I watched the "Secretes of the dead" last night and the episode was about the British setting up POW houses where they bugged and listened to all the conversations between the German military prisoners during WW II.

The one thing that got me was the statement that the conversations gave lie to the claim that the regular German military members did not know or participate in an ongoing bases in the atrocities of Hitler's regime.

The common wisdom was that the SS and special troops did the work to hide it from the common solders (and because it destroyed the moral of the regular troops), but the conversations of the ordinary troops showed that they not only know about it, but where actively helping with it.

The conversation reenactments that showed this were chilling in the casual way the solders talked to each other about rapes, executions, and how they exploited the subjugated peoples. A young solder talking about how on their drive through Russia they would stop their amore car to pick up Russian women, rape them in the car and then throw them back out. He laughed about how the women cursed at them.

And then at the end of the war all the war crimes evidence was kept under wraps so they could continue to use this technique during the cold war.

These houses did produce a lot of useful intelligence that the allies used to prosecute the war acording to the show.

There must be a book on the same subject. Several years ago my brother in law read one that gave transcripts of the POW conversations, and just as you said, they are horrifying.

Interesting. I have a friend that was a Belorussian Jew that from the time she was 4 until 8 years of age, hid with her grandmother in the forests. They had that opportunity because the regular German military that first found them warned that the SS was coming and they would be killed if still in their village. Most of their village was destroyed, but their home was used as concealment for a tank. After the war, she eventually came to the US and became a citizen.

LTC77 said:

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I watched the "Secretes of the dead" last night and the episode was about the British setting up POW houses where they bugged and listened to all the conversations between the German military prisoners during WW II.

The one thing that got me was the statement that the conversations gave lie to the claim that the regular German military members did not know or participate in an ongoing bases in the atrocities of Hitler's regime.

The common wisdom was that the SS and special troops did the work to hide it from the common solders (and because it destroyed the moral of the regular troops), but the conversations of the ordinary troops showed that they not only know about it, but where actively helping with it.

The conversation reenactments that showed this were chilling in the casual way the solders talked to each other about rapes, executions, and how they exploited the subjugated peoples. A young solder talking about how on their drive through Russia they would stop their amore car to pick up Russian women, rape them in the car and then throw them back out. He laughed about how the women cursed at them.

And then at the end of the war all the war crimes evidence was kept under wraps so they could continue to use this technique during the cold war.

These houses did produce a lot of useful intelligence that the allies used to prosecute the war acording to the show.

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The conversations among German Generals regarding military strategy is very interesting.

Yes, there is a book. I've read it. We had a thread on this a bit ago:

Aalan, I looked at the reviews and seems like the biggest negative was that the book was about 1/3 content and 2/3 psychobabble analyzing the inner whatever of the krauts and their reasoning.
Not really interested in that part and not sure if its worth the trouble.
What was your recollection of the book?