The teachers didn’t ‘lie’ so much as they oversimplified the situation, which is all part of the job when you work in mainstream education. They keep things short and present a very basic overview of the situation, so the reason that they normally overlook the soldiers of color in the Wehrmacht is obvious: they were the exception to the rule. Every historian will tell you that the average Wehrmacht soldier was a white, male gentile. Even pro‐Axis intellectuals like David Irving can agree with that.
This is not to say that it’s worthless to learn about the men of color, women, and Jews who worked for the Axis: that even victims can be manipulated into serving their oppressors is an important lesson indeed, but petty‐bourgeois and upper‐class educators can’t be trusted to bring such context and circumspection to the topic.
The teachers didn’t ‘lie’ so much as they oversimplified the situation, which is all part of the job when you work in mainstream education. They keep things short and present a very basic overview of the situation, so the reason that they normally overlook the soldiers of color in the Wehrmacht is obvious: they were the exception to the rule. Every historian will tell you that the average Wehrmacht soldier was a white, male gentile. Even pro‐Axis intellectuals like David Irving can agree with that.
This is not to say that it’s worthless to learn about the men of color, women, and Jews who worked for the Axis: that even victims can be manipulated into serving their oppressors is an important lesson indeed, but petty‐bourgeois and upper‐class educators can’t be trusted to bring such context and circumspection to the topic.