I'm not actually so sure of this. Were the US Military aware of the population policies of the Heer they probably would have been sponsoring "staff" PhDs on the topic in the 1960s-1970s. (These would have been "problematic" to say the least given the obvious functionalist comparisons which would be made. But the absence of their existence is evidence that the US military did not use its own system of comprehension of the world, the staff PhD thesis, to have a formed opinion as an organisation on Heer responsibility for successful operations against the existence of civilian populations.) The US Military seems to have not been functionally aware of the German officer caste's role. US civil institutions are even less well formed in terms of continuity of conception due to the politicised civil service. This means their reliance on "the vibe" or importing scholars and academics ("Team B" import, Kissinger, "Boys from Chicago," Progressivism, etc.) indicates that we ought to look to the general reception of a changed impression on German leaders rather than institutionally specific views. You could try arguing the CIA formed an intelligentsia for the state; but, at least in my area of speciality they got Hungary 1956 so bloody wrong that I doubt their capacity to present the state with awareness.I of course was referring to the 'clean Wehrmacht' myth. The Americans are perfectly aware that these German officers were happy to collude in mas murder until the war went against them.
Instead in holocaust and Eastern historiography we have Hilberg operating outside of the liberal arts system ( https://web.archive.org/web/2014060...enthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=395051 ) and then someone as level headed as a diplomatic historian in the form of Chris Browning causing great waves by publishing a tight little book on bureaucratic organisation in a single 500 man unit.
When the liberal arts college system beats you to unit level studies on how to kill millions of Europeans; and it emerges as a massive historiographical scandal even after Hilberg; then it seems to indicate that that government had no structured idea of what the composition of the BRD military was when the BRD military was still a dangerous subject.
So I'm not exactly sure that the institutions had that awareness. Individual officers may have from personal experience; but, I doubt the institutions did. For example if we (20 year rule) went back to 2001 and interrogated US staff officers regarding concepts around "responsibility to protect" and law of war we'd see a conception of the civil population deeply integrated. 60 years ago to 1961 we'd see a less well developed conception of the military/civil interaction.
I'm sorry if this seems off-topic but I'm just having the mind blowing realisation that the US military documents its own conceptions of the world through staff doctorates, and we can actually plumb its institutional self-awareness thereby through topic selection.
yours,
Sam R.