The Waffen-SS was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's paramilitary Schutzstaffel (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with volunteers and conscripts from both German-occupied Europe and unoccupied lands. It was disbanded in May 1945.
Joachim Peiper was a German Schutzstaffel (SS) officer and war criminal. During the Second World War in Europe, Peiper served as personal adjutant to Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS, and as a tank commander in the Waffen-SS. German historian Jens Westemeier writes that Peiper personified Nazi ideology, as a purportedly ruthless glory-hound commander who was indifferent to the combat casualties of Battle Group Peiper, and who tolerated, expected, and indeed encouraged war crimes by his Waffen-SS soldiers.
The Eastern Front, also known as the Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union and its successor states, and the German–Soviet War in contemporary German and Ukrainian historiographies, was a theatre of World War II fought between the European Axis powers and Allies, including the Soviet Union (USSR) and Poland. It encompassed Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northeast Europe (Baltics), and Southeast Europe (Balkans), and lasted from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. Of the estimated 70–85 million deaths attributed to World War II, around 30 million occurred on the Eastern Front, including 9 million children. The Eastern Front was decisive in determining the outcome in the European theatre of operations in World War II, eventually serving as the main reason for the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Axis nations. It is noted by historian Geoffrey Roberts that "More than 80 percent of all combat during the Second World War took place on the Eastern Front".
Army Group Centre was the name of two distinct strategic German Army Groups that fought on the Eastern Front in World War II. The first Army Group Centre was created during the planning of Operation Barbarossa, Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, as one of the three German Army formations assigned to the invasion.
Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist was a German Generalfeldmarschall of the Wehrmacht during World War II. Born into the Prussian noble family von Kleist, Kleist entered the Prussian Army in 1900 and commanded a cavalry squadron during World War I. Kleist joined the Reichswehr of inter-war Germany before being discharged in 1938.
The Panzergrenadier Division "Großdeutschland", also commonly referred to simply as Großdeutschland or Großdeutschland Division, was an elite combat unit of the German Army that fought on the Eastern Front in World War II.
The 6th Panzer Division was an armoured division in the German Army, the Heer, during World War II, established in October 1939.
The 12th Panzer Division was an armoured division in the German Army, established in 1940.
During World War II, the German Wehrmacht committed systematic war crimes, including massacres, mass rape, looting, the exploitation of forced labour, the murder of three million Soviet prisoners of war, and participated in the extermination of Jews. While the Nazi Party's own SS forces was the organization most responsible for the Holocaust, the regular armed forces of the Wehrmacht committed many war crimes of their own, particularly on the Eastern Front.
The Nemmersdorf massacre was a civilian massacre perpetrated by Red Army soldiers in the late stages of World War II. Nemmersdorf was one of the first prewar ethnic German settlements to fall to the advancing Red Army during the war. On 21 October 1944, Soviet soldiers killed many German civilians as well as French and Belgian POWs.
From 1917 to 1991, a multitude of war crimes and crimes against humanity were carried out by the Soviet Union or any of its Soviet republics, including the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and its armed forces. They include acts which were committed by the Red Army as well as acts which were committed by the country's secret police, NKVD, including its Internal Troops. In many cases, these acts were committed upon the direct orders of Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin in pursuance of the early Soviet policy of Red Terror as a means to justify executions and political repression. In other instances they were committed without orders by Soviet troops against prisoners of war or civilians of countries that had been in armed conflict with the USSR, or they were committed during partisan warfare.
The 3rd Panzer Army was a German armoured formation during World War II, formed from the 3rd Panzer Group on 1 January 1942.
The German Seventeenth Army was a field army of Nazi Germany during World War II.
Joachim Lemelsen was a German general during World War II who rose to army-level command.
The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939–1945 is a book by Alfred-Maurice de Zayas. It was published in November 1979 in Germany by Universitas/Langen Müller under the title Die Wehrmacht-Untersuchungsstelle, and in America in 1989 under the title The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945 by the University of Nebraska Press. Professor Howard S. Levie, an expert in international humanitarian law, provided the preface for the American version. The book describes some of the work of the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, a special section of the legal department of the Wehrmacht High Command, which collected reports of alleged Allied and German war crimes for purposes of diplomatic protests, war crimes trials, and white books.
German military law has a long history.
The Massacre of Broniki referred to the killing of members of the Wehrmacht by soldiers of the Red Army, on 1 July 1941 near the place Broniki, Rivne Raion in western Ukraine.
The Massacre of Feodosia was a war crime by the Red Army against 160 wounded Wehrmacht POWs between December 29, 1941 and January 1, 1942. The massacre was notable for the relatively high number of victims and the "needless cruelty demonstrated" by the perpetrators, who froze victims into ice alive.
The LIX Army Corps, initially known as the Higher Command for Special Deployment LIX was an army corps of the German Wehrmacht during World War II. The formation was active between 1940 and 1945.
The 371st Infantry Division, was an infantry division of the German Army during World War II, active from 1942 to 1945 in two separate instances.
