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.