- After the end of World War II, West Germany formed a new military called the "Bundeswehr."
- Though it's not thought of as a successor to the Wehrmacht, a certain portion of this force still identifies somewhat with the Wehrmacht.
- According to some historians and politicians, Germans are still having a hard time openly addressing the country's Nazi past.
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Just over 75 years ago, young soldiers from the US, Canada, and Great Britain stormed the beaches of Normandy.
D-Day was the beginning of the downfall of national socialism; the first step towards the liberation of Europe — and of Germany.
The allied troops marched onwards, conquering the continent until they finally reached Berlin.
The unified armed forces of Nazi Germany, the Wehrmacht, consisted of the Heer (army), the Kriegsmarine (navy) and the Luftwaffe (air force).
Soldiers of the Wehrmacht fought them every step of the way, defending Adolf Hitler until the end of the war.
Germany's army, the Heer, was a loyal part of the Nazi regime but was formally disbanded in 1946.
After this in 1955, West Germany formed a new military called the "Bundeswehr"— while it employed many former Wehrmacht members, it did not consider itself a successor to the Wehrmacht.
Despite this, the modern Bundeswehr— or at least a certain portion of it — still identifies somewhat with the Wehrmacht.
When the Bundeswehr opened its doors to the public on 15th June, it also did so on the military base in the city of Augustdorf.
The base's name was inspired by Feldmarschall Erwin Rommel, the "Desert Fox"— considered "Hitler's favorite general," he became an essential piece of the Nazi regime's propaganda apparatus and gained notoriety for fighting the Allied Military Operations in North Africa — and Augustdorf's base isn't the only one that was named after a Wehrmacht officer.
In fact, it's not even the only base named after Rommel; there's another base in Dornstadt that also bears his name.
Until the middle of the 1990s, there were 50 military bases that had been named after Wehrmacht soldiers in Germany.
A 2017 parliamentary inquiry by leftwing party Die Linke shows that, between 1995 and 2016, 16 bases were rechristened with new names and that another nine bases were, at the time, considering new ones too.
The last base to be renamed was one in the town of Rotenburg, which — until last year — named after a fighter pilot, Helmut Lent.
Other military bases, however, have kept their Wehrmacht names: General-Thommsen base in Stadum, the Marseille base in Appe-Uetersen, the Feldwebel Lilienthal base in Delmenhorst, and, of course, the two Rommel bases in Augustdorf and Dornstadt.
74 years after the defeat of national socialism in Germany, a niggling question still lingers: why is the Bundeswehr, which was founded from what was left of the Wehrmacht, unable to decisively distance itself from its past?
Part of the answer is quite straightforward — it simply doesn't want to.
For the Bundeswehr, Rommel was a "resistance-fighter" worthy of mention
"With Rommel, the Ministry of Defence in particular just doesn't have a sense of what the problem is," a spokesperson for the Green Party in Germany Tobias Lindner told Business Insider.
"Why should Rommel be an idol for our soldiers?" he asked.
Though Lindner has been demanding for several years that military bases with Wehrmacht names rename themselves, the discussion about the Bundeswehr's roots has been going on far longer than that.
In 1982, the Bundeswehr made an attempt to address its Nazi past for the first time.
In a document called the Traditionserlass meaning "traditional decree", the Ministry of Defence laid out the values the German army should uphold.
The Wehrmacht wasn't named once in the document. Instead, it outlined the importance of soldiers and officers adopting a "critical perspective on German history" and having an "awareness of democratic values".
Read more:How Soviet troops taunted the Nazis during their final drive to Berlin in World War II
It was only last year that Germany's Defence Minister, Ursula von der Leyen, had the Traditionserlass reworked, at which point mention of the Wehrmacht was introduced.
From the perspective of the Bundeswehr, the propaganda hero of the Nazi regime was still a decent soldier, even a resistance fighter in some ways: historian Peter Lieb told Die Welt in October: "There are signs that suggest that Rommel not only knew of a planned attack on Hitler's life, but even sided with the resistance."
To the Bundeswehr, this makes Rommel worthy of mention, from a traditional perspective. Talking to Business Insider, historian and publicist Hannes Heer argues that this reasoning is flawed.
In the mid-1990s, Heer organized the first exhibition on the crimes of the Wehrmacht, titled "Vernichtungskrieg. Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941-1944"— Heer is far more critical of Rommel than Lieb and the Bundeswehr.
Some Wehrmacht historians feel Germans still have a hard time dealing with their Nazi past
"For the Nazis, Rommel served as a contrasting image to the destructive war the Wehrmacht was conducted on the eastern front", said Heer. "The Nazi leadership deliberately made use of his image. Rommel became an action hero of sorts, a pop star."
According to Heer Rommel, was a "Nazi without party membership" very early on.
In 1939, the general is said to have stood by and witnessed the persecution of Jews as a commander in Poland, just as he reportedly allowed hate crimes against Jews during the war in Africa.
"Rommel always showed himself to be a loyal servant of the regime", said Heer.
The same can be said about the Wehrmacht— Hitler saw the army as the "second pillar" of the German Reich.
"The Wehrmacht wasn't entangled within the Nazi regime; it was an independently acting and determined actor," explained Heer.
According to his sources, German soldiers killed 40 million people in Russia and Eastern Europe during the Second World War.
What Heer is accusing the Bundeswehr leadership of is continuing to remain silent about this, out of fear of confronting its past.
"Germans still have a hard time, when it comes to openly dealing with their Nazi past", said the historian.
The Bundeswehr would be especially reluctant to do so, intent on keeping a line between the history of the country and the experience of its modern-day soldiers.
"They hide behind the Holocaust remembrance, but when it comes to the Wehrmacht, we're talking about millions of culprits", Heer said. "It becomes personal, for every family, for our whole society — for our whole people."
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