Although acknowledged as a highly professional military organization, the Wehrmacht has been traditionally exonerated from the crimes attributed to the SS during the Second World War. However, in this radical new study, Omer Bartov shows how the relentless Nazi propaganda machine produced conscripts for Hitler's army who were fully convinced of his horrific views on `inferior peoples', and that it was these ideas, and not the exigencies of war, that motivated their atrocities, particularly those committed against Communist officials and Jews in the Soviet Union.

Omer Bartov is Junior Fellow with Society of Fellows, Harvard University.