Atrocities during the
Invasion of Poland
Wehrmacht units killed thousands of Polish civilians during the 1939 September campaign through executions and
terror bombing of cities. After the end of hostilities, during the Wehrmacht's administration of Poland, which went on until
October 25, 1939, 531 towns and villages were burned, and the Wehrmacht carried out 714 mass executions, alongside mass incidents of plunder, banditry and murder. Altogether, it is estimated that 16,376 Polish (including many Jews) fell victim to those atrocities. Approximately 60% of these crimes were committed by the Wehrmacht.
[1] Wehrmacht soldiers frequently engaged in massacres of Jews on their own rather than just assist in rounding up Jews for the SS
[2].
Mass rapes
Rapes were committed by Wehrmacht
[2] forces on
Jewish women and girls by
German soldiers during Invasion of Poland
[2]. Rapes were also committed against Polish women and girls during mass executions carried out primarily by
Selbstschutz, which were accompanied by Wehrmacht soldiers and on territory under the administration of the German military; the rapes were done before shooting female captives
[1]. Thousands of Soviet female nurses, doctors and field medics fell victim to rape when captured during the war, and often they were murdered afterwards
[3]. The Wehrmacht also ran brothels where women were forced to work
[2]. Ruth Seifert in
War and Rape. Analytical Approaches writes
In the Eastern territories the Wehrmacht used to brand the bodies of captured partisan women - and other women as well - with the words "Whore for Hitler's troops" and to use them accordingly.