1995: The Wehrmacht Exhibition

The Wehrmachtausstellung (Wehrmacht Exhibition) was a series of two touring exhibitions created by the Hamburg Institute for Social Research (HIS), which were on show in Germany and Austria from 1995 to 1999 and from 2001 to 2004. The first exhibition was called Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941–1944 (War of Annihilation. Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941–1944), and the second Verbrechen der Wehrmacht. Dimensionen des Vernichtungskriegs 1941–1944 (Crimes of the Wehrmacht. Dimensions of a War of Annihilation 1941–1944). Both made the general public aware of the crimes of the Wehrmacht. Above all it was the photographs used in the exhibition that refuted the myth of the “clean Wehrmacht”. Attracting around 1.3 million visitors in some 40 towns and cities, the exhibitions are the most successful exhibitions of contemporary history to date in German-speaking countries.

The first exhibition in particular sparked a heated controversy. Following criticism of—among other things—the false classification and captioning of some of the images used in the exhibition, an independent historians’ commission was set up to examine the exhibition. It found that fewer than 20 photos of a total of 1433 had been labelled incorrectly. Nevertheless, at the end of 1999 the HIS closed down the exhibition and developed a follow-on project, the results of which were on show in Germany from 2001 to 2004. In the intervening years, public discussion had moved on and criticism of the Wehrmacht created less furore. Not least for this reason, the second exhibition lacked the impact of the first.