To my knowledge when the Soviets formed the armed forces of East Germany they also made heavy use of former Whermact veterans. I believe they were mostly enlisted men and lower officers but the Soviets in general tended to make use of heavy use of much of the former Nazi Apparatus. It's just kind of one of those things. Hard to run a country without a beuracracy and in East Germany's case a secret police.
AHC: make sure the “clean Wehrmacht” myth non-existent, and have the Wehrmacht have as bad as a post war reputation as the SS
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To my knowledge when the Soviets formed the armed forces of East Germany they also made heavy use of former Whermact veterans. I believe they were mostly enlisted men and lower officers but the Soviets in general tended to make use of heavy use of much of the former Nazi Apparatus. It's just kind of one of those things. Hard to run a country without a beuracracy and in East Germany's case a secret police.
Heck, IIRC, the NVA were much more based on the Wehrmacht than the Bundeswehr were...
Yep I remember that. I'm Jewish but I was like 8 when I read the book so it didn't really occur to me how much was wrong with that.
I actually liked his posleen verse story in Panama. Their's still a lot of problematic politics but it's less ever present and horrible then Watch on The Rhine. Plus any story with the USS Des Moines fighting interstellar flying Pyramids is groovy in my book.
Ficboy
Banned
Treskow if I recall was pretty horrified at what he had done and tried to get his nephew to stop some of the atrocities. Reportedly Stauffenberg was terrified at what was happening towards Jews. Even if they might not be perfect compared to other examples in the SS and Wehrmacht, the Operation Valkyrie plotters look like saints in comparison.
From the Paul Hausser wikipedia page
"Hausser wrote two books, published by right-wing imprints, arguing the purely military role of the Waffen-SS and advancing the notion that its troops were "soldiers like any other", according to the title of the second book. Under Hausser's leadership, HIAG reshaped the image of the Waffen-SS as a so-called pan-European force that fought honorably and had no part in war crimes or Nazi atrocities. These ideas have since been discredited by historians. "
And from HIAG wikipedia page
"The memoirs of HIAG's leading members portrayed Waffen-SS men as "misunderstood idealists who fought honourably and well"[11] and included quotations by former Wehrmacht generals endorsing the fighting skills of the Waffen-SS.[11] Steiner's, Meyer's and Hausser's books have been characterised by historian Charles Sydnor as the "most important works of [Waffen-SS] apologist literature".[64] They demanded rehabilitation of the combat branch of the Nazi Party and presented Waffen-SS members as "soldiers just like any other". "
True, but I feel like popular memory is ignoring the skeletons in the July 20 plotters' closet just because they tried to assassinate Hitler. It needs to be remembered that the German officer corps of the Wehrmacht was the same conservative group that it had been all throughout post-1871 German history up to this point. They were just incensed that Hitler was ignoring that conservative tradition and imposing Nazi ideology on them.
And as for Tresckow 'being horrified' at Heu-Aktion, I find it unbelievable that he didn't know what he was participating in, especially in a program that predominantly targeted people under the age of 18.
The order for Heu-Aktion even says
Had the plot survived, I think he would've buried his participation in Heu-Aktion and participated in the 'clean Wehrmcht myth'. It is definitely true that he was opposed to the massacre of Jews and the Commissar Order, but again, Treskow potentially had the blood of Polish children on his hands.
Ficboy
Banned
Of course Holocaust deniers, neo-Nazis and anti-Semites don't like to acknowledge any opposition within German ranks as that would break their narrative of "International Jewry vs Europe" which is incredibly exaggerated and false anyway.
Well, the Bundeswehr could always be organized along the lines of the early JSDF as it was a force which had many officers with little military experience with its first Chief having no military experience whatsoever before heading the proto-JSDF:
Keizō Hayashi - Wikipedia
then maybe some people could be used to create the new German army, an example of this could be in making Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck or someone like him as chief of staff while the army is being created, it doesn't matter if almost no He does nothing, just by having the rank, no one will say much against him and it has been possible to create an army free of Nazis.
While I'm not an expert by any means when I looked into the fellow it seems like he was heavily involved in the German resistance and plots to kill Hitler. Unlike many other similar members of the White Orchestra he seems to have been heavily motivated by idealism (in terms of at least nominally basing his beliefs and actions as against the various war crimes) instead of just realizing Hitler was going to destroy Germany and that by killing him they might be able to save the old order of things.
At least from Wikipedia (admittedly the best of sources) it's not clear if he actually authored/proposed the action or just signed it. If it's the latter it's possible he considered it neccesary to at least publicly "Play the Part" in order to continue to possibly have the access needed to kill Hitler and end the Nazis. That doesn't make the action good or eliminate the moral evilness. But it does make them somewhat understandable from a moral amoral arithmetic. Namely "Kill five thousand children in order to possibly save five million". If that was his reasoning in some ways it makes it even more awful. The sheer hell of having even half a conscience and ordering the murder of thousands of children hoping to save millions and your entire country.
I'm not sure if he would have played the "Clean Werhmact" card. He seems to have had something of a consciense and been genuinely horrified by what the Whermacht was doing. I mean it takes a lot of balls to in 1941 (When Hitler seemed on top of the world) to semi publicly go to your commanding officer and demand he fly to Berlin and tell your dictator/ commander in chief what he's doing is wrong and he needs to massively change the overt policy he has set.
Well, the Bundeswehr could always be organized along the lines of the early JSDF as it was a force which had many officers with little military experience with its first Chief having no military experience whatsoever before heading the proto-JSDF:
Keizō Hayashi - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
In Japan's case they were an island who's front line of protection was the USN which had massive naval superiority over the Soviets. The Soviets could sink US and Japanese ships but they really had no way during the cold war to land more then a few thousand troops. The Pacific was also kind of the backwater of the Cold War (at least in terms of troop and aircraft numbers). Germany is obviously not an Island and can't rely on the same protection from conventional ground invasion. 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.
The national police reserve was originally a constabulary charged with internal security not facing down Soviet armored divisions. Even then it still had tons of IJA in its ranks and leading most of its units. http://www.nids.mod.go.jp/english/publication/kiyo/pdf/bulletin_e2006_5_Kuzuhara.pdfWell, the Bundeswehr could always be organized along the lines of the early JSDF as it was a force which had many officers with little military experience with its first Chief having no military experience whatsoever before heading the proto-JSDF:
Keizō Hayashi - Wikipedia
When it became a military force it was former imperial officers running the show.
Yep exactly, just wanting to kill* Hitler doesn't make you a good person or even someone you'd really want in charge next. Which is why all these threads that are some version of 'Hitler is killed/dies, Germany instantly does an about face on all the nasty killing but is still all awesome and tiger tanks', gets a bit frustrating
*by the end quite an astounding array of people around the world wanted to kill the man!
Cuirassier
Banned
No Cold War. Somehow the USSR and the US decide to amiably divide their zones of influence.
Germany must not be in the frontline.
Germany must not be in the frontline.
I have seen the opposite. The East German state may have used officials from the Third Reich out of necessity (in the beginning) but as time passed by they put party members/ideologues into power.
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There's another aspect to the the clean Wehrmacht myth away from the deliberate genocides etc.
Even if you ignore the ideologically driven mass killing, slavery, starvation etc by saying "oh it was other armed Germans who did that" . The German army still unequivocally invaded and occupied a long list of countries in 1938-1942. So it doesn't even get to argue it was Brave men defending the fatherland against unprovoked attack ......or at least only if you ignore everything before 1944*! Which is why in a lot of the fiction it's steely eyed German men staring down childlike Americans or conniving, cowardly brits in the west after overlord, or the barbarian hordes in the east during Bagration. rarely asking the question why these forces were coming for them.
*one caveat the North Africa Campaign was seen a vaguely heroic as much against the desert as the other side, with Rommel "the good nazi" etc, etc (its own smaller in scale and issue myth)
Maybe those in charge but they were happy to use the format and structure as well a lot of the people**. The East Germany army was certainly built on the old Wehrmacht. Thing is like I said 50% of men between 15-40 served during WW2, and they were the ones with military experience, you're not going to have much options but to use them. Especially as the Soviets/Warsaw Pact wanted to do exactly in east Germany what NATO was doing in west Germany i.e. build up an effective military force to face the other side.
** carefully watched of course, being a good East German apparatchik was a tough row to hoe for a long while, you had to be extra committed to compensate for being German etc, etc. and I'm guessing there was no shortage of uncomfortable silences between Russians and Germans over the communist water cooler
Even if you ignore the ideologically driven mass killing, slavery, starvation etc by saying "oh it was other armed Germans who did that" . The German army still unequivocally invaded and occupied a long list of countries in 1938-1942. So it doesn't even get to argue it was Brave men defending the fatherland against unprovoked attack ......or at least only if you ignore everything before 1944*! Which is why in a lot of the fiction it's steely eyed German men staring down childlike Americans or conniving, cowardly brits in the west after overlord, or the barbarian hordes in the east during Bagration. rarely asking the question why these forces were coming for them.
*one caveat the North Africa Campaign was seen a vaguely heroic as much against the desert as the other side, with Rommel "the good nazi" etc, etc (its own smaller in scale and issue myth)
Maybe those in charge but they were happy to use the format and structure as well a lot of the people**. The East Germany army was certainly built on the old Wehrmacht. Thing is like I said 50% of men between 15-40 served during WW2, and they were the ones with military experience, you're not going to have much options but to use them. Especially as the Soviets/Warsaw Pact wanted to do exactly in east Germany what NATO was doing in west Germany i.e. build up an effective military force to face the other side.
** carefully watched of course, being a good East German apparatchik was a tough row to hoe for a long while, you had to be extra committed to compensate for being German etc, etc. and I'm guessing there was no shortage of uncomfortable silences between Russians and Germans over the communist water cooler
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Cuirassier
Banned
Blame the British.
They had to glorify Rommel to explain their spankings despite the material imbalance in their favour.
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Heh, we do like playing the plucky underdog! (even while dishing out the spankings
)But yep that particular Wehrmacht myth segues nicely with our own!
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Cuirassier
Banned
It is the opposite. The Germans were the underdogs.Heh, we do like playing the plucky underdog! (even while dishing out the spankings
The British had to make Rommel look more dangerous than he was to explain away their own defeats.
Would an a more successful, more long-term Werwolf insurgency preclude the West from allowing former Wehrmacht soldiers from serving as the Bundeswehr core?