Myth of the clean Wehrmacht significant person Franz Halder
Start of the myth
The Generals' memorandum
General Franz Halder, OKH chief of staff between 1938 and 1942, played a key role in creating the myth of the clean Wehrmacht. The genesis for the myth was the "Generals' Memorandum" created in November 1945 and submitted to the Nuremberg trials. It was titled "The German Army from 1920 to 1945" and was co-authored by Halder and former field marshals Walther von Brauchitsch and Erich von Manstein, along with other senior military figures. It aimed to portray the German armed forces as apolitical and largely innocent of the crimes committed by the Nazi regime. The strategy outlined in the memorandum was later adopted by Hans Laternser, the lead counsel for the defence of senior Wehrmacht commanders at the High Command Trial. The document was written at the suggestion of American general William J. Donovan of the OSS. He viewed the Soviet Union as a global threat to world peace. Donovan served as a deputy prosecutor at Nuremberg; he and some other U.S. representatives believed the trials should not proceed. He believed America should do everything it could to secure Germany as a military ally against the Soviet Union in the growing Cold War.Franz Halder
As the Cold War progressed, the military intelligence provided by the German section of U.S. Army Historical Division became increasingly important to the Americans. Halder oversaw the German section of the research programme which became known as the "Halder Group". His group produced over 2,500 major historical manuscripts from over 700 distinct German authors detailing World War II. Halder manipulated the group into reinventing another war-time history from truths, half-truths, distortion and lies. He set up a "Control group" of trusted former Nazi officers who vetted all the manuscripts and required the authors to change the content. Halder's deputy in the group was Adolf Heusinger who was also working for the Gehlen Organisation, a U.S. Military Intelligence organisation in Germany. Halder expected to be addressed as "General" by the writing teams and behaved as their commanding officer while dealing with their manuscripts. His aim was to exonerate German army personnel from the atrocities they had committed.Halder laid down a version of history that all the writers had to abide by. This version stated the army was Hitler's victim and had opposed him at every opportunity. The writers had to emphasise the "decent" form of war conducted by the army and blame the SS for the criminal operations. Halder enjoyed a privileged position, as the few historians working on World War II history in the 1950s had to obtain historical information from him and his group. His influence extended to newspaper editors and authors. Halder's instructions were sent down the chain of command and were recorded by former Field Marshal Georg von Küchler. They said: "It is German deeds, seen from the German standpoint, that are to be recorded; this will constitute a memorial to our troops", "no criticism of measures ordered by the leadership" is allowed and no one is to be "incriminated in any way". The achievements of the Wehrmacht were to be emphasised instead. Military historian Bernd Wegner, examining Halder's work, wrote: "The writing of German history on the Second World War, and in particular on the Russian front, was for over two decades, and in part up to the present day – and to a far greater extent than most people realise – the work of the defeated". Wolfram Wette wrote: "In the work of the Historical Division the traces of the War of Annihilation for which the Wehrmacht leadership was responsible were covered up".In 1949 Halder wrote, Hitler als Feldherr which translates into English as Hitler as Commander and was published in 1950. The work contained the central ideas behind the myth of the clean Wehrmacht that were subsequently reproduced in countless histories and memoirs. The book describes an idealised commander who is then compared to Hitler. The commander is noble, wise, against the war in the East and free from any guilt. Hitler alone was responsible for the evil committed; his complete immorality is contrasted with the moral behaviour of the commander who had done no wrong.The Americans were aware the manuscripts contained numerous apologia. However, they also contained intelligence the Americans viewed as important in the event of a war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Halder had coached former Nazi officers on how to make incriminating evidence disappear. Many of the officers he coached such as Heinz Guderian went on to write best-selling autobiographies that broadened the appeal of the apologia. Halder succeeded in his aim of rehabilitating the German officer corps, first with the U.S. military, then widening circles of politics and finally with millions of Americans. Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies writing in The Myth of the Eastern Front said: "Franz Halder embodies better than any other high German officer the dramatic difference between myth and reality as it emerged after World War II".The "Lost Cause" of Nazi Germany
American historians Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies noted the close similarities of the "untarnished shield" myth of the Wehrmacht to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy myth, starting with the way that former Confederate officers such as Jubal Early and former Wehrmacht officers such as Franz Halder were most active in promoting these myths after their respective wars. Both myths glorify the Confederate military and the Wehrmacht as superior fighting organisations led by deeply honourable, noble and courageous men who were overwhelmed by inferior opponents by sheer numbers and material together with bad luck. Just as the Lost Cause myth portrayed the Confederate leaders as honourable, but misguided American patriots who were wrong to try to break up the United States, but were still admirable men and great American heroes; the "clean Wehrmacht" myth likewise portrayed the Wehrmacht leaders as honourable German patriots who might have been wrong to fight for Hitler, but were still men worthy of the highest admiration. Both myths seek to glorify the respective militaries of the Confederacy and Nazi Germany by first portraying the military leaders as men of the highest honour, and secondly by disassociating them from the causes that they fought for. In the Confederates' case, it was denied that they fought for white supremacy and slavery while in the case of the Wehrmacht it was denied that they fought for the völkisch ideology of Nazi Germany.Both myths emphasised the respective militaries as forces of order and protection against chaos by inferior elements. In the case of the South, the Reconstruction period was portrayed by the Lost Cause mythologists as a nightmarish time when black men freed from slavery supposedly ran amok in a violent crime wave at the expense of the law-abiding white population of the South, thus implicitly justifying the Confederate struggle. In the case of Germany, the war on the Eastern Front is portrayed as a heroic defensive struggle to protect "European civilisation" against the "Asiatic hordes" of the Red Army, who were always portrayed in the darkest of terms. The Israeli historian Omer Bartov noted that Nazi propaganda during the last days of the Nazi dictatorship pictured the war of the Eastern Front in the starkest and most extreme terms, as it was asserted that the Wehrmacht "... were defending humanity against a demonic invasion while simultaneously hoping to sow dissent between the Soviet Union and the Allied Forces. Though not successful in preventing the total collapse of the Third Reich, these efforts did bear fruit in another important sense, for they both prepared the ground for the FRG's [Federal Republic of Germany] eventual alliance with the West, and provided the Wehrmacht's apologists with a forceful and politically useful argument, even if it conveniently confused cause and effect". And finally just as the "Lost Cause" myth promoted the image of the faithful black slave, happy to serve his or her masters, the "clean Wehrmacht" myth by emphasising the role of the Vlasov Army and other collaborationist units fighting alongside the Wehrmacht similarly gave the image of the Slavs happy to welcome the Wehrmacht as their liberators and saviours. By focusing on the Wehrmacht as liberators, the narrative tended to distract attention from war crimes committed in the Soviet Union. The involvement of the collaborationist units raised in the Soviet Union in the Holocaust was never mentioned.Initially, when Operation Barbarossa was launched in 1941, the peoples of the Soviet Union were portrayed in Nazi propaganda as untermenschen (sub-humans) who were threatening "European civilisation", and for whom there was to be no sympathy or compassion. From 1943 onward there was a change in Nazi propaganda as the peoples of the Soviet Union with the exception of the Jews were portrayed as oppressed by the "Jewish Bolsheviks" whom Germany was fighting to liberate. Both strands of Nazi propaganda found their way into the "clean Wehrmacht" myth. On one hand, the emphasis on atrocities committed by the "Asian" Red Army soldiers echoed the wartime propaganda theme of the "Asiatic hordes" laying waste to civilisation. On the other hand, the theme of the Vlasov Army as allies of the Wehrmacht echoed the wartime propaganda theme of the war against the Soviet Union as a noble struggle to freedom. In this respect, there was a difference in the sense that the "Lost Cause" myth portrayed slaves who did not want their freedom while by contrast the "clean Wehrmacht" myth portrayed the Wehrmacht as liberators. However, just as the "Lost Cause" myth portrayed submissive slaves who rejected freedom because their masters treated them so well, in the "clean Wehrmacht" myth, there is never any suggestion of equality between the Germans and the Soviet peoples, and the Vlasov Army are always portrayed as submissively looking up to their German liberators for guidance and leadership. The exotic members of the Vlasov Army such as the Cossacks were portrayed as romantic, but savage; people worthy enough to be allies of the Wehrmacht, but not really their equals.