It's unfair to brand every German who somehow participated in World War II a "Nazi," even if
we're considering only those who served in a branch of the military. There's actually
a difference between the Germans who served in the Wehrmacht and the SS,
and, while it was rare, there were those in the Wehrmacht and other German military
organisations who "disliked" and even went so far to oppose the SS.
In this video, we're going to discuss some cases in which men in the Wehrmacht and other non-SS
organisations stood up for what was right and opposed the SS in the Second World War.
To begin, let's summarise the difference between the Wehrmacht and the SS.
Conjured by the Nazi Party, the "ghost of a military" which had lingered in Germany since
the Treaty of Versailles achieved physical form in 1935 and became the "Wehrmacht." The Wehrmacht,
raised by some 2.4 million volunteers and 1.3 million draftees between 1935 and 1939 alone,
was Germany's combined military in World War II, comprised of the Heer, which was its army,
the Kriegsmarine, which was its navy, and the Luftwaffe, which was its air force. While
it was "Germany's military," it bore the mark of the party who resurrected it and,
for the most part, worked to make the dreams of the Nazi Party a reality. To reiterate,
the Wehrmacht was one of Hitler's metal arms, and there can be no doubt that
the vast majority of that arm was elbow-deep in war crimes by 1945.
Hitler kept his other metal arm, the Schutzstaffel or SS, closer to him and trusted it more than the
Wehrmacht to effect his desires. This "metal arm" was actually a set of appendages stapled into the
fascist sinew on the right side of the Führer's torso; the Waffen-SS was the militarized branch of
the SS, while the Allgemeine SS handled the racial policy of Nazi Germany and general policing,
and the SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV) ran the concentration and extermination camps.
Two of the more notorious subsections of the Allgemeine SS were the Gestapo,
which was the Party's official secret police, and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), which was the
Party's official intelligence agency. The SS, on a whole, was a paramilitary organisation born to
the Nazi Party, as opposed to the Wehrmacht, which was simply adopted and raised by the
Party. The SS was, like the Wehrmacht, tasked with bringing to fruition the desires of Hitler,
though, generally, it adhered to and enforced Nazi ideology more aggressively.
To put it simply, the SS was much more "Nazi" than the Wehrmacht, so it's fair to say that
to oppose the SS was to oppose Nazi ideology. Before we go ahead and look at some cases of the
Wehrmacht and other non-SS organisations standing up to the SS, it's important we dispel a myth.
While there was pressure on German soldiers to carry out atrocities considered war crimes,
there's no evidence that they suffered any dire punishments, let alone that they were
shot on the spot for insubordination. Soldiers often volunteered to carry out such orders and
knew exactly what they were doing. In fact, Heinrich Himmler himself gave the order to
Wehrmacht officers that no German soldiers were to be punished for refusing to carry
out war crimes and were instead to be relieved from that duty or assigned to a different post.
Now, some specific cases.
Reserve Police Battalion 101, was a German paramilitary unit in the Order Police,
a police organisation formed under SS leadership and deployed alongside the Wehrmacht in the
invasion of Poland. After carrying out some actions in Poland and then returning to Germany,
Battalion 101 was again deployed in Poland, where it helped to facilitate the Holocaust
under the command of high-ranking SS officer Odilo Globočnik, a Nazi who oversaw the murder of more
than one million Jews. In June 1942, Major Wilhelm Trapp, in command of Battalion 101 was ordered by
Globočnik to round up around 1,800 Jews from a town in Poland, deport the able-bodied men,
and kill the children and the elderly on the spot. One of Trapp's lieutenants said outright that he
would take no part in the massacre, so Trapp reassigned him. Once the unit was actually in
the town, Trapp addressed his men, saying that anyone who did not feel up to the task could
step out. Some opted out then and there, while others requested to be relieved from the duty
after the massacre had started. Others approached a different officer and requested to be relieved,
though this officer, an SS-Hauptsturmführer told those men that they would join the dead
if they didn't carry out the order. These men were not killed, however,
but were sent to Trapp, who relieved them of the duty. The SS officer had no legal right
to say what he said and would have faced a court-martial if he'd acted on his words.
General of Infantry Carl-Heinrich Rudolf Wilhelm von Stülpnagel was a successful
Wehrmacht commander, leading the 17th Army to victory in the Battle of Uman and the Battle
of Kiev in the Soviet Union. It was while he was on the Eastern Front that Stülpnagel was
implicated in a series of war crimes which chewed at his conscience until he could
take it no more. Stülpnagel joined the German resistance against the Nazi Party. Soon after,
he was made the commander of Germany's military in occupied France, out of which he maintained
communication with the German resistance. Parallel to Claus von Stauffenberg's plan
to assassinate Hitler in what came to be known as the "20 July Plot," Stülpnagel had his own coup to
undertake in Paris. On the night of the 20th of July 1944, Stülpnagel had his Wehrmacht troops
rushed SS and Gestapo strongpoints throughout the French capital, disarming and arresting most of
them without firing a round. Unfortunately, the assassination in Berlin failed, and the captured
SS and Gestapo members were ultimately set free. Stülpnagel then returned to Germany voluntarily
to stand trial with his co-conspirators, though on the way, stopping by the banks of the Meuse River,
he tried and failed to kill himself with a bullet through the head. While blinded by the failed
attempt to take his own life, Stülpnagel was still taken to Berlin, where he was sentenced
for high treason and hung. Overall, Stülpnagel's coup in Paris was much more successful than
Stauffenberg's in Berlin, though the former was of little use without the success of the latter.
By April 1943, the SS had converted a small castle near the village of Itter in Austria
into a prison, and in this prison, they kept high-profile French prisoners such as former
French prime ministers and French resistance members. Following a prisoner uprising,
the SS members stationed there fled, then the self-liberated prisoners sent a message
to Austrian resistance members in a nearby town which had been abandoned by the Wehrmacht but
occupied by the Waffen-SS. The man delivering the message was taken to a Wehrmacht officer,
Major Josef Gangl, who had defected and joined the Austrian resistance with his unit. Gangl
couldn't protect the town against its Waffen-SS occupiers alone, so he went to the Americans
stationed nearby and asked for help. Back in the castle, the self-liberated French prisoners asked
SS officer Kurt-Siegfried Schrader, who they had befriended during their imprisonment and who had
remained in the castle after the rest of the SS fled, to lead them against the Waffen-SS, who were
en route to reclaiming the castle. At this point, Gangl had won over the Americans, and a force of
American and Wehrmacht soldiers arrived at the castle and hunkered in. Together, the former
French prisoners, some members of the Austrian resistance, a defected unit of the Wehrmacht,
and some US units defeated the oncoming Waffen-SS, making about 100 of their 100-to-150-strong force
their prisoners. This battle took place just two days before Germany's surrender.
Before we conclude, it's important to understand that for many young Germans,
the war wasn't about ideology and politics but adventure, heroism, and shiny medals;
they saw German soldiers who came back from the front and were proud of them. Many saw
Hitler as the hero who brought their country out of the depression and not as the monster
that was later unveiled. World War II was for many about patriotism, rebuilding Germany,
and protecting Germany against perceived threats like communism. Out on deployment,
many Wehrmacht soldiers weren't thinking about Nazi ideology so much as doing their job and
gaining the acceptance of their comrades. If they weren't thinking about that, then perhaps they
were thinking about when they would get their next hot meal, when it would stop raining or snowing,
the holes in their socks and boots, being assigned guard duty in the middle of the night, putting up
with strict officers, and finding a place to rest where they're less likely to get shot.
German World War II veteran Hugo Scharnowski was only 17 when he was drafted into the Wehrmacht;
interviewed in 1983, he said, [...] [W]e didn't think at all about politics. What
boy does? [...] We saw the Americans, the Tommies, and the Russians as our enemies,
but we didn't know or care anything about why they were our enemies. [...] [W]e didn't even
think about the war situation [...] And as far as Hitler and the Nazis go, well,
we never heard anything except good things about them, so how were we supposed to feel?
When our cities were being bombed, we blamed the bombers, not Hitler. [...]
What we've covered in this video are just three examples of the Wehrmacht and other
non-SS organisations standing up to the SS in World War II. While these cases are few,
relative to the war, they are not isolated, and they — along with Hugo Scharnowski's
story — prove that not every German in the Wehrmacht — or, as in the Itter Castle example,
even the Waffen-SS — were diehard "Nazis" with a stiff Sieg Heil.