Wehrmacht exhibition

The popular and controversial travelling exhibition was seen by an estimated 1.2 million visitors over the last decade. Using written documents from the era and archival photographs, the organizers had shown that the Wehrmacht was "involved in planning and implementing a war of annihilation against Jews, prisoners of war, and the civilian population". Historian Hannes Heer and Gerd Hankel had prepared it. The view of the "unblemished" Wehrmacht was shaken by the material evidence put on public display in different cities including Hamburg, Munich, Berlin, Bielefeld, Vienna, and Leipzig. On 25 April 1995, 75-year-old Wehrmacht veteran Reinhold Elstner committed self-immolation in front of the Feldherrnhalle to protest against the Wehrmacht exhibition. Each year, neo-fascist groups from various European countries hold a commemorative ceremony for him. In an open letter, Elstner pleaded with ethnic Germans around the world to "awaken" and denounced the gas chambers of Auschwitz as "fairy tales." == Terrorist assault ==

A bomb attack was carried out on March 9, 1999, in Saarbrücken against the exhibition. A bomb exploded in the early morning hours at the adult education center (VHS) in Saarbrücken. No one was injured. The perpetrators of the attack were never identified. Since 2011, investigators have seen indications that the neo-Nazi terrorist group National Socialist Underground (NSU) carried out the attack. ==Wrongly attributed images, criticism and review==

After criticism about allegedly incorrect attribution such as pictures of Soviet atrocities wrongly attributed to Germans and captioning of some of the images in the exhibition, the exhibition was heavily criticized by some historians such as Polish-born historian Bogdan Musiał and Hungarian historian Krisztián Ungváry. Ungváry claimed that only ten percent of the 800 photos of war crimes were in fact German Wehrmacht crimes and the rest were Soviet war crimes or crimes committed by Hungarian, Finnish, Croatian, Ukrainian or Baltic forces, or by members of the SS or SD, none of whom were members of the Wehrmacht, or not crimes at all. The head and founder of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, Jan Philipp Reemtsma suspended the display, pending review of its content by a committee of historians. The review stated that contrary to Ungváry, only 20 out of 1400 pictures were found to be of Soviet atrocities. The committee’s report acknowledged that the exhibit’s documentation contained inaccuracies and that its arguments may have been too sweeping. It concluded, however, that the Wehrmacht had indeed led a war of annihilation and committed atrocities. The accusation of forged materials was found to be unjustified. In a written statement, Reemtsma said: In its report from November 2000, the committee reaffirmed the reliability of the exhibition in general, explaining that the errors had already been corrected. The committee recommended that the exhibition be expanded to include perspectives of the victims as well, presenting the material but leaving the conclusions to the viewers. Notably, the exhibition does not inform about the Wehrmachts crimes in occupied Poland on either side of the Curzon Line. They were presented later as an entirely different exposition called Größte Härte: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht in Polen September/Oktober 1939 (Crimes of the Wehrmacht in Poland, September/October 1939) by the Deutsches Historisches Institut Warschau. ==Revised exhibition, 2001–2004==

The revised exhibition was renamed Verbrechen der Wehrmacht. Dimensionen des Vernichtungskrieges 1941–1944. ("Crimes of the German Wehrmacht: Dimensions of a War of Annihilation 1941-1944"). It focused on public international law and travelled from 2001 to 2004. Since then, it has been moved permanently to the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin. ==Films==

The documentary Der unbekannte Soldat (The unknown soldier) by Michael Verhoeven was in cinemas from August 2006, and has been available on DVD since February 2007. It compares the two versions of the exhibitions, and the background of its maker Jan Philipp Reemtsma. ==See also==