Opfer, Helden, Kriegsverbrecher?

Abstract

Questions concerning the involvement of single members and whole units of the German Wehrmacht, the regular German army, in war crimes during the Second World War still constitute a social taboo in Austrian public debate. Historical research has hardly at all dealt with the topic. Members of the Wehrmacht are alternatively described as victims of Hitler's politics or stylized into patriotic defenders of the fatherland. During the Second World War the Balkans constituted a military arena in which officers and privates of Austrian origin serving in the Wehrmacht were - for historical reasons - strongly overrepresented. Taking the examples of the Wehrmacht generals Franz Böhme and Walter Hinghofer - both Austrians - the author analyses in this article how Austrian generals and divisions consisting in their majority of Austrian soldiers carried out a criminal occupation policy in Serbia, a policy which - in the autumn of 1941 alone - cost the lives of tens of thousands of civilians.