German soldiers cutting the beard of an old Jewish man, Ukraine, July 1941. [517 × 799]

To say either "All Wehrmacht soldiers were in agreement with the Nazi xenophobia and ideology" or "All Wehrmacht soldiers were apolitically disinterested in the Nazi ideology" are both wrong. u/tinteoj is embellishing the "Clean Wehrmacht Myth" for the sake of proving their point.

Wehrmacht soldiers weren't a 100% homogeneous group, just like the rest of the German populace. Many soldiers probably found what they and their comrades were doing extremely distasteful and amoral, while many more enthusiastically supported Hitler and Nazi regime to the bitter end. The further up the ranks you go, it's more likely the latter than the former, but using absolutes to describe it at any level is obviously wrong.

With that said, every single one of them is complicit in advancing that regime's agenda, no matter what they knew or how much of it they agreed with. By advancing the Nazi agenda and defending the Third Reich, all of them are responsible. Eichmann proved this - "just following orders" is no excuse.

But with that said, it's worth remembering that every Allied soldier is also complicit in war crimes committed by the Allied side - for example, the firebombings of Germany and Japan that served no real strategic purpose other than to kill as many civilians as possible.

The victor writes history, and unfortunately for too many people it's just as easy to accuse every single German soldier of being personally responsible for the Holocaust as it is to excuse and justify the intentional slaughter of millions of innocent German and Japanese civilians.

/r/HistoryPorn Thread Parent Link - upload.wikimedia.org