AHC: make sure the “clean Wehrmacht” myth non-existent, and have the Wehrmacht have as bad as a post war reputation as the SS

[Cuirassier]

@jeandebueil

"Clean Wehrmacht" myth doesn't belong to history at all because actual historians never believed in it. If you want a change in historiography then you need to have credible Soviet history as balance.

 

[jeandebueil]

Have them be captured by the Soviets, anyone?

A possible solution but not a mandatory one. More severe international trials will do as well.
Also, speaking of Historigraphy, if Soviet source materials and memoirs are made available in English at the same time: it will counter German sources' influences and creates a true Historiographical debate. German is more easily understandable than Russian. The Clean wehrmacht myth is also due to the fact that only German sources were available, partly because of the Cold War, but also because the Soviets didn't really try to propose their version of the story while they could perfectly do it. Translating and publishing works with the help of influencial communist parties in Western Europe was certainly doable.

 

[Cuirassier]

Soviets didn't really try to propose their version of the story while they could perfectly do it.

They did, but it was ideological rubbish.

 

[jeandebueil]

@jeandebueil

"Clean Wehrmacht" myth doesn't belong to history at all because actual historians never believed in it. If you want a change in historiography then you need to have credible Soviet history as balance.

History is not only about what Historians believe. It is also about what people read and accept as History. Otherwise, History would only concern a tiny minority. Which is a nonsense. If a large number of people accept a myth as History, then it belongs to the Historiography. And see my previous post about Soviet sources (on which point we agree).

 

[jeandebueil]

They did, but it was ideological rubbish.

A handful of censored and rarely translated memoirs isn't enough to create source materials.

 

[Cuirassier]

@jeandebueil

Your arguments reminds me of Smelser and Davies' book. They talk a lot about Halder, Manstein etc. but don't show how they impacted popular memory outside Germany.

Clean Wehrmacht thing persists only in a certain subsection of military afficionados. I am afraid you won't ever be rid of them.

A handful of censored and rarely translated memoirs isn't enough to create source materials.

The USSR had an "official" history too. Historians in the West found it to be idological nonsense.

 

[Resurgam]

Not just that...the SS is played up as ‘the most International army’ in the world (based on their volunteers and ‘volunteers’ from elsewhere in Europe), Kratman’s German author-insert firmly believes that if the Madagaskar plan had happened there’d have been Jews in the SS one day...and in-story, Israeli soldiers who survive their homeland’s loss join the SS as ‘Judas Maccabaeus-Division’, wearing SS black with little Stars of David and Menorahs as well as the SS-Runes.

The everloving fu-

 

[jeandebueil]

@jeandebueil

Your arguments reminds me of Smelser and Davies' book. They talk a lot about Halder, Manstein etc. but don't show how they impacted popular memory outside Germany.

Clean Wehrmacht thing persisted only among a certain subsection of military afficionados. I am afraid you won't ever be rid of them.

IMHO, I think you are wrong for your last point. My own parents during their youth, who were anything but military afficionados, fully believed in the Clean Wehrmacht myth. They were common people going to cinemas to watch the Longest Day and A Bridge too Far, themselves popular movies showing the Wehrmacht as dutiful professionnals versus "Madman Hitler". This Historiographical myth had clearly impacted popular memory in countries like France in my case.
I personally had to tell them and their friends (born in the 50's and 60's) what the Wehrmacht actually was: their first reaction was disbelief and sometimes hostility (the "Wehrmacht spared Paris against Hitler's orders!" was their main argument).

 

[Crust3038]

Unless the rest of NATO was willing to pay massively more in domestic taxes and raise a lot more troops that meant they needed West Germany to at least partially defend itself now not in a decade or two. In the short term that meant you needed to use a lot of German WW2 Veterans. Theoretically you could have US/British/French officers serve as the generals of the new West German divisions but I'm not sure how practical that would be.

No. This would require A) the Wehrmacht using chemical weaponry on the West front. Then all gloves are off at Nuremberg. The Wehrmacht gets the noose. Second, B) a much more industrially scarier and bellicose USSR (example: detonating the first Soviet nuke in autumn/winter of 1945, so no drawing down of the US military by Truman, War Eternal is here! /s) that would force the US to basically pro-long the New Deal, tax the rich even more, and so get the money necessary to uplift industrially and militarily West Germany while also doing the same thing they did with the JSDF in OTL with the Bundeswehr.

 

[Cuirassier]

@jeandebueil

That sympathy did not rise from Halder or Manstein. It came from popular media which had nothing to do with historical works.

Like it or not, German rehabilitation made many people paper over the ugly past.

also doing the same thing they did with the JSDF

Lol. It was the Japanese who wrote it into their constituion, not Americans.
Germany would not have rearmed had Soviet troops not been across the border.

 

[theg*ddam*hoi2fan]

@jeandebueil

Your arguments reminds me of Smelser and Davies' book. They talk a lot about Halder, Manstein etc. but don't show how they impacted popular memory outside Germany.

Clean Wehrmacht thing persists only in a certain subsection of military afficionados. I am afraid you won't ever be rid of them.

IMHO, I think you are wrong for your last point. My own parents during their youth, who were anything but military afficionados, fully believed in the Clean Wehrmacht myth. They were common people going to cinemas to watch the Longest Day and A Bridge too Far, themselves popular movies showing the Wehrmacht as dutiful professionnals versus "Madman Hitler". This Historiographical myth had clearly impacted popular memory in countries like France in my case.
I personally had to tell them and their friends (born in the 50's and 60's) what the Wehrmacht actually was: their first reaction was disbelief and sometimes hostility (the "Wehrmacht spared Paris against Hitler's orders!" was their main argument).

Cuirassier is dead wrong.

As one example...when I was a kid I read a lot of old British comics. Sevenpenny Nightmare, Warlord, Hotspur... etc. Said comics would have been really popular up until at least the 80s, if not longer.

From the 70s onwards, you saw German protagonists appearing. Hellmann of Hammer Force, Kampfgruppe Falken, Iron Annie... In all of these, the (Wehrmacht) protagonists were depicted as not just dutiful professionals, but actively hating Nazism, loudly castigating the obvious Nazis (who were secondary antagonists, quite often), often intervening to preserve civilians from said obvious Nazis, and generally carrying on in such a way as would have got people shot IRL. The 'Clean Wehrmacht' myth was packaged and sold to kids in Britain in an attractive format...

 

[jeandebueil]

@jeandebueil

That sympathy did not rise from Halder or Manstein. It came from popular media which had nothing to do with historical works.

Like it or not, German rehabilitation made many people paper over the ugly past.

Lol. It was the Japanese who put that bit in their constituion, not Americans.
Germany would not have rearmed had Soviet troops not been across the border.

Popular media feeds itself from Historiography. It reflects how common people sees the/their past. Movie directors are people who once went to Highschool and Colleges. What they were taught was a simplication of Historiography created in Universities. It is a principle goes back to the late XIXth century. Ernest Lavisse for France says it: History studied/made in Universities must then be adapted and taught to children and teenagers. Historical works and Popular media belong to the same cycle.

 

[Cuirassier]

@theg*ddam*hoi2fan Engage with my argument instead of distorting my comments.

The 'Clean Wehrmacht' myth was packaged and sold to kids in Britain in an attractive format...

I am sure Manstein and Halder made that happen.

Movie directors are people who once went to Highschool and Colleges. What they were taught was a simplication of Historiography created in Universities.

If you want this to not happen then make sure Germany is not rehabilitated for a generation or so. You repeat that historiography was distorted but it was not caused by memoirs of old Nazis.
Why did the people who fought the Nazis not vigorously dispute Halder? Don't say lack of information, the allied prosecutors knew exactly who they were prosecuting at Nuremburg.

 

[theg*ddam*hoi2fan]

@theg*ddam*hoi2fan Engage with my argument instead of distorting my comments.

I didn't distort your comments - you said that the Clean Wehrmacht was only a thing among military aficionados, I was pointing out it was pretty much accepted popularly.

I am sure Manstein and Halder made that happen.

Popular media feeds itself from Historiography. It reflects how common people sees the/their past. Movie directors are people who once went to Highschool and Colleges. What they were taught was a simplication of Historiography created in Universities. It is a principle goes back to the late XIXth century. Ernest Lavisse for France says it: History studied/made in Universities must then be adapted and taught to children and teenagers. Historical works and Popular media belong to the same cycle.

What jeandebueil said.

 

[Jürgen]

I’m so incredible tired over the entire discussion about the Clean Wehrmacht “myth”. Everyone knew it was bullshit from the start, but it was useful bullshit which allowed people on both sides to move on. But once in a while there come some person who think everyone else are too stupid to know this and begin their crusade against the myth everyone knows is a myth, but is allowed to survive because it served a useful purpose.

What worse the obsession over have real world consequences. If USA had decided to go with a clean Iraqi Army myth, Iraq could very well be less of a clusterfuck today.

 

[Cuirassier]

Everyone knew it was bullshit from the start, but it was useful bullshit which allowed people on both sides to move on.

My thoughts exactly.

But once in a while there come some person who think everyone else are too stupid to know this and begin their crusade against the myth everyone knows is a myth, but is allowed to survive because it serve a useful purpose.

And so we get books like Smelser and Davies' The Myth of the Eastern Front.

I didn't distort your comments - you said that the Clean Wehrmacht was only a thing among military aficionados, I was pointing out it was pretty much accepted popularly.

jeandebueil and I were talking about two different things. He included popular memory, I did not.
Most people don't care to know the details. Those who do are in unison against the Clean Wehrmacht myth, aside from the ones I mentioned previously.

 

[TDM]

Cuirassier is dead wrong.

As one example...when I was a kid I read a lot of old British comics. Sevenpenny Nightmare, Warlord, Hotspur... etc. Said comics would have been really popular up until at least the 80s, if not longer.

From the 70s onwards, you saw German protagonists appearing. Hellmann of Hammer Force, Kampfgruppe Falken, Iron Annie... In all of these, the (Wehrmacht) protagonists were depicted as not just dutiful professionals, but actively hating Nazism, loudly castigating the obvious Nazis (who were secondary antagonists, quite often), often intervening to preserve civilians from said obvious Nazis, and generally carrying on in such a way as would have got people shot IRL. The 'Clean Wehrmacht' myth was packaged and sold to kids in Britain in an attractive format...

Yep and you see it wider media than just straight action stuff as well

Take "allo, allo", despite it's sitcom piss taking the basic premise is the while all the Germans are pretty bumbling and incompetent (and all trying to avoid the threat of being sent to the eastern front by their mainly offscreen superiors). While the army chaps are generally seen as generally relaxed and good natured and really just after a nice quite life of drinking French wine, looting well endowed paintings and shagging bar staff. But the Gestapo are the ones that while still incompetent (and sexually repressed because brit sitcom) hunting down the resistance, making everyone included the German army characters life hard with their zealotry .

 

[Cuirassier]

@TDM

How did Franz Halder influence the creators of 'Allo, 'Allo ! ?

 

[TDM]

I’m so incredible tired over the entire discussion about the Clean Wehrmacht “myth”. Everyone knew it was bullshit from the start, but it was useful bullshit which allowed people on both sides to move on. But once in a while there come some person who think everyone else are too stupid to know this and begin their crusade against the myth everyone knows is a myth, but is allowed to survive because it served a useful purpose.

What worse the obsession over have real world consequences. If USA had decided to go with a clean Iraqi Army myth, Iraq could very well be less of a clusterfuck today.

I'm sorry while it might be nice to believe we all know better today, but it's not true. Especially when you have groups who have vested interest in promoting the Clean Wehrmacht myth for their one more current purposes.


Don't get me wrong it is less accepted today than it was, but it hasn't gone away

 

[theg*ddam*hoi2fan]

@TDM

How did Franz Halder influence the creators of 'Allo, 'Allo ! ?

The Clean Wehrmacht myth being peddled in academic circles led to it being peddled in popular culture, is the point. Not saying he directly influenced said creators, but that the discussion did.