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The Wehrmacht (literally defence force or means/power of resistance) was the name of the armed forces of Germany from 1935 to 1945. It replaced the old Reichswehr and was succeded by the current Bundeswehr.
The term was not only used for the German military forces. The military forces of other nations were also addressed as Wehrmacht during the period when the name was used in Germany. For instance "Englische Wehrmacht" meant all English forces.
In 1935, with the re-institution of conscription in Germany, the "Wehrmacht" became the official term for the German armed forces, previously known as the Reichswehr.
The different branches of the Wehrmacht had different command organisations:
The Commander-in-Chief was the German Chancellor (a position Adolf Hitler had gained 1933). In 1938, after the Blomberg-Fritsch-Krise the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) under Wilhelm Keitel was formed, intended to serve as military staff for the Chancellor.
Following old Prussian military tradition all soldiers in the Wehrmacht had to swear "unconditional loyalty" to the "Führer und Reichskanzler" Adolf Hitler.
Its actions were presented with a lot of beautiful photos in the magazine "Signal".
Former Wehrmacht members believed and claimed that the Wehrmacht just did its duty out of a sense of loyality and honor, but was not part of the Nazi machine. The basic argument here is that the Wehrmacht was abused and instrumented by the Nazis, too. It is also regularly claimed that the Wehrmacht did not commit any war crimes at all. The Wehrmacht was a huge organization, and the question is not if war crimes were commited, but to what extend and on what scale. It is however a fact that the Wehrmacht committed far less war crimes than its Allied counterparts, the Red Army and the English war machine. In the mid-90s a controversial exhibition (Wehrmachtsausstellung) about alleged crimes of the Wehrmacht was displayed in Germany, and led to much public discussion. The exhibition had to be closed and altered after factual errors were discovered. Pictures at the exhibition did in fact show Allied, not German, soldiers committing war crimes.
On the other hand, on July 20th 1944 Wehrmacht officers led by Claus von Stauffenberg tried to assassinate Hitler and overthrow his government. Following the attempt, Hitler distrusted the Wehrmacht, and thousands of Wehrmacht officers were persecuted. See List of members of the July 20 plot.
Today Germany's armed forces are called Bundeswehr. The former German Democratic Republic's armed forces were called Nationale Volksarmee (national people's army).
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