![]() In 1950, West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer and former officers met secretly at Himmerod Abbey to discuss West Germany's rearmament and agreed upon the Himmerod memorandum. The Western Allied forces were becoming increasingly concerned with the growing Cold War and wanted West Germany to begin rearming to counter the perceived Soviet threat. The memorandum was an attempt to exculpate the Wehrmacht from war crimes. ![]() Franz Halder and other Wehrmacht leaders signed the Generals' memorandum entitled "The German Army from 1920 to 1945", which laid out its key elements. ![]() The verdict of the International Military Tribunal (1945–1946) was misrepresented as exonerating the Wehrmacht. The myth began during the war, being promoted in the Wehrmacht's official propaganda and by soldiers of all ranks seeking to portray their institution in the best possible light as prospects for victory faded these soldiers began to portray themselves as victims. Even where the perpetration of war crimes and the waging of an extermination campaign, particularly in the Soviet Union – where the Nazis viewed the population as " sub-humans" ruled by " Jewish Bolshevik" conspirators – has been acknowledged, they are ascribed to the "Party soldiers corps", the Schutzstaffel (SS), but not the regular German military. The myth, heavily promoted by German authors and military personnel after World War II, completely denies the culpability of the German military command in the planning and perpetration of war crimes. The myth of the clean Wehrmacht ( German: Mythos der sauberen Wehrmacht) is the negationist notion that the regular German armed forces (the Wehrmacht) were not involved in the Holocaust or other war crimes during World War II. About 300 Polish prisoners of war were murdered by soldiers of the German 15th Motorised Infantry Regiment in the Ciepielów massacre on 9 September 1939. The signs state "Glory and honour to the German soldiers!". The touring exhibition, organised by the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, began to erode the myth for the German public in the 1990s. ![]() Germans protesting the Wehrmacht exhibition in 2002. ![]()
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