The clean Wehrmacht myth is term describing the overall belief that armed forces of Nazi Germany were largely unconnected to atrocities Nazi Germany committed and that they were equal to Allied armed forces by observing rules of war and avoiding war crimes. This belief was created by memoirs of former officers of Wehrmacht published in the climate of Cold War. Due to need to have West Germany as ally in confrontation with Soviet Union, Western Allies allowed and propagated this propaganda myth, presenting former Nazi generals and officers as honorable or uninvolved with Holocaust and war crimes.
In their memoirs former Wehrmacht soldiers presented the war largely without mentioning any war crimes and as fight against "Bolshevik hordes".
Only at the end of 20th century and the end of Cold War , was this myth abolished. It is now well known that Wehrmacht engaged in mass war crimes from the start of the Second World War, such as genocide of conquered nations, involvement in Holocaust, execution of civilians in reprisals, torture, mass rapes and theft and plunder.The war crimes and atrocities were especially common in the Eastern Europe, and due to to conditions of Cold War were largely unknown in the West.
The top leadership of Wehrmacht was aware of these events and in fact was directly responsible for some like Commissar Order. Despite post-war public claims of being uninvolved or largely ignorant of the Holocaust, modern research now has shown that the Wehrmacht leaders were either involved or certainly knew quite well that Jews were exterminated.
Some of the literature about this myth can be witnessed in texts by Wolfram Wette, "The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality." Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies II also published a book dealing with this myth, entitled, "The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War In American Popular Culture."