Wehrwolf: German resistance to the Allied occupation

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Tchort
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Wehrwolves

#1

Post by Tchort » 06 Apr 2002, 19:32

Does anyone have any good online sources for info on the Wehrwolves? More specifically, any info on their activities after 1945?

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Matt Gibbs
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Operation werewolf

#2

Post by Matt Gibbs » 06 Apr 2002, 20:35

I haven't seen many sites which go into any detail about the so called oepration werewolf because detaisl are so sketchy. From what I have read i don't believe that there was a great deal of werewolf activity because the planning which was put in was too little too late and half of what I have read indicates that at the end it wasn't much more use than a propaganda tool. The appointed co-ordinator of Werewolf HSSPf Hans Prutzmann ended up retreating with Himmler in the last days of the reich wheras someone with a big job to do would have been there co ordinating it I would have thought...? Beyond a few small actions by members of the hitler youth and the killing of a few so called traitorous officials who collaborated with the allies I don't recall reading much apart from the killing of a town mayor which was used as a propaganda effort on Radio Werewolf. I'd like to know more about it myself!
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Marcus
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#3

Post by Marcus » 06 Apr 2002, 20:42

The Werwolf Organization
by Russ Folsom

The Werwolf Organization's assassination of the Allied appointed Burgomeister of Aachen, Dr.Franz Oppenhoff in March of 1945, is probably the best known and most widely publicized exploit of this hapless band of politically indoctrinated youngsters who hailed for the most part from the ranks of the Hitlerjugend and the Bund Deutscher Maedel. Charles Whiting (aka Leo Kessler) wrote a book named "Werwolf" (recently re-printed) which details this very same mission, called "Unternehmen Karneval" (Operation Carnival). The leader of the assassination team was a veteran of the German Army's famous "Brandenburg" infiltration-specialist formation, named Herbert Wenzel, who had transferred to Otto Skorzeny's "SS-Jagdverband Friedenthal" and who, at the time of the operation, held the rank of SS-Untersturmfuhrer (2nd Lieutenant.)

According to a number of sources, the idea for a Werwolf Organization originated in the fall of 1944 at a meeting attended by Reichsfuhrer-SS Himmler, Artur Axmann (HJ Jugendfuhrer), SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Hans-Adolf Prutzmann, RSHA chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and Waffen-SS Obsturmbannfuhrer Otto Skorzeny. At the meeting in Hohenlychen, Himmler appointed Prutzmann as plenipotentary in charge of the recruiting and training of Werwolf agents from skilled specialists in weapons and communications from among the armed forces and HJ, who would then be trained beneath the aegis of Skorzeny's SS-Jagdverband (Hunting-teams).

Once trained in sabotage and varying forms of deadly mischief, teams of these Werwolf Kommandos, comprised mostly of HJ volunteers, but commanded by older, battle-experienced hand-picked cadre from the German Army and Waffen-SS, would operate behind the enemy lines as guerrillas, creating deadly mishap amongst the occupying forces, and relaying useful intelligence to a central Armed Forces entity (Supposedly in un-occupied territory).

Training took place at the Schloss Hulchrath, near the small Rhenish town of Erkelenz. The castle was at the time the HQ of the HSSPF-West, Karl Gutenberger. Here Prutzmann set up his Werwolf Staff HQ. The first 200 trainees from the HJ arrived in late November and began their Werwolf training under the guise of W-SS volunteers. They were instructed in small-arms and demolitions skills, radio-communications, map-reading, and survival skills by instructors from Skorzeny's Jagdverband, experts from the Army, and agents of the SD and Gestapo. They were taught to sabotage vehicles and communications facilities, to poison wells and food supplies - large quantities of arsenic were issued to some squads. When recruits from the HJ or BDM arrived, most had already had preliminary training with rifles, pistols, and panzerfaust. Prutzmann's staff set up other training centers in the Berlin suburbs, and in the so-called area of the Alpine Redoubt in Bavaria.

Underground bunkers or dens in the Eifel and Bavaria were reserved for Werwolf squads, where food, munitions and other logistics were to be hidden before Allied units overran them. The Werwolf would operate at night, harrassing and sabotaging, and resurface by day and mix with the civil population in thier area of operations protected by false passes and papers supplied by the Gestapo. This at least, was the plan. What actually transpired is of course, quite different.

Despite the fanciful-mythological Werwolf name, at the outset of this joint SS-HJ undertaking in late 1944, a real spirit of military organization and discipline permeated the training and operational goals of the Werwolf-organization. The Germans knew well from first hand experience, just how much damage an organized and efficient partisan force could inflict upon an occupying army. The key feature to success in this scenario would of course, have been a solid base of supply and support - (eg. an un-occupied Germany). Fantastic dreams of an Alpine Redoubt re-considered - these Werwolf squads would have been the long-arm of any logistically viable resistance undertaken by a well defended German power-base in a moutain retreat, or Alpenfestung. Of course, as events transpired - there was very little action toward the establishment of an Alpine base of resistance by the Germans at this very late date.

And so, beyond the one efficacious Operation undertaken by a specifically -trained Werwolf hit-team at Aachen in March of 1945, where one might note that the resources of the OKW (A B-17 of KG-200, the Luftwaffe Special Operations), and the SS-Jagdverband were prominently involved; the later sporadic killings and instances of resistance by so-called Werwolf units, were not intended Werwolf operations as instructed by a higher command, but only isolated acts of last-ditch fanatical resisters, and as such cannot really be accredited to Prutzmann's Werwolf staff.

To explain the difference between actual Werwolf organized activity and those incidents attributed to it by the Allied Military authorities is not always an easy task . When Burgomeister Oppenhof was murdered in late March of 1945, Dr. Goebbels and Reichsleiter Martin Bormann (who were both, it might be noted, denizens of the surreal atmosphere of the Fuhrerbunker), saw it as a great propoganda coup, and took it upon themselves to proclaim a nationwide uprising of German youth against the Allied agressor. Goebbels christened the Werwolf-sender or Radio Werwolf with a call to all able-bodied Germans in the Reich and it's occupied areas to "strike the enemy" from behind the lines.

Radio Werwolf promised death to traitors and a direful fate to the Allied invaders. As a propagandistic ploy, it pandered to a fanatical belief in last-ditch resistance - ironically, it also bolstered a belief in the existance of an Alpine Redoubt among the Allied forces. Bormann's role in this farce was that as NSDAP Chief of the Gauleiterung, he believed that he commanded the activities of all Werwolf units originating in any Gau of the Reich. The truth was, in fact, that both Goebbels and Bormann had nothing at all to do with the training, organization, or employment of the Werwolf. As a crony of Himmler, SS-General Preutzmann had very little interest in taking orders from either Goebbels or Bormann. So, as the Allied Armies advanced, and eventually overran his Schloss Hulcrath HQ, in April of 1945, he seconded himself to Himmler's Hohenlychen headquarters in Mecklenberg - at this point, the Werwolf Organization, as a secret behind the lines formation, in effect, ceased to exist.

Despite the lack of direction from a higher headquarters, examples of spurious Werwolf activitiy continued well after the cessation of hostilities:

The former HJ-Gebeitsfuhrer of Mansfeld, now an SS-Sturmbannfuhrer barely recovered from wounds recieved in the battle of Kharkov, organized 600 HJ boys into Battle-Group Harz (Kampfgruppe Harz). They collected W-SS veterans from a military hospital, students from a NAPOLA, remaining members of the Luftwaffe-HJ, and boys from a nearby anti-tank-destruction unit. When the Werwolf Radio proclaimed defiance on April 1, they went into action against American troops. Within twenty days, seventy combatants were left, reduced to fifty shortly thereafter. A desperate attempt to ambush an American supplies convoy was unsuccessful. Most of these starving boys were wiped out by air-raids, when American patrols could not find them. Heinz Petry, sixteen, and Josef Schomer, seventeen, survived until 5 June, when they were tried as spies by American troops and executed.

North of Hamburg, toward the end of April, an entrenched group of Werwolves and their SS commanders refused to surrender to two battalions of the British Eleventh Armored Division. When Admiral Karl Donitz ordered them to lay down their arms on 1 May, they still persisted. A unit of the German 8.Fallshirmjager Division was finally brought in to subdue them. The German Paras found mainly dead bodies scattered around their fortified forest den. On the eastern side of the Elbe, isolated groups of youngsters from the Werwolf center at Berlin-Gatow offered feeble resistance to a swarm of Russian tanks. A few survivors remained hidden in bunkers and were later turned in by angry and hungry civilians, whom the Russian troops rewarded by allowing them to plunder the Werwolf food dumps.

Donitz finally made a proclomation on 5 May over Radios Copenhagen, Flensburg, and Prague: "The fact that at present an armistice reigns means that I must ask every German man and woman to stop any illegal activity in the Werwolf or other such organizations in those territories occupied by the Western Allies because this can only injure our people."

SS-General Hans-Adolf Prutzmann, who had previously been HSSPF of Riechskommisariat-Ukraine, and could expect no quarter from the victorious Allies, committed suicide in May of 1945.
Source: http://www.feldgrau.com/werwolf.html

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A book on the subject is "Werwolf! The History of the National Socialist Guerrilla Movement, 1944-1946" by Perry Biddiscombe.

/Marcus

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Matt Gibbs
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Great!

#4

Post by Matt Gibbs » 07 Apr 2002, 23:01

Thanks Marcus for postig that info, and the book title. Something more to read up on in a spare moment!
Regards :D

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Kaiser
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Werwolf Organisation

#5

Post by Kaiser » 28 Jun 2002, 19:21

In Peter Pdfield's 'Himmler' it mentions quite mattter of factly that Werwolf was actually not a myth like so many say it was;

Himmler had " commisioned his former Highest SSPF Ukraine and HSSPF South Russia, SS-Obergruppenführer Hans Prützmann, to set up a secret organization, Werwolf, to keep National Socialism alive underground if the country were occupied"

Also, I was always under the impression that Himmler was heading to Denmark at the end of the war (which he intially was doing), but;

"On 10 May, he left Haschen and, accompanied by Brandt, Ohlendorf, Professor Gebhardt, Heinz Macher and his military adjutant, Werner Grothmann, set out by car to make his way to Bavaria, thence, according to Stroop, to join those many other SS-Fuhrers who had gone south-east to establish Werwolf in the Alps"

Are there any books the delve deeper into this topic? It sounds like it was a more organized idea that what most people seem to simply dismiss it as a non-starter?

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#6

Post by Lord Gort » 28 Jun 2002, 21:26

I read a little in Antony Beevors book "Berlin". It mentioned kids being given radios etc. But i dont think it was gonna happen. Not in the Prussian military tradition. Honour and all.

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#7

Post by Ken Jasper » 28 Jun 2002, 21:57

See if you can find, "Werwolf, The History of the National Socialist Guerrilla Movement 1944-1946" by Perry Biddiscombe published in 1998 by University of Wales Press.

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Matt Gibbs
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books

#8

Post by Matt Gibbs » 29 Jun 2002, 00:53

In a Raging Inferno by Holztrager also contains a copy of a leaflet given to members of the HJ about Werwolf tactics. In the appendix I believe - can't scan it at the moment...!
Prutzmann seemed to spend only little time on this task from other books detailing his movements etc.

Regards

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Oberst Mihael
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Wehrwolf: German resistance to the Allied occupation

#9

Post by Oberst Mihael » 17 Jan 2003, 16:59

I've heard about Wehrwolf from so many sources, but I still don't know exactly what sort of organisation that was. Can't find anything on the net. Anyone willing to explain it to me?

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Der Schwarze Ritter
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#10

Post by Der Schwarze Ritter » 17 Jan 2003, 21:22

It was an organization of guerilla fighters set up during the last days of ww2.Its leader was SS-Obergruppenfuhrer General Hans Pruetzmann. In the late days of the war the Werewolf issued pamphlets threatening revenge on those who refused to support them. They regarded themselves as a ressistance group similiar to the underground movements in the German-occupied territories and as a paramilitary auxiliary of the Wehrmacht, but the Werewolf never became an effective fighting force.When Adm. Karl Doenitz became Chancellor he ordered all members of the organization to cease operations and the order was obeyed.



-Daniel-

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#11

Post by Erik E » 17 Jan 2003, 21:26

Try searching for Werwolf instead :wink:

Here`s one:

http://pages.prodigy.net/aesir/wer.htm

Erik

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#12

Post by Oberst Mihael » 17 Jan 2003, 21:28

Ooops... :oops:

Thanks! :D

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Marcus
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#13

Post by Marcus » 17 Jan 2003, 22:32

Image
(click the cover)

Try "Werwolf! The History of the National Socialist Guerrilla Movement, 1944-1946" by Perry Biddiscombe.

/Marcus

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#14

Post by alsaco » 17 Jan 2003, 23:36

Der Schwarze Ritter wrote:
Its leader was SS-Obergruppenfuhrer General Hans Pruetzmann
When Adm. Karl Doenitz became Chancellor he ordered all members of the organization to cease operations and the order was obeyed
.


I have allways thought the wehrwolf was in fact just a propaganda tale. Or at the most a dream for disappointed hitlerjugend.

In fact, in all west Germany, no action by any faithful nazi seems to have been reported, even in towns or places where foreign forced labour did commit exactions

I would therefore be very interested to consider these facts in the light of Doenitz order. Could you give the sources you refer to, to help doing this ?.

Thank you.

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#15

Post by Erik E » 17 Jan 2003, 23:48

no action by any faithful nazi seems to have been reported
The killing of the mayor in Aachen was committed by Werwolf units.
During the Nürnberg trials there were a few cases where werwolf units killed both civilians and German soldiers which were making derogatory remarks about Hitler and the German military situation

EE

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