Nevertheless the partisans were not protected. They did not wear a symbol recognizable on long distances, bear no arms openly and it is doubtful they were in some kind lead by responsible officers in the sense of the Hague Land War Order. Thus they were criminals in the eyes of the law. And as it was martial law the shooting or hanging was justified. Even if it was nazi martial law. If all of them were guilty is another question.
Its somewhat disturbing if not entirely suprising that the legal system seems to be somewhat lacking on the issue. I don't believe that the way that Hitler and his military forces conducted the war against Russia can be justified or explained purely by reprisals and martial law. That to my mind is an abuse of the very idea behind that law. I'd be willing to bet that are enough cases of civilians being rounded up without cause to show that the connection between partizan activity and civilian massacres is weak at best.
Yes, the Wehrmacht was aware about the crimes. And many even acted against Hitler. Did you hear about the 20th of July?
No, can't say I have. I must remember to look it up on wikipedia or something.
You can't lump the entire Wermacht into one group any more than you can condemn the entire RAF for Harris. You can't absolve them as a group either, and there's a simple reason for that. The Wehrmacht to my understanding consisted of all of Germany's armed forces (minus the SS who were nominally under its command but not a part of it per say). You could hardly say that Goering or even Doenitz in July 1944 were anti-nazi. Whilst I don't doubt some of the Luftwaffe or Kreigsmarine were opposed to the Nazis neither could be said to be actively against the regime as an organisation simply because the head of each was not.
The Heer on the other hand had no cohesiveness, no-one like Doenitz or Raeder or even Goering who could be turned to and said to be its leader. The resistance movement within the Heer came together through mutual friends and sounding out people who seemed sympathetic. We can all point to individual household names like Rommel or Stauffenberg who represented sections of it, but there is no way of absolving or damning the entire Heer simply because there is no way of saying what the entire Heer wanted or would do in any given situation. Each general has to be judged on their own.
Its always seemed to me that the German Army's high ranking officers fell into four main categories. The first opposed Hitler on moral grounds and had long worked against him. The second opposed him on the grounds that he was leading Germany down a certain creek without a paddle. This group tended to only become sizeable at times when the war went badly. The third and vast majority just didn't want anything to do with politics or didn't care much either way. The fourth either supported him without question out of a perverse sense of duty or actively supported him because they agreed with his policies.
The first and fourth groups have always struck me as smaller than the second and third. As I said, we can all point to household names who were nominally pro-resistance, but in the absence of the equivalent of a survey of Heer officers of general rank we simply cannot define whether they were pro or anti Nazi as a group. Simply taking the fact that they didn't tell Hitler of the plot is not an accurate summation of their feelings, it could be easily seen as the sense of protecting fellow officers rather than any support for the resistance cause as a whole.
One interesting thing to note that German generals would often talk about 'mistakes' rather than 'morals' when talking about the Nazis. ie pre-war persecution of Jews was 'wrong' becuase it drove away Jewish scientists. Bad treatment of captured Russians was 'wrong' becuase now the Russians will treat us the same way, etc etc. That such acts were 'wrong' in and of themselves doesn't seem relevent.
Very good point, I believe Beevor mentions this in his book Berlin when remarking about studies of captured German generals after the war. The feeling from them was mostly that they had been at worst betrayed and at worst horribly misunderstood by the allies. There was almost no ability to link cause and effect amongst them.
