"The Wehrmacht executed thousands of its own in World War II for desertion and "undermining the military spirit." This study examines who these Wehrmacht deserters were, why they deserted, what punishment they could expect, and how German military justice operated. It argues that after the First World War, the German military embraced the Dolchstoss legend and determined that if it ever went to war again, the military would punish deserters ruthlessly. This view, arrived at independently, accorded fully with that of Adolf Hitler. The study analyses the challenges associated with hiding in the Third Reich, surrendering to the enemy, or crossing over into neutral Switzerland or Sweden. After the Second World War, Germans began a debate about how these deserters should be remembered (Vergangenheitsbewältigung) and whether they should be rehabilitated. The study analyzes the contested meaning attached to the Wehrmacht deserter in Germany from 1945 to the twenty-first century"--

Every year, the Bibliography catalogues the most important new publications, historiographical monographs, and journal articles throughout the world, extending from prehistory and ancient history to the most recent contemporary historical studies. Within the systematic classification according to epoch, region, and historical discipline, works are also listed according to author’s name and characteristic keywords in their title.

This book reveals how ideas of comradeship shaped the actions and mindsets of ordinary German soldiers across the twentieth century.

Over 20,000 deserters and war resisters paid the ultimate price at the hands of Hitler's brutal war judges and bloody executioners. Thousands of others died in prison camps and penal battalions. Even for those who escaped death, life was never the same. Even today, many of those who refused to serve the Nazis live as pariahs, scorned by a society that professes to hate the regime they had actively opposed.

State prisons played an indispensable part in the terror of the Third Reich, incarcerating many hundreds of thousands of men and women during the Nazi era. This important book illuminates the previously unknown world of Nazi prisons, their victims, and the judicial and penal officials who built and operated this system of brutal legal terror. Nikolaus Wachsmann describes the operation and function of legal terror in the Third Reich and brings Nazi prisons to life through the harrowing stories of individual inmates. Drawing on a vast array of archival materials, he traces the series of changes in prison policies and practice that led eventually to racial terror, brutal violence, slave labor, starvation, and mass killings. Wachsmann demonstrates that "ordinary" legal officials were ready collaborators who helped to turn courts and prisons into key components in the Nazi web of terror. And he concludes with a discussion of the whitewash of the Nazi legal system in postwar West Germany.

This report is based on findings from newly-declassified decades-old Army and CIA records released under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998. These records were processed and reviewed by the National Archives-led Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group. The report highlights materials opened under the Act, in addition to records that were previously opened but had not been mined by historians and researchers, including records from the Office of Strategic Services (a CIA predecessor), dossiers of the Army Staff's Intelligence Records of the Investigative Records Repository, State Dept. records, and files of the Navy Judge Advocate General. This is a print on demand report.