War crimes of the Wehrmacht
During World War II, the German Wehrmacht committed systematic war crimes, including massacres, mass rape, looting, the exploitation of forced labour, the murder of three million Soviet prisoners of war, and participated in the extermination of Jews. While the Nazi Party's own SS forces was the organization most responsible for the genocidal killing of the Holocaust, the regular armed forces of the Wehrmacht committed many war crimes of their own, particularly on the Eastern Front.
Soviet prisoners of war were often subjected to forced marches without adequate food or water and commonly shot.
The Nazi Security Police rounding up Polish intelligentsia at Palmiry near Warsaw in 1940
During World War II 85% of buildings in Warsaw were destroyed by German troops.
About 300 Polish POWs executed by the soldiers of the German 15th motorized infantry regiment in Ciepielów on September 9, 1939
The Wehrmacht were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer (army), the Kriegsmarine (navy) and the Luftwaffe. The designation "Wehrmacht" replaced the previously used term Reichswehr and was the manifestation of the Nazi regime's efforts to rearm Germany to a greater extent than the Treaty of Versailles permitted.
Reichswehr soldiers swearing the Hitler oath in August 1934
Inspection of German conscripts
An Afro-Arab soldier of the Free Arabian Legion
Wehrmachthelferinnen in occupied Paris, 1940
