.
Anyway, that’s just my two cents.
@Parlez-vous hate? Cope with the fact that your opa wasn't a good man
@Parlez-vous hate? /pol/tard detected
@@TH-camisntlettingmeuseczech he probably was a good man, he was for his family, he was just in a bad situation, he wouldn't probably chose to just kill random people under normal circumstances, why do you say he is bad?
As much as I love other leftist creators, this channel has such a wonderful way of dealing with complex, difficult questions with nuance and precision
as an american watching this, im genuinely scared
Right here with you. I still have hope for the future, even if it's faint. Do what you can to oppose Trump, and we'll make it through this.
It's very horrific where Trump is taking America. Hopefully Americans realize this before it's too late. He needs to go.
@Diogenes TheDog true
I guarantee that we are closer to falling off the left-wing end of the spectrum than the right. Not to put your mind at ease. Americans have their antennas sky high for detecting any Nazi-like tendencies, while tolerating Marxism and teaching it in schools.
@@r4masami Actually, the more you read about Trump's policies, the more I think you will like him. Defunding Planned Parenthood is one of my favorites.
thanks for the video! It gives another perspective on my own ancestors. (1 opportunist, 1 fascist, 1 unlucky, 1 lucky)
I quite recently learned a lot about my family's history and the slightly chlling details during WWI and II because my uncle spend the lockdown digging through old documents of my grandfather.
My grandfather himself was studying to become a telecommunication engineer in former Königsberg when he got drafted and sent to France as a radio operator. He had three brothers of which only one survived. All of the four sons were raised "preußisch und kaisertreu" (proud prussians and loyal to the emperor) by my greatgrandfather (a marine general) and therefore willingly accepting the tale of defending their homeland (prussia) against invaders.
One brother was a fanatic nazi and joined the U85 submarine voluntarily where he got killed after fleeing the sinking ship by american soldiers refusing to rescue the soldiers from the freezing water and instead, the americans were throwing water bombs at them.
His youngest brother wanted to become an engineer like his my grandfather, just got 18 in january 1945 and when he was drafted out of school a few weeks before the war ended and vanished somewhere in the east where his remains where never found.
The brother who survived was a milker who secretely supplied forced laborers with cream and butter whenever he could. When the russian army freed the region, the only reason he wasn't shot, was that one of the forced laborers remembered him and told the russian soldiers to let him go (which they did).
So yeah, I would say my ancestors definitely knew about what was going on and taking their sides. It still leaves a big question mark how on an individual level each of them was really thinking about the war but your video gave me another perspective on it, thanks!
I actually agree there is "no difference" between "decent" Jews and the rest.
They ALL deserve life, dignity, human rights, and democratic representation.
So do far right people in Germany
I just stumbled upon your channel randomly after seeing Shaun reference one of your videos. Having now watched a couple of your videos, I think yours is among the most thoughtful, well reasoned and well researched content on TH-cam. Your videos come the closest to reading a scholarly article on a subject, which is incredibly refreshing to see on a platform where entertainment and drama seems to dominate the discourse. Keep up the great work.
Wonder if Taft said that racist nonsense while stuck in his bathtub?
Is Three Arrows/ Daniel still making videos/ is ok?
Just wondering as it has been a year since this upload and I can't see any more recent videos
Good to hear.
Thanks for the 2nd channel name.
@@non_gamer9912 he is returning to this channel
You doing okay? I came to check if you had anything new and saw this video was a year old today! I love your content! Thanks so much for what you do!
There are more recent videos on his second channel
@@Cytronik Second channel? I cannot find it
I'm happy to say that I knew both that Taft said that quote, and the fact that he was such a unit who needed a Godzilla sized bathtub.
Honestly though, as an American, I think we could learn from Germany in terms of how you guys have contextualized your history. Sure, you still have extremists as outlined in this video, but you're at least willing to have these discussions and aren't socially allowed to declare Nazism as your "heritage" without catching severe criticism and ire. I wish us Southerners could have this discussion regarding the Confederacy and move towards properly educating our children about the horrors of what slave owners stood for and even died for. You don't have to be like your shitty ancestors. Same also goes for cops in America who aren't willing to hold fellow officers accountable when they objectively fail at protecting people. You're not them, so stop defending them and embrace police reform.
We really need to have a talk about the whole Rommel situation; the guy was just as much a Nazi as all the others were, he just saw the writing on the wall and didn't want to lose the war and potentially die.
It's been 11 months, can't wait until your return triple arrow man.
I need you back 😥 I just saw your comment on a contra video and realized how much I miss your videos