History UsefulNotes / NazisWithGnarlyWeapons

The SS are [[AlwaysChaoticEvil almost always utterly evil]] in non-German works, meanwhile. Making a sympathetic portrayal of Waffen SS characters can be quite difficult due to that branch's infamous reputation (in short, a long list of war crimes). If ever an SS character is portrayed sympathetically chances are he isn't even German but a [[LesCollaborateurs "volunteer"]] from the Reich's territories or allies (who may or may not be disillusioned during his service).

The standard soldiers of the Wehrmacht have been {{mooks}} in non-German fiction since (and even during) World War II, with varying doses of ThoseWackyNazis behavior depending on the decades, countries, genres and mindsets. Most of this is averted in German works, which tend to have the most human and realistic portrayals, [[WriteWhatYouKnow for all-too-obvious reasons]].

* Hans Hellmut Kirst is famous for the ''08/15'' novel series about the struggle of "Gunner Asch", an honest soldier who tries to maintain his identity and humanity amidst the crimes and corruption of Nazi Germany, and for uncompromising portrayals of Wehrmacht officers in novels such as ''Officer Factory'' or ''The Night of the Generals''. The ''08/15'' series was adapted on film in the 1950s, ''The Night of the Generals'' got this treatment in [[Film/TheNightOfTheGenerals 1967]] and ''Officer Factory'' was adapted for the big screen in 1960 and into a TV MiniSeries in 1989.

* ''Film/DasBoot'' -- About the hell of submarine warfare, based on the novel of the same name by Lothar-Günther Buchheim.
* ''Film/{{The Bridge|1959}}'' -- About the war experience of a 16-year old ''Volkssturm'' conscript in the last days of the war.
* ''Film/ComeAndSee'' -- The occupation of Belarus. The film is told from a Soviet point of view, but it's one of the most striking films about the German armies' war crimes to this day.

* ''Film/TheGreenDevilsOfMonteCassino'' -- About the ''Fallschirmjäger'' who fought in the battle of Monte Cassino.
* ''Film/IsParisBurning'' -- About the last days of the occupation of Paris, in which General Dietrich von Choltitz, who's in command of the garrison occupying Paris, faces moral choices after receiving orders to destroy it from Adolf Hitler.

* ''Film/TheLongestDay'' -- About the Normandy Landings. The German high command is divided on how to intercept an allied invasion on the Atlantic Wall. They are confused when the actual invasion happens on June 6, 1944 in Normandy, while they anticipated it to happen in the Pas-de-Calais.

* ''Film/{{Stalingrad|1993}}'' -- About the eponymous battle and the slow agony of the 6th Army.

The standard soldiers of the Wehrmacht have been {{mooks}} in non-German fiction since (and even during) World War II, with varying doses of ThoseWackyNazis behavior depending on the decades, countries, genres and mindsets. They're generally considered targets of mockery, so to speak. Most of this is averted in German works, which tend to have the most realistic portrayals, [[WriteWhatYouKnow for all-too-obvious reasons]].

The standard soldiers of the Wehrmacht have been {{mooks}} in non-German fiction since (and even during) World War II, with varying doses of ThoseWackyNazis behavior depending on the decades, countries, genres and mindsets. They're generally considered AcceptableTargets, so to speak. Most of this is averted in German works, which tend to have the most realistic portrayals, [[WriteWhatYouKnow for all-too-obvious reasons]].

NoSwastikas is the rule practically everywhere in multiplayer and for players in solo games [[PoliticallyCorrectHistory no matter how inaccurate it is]] (depending on the game, there are [[GameMod mods]] to fix this), because most European nations ban depicting the Swastika other than for historical/educational purposes, and many nations consider video games purely entertainment and thus they don't qualify for such an exemption. And it's usually seen as not worth the effort to make one version of a game for Europe and another version for the rest of the world.

\\

\\

Since the 2000s, a number of games have averted NoCampaignForTheWicked, mostly in the RealTimeStrategy genre. Shooters (particularly {{First Person Shooter}}s) with a campaign on the German side are still a rarity.

NoSwastikas is the rule practically everywhere in multiplayer and for players in solo games [[PoliticallyCorrectHistory no matter how inaccurate it is]] (depending on the game, there are [[GameMod mods]] to fix this), because most European nations ban depicting the Swastika other than for historical/educational purposes, and many nations consider video games purely entertainment and thus they don't qualify for such an exemption. And it's usually seen as not worth the effort to make one version of a game for Europe and another version for the rest of the world. Since the 2000s, a number of games have averted NoCampaignForTheWicked, although mostly in the RealTimeStrategy genre. Shooters with a campaign on the German side are still a rarity, especially in the FirstPersonShooter genre.

* ''VideoGame/CompanyOfHeroes'' -- The standalone ExpansionPack ''Opposing Fronts'' has a German POV campaign, and adds a semi-fictional faction called "German Panzer Elite", which is heavily based on the real life ''Panzer Lehr'' Division. NoSwastikas also applies to all of the ''Company of Heroes'' games, replacing the swastika with a Balkzenkreuz.

NoSwastikas is the rule practically everywhere in multiplayer and for players in solo games [[PoliticallyCorrectHistory no matter how inaccurate it is]] (depending on the game, there are [[GameMod mods]] to fix this), because most European nations ban depicting the Swastika other than for historical/educational purposes, and many nations consider video games purely entertainment and thus they don't qualify for such an exemption. And it's usually seen as not worth the effort to make one version of a game for Europe and another version for the rest of the world. Since the 2000s, a number of games have averted NoCampaignForTheWicked, although games that focus entirely on the German side are still a rarity, especially in the FPS genre.

* ''VideoGame/AfrikaKorpsVsDesertRats'' -- RealTimeStrategy game about the Desert War.
* ''VideoGame/Battlefield1942'' -- Multiplayer FirstPersonShooter. Notably has the German side [[NoSwastikas using the flag from Imperial Germany]].

* The ''VideoGame/{{Blitzkrieg}}'' series -- RealTimeStrategy games, again.

* ''VideoGame/HellLetLoose'' -- features the Germans as the sole Axis faction in the game as of this writing, with their fights against the Americans on the Western Front being depicted, although an upcoming major update plans on introducing a number of Eastern Front maps and consequently their battles against the USSR, starting with Stalingrad and Kursk.
* ''VideoGame/RedOrchestra2HeroesOfStalingrad'' -- [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin About the Battle of Stalingrad]]. One of the first (and rare) {{First Person Shooter}}s to have a German solo campaign.

* ''Series/UnsereMuetterUnsereVaeter'' -- Series about a group of friends who get separated by the war. Two of them have to enlist, and they witness the horrors of the Eastern Front.

* Guy Sajer's memoir ''The Forgotten Soldier'' focuses on his experience as the son of a French father and German mother, at first speaking barely any German, who was conscripted into the German Army after Germany annexed Alsace-Lorraine. He describes surviving the war and the Eastern Front, finally being able to surrender to the British after the two fronts met, and then having to explain himself to French authorites afterwards.

* Creator/SvenHassel wrote fictions based on his (claimed) war experience.

[[folder: Detailed breakdown and brief history]]

[[folder: Fiction's No.1 Mook Service: the Heer]]

[[folder: Gnarly Weapons]]

[[folder: Halftracks and Hooves]]

[[folder: Big Kitty Cats: the Panzers]]

[[folder: Wolf-packs and Pocket Battleships: the Kriegsmarine]]

[[folder: Warbirds Large and Small: the Luftwaffe]]

[[folder: Worst of the Worst: Die Schutzstaffel]]

[[folder: Equal Opportunity Tyranny: Foreign Help]]

[[folder: You're with us or against us: Foreign-born Conscripts]]

[[folder: Thunderbolts from Clear Sky: Nazi Rocketry]]

[[folder: We Have Reserves: The Volksgrenadiers]]

[[folder: We ''Still'' Have Reserves, Dammit!: The Volkssturm]]

[[folder: Ranks]]

-->--'''Music/TheRollingStones''', "Sympathy for the Devil"\\

The Allied strategic bombing offensive beginning in 1943 meant that Germany switched its emphasis on turretless, casemated assault guns and tank destroyers, which were quicker to manufacture, simpler and cheaper than turreted tanks. Despite the great fame of the "big cats", the most successful German armored vehicle of the war, both in terms of kills and design, was the ''Sturmgeschütz'' III assault gun ("[=StuG=] III"), which began life as a gun carrier to support infantry advances, and ended up as a tank destroyer with 20,000 kills by 1944. The design saw especial success in the hands of Germany's Finnish allies, who used them to knock out 87 Soviet tanks for only 8 losses (some of which were due to mechanical failure or destruction to avoid capture). The tank served in the Finnish and Syrian armies until the 1960s, and in Syrian, Romanian and Spanish service until the 1950s. Some may still be in use as static pillboxes on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights. The success of the Pazner III-based [=StuG=] as a tank destroyer inspired the development of the Jagdpanzer 38(T) "Hetzer" (using the Panzer 38(T) chassis, which was cheaper and more efficient to build and could be made in Czechoslovakian factories that were further away from Britain and thus more difficult to bomb). Other famous tank destroyers were Jagdpanther (a tank destroyer based on Panther chassis with 88 mm [=KwK=] 43), Elefant (extremely heavily armoured tank destroyer based on Porsche chassis and armed with 88 mm [=PaK=] 43) and Jagdtiger, which was based on Königstiger chassis and armed with [[UpToEleven 128 mm]] (!) [=PaK=] 44.\\\

The greatest innovation in personal equipment the Nazis came up with, however, was not a weapon at all. The ''Wehrmachtskanister'', better known as the "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerrycan jerrycan]]", might seem totally ordinary nowadays, but in 1939 it was considered so advanced and secret that German soldiers were ordered to destroy them if there was a risk of their being captured. Compared to the flimsy, leaky fluid containers used by other armies (it was estimated the British in North Africa lost 30% of all shipped fuel to leaking containers), the jerrycan was nothing short of miraculous; it could be opened and closed without the use of tools, was self-sealing without additional parts, included a pouring spout rather than requiring a funnel, couldn't be overfilled as a failsafe against heat and vapor expansion and was still cheap to manufacture despite being much more sturdy. Even the handles were clever: It had three along the top, making it easier to pass from one man to the next, or allowing a soldier to carry two empty cans comfortably in one hand. The design proved so good that it remains in use to this day by both military forces and civilians.\\\

Although due to German laws, everyone needed to resign from a political party before joining the Wehrmacht and swearing the requisite oath of loyalty to Hitler, and even the Hitler salute was only instituted from 1944 onwards, at the insistence of leading Wehrmacht figures including Heinz Guderian and Wilhelm Keitel, in the wake of the ''Valkyrie'' incident[[note]]Before then it had only been required when greeting Hitler[[note]] MyCountryRightOrWrong was a ''very'' common attitude among many Wehrmacht soldiers, which was combined with a strong undercurrent of heartfelt racial prejudice against Jews and Slavs (and all non-Europeans) as noted above regardless of whether individual members of the Wehrmacht were anti-Nazi or not.\\\

Technically, due to German laws, everyone needed to resign from a political party before joining the Wehrmacht and swearing the requisite oath of loyalty to Hitler. Even the Hitler salute was only instituted from 1944 onwards, at the insistence of leading Wehrmacht figures including Heinz Guderian and Wilhelm Keitel, in the wake of the ''Valkyrie'' incident. Before then it had only been required when greeting Hitler. However, regardless of whether individual members of the Wehrmacht were anti-Nazi or not, MyCountryRightOrWrong was a ''very'' common attitude among many Wehrmacht soldiers despite a strong undercurrent of heartfelt racial prejudice against Jews and Slavs (and all non-Europeans).\\\

Regardless of whether individual members of the Wehrmacht were anti-Nazi or not, MyCountryRightOrWrong was a ''very'' common attitude among many Wehrmacht soldiers despite a strong undercurrent of heartfelt racial prejudice against Jews and Slavs (and all non-Europeans). Due to German laws, everyone needed to resign from a political party before joining the Wehrmacht and swearing the requisite oath of loyalty to Hitler. While quite a few ordinary soldiers went beyond what was strictly necessary in their support of the Nazi regime, most were just conscripts (just like many other militaries) who only gave as much support as they were expected to and thought they were fighting to defend their loved ones and their country from extermination (at the hands of the Soviets) and/or subjugation (at the hands of the Allies). Even the Hitler salute was only instituted from 1944 onwards, at the insistence of leading Wehrmacht figures including Heinz Guderian and Wilhelm Keitel, in the wake of the ''Valkyrie'' incident. Before then it had only been required when greeting Hitler.\\\

A case can be made that the Wehrmacht was technically not a 'Nazi' institution because (before 1944) none of its personnel were Nazi Party members and the Wehrmacht's leadership did not wholeheartedly agree with all Nazi ideals and policies. However, the Wehrmacht's leadership actively supported the Nazi regime and shared almost all of its ideals. Even though there was a distinction between the regime and the military in the minds of many German military personnel and civilians, in practice this separation was artificial and reflected neither the attitudes of the organization's leadership nor its policies. Many of the Wehrmacht's 'pragmatic'/'non-Nazi' policies were virtually indistinguishable from 'Nazi' ones. UrExample of such a policy was the purely 'rational' measure of working together with the Croatian Utasha regime and Waffen-SS to execute all Yugoslavian Jews and Romanis in the field. This was a 'logical' exercise in 'preventative security' because some of them were associated with Tito's Communist partisans and there was no point in [[GenocideBackfire leaving radicalized survivors.]]\\\

On the other hand, it is absolutely '''not''' true that all of the rank and file of the Wehrmacht were Nazis. While we have no way of knowing the extent to which they were, we can rule out the extremes of 'widespread opposition to Nazism', 'no popular support for Nazism', and 'total popular support for Nazism'. Beyond that the nature of individual motivations over time makes it impossible to generalise.\\\

The Wehrmacht's officers were somewhere in-between the leadership and the rank-and-file when it came to support for Nazism, though there was a clear shift towards Nazism over time. Within the ''Wehrmacht'' there was a fairly clear division between the branches in terms of politics; the Luftwaffe was the most Nazi-fied service as it had only been re-created under Hitler's regime; the Army didn't really start to become Nazified until 1938-40 when the conservative Commander-in-Chief was replaced and before then had been largely conservative, especially in its pre-war [[BlueBlood Junker]]-dominated officer corps (and until 1943-44 Wehrmacht soldiers were freer to crack jokes about Hitler than they were at home); and (as anyone who's seen ''Film/DasBoot'' can tell you) the Navy was the least ideological service and ''still'' wasn't Nazi-fied even in 1944-45. The navy in particular is occasionally considered to have been a hotbed of democratic and leftist sentiment (sailors of the High Seas Fleet had started the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Revolution_of_1918%E2%80%9319 German Revolution]] at the end of UsefulNotes/WorldWarI). Hitler himself was known to joke that he had "a conservative army, a Nazi air force, and a communist navy" (another version of the same joke is that Nazi Germany had Frederick the Great's army, Kaiser Wilhelm's navy and Hitler's air force).\\\

MyCountryRightOrWrong was a ''very'' common attitude among many Wehrmacht soldiers despite a strong undercurrent of heartfelt racial prejudice against Jews and Slavs (and all non-Europeans). Due to German laws, everyone needed to resign from a political party before joining the Wehrmacht and swearing the requisite oath of loyalty to Hitler. While quite a few ordinary soldiers went beyond what was strictly necessary in their support of the Nazi regime, most were just conscripts (just like many other militaries) who only gave as much support as they were expected to and thought they were fighting to defend their loved ones and their country from extermination (at the hands of the Soviets) and/or subjugation (at the hands of the Allies). Even the Hitler salute was only instituted from 1944 onwards, at the insistence of leading Wehrmacht figures including Heinz Guderian and Wilhelm Keitel, in the wake of the ''Valkyrie'' incident. Before then it had only been required when greeting Hitler.\\\

One of the more ''unconventional'' improvised inventions of Wehrmacht forces was the [[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minensuchger%C3%A4t_42 Minensuchgerät 42]] (Minesweeper 42). This was used by Wehrmacht forces in Belarus as part of wider measures to dismantle the former Soviet defensive lines on the Dnepr-Dvina around Smolensk and create Wüstenzonen (desert zones) to combat the partisan threat. Since qualified Pioniere (combat engineers) were scarce, the terrain was marshy, and the infrastructure poor the Minensuchgerät 42 was ideally suited to operational requirements in Belarus. It was doubly useful as Wehrmacht policy in Belarus adhered to the principle, neatly summarised by the Army Group Center Rear Area commander (General Max von Seckendorff), that "The Jew is the partisan, the partisan is the Jew": using Jews for the Minensuchgerät 42 could alleviate or even eliminate the need to expend Belarussians in this capacity. The Minensuchgerät 42 is a shining example of the Wehrmacht's ingenuity in improvising minesweepers from nothing more than farm equipment and people [[note]] The device consisted of people yoked (tied) to rollers or ploughs, which they would drag across the minefield in question. This was more time-efficient than getting them to step over every square inch of the field, and more people-efficient than getting them to trample it arm-in-arm or generally close to one another. The surviving motive components would be disposed of by shooting, as they were invariably Jews or from communities associated with partisan activity [[/note]], its base inhumanity in doing so, and its attempts to conceal its indescretions through the use of euphemisms.\\\

* ''Film/{{Le Silence de la Mer|2004}}'' -- French TV film adapting the eponymous book about a young French girl and her grandfather who are forced to house a ''Wehrmacht'' officer, who turns out to be cultured, francophile and gentlemanly.

** Reichsmarschall (Special rank created for Hermann Goering, equivalent to General of the Air Force or Marshal of the Royal Air Force)

* ''Film/{{Le Silence de la Mer|2004}}'' -- French TV film adapting the eponymous book about a young French girl and her grandfather who are forced to house a ''Wehrmacht'' officer, who turns out to be cultured and gentlemanly.

The SS are [[AlwaysChaoticEvil almost always utterly evil]] in non-German works, meanwhile. Making a sympathetic portrayal of Waffen SS characters can be quite difficult due to that branch's infamous reputation (in short, a long list of war crimes).