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Holocaust and Genocide Studies 1997 11(3):351-365; doi:10.1093/hgs/11.3.351
© 1997 by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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Destructive Impulses: German Soldiers and the Conquest of Poland

Alexander B. Rossino

Research Institute, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Why the Wehrmacht became involved in Nazi genocide and carried on a "war of extermination" in the Soviet Union are questions of central concern to Holocaust scholars. Yet few historians have looked back further than the months leading up to the 1941 German offensive for answers. Using evidence from archives in the United States and Germany, this article maintains that the tendency of German soldiers to act brutally towards civilians was already evident during the invasion of Poland in 1939. The author argues that the opinions expressed in their letters, diaries, and reports reveal an attitudinal basis for the willingness of German soldiers to follow the criminal orders of the Wehrmacht command in 1941, orders which legitimized the summary execution of communist functionaries, Jews, and Soviet prisoners of war.


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