The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945 - part 4

July 6, 2015

Carolyn reads chapters 7 and 8, having to do with how Bureau investigations were used by the German government and by the Wehrmacht.

Chapt. 7 talks about White Books and White Papers which were put out by the German Foreign Office. One unexpected and disappointing development was that when photographs of the atrocities committed on Germans in Poland were published in the White Books, there was such an outcry over the "horror pictures" that Germany stopped adding those images. Naturally, since the Germans didn't commit mutilations on their enemies, the other side didn't have such pictures to print.

Chapt. 8 is about the use of Bureau investigations for "Diplomatic Protection" for prisoners of war, the wounded, medical personnel, etc. A number of examples of protests are given, on both the West and East Fronts (South too). Something I did not know: "thousands of German POW's had already been liquidated by Soviet forces in the first weeks of fighting." 47m28s

Image: A German White book from the First World War, 1914. I could not find a single image of a WWII White Book. Are they outlawed? Enlarge