Chances of a Heer "revolt" on the eastern front, early Barbarossa?

Could the Heer revolt in response to SS atrocities during Barbarossa?

  • No chance, "we were only following orders".

    Votes: 14 38.9%
  • Individual soldiers maybe, but wind up executed or sent to camps.

    Votes: 21 58.3%
  • Yes, but they would need a charismatic leader to rally them.

    Votes: 1 2.8%

  • Total voters
    36
In the initial stages of Barbarossa, the regular German army troops would have been exposed more and more to Einsatzgruppen atrocities. While soldiers are expected to deal with the "normal" horrors of war, witnessing acts of organized murder, especially on women and children, must have been a shock to the individual soldier. Nazi indoctrination can lead you to hate a peoples, but to actually witness (or participate) in cold blooded killings on this scale, is something else.

So, were there any instances of German army units refusing to participate in these activities, or even trying to stop them?

Could there be any possibility of army groups revolting and attacking the SS units?

Ric350
 

Deleted member 1487

In the initial stages of Barbarossa, the regular German army troops would have been exposed more and more to Einsatzgruppen atrocities. While soldiers are expected to deal with the "normal" horrors of war, witnessing acts of organized murder, especially on women and children, must have been a shock to the individual soldier. Nazi indoctrination can lead you to hate a peoples, but to actually witness (or participate) in cold blooded killings on this scale, is something else.

So, were there any instances of German army units refusing to participate in these activities, or even trying to stop them?

Could there be any possibility of army groups revolting and attacking the SS units?

Ric350
https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose#Experience_on_the_World_War_II_Eastern_Front

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wehrmacht_War_Crimes_Bureau,_1939-1945
Basically yes, there were certainly soldiers who were disgusted by what they saw, few actually did much about it given what was going on in the East in general. The fate of captured German soldiers or defectors was very grim, so they knew there was really no way out...on either side. Defecting to the Soviets wasn't going to end well, especially earlier in the war, while they saw what the Nazi regime and their own army command were willing to do. It was not advertised that if you stepped out and refused to participate in atrocities that there would be no consequences, simply that you could step out...in front of your entire unit. Given the training and indoctrination and culture of the German army/society, that was psychologically nearly impossible to do. Even in other armies throughout history it was hard for a soldier to step out on his unit when given the choice, like in Vietnam with the massacres that were going on and how few soldiers protested, despite the US of the 1960s being a very different society than Nazi Germany:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_Crimes_Working_Group

There were opportunity to say no or fight back against the SS, that mostly did not happen except in very exceptional cases:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Battel
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...ng_the_holocaust_is_there_evidence_of_even_a/
 

Deleted member 94680

If there were such attitudes in the Heer, wouldn’t it have happened OTL?

I’ve never heard of units rebelling against killing orders, but am willing to corrected.

Seeing as though it’s an Army, the attitudes of the Command are probably illustrative.

There are instances of higher ranking officers complaining of Einsatzgruppen activities - von Tresckow comes to mind - but they were few and far between as far as I am aware.

The myth of the “Clean Wehrmacht” is just that, it seems.

Many were more than happy to help the Einsatzgruppen go about their work and some were even what you could describe as keen.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
No chance. Sailors took vacations so they could do home videos of the mass execution of Jews. One of them even brought his favorite pet dog.

I just wish I could easily find the video for you.
 

Deleted member 1487

If there were such attitudes in the Heer, wouldn’t it have happened OTL?

I’ve never heard of units rebelling against killing orders, but am willing to corrected.

Seeing as though it’s an Army, the attitudes of the Command are probably illustrative.

There are instances of higher ranking officers complaining of Einsatzgruppen activities - von Tresckow comes to mind - but they were few and far between as far as I am aware.

The myth of the “Clean Wehrmacht” is just that, it seems.

Many were more than happy to help the Einsatzgruppen go about their work and some were even what you could describe as keen.
Some certainly were, but it seems most were not actually happy about it and felt themselves duty bound to follow orders. Of course that is no excuse, but given the indoctrination they experienced in their culture at the time and in the military it was a powerful psychological driver for participating in the Einsatzgruppen atrocities. Browning's book is excellent in describing the psychology of participation in the massacres.
It should be noted too that the rate of alcoholism and suicide were astronomical in units that participated in massacres, which led Himmler and the SS to turn to gas as the method of killing, as the shooting massacres were psychologically wrecking the men participating in them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen#Transition_to_gassing
any of the troops found the massacres to be difficult if not impossible to perform. Some of the perpetrators suffered physical and mental health problems, and many turned to drink.[107] As much as possible, the Einsatzgruppen leaders militarized the genocide. The historian Christian Ingrao notes an attempt was made to make the shootings a collective act without individual responsibility. Framing the shootings in this way was not psychologically sufficient for every perpetrator to feel absolved of guilt.[108] Browning notes three categories of potential perpetrators: those who were eager to participate right from the start, those who participated in spite of moral qualms because they were ordered to do so, and a significant minority who refused to take part.[109] A few men spontaneously became excessively brutal in their killing methods and their zeal for the task. Commander of Einsatzgruppe D, SS-Gruppenführer Otto Ohlendorf, particularly noted this propensity towards excess, and ordered that any man who was too eager to participate or too brutal should not perform any further executions.[110]

Again though, there was about 0 zero chance for a revolt given the general situation in the East and as Stenz says, if it could have happened it would have. Perhaps though if the mass shootings went on for longer and there wasn't a transition to the death camps, perhaps there would have been revolts against them?
As it was though, despite the awfulness of the Nazi regime I can't think of any units that did revolt against the SS or regular military. The only instance of fighting between a regular military unit and the SS actually came at the very end of the war when the SS tried to massacre some French politicians in a prison:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32622651
 

SsgtC

Banned
The only instance of fighting between a regular military unit and the SS actually came at the very end of the war when the SS tried to massacre some French politicians in a prison:

That was a very odd battle. And even then, it was a TINY detachment of the Heer. One Major and a handful of soldiers backed by an American Armored battalion (or rather, part of one). Sad that the only one KIA was the Heer Major.
 

Deleted member 1487

Everything @wiking has said, with the added fact that the 1934 oath to serve Hitler was taken extremely seriously
Yeah. We don't get it now, but the oath stuff was taken very seriously in that military culture.

That was a very odd battle. And even then, it was a TINY detachment of the Heer. One Major and a handful of soldiers backed by an American Armored battalion (or rather, part of one). Sad that the only one KIA was the Heer Major.
Exactly.
 
I am always amazed at how quickly the German citizen soldiers accepted the brutality of the nazi leadership. After all, the nazis had only been in power a relatively short time, so it can't all be blamed on indoctrination, can it? Maybe a national "just going along" attitude can make people throw bricks through shop windows, but mass murder?

Even in the cases stated during Vietnam, these incidents usually happened after troops suffered repeated casualties from an enemy they had trouble retaliating against (the hidden foe). Fear and frustration were the driving factors in these cases. I don't think the German troops were experiencing those psychological pressures at this point in the war. The Germans were kicking ass and moral was high. Why shoot women and kids?

Ric350
 

SsgtC

Banned
Yeah. We don't get it now, but the oath stuff was taken very seriously in that military culture.

This gets over looked way to often. Every officer in the Wermacht (sp?) took an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler. And German military culture was that you did NOT break an oath. No matter the circumstances. Just look at the post-war German Military. Anyone who was engaged in actively opposing Hitler, though it was the morally right thing to do, was denied a position in the Armed Forces on the grounds that they broke their oath. It was that big of a thing to them.
 
SsgtC, I can see the officer corps treating the oath as sacred (that Prussian "duty" code), but did the regular soldiers share that mentality as well? After all the officer corps led Germany to ruin in WW1, so why wasn't there lingering resentment to that authority?

Ric350
 

Deleted member 1487

I am always amazed at how quickly the German citizen soldiers accepted the brutality of the nazi leadership. After all, the nazis had only been in power a relatively short time, so it can't all be blamed on indoctrination, can it? Maybe a national "just going along" attitude can make people throw bricks through shop windows, but mass murder?

Military training did specifically include political indoctrination and with participation in the Hitler Youth being mandatory many soldiers were coming in with ideological and military training already. Hitler took over in 1933, so in 1939 you'd have 18 year olds that had been 12 when Hitler rose to power getting drafted, which only increased as time went on. Beyond that the brutality that the army participated in started during Barbarossa; most Germany had a visceral hatred for Communism based on the propagandizing around the threat of it and the experiences of the revolution in 1919, plus of course the actual Soviet atrocities that had happened under Stalin and got out. Plus as the German military advanced into the USSR they were witnessing the results of the NKVD prison massacres and atrocities against German soldiers that had been captured.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD_prisoner_massacres

The war in the east was intensely brutal from the very beginning:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes#Treatment_of_prisoners_of_war
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes#Destruction_battalions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes#The_Red_Army_and_the_NKVD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Broniki

Timothy Snyder discussing the interplay of Soviet and Nazi war crimes and how they played off each other and increased the brutality. Both sides brutalized one another from the beginning, which psychologically enable soldiers then to tolerate further and worse war crimes and atrocities, as the taboo had been broken.
I'm not trying to justify Nazi crimes or the participation of the German military in said crimes, but it is necessary to understand the circumstances that helped unlock the willingness of soldiers to participate. Understanding the general brutalizing atmosphere and orders, plus indoctrination all created a toxic brew that resulted in perhaps the most awful war and crimes against humanity in history.

Even in the cases stated during Vietnam, these incidents usually happened after troops suffered repeated casualties from an enemy they had trouble retaliating against (the hidden foe). Fear and frustration were the driving factors in these cases. I don't think the German troops were experiencing those psychological pressures at this point in the war. The Germans were kicking ass and moral was high. Why shoot women and kids?

Ric350
All those factors were at play in the East too. Soviet soldiers behind the lines were ambushing German troops, massacres and mutilation of German PoWs happened from the very start of the invasion, and there was of course all the 'preparation' taken leading up to Barbarossa to psychologically prepare the military for the sort of war that would happen in the East and the war against communism.

Also understand too that even in winning, the German army was taking huge losses, worse than any other campaign to that point, to win. Within in the first month they had already lost more men than they had lost in the entire French campaign and the war in the East was only getting started. By the end of 1941 losses in dead alone were higher than the entire casualties experienced by all branches of the German military combined from 1939-June 1941.

Of course despite whatever was happening to German PoWs also consider then what happened to the 3 million Soviet PoWs the Germans took prisoner in 1941 and the atrocities against civilians, especially Jews. Again Timothy Snyder handles the topic very well in "Bloodlands".


SsgtC, I can see the officer corps treating the oath as sacred (that Prussian "duty" code), but did the regular soldiers share that mentality as well? After all the officer corps led Germany to ruin in WW1, so why wasn't there lingering resentment to that authority?

Ric350
It wasn't just a Prussian thing, it was all militaries of the various German states (the German Empire was made up of several kingdoms with separate militaries fighting under the same banner; the Bavarians literally issued their own stamps and taxes until after WW1 and had their own royal family, who commanded their divisions in the field during WW1). In WW2 yes, the German military had been 'cleansed' by the Nazis to include officers that were politically 'safe' prior to WW2, so the average soldier understood was effectively 'Hitler approved'. Plus the generation that fought as privates and corporals were young men that did not experience WW1, they really only knew the military after Hitler opted to expand it and it was 'his' army.
 
Well there is story one of Greates tank aces Kurt Knisplel kicked ass of SSman torturing Soviet POW. That's also is said is reason he never reached higher rank.
 
Johannes Blaskowitz was Commander in Chief in the Occupied Poland in 1939–1940, he was Prussian and Politically neutral, and wrote several memoranda complaining about the conduct of the SS in his command area. He kept a firm grip on his own men and opposed any participation in their activities.
As a result he fell into Hitler's disfavour, and was relieved and sidelined.
(Despite this he still reached Army Group command and a Knights Cross with Swords and Oakleaves)
Although he was the officer who convinced Rommel that the atrocity "Rumours" were true.
 

SsgtC

Banned
SsgtC, I can see the officer corps treating the oath as sacred (that Prussian "duty" code), but did the regular soldiers share that mentality as well? After all the officer corps led Germany to ruin in WW1, so why wasn't there lingering resentment to that authority?

Ric350

As has been stated, political indoctrination was a big part of it. Another was that ever military, everywhere pounds into their recruits the basic principle that you obey the orders of your officers. In Germany, that was reinforced by the principle that each and every man in the Army has sworn an Oath of loyalty to Hitler. Enlisted and Officers swore the same oath.
 
Yeah. We don't get it now, but the oath stuff was taken very seriously in that military culture.

Not just there. Ever seen the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance (subtitle The Slave of Duty)? The hero, Frederick, faces the same moral dilemma as the German officers in Nazi Germany. He is duty-bound by his indenture to serve the Pirate King until his 21st birthday. When he is free, he renounces piracy, and proclaims his intent to destroy the pirates - whom he regards as dreadful villains. But then he learns that due to being born on Leap Day, his 21st birthday is 63 years off. Therefore, his duty requires him to rejoin the pirates, villains though they are. But his lover Mabel says "He has acted nobly." (Bear in mind the characters don't know they're being funny. It's all dead serious to them.)
 
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