6th Army (Wehrmacht)

German 6th Army
Armee-Oberkommando 6
Active 10 October 1939 – 3 February 1943
5 March 1943 – 6 May 1945
Country  Germany
Branch Heer
Type Infantry
Size 285,000[1]
Engagements

World War II

Belgium
Battle of Gembloux (1940)
Capture of Paris
Uman
Kiev
First Battle of Kharkov
Second Battle of Kharkov
Stalingrad
Romania
Commanders
Notable
commanders		 Walther von Reichenau
Friedrich Paulus
Insignia
Identification
symbol
Identification
symbol		 Army insignia

The 6th Army was a field army of the German Wehrmacht during World War II. The army is known for being destroyed in the Battle of Stalingrad and the war crimes committed under the command of Field Marshal Walther von Reichenau during Operation Barbarossa.

War crimes

Soon after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the Sixth Army's surgeon, the staff doctor Gerhart Panning, learned about captured Russian dumdum bullets by using Jewish POWs. To determine the effects of this type of ammunition on German soldiers, he decided to test them on other human beings after asking SD member and SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel for some "guinea pigs", (Jewish POWs).[2]

In July 1941 while conducting operations in Right-bank Ukraine, the Sixth Army bloodlessly captured the Ukrainian village of Bila Tserkva. Immediately after the village's capitulation, Sixth Army police units separated the Jewish population of the city into a ghetto and required that they wear the Star of David as identification. Two weeks after the occupation, members of Einsatzgruppen marched the Jews out of the village, 800 men and women in all, to be shot. The Sixth Army provided logistical support for this massacre, providing drivers, guards, weapons and ammunition. Afterwards ninety children aged twelve and under were left, their parents having been killed the night before. A staff officer with the division that made the village their headquarters wrote of their conditions:

"The rooms were filled with about 90 children. There was an indescribable amount of filth; Rags, diapers, refuse lay everywhere. Countless flies cover the children, some of whom were naked. Almost all of the children were crying or whimpering. The stench was unbearable. In the above mentioned case, measures were taken against women and children which were no different from atrocities committed by the enemy.".
— Lieutenant Helmud Groscurth (1941)[3]:06:18

Sixth army headquarters was faced with a decision on what to do with the leftover children. The division commander passed the decision up to Walter von Reichenau, then commander of the Sixth Army, who personally authorized the massacre.[3]:06:54 All the children were murdered[3]:07:27 by Sixth Army regulars.

Main article: Severity Order

The commander, Walther von Reichenau was a committed, fanatical Nazi, had this to say about the expected conduct of soldiers under his command:

"The soldier in the eastern territories is not merely a fighter according to the rules of the art of war but also a bearer of ruthless national ideology and the avenger of bestialities which have been inflicted upon German and racially related nations. Therefore the soldier must have full understanding for the necessity of a severe but just revenge on subhuman Jewry. The Army has to aim at another purpose, i.e., the annihilation of revolts in hinterland which, as experience proves, have always been caused by Jews...".[4]

Immediately after this order was issued, Sixth Army records show a dramatic increase in shootings, rapes and massacres committed by Sixth Army constituent units. The BBC upon examining the now released records of the Sixth Army, stated that there were "so many executions, and so many victims that it was impossible to keep them a secret."[3]:08:13

The Sixth Army confiscated large quantities of food to be used by its troops, creating acute food shortages in the Ukraine. By January 1942 around one-third of the Kharkov's 300,000 remaining inhabitants suffered from starvation. Many would die in the cold winter months.[5] Civilians survived the famine by making stews out of boiled leather and sawdust, and making omelets out of coagulated blood. Survivors bitterly remembered these "meals" for the rest of their lives.[6]

Commanders

Commanding officers

Chief of staff

See also

Bibliography

Citations

  1. ↑ "The History Place - Defeat of Hitler: Catastrophe at Stalingrad". Retrieved 2015-01-24.
  2. ↑ Lower, Wendy (2005), "The Holocaust and Colonialism in Ukraine: A Case Study of the Generalbezirk Zhytomyr, Ukraine, 1941–1944", The Holocaust in the Soviet Union Symposium Presentations (PDF), United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Center For Advanced Holocaust Studies, p. 6
  3. 1 2 3 4 "The Wehrmacht: Warcrimes (part 2)". BBC. Retrieved 2013-11-03.
  4. ↑ von Reichenau, Walter (October 10, 1941). "Secret Field Marshal v.Reichenau Order Concerning Conduct of Troops in the Eastern Territories, 10 October 1941". Stuart D. Stein, The School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences, University of the West of England. Retrieved 2009-12-18. The soldier in the eastern territories is not merely a fighter according to the rules of the art of war but also a bearer of ruthless national ideology and the avenger of bestialities which have been inflicted upon German and racially related nations. Therefore the soldier must have full understanding for the necessity of a severe but just revenge on subhuman Jewry. The Army has to aim at another purpose, i.e., the annihilation of revolts in hinterland which, as experience proves, have always been caused by Jews
  5. ↑ Margry 2001, p. 9
  6. ↑ "The Wehrmacht: Warcrimes (part 1)". BBC. Retrieved 2013-11-03.

References

  • Boll, Bernd; Safrian, Hans (2004). "On the Way to Stalingrad". In Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann. War Of Extermination: The German Military In World War II. New York: Berghahn Books. pp. 237–271. ISBN 1-57181-232-6. 
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