Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

The myth of the clean Wehrmacht
Protesters against the "Wehrmacht exhibition" (Wehrmachtsausstellung) in Munich, Germany on 12 October 2002. The exhibition detailed the war crimes of the Wehrmacht to the general German public. The protesters' posters, based on Nazi wartime propaganda, read "Fame and Honor to the German Soldiers".

The myth of the Clean Wehrmacht (German: Saubere Wehrmacht), Clean Wehrmacht legend (Legende von der sauberen Wehrmacht), or Wehrmacht's "clean hands" is the belief that the Wehrmacht was an apolitical organization along the lines of its predecessor, the Reichswehr, and was largely innocent of Nazi Germany's crimes, comporting themselves as honorably as the armed forces of the Western Allies. This narrative is proven false by the Wehrmacht's own documents: while the Wehrmacht treated British and American POWs in accordance with the laws of war (giving the myth plausibility in the West), they routinely enslaved, starved, shot, or otherwise abused and murdered Polish, Soviet, and Yugoslav civilians and prisoners of war. The Wehrmacht units also participated in the mass murder of Jews and others in the East.

The myth began in the late 1940s, with former Wehrmacht officers and veterans' groups looking to restore honor and evade guilt; in 1950, as part of the rearmament of Federal Republic of Germany, the Western Allies endorsed the myth as a matter of public policy. The myth still has defenders to this day: a few German veterans' associations, and various far-right authors and publishers in Germany and abroad. Modern defenders downplay or deny the Wehrmacht's involvement in the Holocaust, largely ignore the German persecution of Soviet prisoners of war, and emphasize the role of the SS and the civil administration in the Third Reich's atrocities.

In the eyes of the Nazis, the war against the Soviet Union would be a Vernichtungskrieg, a war of annihilation.Racial policy of Nazi Germany viewed the Soviet Union (and all of Eastern Europe) as populated by non-Aryan Untermenschen ("sub-humans"), ruled by "Jewish Bolshevik conspirators". Accordingly, it was stated Nazi policy to kill, deport, or enslave the majority of Russian and other Slavic populations according to the Generalplan Ost ("General Plan for the East"). The plan consisted of the Kleine Planung ("Small Plan") and the Große Planung ("Large Plan"), which covered actions to be taken during the war and actions to be implemented after the war was won, respectively.