Werwolf
Encyclopedia
Werwolf was the name given to a Nazi plan, which began development in 1944, to create a commando
force which would operate behind enemy lines as the Allies
advanced through Germany
itself. Werwolf remained entirely ineffectual as a combat force, however, and in practical terms, its value as propaganda
far outweighed its actual achievements. It did cause the Allies to overestimate the threat of a Nazi insurgency
, leading to greater hardship for the German population.
advance, Minister of Propaganda
Joseph Goebbels
seized upon the idea of Werwolf, and began to foster the notion, primarily through Nazi radio
broadcasts, that Werwolf was a clandestine guerrilla organization comprising irregular German partisans
, similar to the many insurgency
groups which the Germans had encountered in the nations they occupied during the war. Despite such propaganda, however, this was never the actual nature of Werwolf, which in reality was always intended to be a commando unit comprising uniformed troops. Another popular myth about Werwolf is that it was intended to continue fighting underground even after the surrender of the Nazi government and the German military. In fact, no effort was ever made by the Nazi leadership to develop an insurgency
to continue fighting in the event of defeat, in large measure because Adolf Hitler
, as well as other Nazi leaders, refused to believe that a German defeat was possible, and they regarded anyone who even discussed the possibility as defeatists
and traitors
. As a result, no contingency plans to deal with defeat were ever authorized. However, as a result of Goebbels' efforts, Werwolf had, and in many cases continues to have, a mythological reputation as having been an underground Nazi resistance movement, with some even claiming that Werwolf attacks continued for months, or even years, after the end of the war. Its perceived influence went far beyond its actual operations, especially after the dissolution of the Nazi regime.
Historian Perry Biddiscombe has also asserted that Werwolf represented a re-emergence of a genuinely radical, social-revolutionary current within National Socialism, something which had been present in the movement in its early days but which had been suppressed following the Nazi assumption of power in 1933.
' novel, Der Wehrwolf (1910). Set in the Celle
region, Lower Saxony
, during the Thirty Years' War
(1618–48), the novel concerns a peasant, Harm Wulf, who after his family is killed by marauding soldiers, organises his neighbours into a militia who pursue the soldiers mercilessly and execute any they capture, referring to themselves as Wehrwölfe. Löns said that the title was a dual reference to the fact that the peasants put up a fighting defence (sich wehren, see "Bundeswehr" - Federal Defense) and to the protagonist's surname of Wulf, but it also had obvious connotations with the word Werwölfe in that Wulf's men came to enjoy killing. While not himself a Nazi (he died in 1914) Löns' work was also popular with the German far right, and the Nazis celebrated his work. Indeed, Celle's local newspaper began serialising Der Wehrwolf in January 1945.
It may also be of relevance to the naming of the organisation that in 1942 OKW and OKH's field headquarters at Vinnitsa in Ukraine
were christened "Werwolf" by Adolf Hitler
, and Hitler on a number of occasions had used "Wolf" as a pseudonym for himself. The etymology of the name Adolf itself is Noble (adal; Mod. German Adel) Wolf, while Hitler's first World War II Eastern Front military headquarters were labeled Wolfsschanze, commonly rendered in English as "Wolf's Lair", though the literal translation would be "Wolf's Sconce
".
initiated Unternehmen Werwolf (Operation Werwolf), ordering SS Obergruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prützmann
to begin organising an elite troop of volunteer forces to operate secretly behind enemy lines. As originally conceived, these Werwolf units were intended to be legitimate uniformed military formations trained to engage in clandestine operations behind enemy lines in the same manner as Allied Special Forces such as Commandos
. Prützmann was named Generalinspekteur für Spezialabwehr (General Inspector of Special Defence) and assigned the task of setting up the force's headquarters in Berlin and organising and instructing the force. Prutzmann had studied the guerrilla tactics used by Soviet partisans
while stationed in the occupied territories of Ukraine and the idea was to teach these tactics to the members of Operation Werwolf.
Gauleiter
s were to suggest suitable recruits, who would then be trained at secret locations in the Rhineland and Berlin. The chief training centre in the West was at Hülchrath Castle near Erkelenz
, which by early 1945 was training around 200 recruits mostly drawn from the Hitler Youth
.
The tactics available to the organisation included sniping
attacks, arson
, sabotage
, and assassination
. Training was to include such topics as the production of home-made explosives, manufacturing detonators from common articles such as pencils and "a can of soup", and every member was to be trained in how to jump into a guard tower and strangle the sentry in one swift movement, using only a metre of string. Werwolf agents were supposed to have at their disposal a vast assortment of weapons, from fire-proof coats to silenced
Walther pistols but in reality this was merely on paper; the Werwolf never actually had the necessary equipment
, organisation, morale
or coordination. Given the dire supply situation German forces were facing in 1945, the commanding officers of existing Wehrmacht
and SS units were unwilling to turn over what little equipment they still had for the sake of an organization whose actual strategic value was doubtful.
Werwolf originally had about five thousand members recruited from the SS
and the Hitler Youth
. These recruits were specially trained in guerrilla tactics. Operation Werwolf went so far as to establish front companies to ensure continued fighting in those areas of Germany which were occupied (all of the "front companies" were discovered and shut down within eight months). However, as it became increasingly clear that the reputedly impregnable Alpine Redoubt, from which their operations were to be directed by the Nazi leadership in the event that the rest of Germany had been occupied, was yet another grandiose delusion, Werwolf was converted into a terrorist organisation and in the last few weeks of the war, Operation Werwolf was largely dismantled by Heinrich Himmler
and Wilhelm Keitel
.
Disorganised attempts were made to bury explosives, ammunition and weapons in different locations around the country (mainly in the pre-1939 German–Polish border region) to be used by the Werwolf in their terrorist acts after the defeat of Germany, but not only were the amounts of material to be "buried" prohibitively low, by that point the movement itself was so disorganised that few actual members or leaders knew where the materials were, how to use them, or what to do with them. A large portion of these "depots" were found by the Russians and virtually none of the materials were actually used by the Werwolf.
On March 23, 1945, Joseph Goebbels
gave a speech, known as the "Werwolf speech", in which he urged every German to fight to the death. The partial dismantling of the organised Werwolf, combined with the effects of the "Werwolf" speech, caused considerable confusion about which subsequent attacks were actually carried out by Werwolf members, as opposed to solo acts by fanatical Nazis or small groups of SS.
Antony Beevor
and Earl F. Ziemke have argued that Werwolf never amounted to a serious threat, in fact they are regarded by them as barely having existed. This view is supported by the RAND Corporation, which surveyed the history of US occupations with an eye to advising on Iraq. According to a study by former Ambassador James Dobbins and a team of RAND researchers, the total number of post-conflict American combat casualties in Germany was zero.
German historian Golo Mann
, in his The History of Germany Since 1789 (1984) also states that "The [Germans'] readiness to work with the victors, to carry out their orders, to accept their advice and their help was genuine; of the resistance which the Allies had expected in the way of 'werwolf' units and nocturnal guerrilla activities, there was no sign."
Perry Biddiscombe is the only historian to have presented a somewhat different view. In his books Werwolf!: The History of the National Socialist Guerrilla Movement, 1944–1946 (1998) and The Last Nazis: SS Werwolf Guerrilla Resistance in Europe, 1944-1947 (2000), Biddiscombe asserts that after retreating to the Black Forest
and the Harz mountains, the Werwolf continued resisting the occupation until at least 1947, possibly until 1949–50. However, he characterises German post-surrender resistance as "minor", and calls the post-war Werwolfs "desperadoes" and "fanatics living in forest huts". He further cites U.S. Army intelligence reports that characterised partisans as "nomad bands" and judged them as less serious threats than attacks by foreign slave labourers and considered their sabotage and subversive activities to be insignificant. He also notes that: "The Americans and British concluded, even in the summer of 1945, that, as a nationwide network, the original Werwolf was irrevocably destroyed, and that it no longer posed a threat to the occupation."
Biddiscombe also says that Werwolf violence failed to mobilise a spirit of popular national resistance, that the group was poorly led, armed, and organised, and that it was doomed to failure given the war-weariness of the populace and the hesitancy of young Germans to sacrifice themselves on the funeral pyre of the former Nazi regime. He concludes that the only significant achievement of the Werwolves was to spark distrust of the German populace in the Allies as they occupied Germany, which caused them in some cases to act more repressively than they might have done otherwise, which in turn fostered resentments that helped to enable far right ideas to survive in Germany, at least in pockets, into the post-war era.
In the Soviet occupation zone, thousands of youths were arrested as "Werwolfs". Evidently, arrests were arbitrary and in part based on denunciations. The arrested boys were either "shot at dawn" or interned in NKVD special camps
. On 22 June 1945, Deputy Commissar of the NKVD
Ivan Serov
reported to the head of the NKVD
Lavrentiy Beria
the arrest of "more than 600" alleged Werwolf members, mostly aged 15 to 17 years. The report, though referring to incidents where Soviet units came under fire from the woods, asserts that most of the arrested had not been involved in any action against the Soviets, which Serov explained with interrogation results allegedly showing that the boys had been "waiting" for the right moment and in the meantime focussed on attracting new members. In October 1945, Beria reported to Joseph Stalin
the "liquidation" of 359 alleged Werwolf groups. Of those, 92 groups with 1.192 members were "liquidated" in Saxony alone. On 5 August 1946, Soviet
minister for internal affairs Sergei Nikiforovich Kruglov reported that in the Soviet occupation zone, 332 "terrorist diversion groups and underground organizations" had been disclosed and "liquidated". A total of about 10,000 minors was interned in NKVD special camps
, half of whom did not return. Parents as well as the East German administration and political parties, installed by the Soviets, were denied any information on the whereabouts of the arrested youths. The Red Army
's torching of Demmin
, which resulted in the suicide of hundreds of people
, was blamed on alleged preceding Werwolf activities by the East German regime.
Eisenhower believed he would be faced with extensive guerrilla warfare
, based on the Alpine Redoubt. The fear of Werwolf activity believed to be mustering around Berchtesgaden
in the Alps
also led to the switch in U.S. operational targets in the middle of March 1945 away from the drive towards Berlin and instead shifted the thrust towards the south and on linking up with the Russians first. An intelligence report stated "We should...be prepared to undertake operations in Southern Germany in order to overcome rapidly any organised resistance by the German Armed Forces or by guerrilla movements which may have retreated to the inner zone and to this redoubt" On March 31 Eisenhower told Roosevelt, "I am hopeful of launching operations that should partially prevent a guerrilla control of any large area such as the southern mountain bastions".
Eisenhower had previously also requested that the occupation directive JCS 1067 not make him responsible for maintaining living conditions in Germany under the expected circumstances; "..probably guerrilla fighting and possibly even civil war
in certain districts... If conditions in Germany turn out as described, it will be utterly impossible effectively to control or save the economic structure of the country .. and we feel we should not assume the responsibility for its support and control." The British were "mortified by such a suggestion", but the War Department took considerable account of Eisenhower's wishes.
In April 1945 Churchill announced that the Allies would incarcerate all captured German officers for as long as a guerrilla threat existed. Hundreds of thousands of German last-ditch troops were kept in the makeshift Rheinwiesenlager
for months, "mainly to prevent Werwolf activity". In addition to these captives the civilian detainees held by the U.S. alone climbed from 1000 in late March to 30,000 in late June, and more than 100,000 by the end of 1945. Also in the camps for civilians were the conditions often poor.
Prior to the occupation SHAEF investigated the retaliation techniques the Germans had used in order to maintain control over occupied territories since they felt the Germans had had good success. Directives were loosely defined and implementation of retaliation was largely left to the preferences of the various armies, with the British seeming uncomfortable with those involving bloodshed. Rear-Admiral H.T. Baillie Grohman for example stated that killing hostages was "not in accordance with our usual methods". Thanks to feelings such as this, and relative light guerrilla activity in their area, relatively few reprisals took place in the UK zone of operations. In April 1945 General Eisenhower ordered that all partisans were to be shot. As a consequence, some war crime
s (summary execution
s without trial and the like) followed.
Contrary to Section IV of the Hague Convention of 1907, "The Laws and Customs of War on Land", the SHAEF "counter insurgency manual" included provisions for forced labour and hostage taking.
The German resistance movement was successfully suppressed in 1945.
However, collective punishment for acts of resistance, such as fines and curfews, was still being imposed as late as 1948.
Biddiscombe estimates the total death toll as a direct result of Werewolf actions and the resulting reprisals as 3,000–5,000.
). The group was reported to be composed mainly of former members and officers of Hitler Youth
units, ex-soldiers and drifters, and was described by an intelligence report as "a sentimental, adventurous, and romantically anti-social [movement]". It was regarded as a more serious menace to order than the Werwolf by US officials.
A raid in March 1946 captured 80 former German officers who were members, and who possessed a list of 400 persons to be liquidated, including Wilhelm Hoegner
, the prime minister of Bavaria
. Further members of the group were seized with caches of ammunition and even anti-tank rockets. In late 1946 reports of activities gradually died away.
, Czechoslovakia
and Romania
. These activities were virtually unknown to the Western Allies, primarily because they were kept out of the official news channels by Soviet censors. These actions, however, are more correctly to be understood as resistance to the brutality of Soviet occupation and reprisals (for example, many ethnic Germans in eastern Europe were forcibly deported to Siberia as slave laborers
, from where few would ever return alive), rather than as an effort to resurrect the aims of the Nazi regime.
Also similar to Werwolf were the Forest Brothers
of Estonia
, Latvia
and Lithuania
, who continued to wage armed guerrilla resistance against the Soviet occupation of their nations from the end of the Second World War until as late as 1957. Although few Forest Brothers were of German ethnicity, many of them had originally served in military units which had been allied with the Third Reich. As with the resistance movement among ethnic Germans in eastern Europe, however, the Forest Brothers were only interested in the liberation of their lands from Soviet rule, rather than any kind of attempted resurrection of Nazi war aims.
by the Bush Administration
and other Iraq War supporters. In speeches given on August 25, 2003 to the Veterans of Foreign Wars
by National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice
and Secretary of Defence
Donald Rumsfeld
parallels were drawn between the problems faced by the coalition's occupation forces in Iraq to those encountered by occupation forces in post-World War II Germany, asserting that the Iraqi insurgency would ultimately prove to be as futile in realizing its objectives as had the Werwolves.
Former National Security Council
staffer Daniel Benjamin
published a riposte in Slate magazine on August 29, 2003, entitled "Condi’s Phony History: Sorry, Dr. Rice, postwar Germany was nothing like Iraq" in which he took Rice and Rumsfeld to task for mentioning the Werwolf, writing that the reality of postwar Germany bore no resemblance to the occupation of Iraq, and made reference to Anthony Beevor's The Fall of Berlin 1945 and the US Army's official history, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany 1944-1946, where the Werwolf were only mentioned twice in passing. This did not prevent his political opponents from disagreeing with him, using Biddiscombe's book as a source.
Given the events that came to pass after the Bush Administration's comparison, the most striking difference is the fact that in Iraq, many more (over twenty times as many) coalition soldiers were killed in combat after victory had been declared by President Bush on 1 May 2003 than had been killed during the initial invasion. In Germany, not a single Allied soldier was ever proven to have been killed as a result of hostile action after the German surrender on 8 May 1945. Another is that Biddiscombe maintains that what little resistance to the occupation there was in Germany had evaporated within two to four years after the end of the war, while widespread violent opposition to the occupation of Iraq and its new government has continued (as of this writing) for more than eight years after the invasion.
Commando
In English, the term commando means a specific kind of individual soldier or military unit. In contemporary usage, commando usually means elite light infantry and/or special operations forces units, specializing in amphibious landings, parachuting, rappelling and similar techniques, to conduct and...
force which would operate behind enemy lines as the Allies
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
advanced through Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
itself. Werwolf remained entirely ineffectual as a combat force, however, and in practical terms, its value as propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
far outweighed its actual achievements. It did cause the Allies to overestimate the threat of a Nazi insurgency
Insurgency
An insurgency is an armed rebellion against a constituted authority when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognized as belligerents...
, leading to greater hardship for the German population.
Misperceptions
After it became clear, by March 1945, that the remaining German forces had no chance of stopping the AlliedAllies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
advance, Minister of Propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
seized upon the idea of Werwolf, and began to foster the notion, primarily through Nazi radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
broadcasts, that Werwolf was a clandestine guerrilla organization comprising irregular German partisans
Partisan (military)
A partisan is a member of an irregular military force formed to oppose control of an area by a foreign power or by an army of occupation by some kind of insurgent activity...
, similar to the many insurgency
Insurgency
An insurgency is an armed rebellion against a constituted authority when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognized as belligerents...
groups which the Germans had encountered in the nations they occupied during the war. Despite such propaganda, however, this was never the actual nature of Werwolf, which in reality was always intended to be a commando unit comprising uniformed troops. Another popular myth about Werwolf is that it was intended to continue fighting underground even after the surrender of the Nazi government and the German military. In fact, no effort was ever made by the Nazi leadership to develop an insurgency
Insurgency
An insurgency is an armed rebellion against a constituted authority when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognized as belligerents...
to continue fighting in the event of defeat, in large measure because Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, as well as other Nazi leaders, refused to believe that a German defeat was possible, and they regarded anyone who even discussed the possibility as defeatists
Defeatism
Defeatism is acceptance of defeat without struggle. In everyday use, defeatism has negative connotation and is often linked to treason and pessimism, or even a hopeless situation such as a Catch-22...
and traitors
Treason
In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...
. As a result, no contingency plans to deal with defeat were ever authorized. However, as a result of Goebbels' efforts, Werwolf had, and in many cases continues to have, a mythological reputation as having been an underground Nazi resistance movement, with some even claiming that Werwolf attacks continued for months, or even years, after the end of the war. Its perceived influence went far beyond its actual operations, especially after the dissolution of the Nazi regime.
Historian Perry Biddiscombe has also asserted that Werwolf represented a re-emergence of a genuinely radical, social-revolutionary current within National Socialism, something which had been present in the movement in its early days but which had been suppressed following the Nazi assumption of power in 1933.
Nomenclature
The name was chosen after the title of Hermann LönsHermann Löns
Hermann Löns was a German journalist and writer. He is most famous as "The Poet of the Heath" for his novels and poems celebrating the people and landscape of the North German moors, particularly the Lüneburg Heath in Lower Saxony. Löns is well known in Germany for his famous folksongs...
' novel, Der Wehrwolf (1910). Set in the Celle
Celle
Celle is a town and capital of the district of Celle, in Lower Saxony, Germany. The town is situated on the banks of the River Aller, a tributary of the Weser and has a population of about 71,000...
region, Lower Saxony
Lower Saxony
Lower Saxony is a German state situated in north-western Germany and is second in area and fourth in population among the sixteen states of Germany...
, during the Thirty Years' War
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most countries in Europe. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history....
(1618–48), the novel concerns a peasant, Harm Wulf, who after his family is killed by marauding soldiers, organises his neighbours into a militia who pursue the soldiers mercilessly and execute any they capture, referring to themselves as Wehrwölfe. Löns said that the title was a dual reference to the fact that the peasants put up a fighting defence (sich wehren, see "Bundeswehr" - Federal Defense) and to the protagonist's surname of Wulf, but it also had obvious connotations with the word Werwölfe in that Wulf's men came to enjoy killing. While not himself a Nazi (he died in 1914) Löns' work was also popular with the German far right, and the Nazis celebrated his work. Indeed, Celle's local newspaper began serialising Der Wehrwolf in January 1945.
It may also be of relevance to the naming of the organisation that in 1942 OKW and OKH's field headquarters at Vinnitsa in Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
were christened "Werwolf" by Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, and Hitler on a number of occasions had used "Wolf" as a pseudonym for himself. The etymology of the name Adolf itself is Noble (adal; Mod. German Adel) Wolf, while Hitler's first World War II Eastern Front military headquarters were labeled Wolfsschanze, commonly rendered in English as "Wolf's Lair", though the literal translation would be "Wolf's Sconce
Sconce (fortification)
A Sconce is a small protective fortification, such as an earthwork often placed on a mound as a defensive work for artillery. It was used primarily in Northern Europe from the late Middle Ages until the 19th century. This type of fortification was common during the English Civil War, and the...
".
Plans
In late summer/early autumn 1944, Heinrich HimmlerHeinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
initiated Unternehmen Werwolf (Operation Werwolf), ordering SS Obergruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prützmann
Hans-Adolf Prützmann
Hans-Adolf Prützmann was a Superior SS and Police Leader, as well as an SS Obergruppenführer...
to begin organising an elite troop of volunteer forces to operate secretly behind enemy lines. As originally conceived, these Werwolf units were intended to be legitimate uniformed military formations trained to engage in clandestine operations behind enemy lines in the same manner as Allied Special Forces such as Commandos
Commandos
Commandos is a stealth-oriented real-time tactics game series, available for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. The game is set in the Second World War and follows the escapades of a fictional British Commandos section. It leans heavily on historical events during WWII to carry the plot...
. Prützmann was named Generalinspekteur für Spezialabwehr (General Inspector of Special Defence) and assigned the task of setting up the force's headquarters in Berlin and organising and instructing the force. Prutzmann had studied the guerrilla tactics used by Soviet partisans
Soviet partisans
The Soviet partisans were members of a resistance movement which fought a guerrilla war against the Axis occupation of the Soviet Union during World War II....
while stationed in the occupied territories of Ukraine and the idea was to teach these tactics to the members of Operation Werwolf.
Gauleiter
Gauleiter
A Gauleiter was the party leader of a regional branch of the NSDAP or the head of a Gau or of a Reichsgau.-Creation and Early Usage:...
s were to suggest suitable recruits, who would then be trained at secret locations in the Rhineland and Berlin. The chief training centre in the West was at Hülchrath Castle near Erkelenz
Erkelenz
- Geology :The Erkelenz Börde is the northernmost extent of the Jülich Börde and is formed from a loess plateau that has an average thickness of over eleven metres in this area. Beneath it are the gravels and sands of the main ice age terrace, laid down by the Rhine and the Meuse...
, which by early 1945 was training around 200 recruits mostly drawn from the Hitler Youth
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
.
The tactics available to the organisation included sniping
Sniper
A sniper is a marksman who shoots targets from concealed positions or distances exceeding the capabilities of regular personnel. Snipers typically have specialized training and distinct high-precision rifles....
attacks, arson
Arson
Arson is the crime of intentionally or maliciously setting fire to structures or wildland areas. It may be distinguished from other causes such as spontaneous combustion and natural wildfires...
, sabotage
Sabotage
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is...
, and assassination
Assassination
To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...
. Training was to include such topics as the production of home-made explosives, manufacturing detonators from common articles such as pencils and "a can of soup", and every member was to be trained in how to jump into a guard tower and strangle the sentry in one swift movement, using only a metre of string. Werwolf agents were supposed to have at their disposal a vast assortment of weapons, from fire-proof coats to silenced
Suppressor
A suppressor, sound suppressor, sound moderator, or silencer, is a device attached to or part of the barrel of a firearm which reduces the amount of noise and flash generated by firing the weapon....
Walther pistols but in reality this was merely on paper; the Werwolf never actually had the necessary equipment
Materiel
Materiel is a term used in English to refer to the equipment and supplies in military and commercial supply chain management....
, organisation, morale
Morale
Morale, also known as esprit de corps when discussing the morale of a group, is an intangible term used to describe the capacity of people to maintain belief in an institution or a goal, or even in oneself and others...
or coordination. Given the dire supply situation German forces were facing in 1945, the commanding officers of existing Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
and SS units were unwilling to turn over what little equipment they still had for the sake of an organization whose actual strategic value was doubtful.
Werwolf originally had about five thousand members recruited from the SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
and the Hitler Youth
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
. These recruits were specially trained in guerrilla tactics. Operation Werwolf went so far as to establish front companies to ensure continued fighting in those areas of Germany which were occupied (all of the "front companies" were discovered and shut down within eight months). However, as it became increasingly clear that the reputedly impregnable Alpine Redoubt, from which their operations were to be directed by the Nazi leadership in the event that the rest of Germany had been occupied, was yet another grandiose delusion, Werwolf was converted into a terrorist organisation and in the last few weeks of the war, Operation Werwolf was largely dismantled by Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
and Wilhelm Keitel
Wilhelm Keitel
Wilhelm Bodewin Gustav Keitel was a German field marshal . As head of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht and de facto war minister, he was one of Germany's most senior military leaders during World War II...
.
Disorganised attempts were made to bury explosives, ammunition and weapons in different locations around the country (mainly in the pre-1939 German–Polish border region) to be used by the Werwolf in their terrorist acts after the defeat of Germany, but not only were the amounts of material to be "buried" prohibitively low, by that point the movement itself was so disorganised that few actual members or leaders knew where the materials were, how to use them, or what to do with them. A large portion of these "depots" were found by the Russians and virtually none of the materials were actually used by the Werwolf.
On March 23, 1945, Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
gave a speech, known as the "Werwolf speech", in which he urged every German to fight to the death. The partial dismantling of the organised Werwolf, combined with the effects of the "Werwolf" speech, caused considerable confusion about which subsequent attacks were actually carried out by Werwolf members, as opposed to solo acts by fanatical Nazis or small groups of SS.
Antony Beevor
Antony Beevor
Antony James Beevor, FRSL is a British historian, educated at Winchester College and Sandhurst. He studied under the famous military historian John Keegan. Beevor is a former officer with the 11th Hussars who served in England and Germany for five years before resigning his commission...
and Earl F. Ziemke have argued that Werwolf never amounted to a serious threat, in fact they are regarded by them as barely having existed. This view is supported by the RAND Corporation, which surveyed the history of US occupations with an eye to advising on Iraq. According to a study by former Ambassador James Dobbins and a team of RAND researchers, the total number of post-conflict American combat casualties in Germany was zero.
German historian Golo Mann
Golo Mann
Golo Mann , born Angelus Gottfried Thomas Mann, was a popular German historian, essayist and writer. He was the third child of the novelist Thomas Mann and his wife Katia Mann.-Life:...
, in his The History of Germany Since 1789 (1984) also states that "The [Germans'] readiness to work with the victors, to carry out their orders, to accept their advice and their help was genuine; of the resistance which the Allies had expected in the way of 'werwolf' units and nocturnal guerrilla activities, there was no sign."
Perry Biddiscombe is the only historian to have presented a somewhat different view. In his books Werwolf!: The History of the National Socialist Guerrilla Movement, 1944–1946 (1998) and The Last Nazis: SS Werwolf Guerrilla Resistance in Europe, 1944-1947 (2000), Biddiscombe asserts that after retreating to the Black Forest
Black Forest
The Black Forest is a wooded mountain range in Baden-Württemberg, southwestern Germany. It is bordered by the Rhine valley to the west and south. The highest peak is the Feldberg with an elevation of 1,493 metres ....
and the Harz mountains, the Werwolf continued resisting the occupation until at least 1947, possibly until 1949–50. However, he characterises German post-surrender resistance as "minor", and calls the post-war Werwolfs "desperadoes" and "fanatics living in forest huts". He further cites U.S. Army intelligence reports that characterised partisans as "nomad bands" and judged them as less serious threats than attacks by foreign slave labourers and considered their sabotage and subversive activities to be insignificant. He also notes that: "The Americans and British concluded, even in the summer of 1945, that, as a nationwide network, the original Werwolf was irrevocably destroyed, and that it no longer posed a threat to the occupation."
Biddiscombe also says that Werwolf violence failed to mobilise a spirit of popular national resistance, that the group was poorly led, armed, and organised, and that it was doomed to failure given the war-weariness of the populace and the hesitancy of young Germans to sacrifice themselves on the funeral pyre of the former Nazi regime. He concludes that the only significant achievement of the Werwolves was to spark distrust of the German populace in the Allies as they occupied Germany, which caused them in some cases to act more repressively than they might have done otherwise, which in turn fostered resentments that helped to enable far right ideas to survive in Germany, at least in pockets, into the post-war era.
Alleged Werwolf actions
A number of instances of post-war violence have been attributed to Werwolf activity, but none have been proven.- It has been claimed that the destruction of the United States Military GovernmentOffice of Military Government, United StatesThe Office of Military Government, United States was the United States military-established government created shortly after the end of hostilities in occupied Germany in World War II. Under General Lucius D...
police headquarters in Bremen on June 5, 1945 by two explosions which resulted in 44 deaths was a Werwolf-related attack. There is, however, no proof that it was due to Werwolf actions rather than to unexploded bombs or delayed-action ordnance. - Dr. Franz OppenhoffFranz OppenhoffFranz Oppenhoff was a German lawyer who was appointed Mayor of the city of Aachen by Allied forces and subsequently murdered on the order of Heinrich Himmler.-Biography:...
, the newly appointed mayorMayorIn many countries, a Mayor is the highest ranking officer in the municipal government of a town or a large urban city....
of AachenAachenAachen has historically been a spa town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Aachen was a favoured residence of Charlemagne, and the place of coronation of the Kings of Germany. Geographically, Aachen is the westernmost town of Germany, located along its borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, ...
, was murdered outside his home in March 1945, allegedly by Werwolfs, but was in fact assassinated by an SS unit which was composed of Werwolf trainees from Hülchrath Castle. They were flown in at the order of Heinrich Himmler. - Major John Poston, Field MarshalField MarshalField Marshal is a military rank. Traditionally, it is the highest military rank in an army.-Etymology:The origin of the rank of field marshal dates to the early Middle Ages, originally meaning the keeper of the king's horses , from the time of the early Frankish kings.-Usage and hierarchical...
Sir Bernard Law Montgomery's liaison officer was ambushed and killed a few days before Germany's surrender by unidentified assailants; in reality Poston died in an ambush by regular troops. - Colonel-General Nikolai BerzarinNikolai BerzarinNikolai Erastovich Berzarin was a Soviet Red Army General during the Stalinist era and the Second World War. In 1945 he became commander of the Soviet occupying forces in Berlin.-Family:Berzarin was born the son of a pipefitter and a seamstress...
, Soviet commandant of BerlinBerlinBerlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
is often claimed to have been assassinated by Werwolfs, but actually died in a motorcycle accident on June 16, 1945. - The Werwolf propagandaPropagandaPropaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
station "Radio Werwolf" (which actually broadcast from Nauen near Berlin during April 1945), also claimed responsibility for the assassination of Major General Maurice RoseMaurice RoseGeneral Maurice Rose was a United States Army general during World War II and World War I veteran. The son and grandson of rabbis, General Rose was at the time the highest ranking Jew in the U.S. Army...
, commander of the US 3rd Armored Division on 30 March 1945, who was in reality killed in action by regular troops on 31 March. - On 31 July 1945 an ammunition dump in Ústí nad LabemÚstí nad LabemÚstí nad Labem is a city of the Czech Republic, in the Ústí nad Labem Region. The city is the 7th-most populous in the country.Ústí is situated in a mountainous district at the confluence of the Bílina and the Elbe Rivers, and, besides being an active river port, is an important railway junction...
(Aussig an der Elbe), a largely ethnic German city in northern Bohemia ("SudetenlandSudetenlandSudetenland is the German name used in English in the first half of the 20th century for the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans, specifically the border areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Silesia being within Czechoslovakia.The...
"), exploded, killing 26 or 27 people and injuring dozens. The explosion resulted in the "Ústí massacreÚstí massacreThe Ústí massacre was a lynching of ethnic Germans in Ústí nad Labem , a largely ethnic German city in northern Bohemia shortly after the end of the World War II, on July 31, 1945....
" of ethnic Germans and was blamed on the Werwolf organization. A book published following the 1989 Velvet RevolutionVelvet RevolutionThe Velvet Revolution or Gentle Revolution was a non-violent revolution in Czechoslovakia that took place from November 17 – December 29, 1989...
states that the explosion and massacre was perpetrated by Communists within the Czechoslovak secret services, specifically Bedřich PokornýBedrich PokornýBedřich Pokorný was a Czechoslovak secret service officer.After World War II, during the summer of 1945, he organized persecutions and expulsions of Sudeten Germans, both in the Brünn death march and the Ústí massacre in which hundreds were killed. From 28 January 1951 until 10 November 1956, he...
, leader of the Ministry of Interior's Defensive Intelligence (Obranné zpravodajství) department, as a pretext for the expulsion of GermansExpulsion of Germans after World War IIThe later stages of World War II, and the period after the end of that war, saw the forced migration of millions of German nationals and ethnic Germans from various European states and territories, mostly into the areas which would become post-war Germany and post-war Austria...
from Czechoslovakia.
Allied reprisals
According to Biddiscombe "the threat of Nazi partisan warfare had a generally unhealthy effect on broad issues of policy among the occupying powers. As well, it prompted the development of Draconian reprisal measures that resulted in the destruction of much German property and the deaths of thousands of civilians and soldiers".In the Soviet occupation zone, thousands of youths were arrested as "Werwolfs". Evidently, arrests were arbitrary and in part based on denunciations. The arrested boys were either "shot at dawn" or interned in NKVD special camps
NKVD special camps
NKVD special camps were NKVD-run late and post-World War II internment camps in the Soviet-occupied parts of Germany and areas east of the Oder-Neisse line. The short-lived camps east of the line were subsequently transferred to the Soviet occupation zone, where they were set up by the Soviet...
. On 22 June 1945, Deputy Commissar of the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
Ivan Serov
Ivan Serov
State Security General Ivan Aleksandrovich Serov was a prominent leader of Soviet security and intelligence agencies, head of the KGB between March 1954 and December 1958, as well as head of the GRU between 1958 and 1963. He was Deputy Commissar of the NKVD under Lavrentiy Beria, and was to play a...
reported to the head of the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was a Georgian Soviet politician and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus under Joseph Stalin during World War II, and Deputy Premier in the postwar years ....
the arrest of "more than 600" alleged Werwolf members, mostly aged 15 to 17 years. The report, though referring to incidents where Soviet units came under fire from the woods, asserts that most of the arrested had not been involved in any action against the Soviets, which Serov explained with interrogation results allegedly showing that the boys had been "waiting" for the right moment and in the meantime focussed on attracting new members. In October 1945, Beria reported to Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
the "liquidation" of 359 alleged Werwolf groups. Of those, 92 groups with 1.192 members were "liquidated" in Saxony alone. On 5 August 1946, Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
minister for internal affairs Sergei Nikiforovich Kruglov reported that in the Soviet occupation zone, 332 "terrorist diversion groups and underground organizations" had been disclosed and "liquidated". A total of about 10,000 minors was interned in NKVD special camps
NKVD special camps
NKVD special camps were NKVD-run late and post-World War II internment camps in the Soviet-occupied parts of Germany and areas east of the Oder-Neisse line. The short-lived camps east of the line were subsequently transferred to the Soviet occupation zone, where they were set up by the Soviet...
, half of whom did not return. Parents as well as the East German administration and political parties, installed by the Soviets, were denied any information on the whereabouts of the arrested youths. The Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
's torching of Demmin
Demmin
Demmin is a town in the Mecklenburgische Seenplatte district, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany. It was the capital of the former district Demmin.- Name :...
, which resulted in the suicide of hundreds of people
Mass suicide in Demmin
On May 1, 1945, hundreds of people committed mass suicide in the town of Demmin, in the Province of Pomerania , Germany. The suicides occurred during a mass panic that was provoked by atrocities committed by soldiers of the Soviet Red Army, who had sacked the town the day before...
, was blamed on alleged preceding Werwolf activities by the East German regime.
Eisenhower believed he would be faced with extensive guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...
, based on the Alpine Redoubt. The fear of Werwolf activity believed to be mustering around Berchtesgaden
Berchtesgaden
Berchtesgaden is a municipality in the German Bavarian Alps. It is located in the south district of Berchtesgadener Land in Bavaria, near the border with Austria, some 30 km south of Salzburg and 180 km southeast of Munich...
in the Alps
Alps
The Alps is one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany to France in the west....
also led to the switch in U.S. operational targets in the middle of March 1945 away from the drive towards Berlin and instead shifted the thrust towards the south and on linking up with the Russians first. An intelligence report stated "We should...be prepared to undertake operations in Southern Germany in order to overcome rapidly any organised resistance by the German Armed Forces or by guerrilla movements which may have retreated to the inner zone and to this redoubt" On March 31 Eisenhower told Roosevelt, "I am hopeful of launching operations that should partially prevent a guerrilla control of any large area such as the southern mountain bastions".
Eisenhower had previously also requested that the occupation directive JCS 1067 not make him responsible for maintaining living conditions in Germany under the expected circumstances; "..probably guerrilla fighting and possibly even civil war
Civil war
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same nation state or republic, or, less commonly, between two countries created from a formerly-united nation state....
in certain districts... If conditions in Germany turn out as described, it will be utterly impossible effectively to control or save the economic structure of the country .. and we feel we should not assume the responsibility for its support and control." The British were "mortified by such a suggestion", but the War Department took considerable account of Eisenhower's wishes.
In April 1945 Churchill announced that the Allies would incarcerate all captured German officers for as long as a guerrilla threat existed. Hundreds of thousands of German last-ditch troops were kept in the makeshift Rheinwiesenlager
Rheinwiesenlager
The Rheinwiesenlager , official name Prisoner of War Temporary Enclosures , were a group of about 19 transit camps for holding about one million German POWs after World War II from spring until late summer 1945...
for months, "mainly to prevent Werwolf activity". In addition to these captives the civilian detainees held by the U.S. alone climbed from 1000 in late March to 30,000 in late June, and more than 100,000 by the end of 1945. Also in the camps for civilians were the conditions often poor.
Prior to the occupation SHAEF investigated the retaliation techniques the Germans had used in order to maintain control over occupied territories since they felt the Germans had had good success. Directives were loosely defined and implementation of retaliation was largely left to the preferences of the various armies, with the British seeming uncomfortable with those involving bloodshed. Rear-Admiral H.T. Baillie Grohman for example stated that killing hostages was "not in accordance with our usual methods". Thanks to feelings such as this, and relative light guerrilla activity in their area, relatively few reprisals took place in the UK zone of operations. In April 1945 General Eisenhower ordered that all partisans were to be shot. As a consequence, some war crime
War crime
War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict giving rise to individual criminal responsibility...
s (summary execution
Summary execution
A summary execution is a variety of execution in which a person is killed on the spot without trial or after a show trial. Summary executions have been practiced by the police, military, and paramilitary organizations and are associated with guerrilla warfare, counter-insurgency, terrorism, and...
s without trial and the like) followed.
Contrary to Section IV of the Hague Convention of 1907, "The Laws and Customs of War on Land", the SHAEF "counter insurgency manual" included provisions for forced labour and hostage taking.
- At SeedorfSeedorfSeedorf may refer to:*places in Switzerland:**Seedorf, Berne, a municipality in the Canton of Berne**Seedorf, Uri, a municipality in the Canton of Uri**Seedorf, Fribourg, a place in the municipality of Noréaz in the canton of Fribourg...
British forces randomly selected and burned 2 cottages on April 21. - At the town of SogelSögelSamtgemeinde Sögel is a Samtgemeinde in the district Emsland in Lower Saxony, Germany.The following towns are situated in Sögel:...
the Canadian First Army evacuated the civilians from the city center whereupon it was systematically demolished. - In 1945, it is believed that Canadian forces set civilian houses and a church on fire in reprisal for the death of the unit's commanding officer in battle. Maj.-Gen. Christopher VokesChristopher VokesMajor General Christopher Vokes CB, CBE, DSO, CD was a Canadian soldier.-Family:Born in Armagh, Ireland, the son of a British officer, Major Frederick Patrick Vokes and Elizabeth Vokes, who came to Canada in 1910. Major Frederick Patrick Vokes was the engineering officer at the Royal Military...
, commanding the 4th Canadian (Armoured) Division4th Canadian (Armoured) DivisionThe 4th Canadian Division was created by the conversion of the 4th Canadian Infantry Division at the beginning of 1942 in Canada. The division proceeded overseas in 1942, with its two main convoys reaching the United Kingdom in August and October....
ordered the town to be destroyed. "We used the rubble to make traversable roads for our tanks," Vokes wrote later. - Unless the citizens of the city of Stuppach within 3 hours produced the German officer that the U.S. forces believed was hiding there they were informed that: all male inhabitants would be shot, women and children expelled to the surrounding wilderness and the city razed.
- U.S. combat troops destroyed the town of BruchsalBruchsalBruchsal is a city at the western edge of the Kraichgau, approximately 20 km northeast of Karlsruhe in the state of Baden-Württemberg, Germany...
in retaliation for SS activities. - French forces expelled more than 25,000 civilians from their homes. Some of them were then forced to clear minefields in AlsaceAlsaceAlsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...
. - The city of LichtentalLichtentalLichtental is a part of the district of Alsergrund, Vienna. It was an independent municipality until 1850.- Notable people :* Hans-Adam I, Prince of Liechtenstein lived here.* Caterina Cavalieri , opera singer, was born here....
was pillaged by the French. - Jarmin was demolished by Soviet troops.
- At the town of Schivelbein all men were shot and all women and girls raped by Soviet troops.
The German resistance movement was successfully suppressed in 1945.
However, collective punishment for acts of resistance, such as fines and curfews, was still being imposed as late as 1948.
Biddiscombe estimates the total death toll as a direct result of Werewolf actions and the resulting reprisals as 3,000–5,000.
Within Germany
From 1946 onward Allied intelligence officials noted resistance activities by an organisation which had appropriated the name of the anti-Nazi resistance group, the Edelweiss Piraten (Edelweiss PiratesEdelweiss Pirates
The Edelweiss Pirates were a loose group of youth culture in Nazi Germany. They emerged in western Germany out of the German Youth Movement of the late 1930s in response to the strict regimentation of the Hitler Youth...
). The group was reported to be composed mainly of former members and officers of Hitler Youth
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
units, ex-soldiers and drifters, and was described by an intelligence report as "a sentimental, adventurous, and romantically anti-social [movement]". It was regarded as a more serious menace to order than the Werwolf by US officials.
A raid in March 1946 captured 80 former German officers who were members, and who possessed a list of 400 persons to be liquidated, including Wilhelm Hoegner
Wilhelm Hoegner
Wilhelm Hoegner was the second Bavarian prime minister after World War II and father of the Bavarian constitution. He has been the only Social Democrat to hold this office....
, the prime minister of Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
. Further members of the group were seized with caches of ammunition and even anti-tank rockets. In late 1946 reports of activities gradually died away.
Outside Germany
Although not connected with Werwolf in any way, there was some sporadic armed resistance and sabotage in the years immediately after the war carried out by ethnic Germans in the Soviet-controlled territories of western PolandPoland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
and Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
. These activities were virtually unknown to the Western Allies, primarily because they were kept out of the official news channels by Soviet censors. These actions, however, are more correctly to be understood as resistance to the brutality of Soviet occupation and reprisals (for example, many ethnic Germans in eastern Europe were forcibly deported to Siberia as slave laborers
Expulsion of Germans after World War II
The later stages of World War II, and the period after the end of that war, saw the forced migration of millions of German nationals and ethnic Germans from various European states and territories, mostly into the areas which would become post-war Germany and post-war Austria...
, from where few would ever return alive), rather than as an effort to resurrect the aims of the Nazi regime.
Also similar to Werwolf were the Forest Brothers
Forest Brothers
The Forest Brothers were Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian partisans who waged a guerrilla war against Soviet rule during the Soviet invasion and occupation of the three Baltic states during, and after, World War II...
of Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
, Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
and Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
, who continued to wage armed guerrilla resistance against the Soviet occupation of their nations from the end of the Second World War until as late as 1957. Although few Forest Brothers were of German ethnicity, many of them had originally served in military units which had been allied with the Third Reich. As with the resistance movement among ethnic Germans in eastern Europe, however, the Forest Brothers were only interested in the liberation of their lands from Soviet rule, rather than any kind of attempted resurrection of Nazi war aims.
In American politics
The history of Werwolf was compared to the Iraqi insurgencyIraqi insurgency
The Iraqi Resistance is composed of a diverse mix of militias, foreign fighters, all-Iraqi units or mixtures opposing the United States-led multinational force in Iraq and the post-2003 Iraqi government...
by the Bush Administration
George W. Bush administration
The presidency of George W. Bush began on January 20, 2001, when he was inaugurated as the 43rd President of the United States of America. The oldest son of former president George H. W. Bush, George W...
and other Iraq War supporters. In speeches given on August 25, 2003 to the Veterans of Foreign Wars
Veterans of Foreign Wars
The Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States is a congressionally chartered war veterans organization in the United States. Headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, VFW currently has 1.5 million members belonging to 7,644 posts, and is the largest American organization of combat...
by National Security Adviser
National Security Advisor (United States)
The Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, commonly referred to as the National Security Advisor , serves as the chief advisor to the President of the United States on national security issues...
Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice is an American political scientist and diplomat. She served as the 66th United States Secretary of State, and was the second person to hold that office in the administration of President George W. Bush...
and Secretary of Defence
United States Secretary of Defense
The Secretary of Defense is the head and chief executive officer of the Department of Defense of the United States of America. This position corresponds to what is generally known as a Defense Minister in other countries...
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Henry Rumsfeld is an American politician and businessman. Rumsfeld served as the 13th Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford, and as the 21st Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He is both the youngest and the oldest person to...
parallels were drawn between the problems faced by the coalition's occupation forces in Iraq to those encountered by occupation forces in post-World War II Germany, asserting that the Iraqi insurgency would ultimately prove to be as futile in realizing its objectives as had the Werwolves.
Former National Security Council
United States National Security Council
The White House National Security Council in the United States is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the Executive Office of the...
staffer Daniel Benjamin
Daniel Benjamin
Ambassador-at-large Daniel Benjamin is the coordinator for counterterrorism at the United States Department of State appointed by Secretary Clinton.-Life:He was a 1983 Marshall Scholar at New College, Oxford where he studied for BA in PPE....
published a riposte in Slate magazine on August 29, 2003, entitled "Condi’s Phony History: Sorry, Dr. Rice, postwar Germany was nothing like Iraq" in which he took Rice and Rumsfeld to task for mentioning the Werwolf, writing that the reality of postwar Germany bore no resemblance to the occupation of Iraq, and made reference to Anthony Beevor's The Fall of Berlin 1945 and the US Army's official history, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany 1944-1946, where the Werwolf were only mentioned twice in passing. This did not prevent his political opponents from disagreeing with him, using Biddiscombe's book as a source.
Given the events that came to pass after the Bush Administration's comparison, the most striking difference is the fact that in Iraq, many more (over twenty times as many) coalition soldiers were killed in combat after victory had been declared by President Bush on 1 May 2003 than had been killed during the initial invasion. In Germany, not a single Allied soldier was ever proven to have been killed as a result of hostile action after the German surrender on 8 May 1945. Another is that Biddiscombe maintains that what little resistance to the occupation there was in Germany had evaporated within two to four years after the end of the war, while widespread violent opposition to the occupation of Iraq and its new government has continued (as of this writing) for more than eight years after the invasion.
In popular culture
- In the mangaMangaManga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
Hellsing, a secret British organisation fights against a Nazi battalionBattalionA battalion is a military unit of around 300–1,200 soldiers usually consisting of between two and seven companies and typically commanded by either a Lieutenant Colonel or a Colonel...
based in BrazilBrazilBrazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
. It moved there during the last months of the war and some of its officers are referred as being Werwölfe. - In the 1991 Lars von TrierLars von TrierLars von Trier is a Danish film director and screenwriter. He is closely associated with the Dogme 95 collective, although his own films have taken a variety of different approaches, and have frequently received strongly divided critical opinion....
film, Europa (released in North America as Zentropa), Werwolf terrorist plots months after the end of the war play a prominent role in the story. Here, Werwolf is shown as not only surviving the war, but of having been a genuine threat to the occupation. One of their attacks is a highly fictionalized version of the assassination of Dr. Franz OppenhoffFranz OppenhoffFranz Oppenhoff was a German lawyer who was appointed Mayor of the city of Aachen by Allied forces and subsequently murdered on the order of Heinrich Himmler.-Biography:...
(named Ravenstein in the film). - The 1958 film When Hell Broke LooseWhen Hell Broke LooseWhen Hell Broke Loose is a World War II war film starring Charles Bronson, directed by Kenneth G. Crane and co-written by Ib Melchior.- Plot :Steve Boland is a cynical minor criminal drafted into the US Army during World War II...
depicts a Werwolf group stopped by Charles BronsonCharles BronsonCharles Bronson , born Charles Dennis Buchinsky was an American actor, best-known for such films as Once Upon a Time in the West, The Magnificent Seven, The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, Rider on the Rain, The Mechanic, and the popular Death Wish series...
. - In the French comic book "Anton Six" (José Louis Bocquet/Arno) the U.S Secret Service sent an agent to meet Werwolf soldiers in Ukraine which possessed information about Stalin and the Red Army.
- In the James BondJames BondJames Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
novel Moonraker, the villain Hugo DraxHugo DraxSir Hugo Drax is a fictional character created by author Ian Fleming for the James Bond novel Moonraker. Fleming named him after his friend, Sir Reginald Drax. For the later film and its novelization, Drax was largely transformed by screenwriter Christopher Wood. In the film, Drax is portrayed by...
is described as having been part of a Werwolf operation behind Allied lines during World War II. - The 2008 alternate history novel The Man with the Iron HeartThe Man with the Iron HeartThe Man with the Iron Heart is an alternate history novel by Harry Turtledove. Published in 2008, it takes as its premise the survival by Reinhard Heydrich of his 1942 assassination in Czechoslovakia and his subsequent leadership of the postwar Werwolf insurgency in occupied Germany, which...
by Harry TurtledoveHarry TurtledoveHarry Norman Turtledove is an American novelist, who has produced works in several genres including alternate history, historical fiction, fantasy and science fiction.- Life :...
is premised on the idea of a successful Werwolf insurgency led by Reinhard HeydrichReinhard HeydrichReinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich , also known as The Hangman, was a high-ranking German Nazi official.He was SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia...
. - In the 1947 novel 'Gimlet Mops Up' by W.E. Johns, GimletCaptain Lorrington "Gimlet" KingCaptain Lorrington "Gimlet" King, is a character created by the British author, W.E. Johns, best known as the creator of Biggles and Worrals.The books which were published during and after World War II, are about the adventures of explorer-soldier "Gimlet" King, and his intrepid band of followers...
uncovers a Werwolf cell operating in Britain, attempting to assassinate high profile members of the British Armed forces for 'War Crimes'. In this story the Nazis wear werewolf masks to hide their identity. - In the US television series 'True BloodTrue BloodTrue Blood is an American television series created and produced by Alan Ball. It is based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels by Charlaine Harris, detailing the co-existence of vampires and humans in Bon Temps, a fictional, small town in the state of Louisiana...
,' Werwolf is depicted as being comprised of actual werewolves.
See also
- Forest BrothersForest BrothersThe Forest Brothers were Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian partisans who waged a guerrilla war against Soviet rule during the Soviet invasion and occupation of the three Baltic states during, and after, World War II...
, the post-war resistance movement in EstoniaEstoniaEstonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
. - Latvian national partisansLatvian national partisansLatvian national partisans were the Latvian national partisans who waged guerrilla warfare against Soviet rule.- Aftermath of World War I :...
, the post-war resistance movement in LatviaLatviaLatvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
. - Lithuanian partisansLithuanian partisansThe Lithuanian partisans can refer to various irregular military units in different historical periods active in Lithuania against foreign invaders and occupiers:...
, the post-war resistance movement in LithuaniaLithuaniaLithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
. - The Alpine National RedoubtNational RedoubtA national redoubt is a general term for an area to which the forces of a nation can be withdrawn if the main battle has been lost—or even beforehand if defeat is considered inevitable...
of Germany - Japanese holdoutJapanese holdoutJapanese holdouts or stragglers were Japanese soldiers in the Pacific Theatre who, after the August 1945 surrender of Japan that marked the end of World War II, either adamantly doubted the veracity of the formal surrender due to strong dogmatic or militaristic principles, or were not aware of it...
- ODESSAODESSAThe ODESSA, from the German Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen, meaning “Organization of Former SS Members,” is believed to have been an international Nazi network set up toward the end of World War II by a group of SS officers...
- Operation GladioOperation GladioOperation Gladio is the codename for a clandestine NATO "stay-behind" operation in Italy after World War II. Its purpose was to continue anti-communist actions in the event of a shift to a Communist party led government...
- Operation PaperclipOperation PaperclipOperation Paperclip was the Office of Strategic Services program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the United States in the aftermath of World War II...
- Operation UnthinkableOperation UnthinkableOperation Unthinkable was a British plan to attack the Soviet Union. The creation of the plan was ordered by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1945 and developed by the British Armed Forces' Joint Planning Staff at the end of World War II in Europe.-Offensive operations:The initial...
- Stille HilfeStille HilfeDie Stille Hilfe für Kriegsgefangene und Internierte abbreviated Stille Hilfe is a relief organization for arrested, condemned and fugitive SS members, similar to the veterans' association, set up by Helene Elizabeth Princess von Isenburg in 1951...
- HIAGHIAGHilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit der Angehörigen der ehemaligen Waffen-SS was an organization founded in 1951 by former members of the Waffen-SS....
- Ratlines (history)Ratlines (history)Ratlines were a system of escape routes for Nazis and other fascists fleeing Europe at the end of World War II. These escape routes mainly led toward havens in South America, particularly Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile. Other destinations included the United States and perhaps...
Further reading
- Hellmuth Auerbach, 'Die Organisation des "Werwolf"'
- Arno Rose, Werwolf, 1944–1945
- Klaus-Dietmar Henke, Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands
- Charles Whiting, Hitler's Werewolves
- James Lucas, Kommando (part 4)
External links
- Review of Werwolf! The History of the National Socialist Guerrilla Movement, 1944–1946 Canadian Journal of History, Dec 1999 by Lawrence D Stokes