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The German Red Cross reported in 2005 that the records of the WASt showed total Wehrmacht losses to have been 4.3 million men (3.1 million dead and 1.2 million missing) in World War II. Their figures include men conscripted from Austria and conscripted ethnic Germans from lands in Eastern Europe . [ 4 ]
Among the 5.3 million Wehrmacht casualties during the Second World War, more than 80 per cent died during the last two years of the war. Approximately three-quarters of these losses occurred on the Eastern front (2.7 million) and during the final stages of the war between January and May 1945 (1.2 million).
During World War II, the German military had thousands of its members executed, often for the most trivial violations of discipline. [75] In World War I, the German Army had executed only 48 of its soldiers; in World War II between 13,000 and 15,000 German soldiers were executed for violations of military code. [76]
It includes those murdered in the Holocaust, as well as individuals otherwise killed by the Nazis before and during World War II. Those killed in concentration camps are listed alongside those who were murdered by the Nazi Party or those who chose suicide for political motives or to avoid being murdered.
During the war members of the Wehrmacht attempted to influence Hitler's decision to study biological warfare only regarding defense. The head of the Science Division of the Wehrmacht , Erich Schumann , urged the Führer that "America must be attacked simultaneously with various human and animal epidemic pathogens , as well as plant pests."
Hitler also specified that criminal acts against civilians perpetrated by members of the Wehrmacht during the upcoming campaign would not be prosecuted in the military courts, and thus would go unpunished. [34] In a speech to his leading generals on 30 March 1941, Hitler described his envisioned war against the Soviet Union.
As early as March 1933, two months after Hitler was appointed Chancellor, the Sturmabteiling began to attack trade union offices without legal consequences. Several union offices were occupied, their furnishings were destroyed, their documents were stolen or burned, and union members were beaten and in some cases killed; the police ignored these attacks and declared itself without jurisdiction ...
Job Wilhelm Georg Erdmann Erwin von Witzleben (4 December 1881 – 8 August 1944) was a German Generalfeldmarschall (field marshal) in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War. A leading conspirator in the 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler , [ 1 ] he was designated to become Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht in a post-Nazi regime, had ...