title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: During World War II the government of Nazi Germany, the Armed Forces High Command (OKW) and the Army High Command (OKH) jointly laid the foundations for genocide in the Soviet Union. From the outset, the war against the Soviet Union was designed as a war of annihilation. The racial policy of Nazi Germany viewed the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe as populated by non-Aryan "sub-humans", ruled by "Jewish Bolshevik" conspirators. It was stated Nazi policy to murder, deport, or enslave the majority of Russian and other Slavic populations according to the Master Plan for the East.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Before and during Operation Barbarossa, the German offensive into the Soviet Union, German troops were repeatedly subjected to anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic and anti-Slavic indoctrination propaganda. Following the invasion, "Wehrmacht" officers described the Soviets to their soldiers as "Jewish Bolshevik sub-humans", the "Mongol hordes", the "Asiatic flood" and the "Red beast". As a result, many German troops viewed the war in Nazi racialist terms and regarded their Soviet enemies as sub-human. In a speech to 4th Panzer Group, General Erich Hoepner echoed the Nazi racial plans by claiming the war against the Soviet Union was "an essential part of the German people's struggle for existence", and that "the struggle must aim at the annihilation of today's Russia and must therefore be waged with unparalleled harshness".


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: The murder of Jews was common knowledge in the "Wehrmacht". During the retreat from the Soviet Union, German officers destroyed incriminating documents. "Wehrmacht" soldiers actively worked together with the "Schutzstaffel" (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass killings, the "Einsatzgruppen" and participated in the mass killings with them such as at Babi Yar. "Wehrmacht" officers considered the relationship with the "Einsatzgruppen" to be very close and almost cordial.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: The "Wehrmacht" carried out war crimes across the continent including in Poland, Greece, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. The first significant combat for the "Wehrmacht" was the Invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939. In April 1939 Reinhard Heydrich, the architect of the Final Solution, had already arranged co-operation between the intelligence sections of the "Wehrmacht" and the "Einsatzgruppen". The army's behaviour in Poland was a prelude to the war of annihilation, the "Wehrmacht" had begun participating in the large-scale killings of civilians and partisans.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Soviet Belarus has been described as "the deadliest place on earth between 1941 and 1944". One in three Belarusians died during World War II. The Holocaust was carried out near to populated towns. Very few of the victims died in extermination centres like Auschwitz. Most Soviet Jews lived in an area of Western Russia that was previously known as the Pale of Settlement. The "Wehrmacht" was initially tasked with assisting the "Einsatzgruppen". In the case of the massacre at Krupki, this involved the army marching the Jewish population of approximately 1,000 people, one and a half miles to meet their SS executioners. The frail and sick were taken in a truck and those who strayed were shot and killed. German troops guarded the site, and alongside the SS, shot the Jews who then fell into a pit. Krupki was one of many atrocities of this kind; the "Wehrmacht" was a full partner in industrialised mass murder.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: German military brothels were set up throughout much of occupied Europe. In many cases in Eastern Europe, women and teenage girls were kidnapped from the streets during German military and police round-ups to be used as sex slaves. The women were raped by up to 32 men per day at a nominal cost of three Reichsmarks. A Swiss Red Cross mission driver Franz Mawick wrote about what he saw in 1942: Uniformed Germans ... gaze fixedly at women and girls between the ages of 15 and 25. One of the soldiers pulls out a pocket flashlight and shines it on one of the women, straight into her eyes. The two women turn their pale faces to us, expressing weariness and resignation. The first one is about 30 years old. 'What is this old whore looking for around here?' – one of the three soldiers laughs. 'Bread, sir' – asks the woman ... 'A kick in the ass you get, not bread' – answers the soldier. The owner of the flashlight directs the light again on the faces and bodies of girls ... The youngest is maybe 15 years old ... They open her coat and start groping her. 'This one is ideal for bed' – he says.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Author Ursula Schele estimates that up to ten million women in the Soviet Union may have been raped by the "Wehrmacht", and one in ten might have become pregnant as a result. According to a study by Alex J. Kay and David Stahel, the majority of "Wehrmacht" soldiers deployed to the Soviet Union participated in committing war crimes.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Yugoslavia and Greece were jointly occupied by the Italians and the Germans. The Germans began persecuting the Jews immediately, but the Italians refused to co-operate. "Wehrmacht" officers tried to exert pressure on their Italian counterparts to stop the exodus of Jews from German-occupied areas; however, the Italians refused. General Alexander Löhr reacted with disgust describing the Italians as weak. He wrote an angry communique to Hitler saying the "implementation of the Croatian government's laws concerning Jews is being so undermined by Italian officials that in the coastal zoneparticularly in Mostar, Dubrovnik and Crikvenikanumerous Jews are protected by the Italian military, and other Jews have been escorted across the border to Italian Dalmatia and Italy itself".


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: The "Wehrmacht" murdered the Jews of Serbia from mid-1941. This extermination was begun independently, without the involvement of the SS. In April 1941 in the early days of the occupation of Serbia, Chief of Military Administration Harald Turner decreed the necessity of registering Jews, including forced labor and curfews. This culminated in the "Geiselmordpolitik," the reprisal killings by the "Wehrmacht" for insurgency and sabotage"." In September 1942, the "Wehrmacht" was also involved in a massacre of civilians in Samarica, where they reportedly killed 480 "enemy" combatants with a loss of one German soldier. At the same time the "Wehrmacht" was engaged in these atrocities, they condemned the similar actions taken by the fascist "Ustasa" party of the Independent State of Croatia.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: General Franz Halder, OKH chief of staff between 1938 and 1942, played a key role in creating the myth of the clean "Wehrmacht". The genesis for the myth was the "Generals' Memorandum" created in November 1945 and submitted to the Nuremberg trials. It was titled "The German Army from 1920 to 1945" and was co-authored by Halder and former field marshals Walther von Brauchitsch and Erich von Manstein, along with other senior military figures. It aimed to portray the German armed forces as apolitical and largely innocent of the crimes committed by the Nazi regime. The strategy outlined in the memorandum was later adopted by Hans Laternser, the lead counsel for the defence of senior "Wehrmacht" commanders at the High Command Trial. The document was written at the suggestion of American general William J. Donovan of the OSS. He viewed the Soviet Union as a global threat to world peace. Donovan served as a deputy prosecutor at Nuremberg; he and some other U.S. representatives believed the trials should not proceed. He believed America should do everything it could to secure Germany as a military ally against the Soviet Union in the growing Cold War.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: In Britain, the Paymaster General Maurice Hankey had been one of Britain's most established civil servants, holding a series of powerful posts from 1908 to 1942 and advised every prime minister from Herbert Henry Asquith to Winston Churchill on questions of strategy. Hankey felt very strongly that the war crimes trials were wrong, not the least because he believed that in the context of the Cold War that Britain might need former "Wehrmacht" generals to fight against the Soviet Union in a possible Third World War. Hankey also objected to war crime trials against Japanese leaders and pressured for Britain to stop trying Japanese war criminals and to free those who had already been convicted. Though Hankey's efforts on behalf of the "Wehrmacht" generals are little known, he was the leader of a powerful lobbying group in Britain that worked both behind the scenes and in public to end war crimes trials and free the "Wehrmacht" generals already convicted. Hankey regularly corresponded with Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Douglas MacArthur and Konrad Adenauer about the issue. When Adenauer visited London in 1951, he had a private meeting with Hankey to discuss his work on behalf of the "Wehrmacht" generals.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Members of Hankey's group included the Labour MP Richard Stokes, Field Marshal Harold Alexander, Lord De L'Isle, Frank Pakenham, Lord Dudley, Victor Gollancz, Lord Cork and Orrery Frederic Maugham, the lawyer Reginald Paget, the historian Basil Liddell Hart and the bishop of Chichester George Bell. As a master of bureaucratic warfare with excellent connections among the British Establishment together with well formed links to the media, Hankey was, in the words of the German historian Kerstin von Lingen, the leader of the "most powerful" lobby group ever formed to campaign on behalf of the "Wehrmacht" generals. There was a difference between Hankey, who objected to war crimes trials because he was opposed on principle to trying fellow soldiers and some of his followers such as the military historian and Nazi apologist J. F. C. Fuller.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: After Field Marshal Albert Kesselring was convicted of war crimes by a British military court for ordering the massacres of Italian civilians, the Ardeatine massacre for example, Hankey used his influence to have one of Kesselring's interrogators, Colonel Alexander Scotland, publish a letter to "The Times" in 1950 calling the verdict into question. Scotland's picture of Kesselring as an honourable, apolitical soldier-airman who could not have possibly known that Italian civilians were being massacred had considerable impact on British public opinion, and led to demands that Kesselring be freed. The picture of Kesselring drawn by Hankey and his circle was that of a chivalrous leader who was unaware of the massacres of Italian civilians during 1943–45, and would have stopped them had he known. Hankey focused on Kesselring's "professionalism" as a general, noting he had much success in delaying the advancing Western Allied Forces in Italy through 1943–45, which he used as evidence that Kesselring could not have committed war crimes, though Lingen noted that there is no evidence that "professionalism" excludes the possibility of criminality. The extent of Hankey's influence could be seen in that when the leader of the main German veterans group, the VdS, Admiral , visited Britain in 1952 to discuss the Kesselring case, the first person he visited was Hankey.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: The Western Allied Forces were now concerned with the possibility of war with the Soviet Union and a communist invasion. In 1950, after the start of the Korean War, it became clear to the Americans that a German army would have to be revived against the threat posed by the Soviet Union. Both American and West German politicians were faced with the prospect of rebuilding the armed forces of West Germany. The British were more concerned with the growing threat posed by the Soviets and were desperate to succeed in convincing the West German government to join the European Defence Community and NATO.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Konrad Adenauer, the West German chancellor, arranged secret meetings between his officials and former "Wehrmacht" officers to discuss the rearmament of West Germany. The meetings took place at Himmerod Abbey between 5 and 9 October 1950, and included Hermann Foertsch, Adolf Heusinger and Hans Speidel. During the war, Foertsch had worked under Walter von Reichenau, an ardent Nazi who issued the Severity Order. Foertsch became one of Adenauer's defence advisors.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: The "Wehrmacht" officers made a number of demands for West German rearmament to begin. The demands were laid out in the Himmerod memorandum and included: all German soldiers convicted as war criminals would be released, the "defamation" of the German soldier, including those of the Waffen-SS, would have to cease, and "measures to transform both domestic and foreign public opinion" of the German military would need to be taken.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: The chairman of the meetings summarised the foreign policy changes demanded in the memorandum as follows: "Western nations must take public measures against the 'prejudicial characterisation' of former German soldiers and must distance the former regular armed forces from the 'war crimes issue'". Adenauer accepted the memorandum and began a series of negotiations with the three Western Allied Forces to satisfy the demands.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: To facilitate West German rearmament and respond to the memorandum, U.S. general Dwight D. Eisenhower, soon to be appointed as Supreme Allied Commander Europe and future President of the United States, changed his public opinion on the "Wehrmacht". He had previously described them in very negative terms as Nazis, but in January 1951, he wrote there was "a real difference between the German soldier and Hitler and his criminal group". Chancellor Adenauer made a similar statement in a Bundestag debate on the Article 131 of the "Grundgesetz", West Germany's provisional constitution. He stated the German soldier fought honourably, as long as he "had not been guilty of any offence". The declarations by Eisenhower and Adenauer reshaped the West's perception of the German war effort and laid the foundation for the myth of the clean "Wehrmacht".


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: In the immediate aftermath of World War II, there was a great deal of German sympathy for their war criminals. The British High Commissioner in occupied Germany felt compelled to remind the German public the criminals involved had been found guilty of participating in the torture or murder of Allied citizens. In the late 1940s and 1950s there was a flood of polemical books and essays demanding freedom for the "so-called 'war criminals'". The phrasing implied that those convicted were in fact innocent. German historian Norbert Frei wrote that the widespread demand for freedom for the war criminals was an indirect admission of the whole of society's enmeshment in National Socialism. He added the war crimes trials were a painful reminder of the nature of the regime with which many ordinary people had identified. In this context, there was an overwhelming demand for the rehabilitation of the "Wehrmacht". In part because the "Wehrmacht" could trace its descent back to the Prussian Army and before that to the army founded in 1640 by Frederich Wilhelm, the "Great Elector" of Brandenburg, making it an institution deeply rooted in German history, which presented problems for those who wanted to portray the Nazi era as a "freakish aberration" from the course of German history. In part, there were so many Germans who served in the "Wehrmacht" or who had family members who served in the "Wehrmacht" that there was a widespread demand to have a version of the past that allowed them to "...honour the memory of their fallen comrades and to find meaning in the hardships and personal sacrifice of their own military service". Wette writes, the founding years of West Germany saw the wartime generation cement over its past and make outraged claims that innocence was the norm.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: In the early 1950s political parties in West Germany took up the cause of the war criminals and entered a virtual competition for the votes of wartime veterans. A wide political consensus existed that represented the view that it was "time to close the chapter". The West German chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, initiated policies that included an amnesty, the end to de-Nazification programs and an exemption from punishment law. Adenauer courted the votes of veterans by making a highly public visit to the remaining war criminals' jail. This gesture helped him win the federal elections of 1953 with a two-thirds majority. Adenauer successfully limited the responsibility for war crimes to Hitler and a small number of "major war criminals". In the 1950s, criminal investigations into the "Wehrmacht" were halted and there were no convictions. The German ministers of justice had enacted a war crimes law, which in practice was awkwardly defined. Adalbert Rückerl, the investigative chief, interpreted the law as meaning only the SS, the security police, concentration camp guards, ghettos and forced labour criminals could be investigated. The myth was firmly established in the public mind and German prosecutors were unwilling to challenge the prevailing national mood and investigate suspected war criminals in the "Wehrmacht". The new German army, the "Bundeswehr", was established in 1955 with prominent members of the "Wehrmacht" in positions of authority. If large numbers of former "Wehrmacht" officers were indicted on war crimes the "Bundeswehr" would have been damaged and discredited both in Germany and abroad.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Following the return of the last prisoners of war from Soviet captivity, 600 former members of the "Wehrmacht" and the "Waffen-SS" swore a public oath on 7 October 1955 in the Friedland Barracks, which received a strong media reaction. The oath said: "[W]e swear that we have neither committed murder, nor defiled, nor plundered. If we have brought suffering and misery on other people, it was done according to the Laws of War".


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Former German officers published memoirs and historical studies that contributed to the myth. The chief architect of this body of work was Franz Halder. He worked for the Operational History (German) Section of the US Army Historical Division and had exclusive access to the captured German war archives stored in the U.S. He supervised the work of other former German officers and wielded a great deal of influence. Formally Halder's role was to assemble and supervise "Wehrmacht" officers to write a multi-volume history of the Eastern Front so that U.S. Army officers could obtain military intelligence about the Soviet Union. However, he also formulated and disseminated the myth of the clean "Wehrmacht". German historian Wolfram Wette wrote that most Anglo-American military historians have a strong admiration for the "professionalism" of the "Wehrmacht", and tended to write about the "Wehrmacht" in a very admiring tone, largely accepting the version of history set out in the memoirs of former "Wehrmacht" leaders. Wette suggested this "professional solidarity" had something to do with the fact that for a long time most military historians in the English-speaking world tended to be conservative former Army officers, who had a natural empathy with conservative former "Wehrmacht" officers, whom they identified as men much like themselves. The picture of highly "professional" "Wehrmacht" committed to Prussian values that were allegedly inimical to Nazism while displaying super-human courage and endurance against overwhelming odds, especially on the Eastern Front, does appeal to a certain type of historian. Wette described Halder as having a "decisive influence in West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s on the way the history of the Second World War was written".


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Various historians across the political spectrum such as Gordon A. Craig, General J. F. C. Fuller, Gerhard Ritter, Friedrich Meinecke, Basil Liddell Hart and John Wheeler-Bennett all found it inconceivable that the "correct" "Wehrmacht" officer's corps could have been involved in genocide and war crimes. Claims by Soviet historians that the "Wehrmacht" had committed war crimes were generally dismissed as "communist propaganda", indeed in the context of the Cold War, the very fact that such claims were being made by the Soviets helped serve more persuasive in the West that the "Wehrmacht" had behaved honourably. The tendency on the part of many people in the West to see the main theatres of war in Europe as being in Western Europe with the Eastern Front as a side-show further increased the lack of interest in the topic.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: After the war "Wehrmacht" officers and generals produced a slew of memoirs that followed the myth of the clean "Wehrmacht". Erich von Manstein and Heinz Guderian produced best-selling memoirs. Guderian's memoirs contained numerous exaggerations, untruths and omissions. He wrote that Russian people greeted German soldiers as liberators and boasted about the personal care he had taken to protect Russian culture and religion. Guderian endeavoured to get German officers released in return for German military support in the defence of Europe. He fought particularly hard for the release of Jochen Peiper, the "Waffen-SS" commander found guilty of murdering U.S. prisoners of war at the Malmedy massacre. Guderian said that General Handy, Commander in Chief, U.S. European Command, wanted to hang Peiper and that he would "cable President Truman and ask him if he is familiar with this idiocy".


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Erwin Rommel and his memory were used to shape perceptions of the "Wehrmacht". Friedrich von Mellenthin's memoirs, "Panzer Battles", went through six printings between 1956 and 1976. Mellenthin's memoirs use racist language such as characterising the Russian soldier as an "Asiatic dragged from the deepest recess of the Soviet Union", a "primitive", and "[lacking] any true religious or moral balance, his moods alter between bestial cruelty and genuine kindness". Over a million copies of Hans-Ulrich Rudel's memoirs, "Stuka Pilot", were sold. Unusually, he made no secret of his admiration for Hitler. Rudel's memoirs describe dashing adventures, heroic exploits, sentimental comradeship and narrow escapes. One American interrogator described him as a typical Nazi officer. After the war he went to Argentina and started a rescue agency for Nazis called "Eichmann-Runde", that helped Josef Mengele among others.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Historians outside Germany did not study the Holocaust in the 1960s and there were almost no studies of the "Wehrmacht"'s involvement in the Final Solution. The Austrian-born American historian Raul Hilberg found that in the 1950s successive publishers rejected his later critically acclaimed book "The Destruction of the European Jews". He was told that nobody in America was interested in the topic. Until the 1990s, military historians writing the history of World War II focused on the campaigns and battles of the "Wehrmacht", treating the genocidal policies of the Nazi regime in passing. Historians of the Holocaust and the occupation policies of Nazi Germany often did not write about the "Wehrmacht" at all.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: As the Cold War progressed, the military intelligence provided by the German section of U.S. Army Historical Division became increasingly important to the Americans. Halder oversaw the German section of the research programme which became known as the "Halder Group". His group produced over 2,500 major historical manuscripts from over 700 distinct German authors detailing World War II. Halder manipulated the group into reinventing another war-time history from truths, half-truths, distortion and lies. He set up a "Control group" of trusted former Nazi officers who vetted all the manuscripts and required the authors to change the content. Halder's deputy in the group was Adolf Heusinger who was also working for the Gehlen Organisation, a U.S. Military Intelligence organisation in Germany. Halder expected to be addressed as "General" by the writing teams and behaved as their commanding officer while dealing with their manuscripts. His aim was to exonerate German army personnel from the atrocities they had committed.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Halder laid down a version of history that all the writers had to abide by. This version stated the army was Hitler's victim and had opposed him at every opportunity. The writers had to emphasise the "decent" form of war conducted by the army and blame the SS for the criminal operations. Halder enjoyed a privileged position, as the few historians working on World War II history in the 1950s had to obtain historical information from him and his group. His influence extended to newspaper editors and authors. Halder's instructions were sent down the chain of command and were recorded by former Field Marshal Georg von Küchler. They said: "It is German deeds, seen from the German standpoint, that are to be recorded; this will constitute a memorial to our troops", "no criticism of measures ordered by the leadership" is allowed and no one is to be "incriminated in any way". The achievements of the "Wehrmacht" were to be emphasised instead. Military historian Bernd Wegner, examining Halder's work, wrote: "The writing of German history on the Second World War, and in particular on the Russian front, was for over two decades, and in part up to the present dayand to a far greater extent than most people realisethe work of the defeated". Wolfram Wette wrote: "In the work of the Historical Division the traces of the War of Annihilation for which the "Wehrmacht" leadership was responsible were covered up".


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: In 1949 Halder wrote, "Hitler als Feldherr" which translates into English as "Hitler as Commander" and was published in 1950. The work contained the central ideas behind the myth of the clean "Wehrmacht" that were subsequently reproduced in countless histories and memoirs. The book describes an idealised commander who is then compared to Hitler. The commander is noble, wise, against the war in the East and free from any guilt. Hitler alone was responsible for the evil committed; his complete immorality is contrasted with the moral behaviour of the commander who had done no wrong.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: The Americans were aware the manuscripts contained numerous apologia. However, they also contained intelligence the Americans viewed as important in the event of a war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Halder had coached former Nazi officers on how to make incriminating evidence disappear. Many of the officers he coached such as Heinz Guderian went on to write best-selling autobiographies that broadened the appeal of the apologia. Halder succeeded in his aim of rehabilitating the German officer corps, first with the U.S. military, then widening circles of politics and finally with millions of Americans. Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies writing in "The Myth of the Eastern Front" said: "Franz Halder embodies better than any other high German officer the dramatic difference between myth and reality as it emerged after World War II".


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Erich von Manstein was a key figure in the creation of the myth of the clean "Wehrmacht". His influence was second only to that of Halder. After the war his declared lifetime task was burnishing the memory of the "Wehrmacht" and "cleaning" it of war crimes. His military reputation as a capable army leader meant his memoirs were widely read, however, they followed the myth of the clean "Wehrmacht" faithfully. His memoirs do not discuss politics or offer a condemnation of Nazism. Manstein was involved in the Holocaust, and he held the same anti-Semitic and racist views as Hitler. In his memoirs Manstein emphasised the supposedly good relations the German army had with Russian civilians. He wrote: "Naturally, there was no question of our pillaging the area. That was something the German army did not tolerate". From the outset the German army had treated the populace with savagery. Manstein became overall commander of the Crimea while he was in control of the 11th Army. During this time his troops co-operated with the "Einsatzgruppen" and the peninsula became "Judenfrei"90,000 to 100,000 Jews were killed. Manstein was sent to trial, convicted on nine charges of committing war crimes and sentenced to 18 years in jail. The charges he was convicted of included: not preventing murders in his command area, shooting Soviet war prisoners, carrying out the Commissar Order, and allowing subordinates to shoot Soviet civilians in reprisals. At the time of his trial, the first major crisis of the Cold War, the Berlin Blockade, had just ended. The Western powers wanted Germany to begin rearming to counter the Soviet threat. The West Germans indicated "not a single German soldier would don a uniform as long as any "Wehrmacht" officer remained in custody". Consequently, a campaign started to secure the release of Manstein and the other jailed West German war criminals.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Manstein's defence attorney during his trial was Reginald Paget. William Donovan, who had earlier helped Franz Halder, intervened and recruited his friend Paul Leverkuehn to assist the defence. Paget helped strengthen the myth of the clean "Wehrmacht", he defended the army's scorched earth policy on the basis that no army would fight by the rulebook. He defended the shooting of civilians who were armed but not engaged in any partisan action. Both during and after the trial Paget denied Operation Barbarossa was a "war of annihilation". He down-played the racist aspects of Barbarossa and the campaign to exterminate Soviet Jews. Instead, he argued that "the Wehrmacht displayed a large degree of restraint and discipline". Paget's closing statement echoed the core of the myth of the clean "Wehrmacht" saying "Manstein is and will remain a hero amongst his people". He echoed the Cold War politics with the words: "If Western Europe is to be defencible, these decent soldiers must be our comrades".


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Captain Basil Liddell Hart, the British historian who was the most influential military historian in the English-speaking world during his lifetime, endorsed the "clean "Wehrmacht"" myth, writing with undisguised admiration about how the "Wehrmacht" had been the mightiest war machine ever built that would have won the war if only Hitler had not interfered with the conduct of operations. Between 1949 and 1953, Liddell Hart was deeply involved in a public relations campaign for freedom for Manstein after a British military court convicted him of war crimes on the Eastern Front, which Liddell Hart called a gross miscarriage of justice. The trial of Manstein was a turning point in the British people's perception of the "Wehrmacht" as Manstein's lawyer, the Labour MP Reginald Paget, waged a well oiled and energetic public relations campaign for amnesty for his client, enlisting many politicians and celebrities in the process.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: One celebrity who joined Paget's campaign, the left-wing philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote in a 1949 essay that the 'enemy today' was the Soviet Union, not Germany, and, given how Manstein had become a hero to the German people, it was necessary for the Allied Forces to free him so he was able to fight on their side in the Cold War. Liddell Hart joined Paget's campaign for freedom for Manstein, and as Liddell Hart often wrote on military affairs in British newspapers, he played a key role in winning Manstein his freedom in May 1953. Given Liddell Hart's general sympathy with the "Wehrmacht", he depicted it in his books and essays as an apolitical force that had nothing to do with the crimes of the National Socialist regime, a subject that did not much interest Liddell Hart in the first place.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: In arguing for Manstein, Paget had made contradictory arguments at the same time; namely Manstein and other "Wehrmacht" officers had known nothing of Nazi crimes at the time while at the same time they were opposed to the Nazi crimes that they were supposedly unaware of. Paget lost the Manstein case with the British military tribunal presided over by Lieutenant General Frank Simpson finding Manstein supported Hitler's "war of annihilation" against the Soviet Union, enforced the Commissar Order, and as commander of the 11th Army assisted "Einsatzgruppe" C with massacring Jews in the Ukraine, sentencing him to 18 years in prison for war crimes. However, Paget did win the war for public opinion, persuading much of the British people that Manstein was wrongly convicted, and in May 1953 when the British government released Manstein, it caused no great controversy in Britain.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: The British historian Tom Lawson wrote that Paget was greatly helped by the fact that most of the British "Establishment" naturally sympathised with the traditional elites in Germany, seeing them as people much like themselves, and for members of the "Establishment" like Archbishop George Bell the mere fact that Manstein was a German Army officer and a Lutheran who went to church regularly "...was enough to confirm his opposition to the Nazi state and therefore the absurdity of the trial".


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: After the war, the West German Federal government bought the release of their war criminals. The British government, concerned with the growing threat, wanted to encourage the West German Federal government to join the proposed European Defence Community and NATO. The British decided that releasing a few "iconic" war criminals was a price worth paying to prevent any part of West Germany from joining the East. Celebrities and historians joined the campaign to secure the release of Manstein.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: The American historians Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies noted the close similarities of the "untarnished shield" myth of the "Wehrmacht" to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy myth of the American South starting with the way that former Confederate officers such as Jubal Early and former "Wehrmacht" officers such as Franz Halder were most active in promoting these myths after their respective wars. Both myths glorify the Confederate military and the "Wehrmacht" as superior fighting organisations led by deeply honourable, noble and courageous men who were overwhelmed by inferior opponents by sheer numbers and material together with bad luck. Just as the Lost Cause myth portrayed the Confederate leaders as honourable, but misguided American patriots who were wrong to try to break up the United States, but were still admirable men and great American heroes; the "clean "Wehrmacht"" myth likewise portrayed the "Wehrmacht" leaders as honourable German patriots who might have been wrong to fight for Hitler, but were still men worthy of the highest admiration. Both myths seek to glorify the respective militaries of the Confederacy and Nazi Germany by first portraying the military leaders as men of the highest honour, and secondly by disassociating them from the causes that they fought for. In the Confederates' case, it was denied that they fought for white supremacy and slavery while in the case of the "Wehrmacht" it was denied that they fought for the "völkisch" ideology of Nazi Germany.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Both myths emphasised the respective militaries as forces of order and protection against chaos by inferior elements. In the case of the South, the Reconstruction period was portrayed by the Lost Cause mythologists as a nightmarish time when black men freed from slavery supposedly ran amok in a violent crime wave at the expense of the law-abiding white population of the South, thus implicitly justifying the Confederate struggle. In the case of Germany, the war on the Eastern Front is portrayed as a heroic defensive struggle to protect "European civilisation" against the "Asiatic hordes" of the Red Army, who were always portrayed in the darkest of terms. The Israeli historian Omer Bartov noted that Nazi propaganda during the last days of the Nazi dictatorship pictured the war of the Eastern Front in the starkest and most extreme terms, as it was asserted that the "Wehrmacht" "... were defending humanity against a demonic invasion while simultaneously hoping to sow dissent between the Soviet Union and the Allied Forces. Though not successful in preventing the total collapse of the "Third Reich", these efforts did bear fruit in another important sense, for they both prepared the ground for the FRG's [Federal Republic of Germany] eventual alliance with the West, and provided the "Wehrmacht"'s apologists with a forceful and politically useful argument, even if it conveniently confused cause and effect". And finally just as the "Lost Cause" myth promoted the image of the faithful black slave, happy to serve his or her masters, the "clean "Wehrmacht"" myth by emphasising the role of the Vlasov Army and other collaborationist units fighting alongside the "Wehrmacht" similarly gave the image of the Slavs happy to welcome the "Wehrmacht" as their liberators and saviours. By focusing on the "Wehrmacht" as liberators, the narrative tended to distract attention from war crimes committed in the Soviet Union. The involvement of the collaborationist units raised in the Soviet Union in the Holocaust was never mentioned.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Initially, when Operation Barbarossa was launched in 1941, the peoples of the Soviet Union were portrayed in Nazi propaganda as "untermenschen" (sub-humans) who were threatening "European civilisation", and for whom there was to be no sympathy or compassion. From 1943 onward there was a change in Nazi propaganda as the peoples of the Soviet Union with the exception of the Jews were portrayed as oppressed by the "Jewish Bolsheviks" whom Germany was fighting to liberate. Both strands of Nazi propaganda found their way into the "clean "Wehrmacht"" myth. On one hand, the emphasis on atrocities committed by the "Asian" Red Army soldiers echoed the wartime propaganda theme of the "Asiatic hordes" laying waste to civilisation. On the other hand, the theme of the "Vlasov Army" as allies of the "Wehrmacht" echoed the wartime propaganda theme of the war against the Soviet Union as a noble struggle to freedom. In this respect, there was a difference in the sense that the "Lost Cause" myth portrayed slaves who did not want their freedom while by contrast the "clean "Wehrmacht"" myth portrayed the "Wehrmacht" as liberators. However, just as the "Lost Cause" myth portrayed submissive slaves who rejected freedom because their masters treated them so well, in the "clean "Wehrmacht"" myth, there is never any suggestion of equality between the Germans and the Soviet peoples, and the "Vlasov Army" are always portrayed as submissively looking up to their German liberators for guidance and leadership. The exotic members of the "Vlasov Army" such as the "Cossacks" were portrayed as romantic, but savage; people worthy enough to be allies of the "Wehrmacht", but not really their equals.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: The myth of the clean "Wehrmacht" did not come to an end with any single event; rather, it ended with a series of events over many decades. The myth predominated in the public mind in 1975. The Israeli historian Omer Bartov praised "the efforts of a few outstanding and courageous German scholars" to challenge the myth starting in 1965. The first German historian to challenge the myth was Hans-Adolf Jacobsen in his essay on the Commissar Order in the 1965 book "Anatomie des SS Staates". In 1969, Manfred Messerschmidt published a book on ideological indoctrination in the "Wehrmacht", "Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat: Zeit der Indoktrination", which did not deal with war crimes directly, but challenged the popular claim of an "apolitical" "Wehrmacht" that had largely escaped Nazi influence. The year 1969 also saw the publication of "Das Heer und Hitler: Armee und nationalsozialistisches Regime" by Klaus-Jürgen Muller and the essay "NSDAP und 'Geistige Führung' der Wehrmacht" by Volker R. Berghahn, the former dealing with the Army's relationship with Hitler and the latter with the role of the "educational officers" in the "Wehrmacht". In 1978, Christian Streit published "Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen, 1941-1945" dealing with the mass murder of three million Soviet POWs, which was the first German book on the topic. 1981 saw two books dealing with the co-operation of the "Wehrmacht" with the "Einzsatzgruppen", namely "Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener im "Fall Barbarossa" Ein Dokumentation" by the war crimes prosecutor Alfred Streim and "Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges: Die Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, 1938-1942" by the historians' Helmut Krausnick and Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm. Starting in 1979, the historians of the "Militargeschichtliches Forschungsamt" (Military Research Office) started publishing the official history of Germany in the Second World War, and the successive volumes have been very critical of the "Wehrmacht"'s leaders.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: German historians critical of the myth were denounced and were told they had "fouled their own nest". In 1986 the "Historikerstreit" ("historians' quarrel") began. The debate was supported with television programmes and by newspapers and publishers. The "Historikerstreit" did not contribute any new research, but the efforts of the "revisionist" conservative historians such as Ernst Nolte and Andreas Hillgruber were marked by an angry nationalist tone. Nolte and Hillgruber sought to "normalise" the German past by portraying the Holocaust as a defensive reaction to the Soviet Union and demanding "empathy" for the last stand on the "Wehrmacht" as it attempted to stop the "Asiatic flood" into Europe. Bartov called the "Historikerstreit" a "rear-guard action" against the trends in German historiography. Bartov noted that even historians who were critical of the "Wehrmacht" tended to write history very much in the traditional manner, namely history "from above" by focusing on actions of the leaders. The tendency for social historians to write "history from below", especially "Alltagsgeschichte" ("history of everyday life") beginning in the 1970-80s opened up new avenues of research by looking at the experiences of ordinary German soldiers. Such studies tended to confirm what the ordinary soldiers claimed to be up against on the Eastern Front, thanks to indoctrination propaganda, many German troops regarded the Soviets as sub-human, leading to what Bartov called the "barbarisation of warfare".


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: The year 1995 proved to be a turning point in German public consciousness with the opening in Hamburg of the "Wehrmachtsausstellung" ("Wehrmacht Exhibition"); the Hamburg Institute for Social Research initiated the touring exhibition, which exposed war crimes of the "Wehrmacht" to a wider audience focussing on the hostilities as a German war of extermination. The exhibition was designed by Hannes Heer. The tour lasted for four years and travelled to 33 German and Austrian cities. It created a long-running debate and reappraisal of the myth. The exhibition showed graphic photographs of war crimes committed by the "Wehrmacht" and interviewed those who had been party to the war itself. The soldiers who had been in the war mostly acknowledged the crimes but denied personal involvement. Some former soldiers offered Nazi-like justifications. The impact of the exhibition was described as explosive. The German public had become accustomed to seeing "unspeakable deeds" with images of concentration camps and the SS. The exhibition showed 1,380 pictures of the "Wehrmacht" complicit in war crimes. The pictures had been taken mostly by the soldiers themselves, out in the countryside, far away from the concentration camps and the SS. Heer wrote: "The creators of these photographs are present in their images – laughing, triumphant, or businesslike" and "this place is, in my opinion, at the centre of Hitler's Wehrmacht, standing inside the 'heart of darkness'". Heer argues the war crimes had been covered up by scholars and former soldiers. An outcry then ensued with the breaking of an age-old taboo. The organisers did not quantify the number of soldiers who had carried out war crimes. Historian Horst Möller wrote the number was "many tens of thousands".


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Further confirmation of the "Wehrmacht"'s role came with the publication in 1996 of 1.3 million cables sent from the SS and the "Wehrmacht" units operating in the Soviet Union in the summer and autumn of 1941 which had been intercepted and decrypted by the British Government Code and Cipher School, and then shared with the U.S. National Security Agency, which chose to publish them. Bartov wrote: "Although much of this has been known before, these documents provide more details on the beginning of the Holocaust and the apparently universal participation of German agencies on the ground in its implementation".


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: In 2000, the historian Truman Anderson identified a new scholarly consensus centring around the "recognition of the Wehrmacht's affinity for key features of the National Socialist world view, especially for its hatred of communism and its anti-Semitism". The historian Ben H. Shepherd writes, "Most historians now acknowledge the scale of Wehrmacht's involvement in the crimes of the Third Reich". In 2011, the German military historian Wolfram Wette called the clean "Wehrmacht" thesis a "collective perjury". The war-time generation maintained the myth with vigour and determination. They suppressed information and manipulated government policy, with their passing there was insufficient pressure to maintain the deceit.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Jennifer Foray, in her 2010 study of the "Wehrmacht" occupation of the Netherlands, asserts that: "Scores of studies published in the last few decades have demonstrated that the Wehrmacht's purported disengagement with the political sphere was an image carefully cultivated by commanders and foot soldiers alike, who, during and after the war, sought to distance themselves from the ideologically driven murder campaigns of the National Socialists".


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Alexander Pollak writing in "Remembering the Wehrmacht's War of Annihilation" used his research into newspaper articles and the language they used, to identify ten structural themes of the myth. The themes included focusing on a small group of the guilty, the construction of a symbolic victim eventthe Battle of Stalingrad, minimising war crimes by comparing them to Allied misdeeds, denying responsibility for starting the war, using the personal accounts of individual soldiers to extrapolate behaviour of the whole Wehrmacht, writing heroic obituaries and books, claiming the naivety of the ordinary soldier, and claiming orders had to be carried out. Heer et al. conclude the newspapers conveyed only two types of events: those that would engender a feeling of empathy with Wehrmacht soldiers and to portray them as victims of Hitler, the "OKH", or the enemy; and those that involved crimes by the Allied forces.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Pollak, examining the structural themes of the myth, said where blame could not be dismissed the print media limited its scope by focusing the blame firstly on Hitler and secondly on the SS. By the 1960s a "Hitler craze" had been created and the SS were being described as his ruthless agents. The Wehrmacht had been detached from involvement in war crimes. The Battle of Stalingrad was invented as a victim event by the media. They described the "Wehrmacht" as having been betrayed by the leadership and left to die in the freezing cold. This narrative focuses on individual soldiers who struggled to survive, engendering sympathy for the privations and harsh conditions. The War of Annihilation, Holocaust and racial genocide that had been carried out are not discussed. The media minimised German war crimes by comparing them to the behaviour of the Allied Forces. In the 1980s and 1990s the media became preoccupied with the Bombing of Dresden to argue the Allies and the "Wehrmacht" were equally culpable. Newspaper articles routinely showed dramatic pictures of Allied crimes but rarely ones depicting the "Wehrmacht".


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Pollak notes that the honour of the "Wehrmacht" is affected by the question of who started the war. He remarks that the media blame Britain and France for the "disgraceful" Treaty of Versailles, that they see as triggering German militarism. They blame the Soviet Union for signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Germany that subsequently encouraged Hitler to invade Poland. Some commentators discussed the need for a preventive war which supposed the Soviet Union intended to invade Germany. The print media retold personal soldiers' accounts which, while an "authentic" recounting of perceived events, can be construed narrowly and placed in any wider context. The tragedies of "one soldier" are supposedly symptomatic of "tens of thousands of others", while the War of Annihilation, the soldier had been part of, is airbrushed out. A central theme of the myth is the description of soldiers as naïve, apolitical and without the mental faculty to understand the reasons for the war or its nature. Soldiers are often described as having been forced to carry out orders, often under the fear of severe punishment, to excuse their actions. However, soldiers had a great deal of discretion and mostly chose their behaviour.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: During the planning of Operation Barbarossa, a series of "criminal orders" were devised. These orders went beyond international law and established codes of conduct. The Commissar Order and the "Barbarossa decree" allowed German soldiers to execute civilians without fear they would later be tried for war crimes by the German state. German historian Felix Römer studied the implementation of the "Commissar Order" by the "Wehrmacht", publishing his findings in 2008. It was the first complete account of the application of the order by the Wehrmacht's combat formations. Römer's research shows that over 80% of German divisions on the Eastern Front filed reports detailing the murder of the Red Army's political commissars. Soviet statistics state 57,608 commissars were killed in action and 47,126 were reported missing, the majority of whom were killed utilising the order.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Römer wrote the records which "prove that it was Hitler's generals who executed his murderous orders without scruples or hesitations". Historian Wolfram Wette, reviewing the book, notes the sporadic objections to the order were not fundamental. They were driven by military necessity and the cancellation of the order in 1942 was "not a return to morality, but an opportunistic course correction". Wette concludes: "The Commissar Order, which had always had a particularly strong influence on the image of the Wehrmacht because of its obviously criminal character, had finally been clarified. Once again the observation had confirmed itself: the deeper the research penetrates into the military history, the gloomier the picture becomes".


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: In 1941, the "Wehrmacht" took 3,300,000 Soviet soldiers as prisoners of war. By February 1942, two million of these were dead. 600,000 were shot because of the Commissar Order. Most of the rest died from criminal mistreatment. Once captured, Soviet POWs were marched into holding pens where they had no shelter, no medical treatment and given minuscule rations. Forced labour became a death sentence. German Quartermaster-General Eduard Wagner declared, "prisoners incapable of work in the prison camps are to starve". Friedrich Freiherr von Broich, while being secretly taped at Trent Park, recalled his memories of prisoners of war. He said the prisoners "at night howled like wild beasts" from starvation. Adding "we marched down the road and a column of 6,000 tottering figures went past, completely emaciated, helping each other along ... Soldiers of ours on bicycles rode alongside with pistols everyone who collapsed was shot and thrown into the ditch". "Wehrmacht" troops shot civilians on the slightest pretext of partisan involvement and massacred whole villages that were supposedly protecting them. Omer Bartov writes in "The Eastern Front: 1941–1945 German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare" that numerous interrogations by Germans had determined Soviet troops would rather die on the battlefield than be taken prisoner.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: The racist ideology of the campaign combined with "criminal orders", such as the Commissar Order, brought about a vicious circle of deepening violence and murder. The "Wehrmacht" endeavoured to "pacify" the population, but the civilians increased partisan activity. In August 1941 the II. Corps ordered that "partisans are to be publicly hanged and left hanging for some time". Public hangings became commonplace. Records of the reason for the murders included "feeding a Russian soldier", "wandering about", "trying to escape", and "for being an assistant's assistant of the partisans". Bartov writes that the civilian population had also been de-humanised resulting in the barbarisation of warfare. The final phase of this barbarisation was the "scorched earth" policy utilised by the "Wehrmacht" as they retreated.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Walter von Reichenau issued the Severity Order in October 1941 that stated the essential aim of the campaign was the destruction of the 'Jewish–Bolshevik system'. The order was described as a model by the "Wehrmacht" leadership and relayed to numerous commanders. Manstein relayed it to his troops as: "The Jew is the middle man between the enemy at the rear [...] The soldier must summon understanding for the necessity for the hard redress against the Jews". To functionally justify the murder of Jews they were equated to partisan resistance fighters. A wide-scale anti-Semitic consensus already existed amongst ordinary "Wehrmacht" soldiers.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: Army Group Centre began massacring the Jewish population on day one. In Białystok, Police Battalion 309 shot dead large numbers of Jews in the street, then corralled hundreds of Jews into a synagogue they set on fire. The commander of rear military zone 553 recorded 20,000 Jews had been killed by Army Group South in his zone up to the summer of 1942. In Belorussia, over half the civilians and POWs murdered were killed by "Wehrmacht" units, many Jews were among them.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: American historian Waitman Wade Beorn writing in his book "Marching into Darkness" examined the "Wehrmacht's" role in the Holocaust in Belarus during 1941 and 1942. The book investigates how German soldiers progressed from tentative killings to sadistic "Jew games". He writes that "Jew hunting" became a pastime. Soldiers would break the monotony of duty in the countryside by rounding up Jews, taking them to the forests and releasing them so they could be shot as they ran away. Beorn writes that individual "Wehrmacht" units were rewarded for brutal behaviour and explains how this created a culture of ever deeper involvement with the regime's genocidal aims. He discusses the "Wehrmacht's" role in the Hunger Plan, Nazi Germany's starvation policy. He examines the Mogilev Conference in September 1941 which marked a dramatic escalation of violence against the civilian population. The book looks at several military formations and how they responded to orders to commit genocide and other crimes against humanity.


title: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht

text: The "Wehrmacht" carried out mass shootings of Jews, near Kiev, on 29 and 30 September in 1941. At Babi Yar 33,371 Jews were marched to a ravine and shot into pits. Some of the victims died as a result of being buried alive in the pile of corpses. In 1942, mobile SS killing squads engaged in a swathe of massacres in conjunction with the "Wehrmacht". Approximately 1,300,000 Soviet Jews were murdered.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: Ocala ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Marion County within the northern region of Florida, United States. As of the 2020 United States Census, the city's population was 63,591, making it the 54th most populated city in Florida.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: Home to over 400 thoroughbred farms and training centers, Ocala was officially named the Horse Capital of the World in 2007. Notable attractions include the Ocala National Forest, Silver Springs State Park, Rainbow Springs State Park, and the College of Central Florida.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: Ocala is the principal city of the Ocala, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had an estimated 2017 population of 354,353.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: Ocala is located near what is thought to have been the site of "Ocale" or Ocali, a major Timucua village and chiefdom recorded in the 16th century. The modern city takes its name from the historical village, the name of which is believed to mean "Big Hammock" in the Timucua language. The Spaniard Hernando de Soto's expedition recorded Ocale in 1539 during his exploration through what is today the southeastern United States. Ocale is not mentioned in later Spanish accounts; it appears to have been abandoned in the wake of de Soto's attack.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Creek people and other Native Americans, and free and fugitive African Americans sought refuge in Florida. The Seminole people formed. After foreign colonial rule shifted between Spain and Great Britain and back again, in 1821 the United States acquired the territory of Florida. After warfare to the north, in 1827 the U.S. Army built Fort King near the present site of Ocala as a buffer between the Seminole, who had long occupied the area, and white settlers moving into the region. The fort was an important base during the Second Seminole War and later served in 1844 as the first courthouse for Marion County.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: The modern city of Ocala, which was established in 1849, developed around the fort site. Greater Ocala is known as the "Kingdom of the Sun". Plantations and other agricultural development dependent on slave labor were prevalent in the region. Ocala was an important center of citrus production until the Great Freeze of 1894–1895.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: During the Reconstruction era Ocala was represented by several African Americans in the Florida House of Representstives and on the local level.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: Rail service reached Ocala in June 1881, encouraging economic development with greater access to markets for produce. Two years later, much of the Ocala downtown area was destroyed by fire on Thanksgiving Day, 1883. The city encouraged rebuilding with brick, granite and steel rather than lumber. By 1888, Ocala was known statewide as "The Brick City".


title: Ocala, Florida

text: In December 1890, the Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union, a forerunner of the Populist Party, held its national convention in Ocala. At the convention, the Alliance adopted a platform that would become known as the "Ocala Demands". This platform included abolition of national banks, promoting low-interest government loans, free and unlimited coinage of silver, reclamation of excess railroad lands by the government, a graduated income tax, and direct election of United States senators. Most of the "Ocala Demands" were to become part of the Populist Party platform.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: The first thoroughbred horse farm in Florida was developed in Marion County in 1943 by Carl G. Rose. Other farms were developed, making Ocala the center of a horse-breeding area. Local horses have won individual races of the Triple Crown series; in 1978, Affirmed, who was bred and trained in Marion County, won all three races, boosting interest in the industry there.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: Ocala is one of only five cities (four in the US and one in France) permitted under Chamber of Commerce guidelines to use the title, "Horse Capital of the World", based on annual revenue produced by the horse industry. 44,000 jobs are sustained by breeding, training, and related support of the equine industry, which generates over $2.2 billion in annual revenue. Postime Farms and Ocala serve as host to one of the largest horse shows in the country: H.I.T.S or "Horses in the Sun", a Dressage/Jumper event lasting about two months. It generates some 6 to 7 million dollars for the local Marion County economy each year. The show features classes for over 100 different breeds, including Tennessee Walker, Paso Fino, Morgan horse, Saddlebred, Draft horse and the American Quarter Horse. Other equine events in the area include mounted shooting by the Florida Outlaws, as well as endurance rides, barrel races, extreme cowboy events, jumper shows, trick shows, parades, draft pulls, rodeo events and more.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: In the last decades of the twentieth century, the greater Ocala area had one of the highest growth rates in the country for a city its size. The population of Marion County in 2000 was more than 250,000, up from under 100,000 in 1975.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: Many historic homes are preserved in Ocala's large residential Historic District, designated in 1984. East Fort King Street features many excellent examples of Victorian architecture. Ocala structures listed on the National Register of Historic Places include the Coca-Cola Building, the E. C. Smith House, East Hall, the Marion Hotel, Mount Zion A.M.E. Church, the Ritz Historic Inn, and Union Train Station.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: Ocala is governed by a five-member board of councillors and a mayor, all of which are elected on a nonpartisan basis. It has a council-manager form of government, relying on a manager hired by the city. The mayor sets policy but has few powers other than vetoing legislation passed by the council and tending to some duties involving the police department. The current mayor is Kent Guinn. The city manager handles most administrative and financial matters.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: As of 2020, Republicans outnumber Democrats in Marion County, 112,000 to 80,000. In the 2008 presidential election, John McCain carried both the city and the county, the latter by a landslide, although Florida as a whole voted for Democrat Barack Obama by a narrow margin.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , all land. The surrounding farms are famous for their thoroughbred horses, in terrain similar to Kentucky bluegrass. Ocala is also known for nearby Silver Springs, site of one of the largest artesian spring formations in the world and Silver Springs Nature Theme Park, one of the earliest tourist attractions in Florida.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: The long Ocklawaha River passes east of Ocala, flowing north from Central Florida until it joins the St. Johns River near Palatka.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: Marion County is also home to the Ocala National Forest which was established in 1908 and is now the second largest national forest in the state. The Florida Trail, also known as the Florida National Scenic Trail, cuts through Ocala National Forest. Silver Springs State Park was formed as Silver River State Park in 1987, out of land the state purchased around the Silver Springs attraction to spare it from development. The state took over Silver Springs itself in 1993 and incorporated it into the park in 2013.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: As of the 2010 through 2014 census, Ocala was 63.3% non Hispanic white, 20.4% African American, 11.7% Hispanic or Latino, 2.6% Asian, 2% all other. As of the census of 2000, there were 45,943 people, 18,646 households, and 11,280 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 20,501 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 72.9% White, 22.1% African American, 0.4% Native American, 1.2% Asian, <0.1% Pacific Islander, 1.8% from other races, and 1.6% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 5.7% of the population.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: There were 18,646 households. 40.9% were married couples living together, 15.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 39.5% were non-families. 33.0% of all households were made up of individuals, and 15.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.29 and the average family size was 2.91.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: In the city the population was spread out, with 23.2% under the age of 18, 9.3% from 18 to 24, 26.2% from 25 to 44, 20.9% from 45 to 64, and 20.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females, there were 89.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 85.5 males.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: The median income for a household in the city was $30,888, and the median income for a family was $38,190. Males had a median income of $29,739 versus $24,367 for females. The per capita income for the city was $18,021. About 13.2% of families and 18.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 28.6% of those under age 18 and 9.8% of those age 65 or over.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: Ocala is the headquarters of Emergency One, a worldwide designer and manufacturer of fire rescue vehicles.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: The public schools in Ocala are run by the Marion County School Board. There are 30 elementary, ten middle and ten public high schools in Marion County, which include the following schools in Ocala:


title: Ocala, Florida

text: Ocala is home to the College of Central Florida, a member of the Florida College System, accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. CF offers bachelor's degrees in Business and Organizational Management, Early Childhood Education, and Nursing, as well as associate degrees and certificates. The college offers specialty programs in equine studies, agribusiness, and logistics and supply chain management. It also has one of 21 campuses of Rasmussen College, a Higher Learning Commission regionally accredited post secondary institution. Webster University offers on-site, regionally accredited graduate degree programs in business and counseling at their Ocala Metropolitan Campus.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: Three of the eight libraries in the Marion County Public Library System are located in Ocala. Those three libraries are:


title: Ocala, Florida

text: Several major highways pass through Ocala, including Interstate 75, U.S. Highway 27, U.S. Route 301, and U.S. Highway 441. Ocala was on the western leg of the historic Dixie Highway.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: Ocala International Airport provides general aviation services to the community. Ocala Suntran provides bus service throughout select parts of the city. One of the major hubs for Suntran is the former Ocala Union Station, which served Amtrak trains until November 2004. Amtrak serves Ocala by bus connection to Jacksonville and Lakeland.


title: Ocala, Florida

text: Ocala is also served by Greyhound Bus Lines. Marion Transit is the complementary ADA paratransit service for SunTran the fixed route in the City of Ocala. Marion Transit was established in 1976 and operates paratransit buses providing public transportation throughout Marion County for the Transportation Disadvantaged population.


title: Francis Scott Key

text: Francis Scott Key (August 1, 1779January 11, 1843) was an American lawyer, author, and amateur poet from Frederick, Maryland, who wrote the lyrics for the American national anthem "The Star-Spangled Banner". Key observed the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in 1814 during the War of 1812. He was inspired upon seeing the American flag still flying over the fort at dawn and wrote the poem "Defence of Fort M'Henry"; it was published within a week with the suggested tune of the popular song "To Anacreon in Heaven". The song with Key's lyrics became known as "The Star-Spangled Banner" and slowly gained in popularity as an unofficial anthem, finally achieving official status more than a century later under President Herbert Hoover as the national anthem.


title: Francis Scott Key

text: Key was a lawyer in Maryland and Washington D.C. for four decades and worked on important cases, including the Burr conspiracy trial, and he argued numerous times before the Supreme Court. He was nominated for District Attorney for the District of Columbia by President Andrew Jackson, where he served from 1833 to 1841. Key was a devout Episcopalian.


title: Francis Scott Key

text: Key owned slaves from 1800, during which time abolitionists ridiculed his words, claiming that America was more like the "Land of the Free and Home of the Oppressed". As District Attorney, he suppressed abolitionists, and in 1836 lost a case against Reuben Crandall where he accused the defendant's abolitionist publications of instigating slaves to rebel. He was also a leader of the American Colonization Society which sent freed slaves to Africa. He freed some of his slaves in the 1830s, paying one ex-slave as his farm foreman to supervise his other slaves. He publicly criticized slavery and gave free legal representation to some slaves seeking freedom, but he also represented owners of runaway slaves. At the time of his death he owned eight slaves.


title: Francis Scott Key

text: Key's father John Ross Key was a lawyer, a commissioned officer in the Continental Army, and a judge of English descent. His mother Ann Phoebe Dagworthy Charlton was born (February 6, 1756 – 1830), to Arthur Charlton, a tavern keeper, and his wife, Eleanor Harrison of Frederick in the colony of Maryland.


title: Francis Scott Key

text: Key grew up on the family plantation Terra Rubra in Frederick County, Maryland (now Carroll County). He graduated from St.John's College, Annapolis, Maryland, in 1796 and read law under his uncle Philip Barton Key who was loyal to the British Crown during the War of Independence. He married Mary Tayloe Lloyd on January 1, 1802, daughter of Edward Lloyd IV of Wye House and Elizabeth Tayloe, daughter of John Tayloe II of Mount Airy and sister of John Tayloe III of The Octagon House.


title: Francis Scott Key

text: During the War of 1812, following the Burning of Washington in August 1814, on September 7, 1814, Key and American Agent for Prisoners of War, Colonel John Stuart Skinner dined aboard as the guests of Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane, Rear Admiral George Cockburn, and Major General Robert Ross. Skinner and Key were there to plead for the release of Dr. William Beanes, an elderly resident of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, and a friend of Key, who had been captured in his home on August 28, 1814. Beanes was accused of aiding the arrest of some British soldiers (stragglers withdrawing after the Washington campaign) who were pillaging homes. Skinner, Key, and the released Beanes were allowed to return to their own truce ship, under guard, but not allowed to leave the fleet because they had become familiar with the strength and position of the British units and their intention to launch an attack upon Baltimore. Key was unable to do anything but watch the 25-hour bombardment of the American forces at Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore from dawn of September 13 through the morning of the 14th, 1814.


title: Francis Scott Key

text: At dawn, Key was able to see a large American flag waving over the fort, and he started writing a poem about his experience, on the back of a letter he had kept in his pocket. On September 16, Key, Skinner and Beanes were released from the fleet. When they arrived in Baltimore that evening, Key completed the poem at the Indian Queen Hotel, where he was staying, His finished manuscript was untitled and unsigned. When printed as a broadside the next day, it was given the title "Defence of Fort M'Henry” with the notation: "Tune – Anacreon in Heaven" This was a popular tune that Key had already used as a setting for his 1805 song "When the Warrior Returns", celebrating American heroes of the First Barbary War. It was soon published in newspapers first in Baltimore and then across the nation, and given the new title The Star-Spangled Banner. It was somewhat difficult to sing, yet it became increasingly popular, competing with "Hail, Columbia" (1796) as the de facto national anthem by the time of the Mexican–American War and the American Civil War. The song was finally adopted as the American national anthem more than a century after its first publication by Act of Congress in1931 signed by President Herbert Hoover.


title: Francis Scott Key

text: The third verse of the Star-Spangled Banner makes disparaging mention of black people and demonstrates Key's opinion of their seeking freedom at the time by escaping to fight with the British, who promised them freedom from American enslavement.


title: Francis Scott Key

text: Key was a leading attorney in Frederick, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., for many years, with an extensive real estate and trial practice. He and his family settled in Georgetown in 1805 or 1806, near the new national capital. He assisted his uncle Philip Barton Key in the sensational conspiracy trial of Aaron Burr and in the expulsion of Senator John Smith of Ohio. He made the first of his many arguments before the United States Supreme Court in 1807. In 1808, he assisted President Thomas Jefferson's attorney general in "United Statesv.Peters".


title: Francis Scott Key

text: In 1829, Key assisted in the prosecution of Tobias Watkins, former U.S. Treasury auditor under President John Quincy Adams, for misappropriating public funds. He also handled the Petticoat affair concerning Secretary of War John Eaton, and he served as the attorney for Sam Houston in 1832 during his trial for assaulting Representative William Stanbery of Ohio. After years as an adviser to President Jackson, Key was nominated by the President to District Attorney for the District of Columbia in 1833. He served from 1833 to 1841 while also handling his own private legal cases. In 1835, he prosecuted Richard Lawrence for his attempt to assassinate President Jackson at the top steps of the Capitol, the first attempt to kill an American president.


title: Francis Scott Key

text: Key purchased his first slave in 1800 or 1801 and owned six slaves in 1820. He freed seven of his slaves in the 1830s, and owned eight slaves when he died. One of his freed slaves continued to work for him for wages as his farm's foreman, supervising several slaves. Key also represented several slaves seeking their freedom, as well as several slave-owners seeking return of their runaway slaves. Key was one of the executors of John Randolph of Roanoke's will, which freed his 400 slaves, and Key fought to enforce the will for the next decade and to provide the freed slaves with land to support themselves.


title: Francis Scott Key

text: Key is known to have publicly criticized slavery's cruelties, and a newspaper editorial stated that "he often volunteered to defend the downtrodden sons and daughters of Africa." The editor said that Key "convinced me that slavery was wrong—radically wrong".


title: Francis Scott Key

text: A quote increasingly credited to Key stating that free black people are "a distinct and inferior race of people, which all experience proves to be the greatest evil that afflicts a community" is erroneous. The quote is taken from an 1838 letter that Key wrote to Reverend Benjamin Tappan of Maine who had sent Key a questionnaire about the attitudes of Southern religious institutions about slavery. Rather than representing a statement by Key identifying his personal thoughts, the words quoted are offered by Key to describe the attitudes of others who assert that formerly enslaved black people could not remain in the U.S. as paid laborers. This was the official policy of the American Colonization Society. Key was an ACS leader and fundraiser for the organization, but he himself did not send the men and women he freed to Africa upon their emancipation. The original confusion around this quote arises from ambiguities in the 1937 biography of Key by Edward S. Delaplaine.


title: Francis Scott Key

text: Key was a founding member and active leader of the American Colonization Society (ACS), whose primary goal was to send free black people to Africa. Though many free black people were born in the United States by this time, historians argue that upper-class American society, of which Key was a part, could never "envision a multiracial society". The ACS was not supported by most abolitionists or free black people of the time, but the organization's work would eventually lead to the creation of Liberia in 1847.


title: Francis Scott Key

text: In the early 1830s American thinking on slavery changed quite abruptly. Considerable opposition to the American Colonization Society's project emerged. Led by newspaper editor and publisher Wm. Lloyd Garrison, a growing portion of the population noted that only a very small number of free black people were actually moved, and they faced brutal conditions in West Africa, with very high mortality. Free black people made it clear that few of them wanted to move, and if they did, it would be to Canada, Mexico, or Central America, not Africa. The leaders of the American Colonization Society, including Key, were predominantly slave owners. The Society was intended to preserve slavery, rather than eliminate it. In the words of philanthropist Gerrit Smith, it was "quite as much an Anti-Abolition, as Colonization Society". "This Colonization Society had, by an invisible process, half conscious, half unconscious, been transformed into a serviceable organ and member of the Slave Power."


title: Francis Scott Key

text: The alternative to the colonization of Africa, project of the American Colonization Society, was the total and immediate abolition of slavery in the United States. This Key was firmly against, with or without slave owner compensation, and he used his position as District Attorney to attack abolitionists. In 1833, he secured a grand jury indictment against Benjamin Lundy, editor of the anti-slavery publication "Genius of Universal Emancipation", and his printer William Greer, for libel after Lundy published an article that declared, "There is neither mercy nor justice for colored people in this district [of Columbia]". Lundy's article, Key said in the indictment, "was intended to injure, oppress, aggrieve, and vilify the good name, fame, credit & reputation of the Magistrates and constables" of Washington. Lundy left town rather than face trial; Greer was acquitted.


title: Francis Scott Key

text: In a larger unsuccessful prosecution, in August 1836 Key obtained an indictment against Reuben Crandall, brother of controversial Connecticut teacher Prudence Crandall, who had recently moved to Washington, D.C. It accused Crandall of "seditious libel" after two marshals (who operated as slave catchers in their off hours) found Crandall had a trunk full of anti-slavery publications in his Georgetown residence/office, five days after the Snow riot, caused by rumors that a mentally ill slave had attempted to kill an elderly white woman. In an April 1837 trial that attracted nationwide attention and that congressmen attended, Key charged that Crandall's publications instigated slaves to rebel. Crandall's attorneys acknowledged he opposed slavery, but denied any intent or actions to encourage rebellion. Evidence was introduced that the anti-slavery publications were packing materials used by his landlady in shipping his possessions to him. He had not "published" anything; he had given one copy to one man who had asked for it.


title: Francis Scott Key

text: The jury acquitted Crandall of all charges. This public and humiliating defeat, as well as family tragedies in 1835, diminished Key's political ambition. He resigned as District Attorney in 1840. He remained a staunch proponent of African colonization and a strong critic of the abolition movement until his death.


title: Francis Scott Key

text: Key was a devout and prominent Episcopalian. In his youth, he almost became an Episcopal priest rather than a lawyer. Throughout his life he sprinkled biblical references in his correspondence. He was active in All Saints Parish in Frederick, Maryland, near his family's home. He also helped found or financially support several parishes in the new national capital, including St. John's Episcopal Church in Georgetown, Trinity Episcopal Church in present-day Judiciary Square, and Christ Church in Alexandria (at the time, in the District of Columbia).


title: Francis Scott Key

text: From 1818 until his death in 1843, Key was associated with the American Bible Society. He successfully opposed an abolitionist resolution presented to that group around 1838.


title: Francis Scott Key

text: Key also helped found two Episcopal seminaries, one in Baltimore and the other across the Potomac River in Alexandria (the Virginia Theological Seminary). Key also published a prose work called "The Power of Literature, and Its Connection with Religion" in 1834.


title: Francis Scott Key

text: On January 11, 1843, Key died at the home of his daughter Elizabeth Howard in Baltimore from pleurisy at age 63. He was initially interred in Old Saint Paul's Cemetery in the vault of John Eager Howard but in 1866, his body was moved to his family plot in Frederick at Mount Olivet Cemetery.


title: Francis Scott Key

text: The Key Monument Association erected a memorial in 1898 and the remains of both Francis Scott Key and his wife, Mary Tayloe Lloyd, were placed in a crypt in the base of the monument.


title: Francis Scott Key

text: Despite several efforts to preserve it, the Francis Scott Key residence was ultimately dismantled in1947. The residence had been located at 351618MStreet in Georgetown.


title: Francis Scott Key

text: Though Key had written poetry from time to time, often with heavily religious themes, these works were not collected and published until 14years after his death. Two of his religious poems used as Christian hymns include "Before the Lord We Bow" and "Lord, with Glowing Heart I'd Praise Thee".


title: Francis Scott Key

text: In1806, Key's sister, Anne Phoebe Charlton Key, married Roger B. Taney, who would later become Chief Justice of the United States. In 1846 one daughter, Alice, married U.S. Senator George H. Pendleton and another, Ellen Lloyd, married Simon F. Blunt. In1859, Key's son Philip Barton Key II, who also served as United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, was shot and killed by Daniel Sicklesa U.S.Representative from New York who would serve as a general in the American Civil Warafter he discovered that Philip Barton Key was having an affair with his wife. Sickles was acquitted in the first use of the temporary insanity defense. In1861, Key's grandson Francis Key Howard was imprisoned in Fort McHenry with the Mayor of Baltimore George William Brown and other locals deemed to be Confederate sympathizers.


title: Francis Scott Key

text: Key was a distant cousin and the namesake of F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose full name was Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald. His direct descendants include geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan, guitarist Dana Key, and American fashion designer and socialite Pauline de Rothschild.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: Bogdan Bogdanović (; born 18 August 1992) is a Serbian professional basketball player for the Atlanta Hawks of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He also represents the Serbian national basketball team internationally.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: He was selected by the Phoenix Suns with the 27th overall pick in the 2014 NBA draft, with his draft rights being traded to the Sacramento Kings during the 2016 NBA draft. Bogdanović earned an All-EuroLeague First Team and a EuroBasket All-Tournament Team selection in 2017. He was selected to the EuroLeague 2010–20 All-Decade Team.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: Bogdanović began playing organized basketball with ŠKK Zvezdara, a club in Belgrade. In April 2008, he moved on to Žitko Basket (then known as Alimenti Basket), also from Belgrade. Playing with Žitko Basket under coach Dragan Jakovljević, Bogdanović was part of the team that in April 2010 earned third place in the 2009–10 Junior Serbian League at the final eight tournament in Vršac, after beating Partizan juniors in the quarterfinal, losing 89–86 to Hemofarm juniors in the semifinal and beating FMP junior team 82–76 in the third place game.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: A few weeks later in May 2010, together with another Žitko player Luka Pajković, Bogdanović got attached to FMP's junior team featuring Nenad Miljenović, Stefan Popovski-Turanjanin, Nemanja Bezbradica, Nikola Janković, and Nikola Silađi for the Nike International Junior Tournament (NIJT) in Paris where the FMP juniors were defending their club's double title from previous two years. They were drawn in one of two round-robin groups at the tournament, alongside KK Split, Treviso, and Málaga. After beating Treviso and Split, FMP required a win over Málaga juniors to win their group and make the final; with precisely Bogdanović making the difference with an off-balance buzzer-beater for a 79–78 final score, two of his 21 points on the day alongside 6 rebounds. In the final game FMP took on INSEP and lost 73–83 with Bogdanović having an outing to forget due to the mid-game injury that forced him to leave the contest.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: In September 2010, 18-year-old Bogdanović signed his first professional contract with Partizan. Initially, in his first two seasons with the "crno-beli", under head coach Vlada Jovanović, Bogdanović didn't play much.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: With the summer 2012 return of head coach Duško Vujošević to Partizan, 20-year-old Bogdanović began to see increased minutes. After Danilo Anđušić's departure in December 2012, Bogdanović's role in the team stabilized even more. The 2012–13 season saw him make his EuroLeague debut with the team, averaging 5 points per game and 1.8 rebounds per game over 6 appearances.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: After being invited to play for the Serbian national team in the summer of 2013, he earned greater trust from coach Vujošević, which was reflected in his increased playing time in the 2013–14 season, and bigger role in the team.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: In the EuroLeague game is victory over CSKA Moscow in Belgrade, Bogdanović scored a career-high 27 points, shooting 10 for 16 from the field. Shortly after the game, he was praised by Serbian national team selector Aleksandar Đorđević, as being one of the most promising young European players.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: In a February ABA League away game versus Cibona, Bogdanović scored a career-high 32 points, also adding 4 rebounds and 5 assists. Over 23 games in the EuroLeague, he averaged 14.8 points, 3.7 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game, all career-highs. In April 2014, along with his teammate Joffrey Lauvergne, he was selected to the Ideal Team of the ABA League.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: In May 2014, he was voted the EuroLeague Rising Star of the season, by the head coaches of 24 EuroLeague teams.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: Partizan finished the season by winning its 13th consecutive Serbian League title, after once again defeating their archrivals, Red Star Belgrade, 3–1 in the league's finals series. Bogdanović exploded in the finals series, averaging 30.8 points, 4.8 rebounds, and 4.2 assists per game. For such a performance, he was named the league's Finals MVP.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: Following Bogdanović's summer 2014 transfer from Partizan to Fenerbahce, the player's decision to leave the club was publicly criticized by Partizan's head coach Vujošević who claimed that by leaving in 2014 Bogdanović broke their verbal agreement the coach had struck with the player (along with Bogdanović's agent Aleksandar Rašković and his parents) two years earlier in 2012. Their 2012 agreement, according to the coach, saw then 20-year-old Bogdanović be placed immediately into Partizan's first team rotation in return for the player's promise he would stay with the team three more seasons from that point on. Bogdanović left the club in summer 2014, two years after the supposed agreement, following Partizan's failure to qualify for the next season's EuroLeague.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: On 11 July 2014, Bogdanović officially signed a four-year contract, containing opt-out clauses after the second and third seasons, with the Turkish team Fenerbahçe. Over four years, Bogdanović is slated to make €3.5 million euros net income, while Partizan also received a €1.3 million buyout from Fenerbahçe, as the player was still under contract with the Belgrade club.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: Even though Bogdanović was a newcomer in the team, head coach Željko Obradović gave him a significant number of minutes and a starter role. With the beginning of the 2014–15 season, he struggled in shooting and consistency. On 15 November, in a 93–86 win over FC Bayern Munich, he scored 18 points and added 7 assists, his best game since coming to the new team. Over 10 games in the first phase of the EuroLeague, he averaged 10.4 points and 3.4 assists per game. On 20 March, Bogdanović set a season-high of 25 points, and added 4 assists, in a 98–77 win over Emporio Armani Milano. For such a performance, he was named the EuroLeague MVP of the Round, with a performance index rating of 32. On 26 March, in a game against Unicaja Málaga, he scored a 20-meter distance buzzer beater at the end of the second quarter. After good showings in the Top 16, he struggled in shooting in the quarter-final playoff series against Maccabi Tel Aviv, averaging 8 points on 25% shooting from the field. Eventually, Fenerbahçe won the EuroLeague playoff series, and advanced to the 2015 Euroleague Final Four, the first in the club's history.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: On 7 May, he was voted the EuroLeague Rising Star for the second season in a row, becoming only the second player, after Nikola Mirotić, to win the award twice. On 15 May 2015, however, his team lost in the EuroLeague semifinal game to Real Madrid, by a score of 87–96. Eventually, Fenerbahçe finished in 4th place in the EuroLeague, after losing in the third-place game to CSKA Moscow, by a score of 80–86. Over the season, in 29 EuroLeague games, Bogdanović averaged 10.6 points, 2.9 rebounds, and 2.8 assists per game. Also, in 36 games of the Turkish League, he averaged 11.5 points, 3.1 rebounds, and 2.4 assists.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: Throughout his second season with the team, Bogdanović continued with his good performances, becoming one of the team's leaders. Occasionally, in the late phases of the games, he also had the ball in his hands. Fenerbahçe won the Turkish Cup, with a 67–65 win over Darüşşafaka, with Bogdanović being named the Cup MVP. Fenerbahçe also reached the final game of the 2016 Euroleague Final Four, but fell short of winning the EuroLeague championship, after an overtime 96–101 loss to CSKA Moscow. Over 28 EuroLeague games, he averaged 11.7 points, 3.3 rebounds, and 3 assists per game. At the end of the season, Fenerbahçe won the Turkish League championship.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: On 26 October 2016, in a EuroLeague game against Žalgiris Kaunas, Bogdanović sprained his right ankle; at first it was estimated that he will need two to three weeks of recovery time, but recovery didn't seem to go as expected as he didn't return until January 2017. On 6 January 2017, he returned on the court, in a game against Milano. Bogdanović proved to be a major contributor for Fenerbahçe in the EuroLeague playoffs, as he would be the team's leading scorer in their first two games against Panathinaikos, before his club ultimately swept them, to earn another EuroLeague Final Four appearance. As a result of his contributions, he was not only named the EuroLeague's Player of the Round during those first two playoff games, but he was also named the EuroLeague's Player of the Month, for his overall work that month. He later helped Fenerbahçe repeat their place in the Finals of the EuroLeague, after helping them defeat Real Madrid, in the EuroLeague Final Four semifinals, by a score of 84–75. He had 14 points and 6 rebounds against Real Madrid. Two days later, Bogdanović would help the club win their first ever EuroLeague championship, as they beat out Olympiacos, by a score of 80–64, in the championship game. Afterwards, Bogdanović would lead Fenerbahçe to its second straight Turkish Super League Finals victory, by sweeping Beşiktaş Sompo Japan, and winning the Turkish Super League Finals MVP award in the process.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: On 26 June 2014, while playing for Partizan Belgrade, Bogdanović was selected by the Phoenix Suns with the 27th overall pick in the 2014 NBA draft. On 23 June 2016, on the night of the 2016 NBA draft, the Suns traded his rights to the Sacramento Kings along with Georgios Papagiannis, Skal Labissière and a future second-round pick, in exchange for the draft rights of Marquese Chriss.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: On 13 July 2017, Bogdanović signed with the Sacramento Kings. He made his NBA debut on 23 October 2017, against the team that originally drafted him, the Phoenix Suns. Bogdanović recorded 12 points, 3 rebounds, and 2 assists in 25 minutes of play off the bench as the Kings lost 117–115.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: Bogdanović was selected as a member of the Team World for the 2018 Rising Stars Challenge. He led Team World to a 155–124 win over Team USA with 26 points, 6 assists and 4 rebounds, while shooting 7 of 13 from the three-point line and was named the MVP of the game. The Sacramento Kings finished the season with 27–55 record, thus failing to qualify to the NBA playoffs for the twelfth season in a row. Bogdanović in his first NBA season had the averages of 11.8 points, 3.3 assists and 2.9 rebounds over 78 games.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: After the end of the season, he had an MRI procedure that revealed a slight tear of the medial meniscus in his left knee. On 24 April 2018, he underwent a meniscus debridement surgery in order to fully recover his left knee. On 22 May 2018, he was named to the NBA All-Rookie Second Team.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: Bogdanović was selected as a member of the Team World for the 2019 Rising Stars Challenge. After missing first ten games due to an injury rehab, in his sophomore season with the club Bogdanović mainly played the role of sixth man and second unit leader. Over 70 games, he averaged career-highs of 14.1 points, 3.8 assists and 3.5 rebounds.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: In his contract year with the club, Bogdanović averaged 15.1 points, 3.4 assists and 3.4 rebounds over 61 games. The 2019–20 NBA season was suspended in March as a result of COVID-19 pandemic and Sacramento Kings were invited for 22-team 2020 NBA Bubble. Eventually, they did not manage to qualify for the playoffs and finished the season with 31–41 record.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: In November 2020, the Kings attempted to sign-and-trade Bogdanović to the Milwaukee Bucks along with Justin James for Donte DiVincenzo, D. J. Wilson, and Ersan İlyasova. The trade unraveled when it was announced that the NBA was investigating the Bucks for having contact with Bogdanović and/or his agent before it was allowed under free agency rules. The Bucks reportedly felt double-crossed by the situation, decided not to pursue the trade further, and were stripped of their 2022 second-round draft pick at the conclusion of the investigation in December. According to Bogdanović, he was not aware of the trade and felt betrayed by the Kings.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: On 24 November 2020, Bogdanović signed a four-year, $72 million contract with the Atlanta Hawks. Bogdanović would only play in 44 games during the 2020–21 regular season due to injuries, but set new career highs, averaging 16.4 points per game and shot 90.9% on free throws. Coincidentally, the Hawks faced the Bucks in the 2021 Eastern Conference Finals, which the Bucks won in six games before winning the NBA championship.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: After the 2021–22 season ended, Bogdanović underwent right knee surgery and was ruled out for at least three months.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: Bogdanović's play with Žitko got him a training camp invite ahead of the 2009 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship in France, however he was quickly cut by head coach Vlada Jovanović since he was about to turn 17 at that time.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: In the summer of 2010, Bogdanović was selected to represent Serbia by head coach Jovanović for the European under-18 Championship wherein they finished fourth in the tournament.


title: Bogdan Bogdanović (basketball)

text: The following year, Bogdanović, while still with Partizan at the club level, was selected to play for Serbia's Under-19 national team under head coach Dejan Mijatović at the 2011 FIBA Under-19 World Championship in Latvia. Playing alongside Aleksandar Cvetković, Đorđe Drenovac, Luka Mitrović, Nemanja Dangubić, and Nemanja Bešović, they finished as a runner-up against a Jonas Valančiūnas-led Lithuanian team. Bogdanović averaged 8.9 points and 5 rebounds per game for the tournament.