15. La Wehrmacht, le corps des généraux et la Shoah

Abstract

For a long time, the participation of the Wehrmacht in the Holocaust was denied, ignored or underestimated in Germany. Only more recent research has clearly shown that the deprivation of rights, deportation and murder of Jews in the occupied territories which were managed by the Wehrmacht would hardly have been possible without the active participation of military departments. This applies to France, Belgium, Serbia and Greece, but especially to the occupied Soviet territories, in which the indiscriminate genocide was initiated in 1941. Over half a million Jews were murdered in the military operation area in the East alone, with the indulgence as well as administrative and logistical support of the Wehrmacht. On the military side, the main responsibility for these precedentsetting mass crimes was borne by the generals, who consciously engaged in Hitler’s intended racial ideological war of extermination and, in this context, accepted the Holocaust themselves.