Werwolf
There is some argument that the plan, and subsequent reports of guerrilla activities, were created by Joseph Goebbels through propaganda disseminated in the waning weeks of the war through his "Radio Werwolf", something that was not connected in any way with the military unit.
[3] Set in the Celle region (Lower Saxony) during the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), the novel concerns a peasant named Harm Wulf.
As initially conceived, these Werwolf units were intended to be legitimate uniformed military or paramilitary[7] formations trained to engage in clandestine operations behind enemy lines in the same manner as Allied Special Forces such as Commandos.
[8] They were never intended to act outside of the control of the German High Command (OKW), or to fight in civilian clothes, and they expected to be treated as soldiers if they were captured.
The 27 January 1945 issue of Collier's Weekly featured a detailed article by Major Edwin Lessner, stating that elite SS and Hitler Youth were being trained to attack Allied forces and opening with a 1944 quote from Joseph Goebbels: "The enemy (invading German territory) will be taken in the rear by the fanatical population, which will ceaselessly worry him, tie down strong forces and allow him no rest or exploitation of any possible success.
"[13] Every Bolshevik, every Englishman, every American on our soil must be a target for our movement ... Any German, whatever his profession or class, who puts himself at the service of the enemy and collaborates with him will feel the effect of our avenging hand ... A single motto remains for us: 'Conquer or die.'
Trevor-Roper assesses Goebbels' Radio Werwolf as propagating "an ideological nihilism" which was not consonant with the limited aims of the actual unit.
[7] British and American newspapers widely reported the text of Radio Werwolf broadcasts, fueling rumors among occupation forces.
Using an alleged link with the group as cover they were able to reroute a train of "refugees" (Belgian and French Nazi collaborators running away from justice) from Innsbruck back to Switzerland and then Brussels.
[citation needed] However, as it became clear that the reputedly impregnable Alpine Fortress, from which operations were to be directed by the Nazi leadership if the rest of Germany was occupied, was yet another delusion, Werwolf was converted into a terrorist organisation in the last few weeks of the war.
[19] 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.
[21] On 28 April 1945 Staff Sergeant Ib Melchior of the US Counter-Intelligence Corps captured six German officers and 25 enlisted men dressed in civilian clothes, who claimed to constitute a Werwolf cell under the command of Colonel Paul Krüger, operating in Schönsee, Bavaria.
The group was captured while hiding in a tunnel network which contained communications equipment, weapons, explosives and several months' food supplies.
"[25]The following day a CIC unit led by Captain Oscar M. Grimes of the 97th Infantry Division captured about two hundred Gestapo officers and men in hiding near Hof, Bavaria.
According to a study by former ambassador James Dobbins and a team of RAND Corporation researchers, there were no American combat casualties after the German surrender.
"[31]Historian Richard Bessel concurs that "'Werewolf' resistance to Allied occupation never really materialized," noting one exception in the form of the assassination of the American-installed mayor of Aachen, Franz Oppenhoff, on 28 March 1945.
However, he characterizes German post-surrender resistance as "minor",[34] and calls the post-war Werwolfs "desperadoes"[35] and "fanatics living in forest huts".
[36] He further cites U.S. Army intelligence reports that characterized Nazi partisans as "nomad bands"[37] and judged them as less serious threats than attacks by foreign slave laborers[38] and considered their sabotage and subversive activities to be insignificant.
[39] 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.
[9] Nevertheless, says Biddiscombe, "The Werewolves were no bit players";[41] they caused tens of millions of dollars of property damage at a time when the European economies were in an already desperate state, and were responsible for the killing of thousands of people.
[41] A number of instances of resistance have been attributed to Werwolf activity: 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".
[52] Ian Kershaw states that fear of Werwolf activities may have motivated atrocities against German civilians by Allied troops during and immediately after the war.
[57] 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.
[52] 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.
[62] 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".
[62] 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".
[62] 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 ...
[65] Directives were loosely defined and implementation of reprisal was largely left to the preferences of the various armies, with the British seeming uncomfortable with those involving bloodshed.
[16] 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.
