From clean hands to Vernichtungskrieg. How the High Command Case shaped the image of the Wehrmacht

This article explains the early battle over the memory of the Wehrmacht in war and describes the competing accounts presented by the prosecution and defense at trial as well as the record confirmed in judgement. Although the trial achieved convictions for war crimes and crimes against humanity on the basis of incontrovertible documentary evidence, the image of a blameless army is what took root in the German public imagination in the postwar years.