Review: The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality

The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality by Wolfram Wette
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Because of the Cold War, the Americans wanted to understand their Sovjet foe, and asked German generals to publish their war memoirs. In doing so, they provided unlimited access to German war documentation - far before official historians could get the same access. That enabled these generals, their leader being Halder, the former chief of the German army, to rewrite the legend of the Wehrmacht into an army that only fought bravely, without being involved in the murder of the Jews and other war crimes. They could even have certain documents dissappear, like the involvement of the famous sixth army with the murder of 33,000 Jews in Babi Yar, near Kiev, Ukraine.

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