Theories as to why there was no postwar German resistance

[Sid Guttridge]

The essential answer is that Germany had been so thoroughly beaten by 1945 that there was no popular stomach for more.

Without popular support an insurgency is, to adapt Mao's famous phrase, "like a fish with no sea to swim in".

[UMachine]

The essential answer is that the population knew that the food supply could be choked off at any time.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Umachine,

So, you are saying that with a guaranteed food supply there would still have been the stomach for a fight?

It wasn't merely lack of food that finished the Reich in 1945. It was total defeat.

I appreciate that Nazism wasn't yet as discredited in the mind of much of the the wartime generation as it later became, but it was still not a cause likely to motivate many to die for after 1945. Certainly the Werewolf organization designed specifically to carry on resistance proved a damp squib, so it seems unlikely that the bulk of the rest of the population, which hadn't been primed for this task, was going to resist even with full bellies!

[phylo_roadking]

However...

Certainly the Werewolf organization designed specifically to carry on resistance proved a damp squib, so it seems unlikely that the bulk of the rest of the population, which hadn't been primed for this task, was going to resist even with full bellies!

...was the Werwolf organistation intended by its creators for mass uprising and discontent?

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Phylo,

Not as far as I am aware.

It was a supposedly a highly motvated organization which had a much more limited brief and yet couldn't mount more than occasional pinprick attacks.

The general population were not as motivated as Werewolf supposedly was, so there is even less likelihood of a mass uprising.

[UMachine]

Hi Umachine,

So, you are saying that with a guaranteed food supply there would still have been the stomach for a fight?
No,I agree that they were a defeated bunch,the food situation just reminded them that things could get worse.

It wasn't merely lack of food that finished the Reich in 1945. It was total defeat.

I appreciate that Nazism wasn't yet as discredited in the mind of much of the the wartime generation as it later became, but it was still not a cause likely to motivate many to die for after 1945. Certainly the Werewolf organization designed specifically to carry on resistance proved a damp squib, so it seems unlikely that the bulk of the rest of the population, which hadn't been primed for this task, was going to resist even with full bellies!

[CJK1990]

Another reason I thought of is that the allied anger at Germany was so great that Germans knew the Allies would adopt extreme reprisals (mass executions, liquidation of all industry, enforced famine, deportations) if they dared to resist.

[nobodyofnote]

It would be hard to motivate the general population to resist, particularly with the knowledge that the Allies had the atom bomb and you had no Luftwaffe and no Luftschutz to prevent it happening on German soil.

[Arto O]

Hi,
To my opinion everybody was just SO tired of the war, starting from front line soldiers, to civilians and Hitlerjugend and Volksturm(the air bombings).
Arto

[Sid Guttridge]

SO tired..... and thoroughly beaten.

[michael mills]

The essential reason for the lack of any post-war German resistance was that there was no hope of any outside support.

The only anti-German resistance movements that survived, let alone had any sort of success, were those that received Allied support in the form of supplies of weapons and materiel, and also trained leaders and liaison personnel.

For example, Tito's partisans in Yugoslavia only began to fight successfull once Britain had switched its support to him and away from Mihailovic's forces, which withered away as a result.

Although there was no organised armed resistance against the Allies in occupied Germany, there was a degree of non-violent resistance, in the form of strikes, demonstrations, economic sabotage etc.

Such resistance was usually the result of rivalry between the Western Allies and the Soviet occupiers, with each side stirring up Germans in the others side's zone to various measures of political resistance. For example, the Soviet occupation authorities, working through the German Communist Party (KPD), which had been legalised in all occupation zones, instigated strikes and demonstrations in the British Zone, which forced the British authorities to halt the export of coal from the Ruhr.

On the other side, the US authorities, working through the German Socialist Party (SPD), which was also legal in all zones, encouraged resistance to the Soviet attempts to create a pro-Communist unified German state.

[RST]

Resistance for what exactly?
After the shock of the second wave of Russians even the Western Allied were forgiven for their war crime of carpet bombing which served no other purpose than terrorising the German civilians.
The initial Russian Soldiers, who never bombed German civilians, where welcomed "Heroes/Liberators" in the East. It was their replacement, a short while later, which hadn't fought, which now was raping and stealing what was left.
By the time the West Allied arrived they were the ones every German was looking up to.
They were there to help and rebuild. So life was getting better quickly now also in the parts where the Russians handed over captured territory to the West Allied Forces.
German Civilians in the East already knew about the instant improvements to everyday civilian life once the West-Allied had liberated your town.

The so called Volkssturm of Pensioners and School Children, they only were bullied into this. By then Nazis were executing anyone they disliked or who dared not to jump. There were no court it was instant justice to spread fear amongst those watching.
You imagine what this would do to your children and parents while you their only help are somewhere if at all. With the State and Political system which is suppose to protect you actually killing you at will and for no reason.
Hence the arriving foreign tropes being automatically forced into this protector role.

Resistance comes from within. There was no within. Everybody was in the same boat, which floated a little higher every day. If somebody would have mentioned resistance they just would have told him to go away, find a big hole and bury himself as by example of the other nazi coward leadership.

I am not sure why Americans expected something similar to be in Iraq. There is no key-point comparison between Hussein and Hitler.
A similar situation to the one in Germany after the war would have been in Cambodia, but it was the Vietnamese army who put an end to that "Little Hitler" there. From what I remember with very little resistance from even the ruling party, never mind the Cambodian people.

[waldzee]

No postwar German resistance is actually a myth. Professor Biddiscombe has done several excellent studies regarding post-war German resistance, namely in his three books;







You be surprised that some of the SD radio stations were operational until the autumn of 1945 and these were actually taken over operationally by the Allied intelligence services such as the American OSS while the American CIC were looking for them! (in fact, the SD foreign intelligence as the Abwehr intelligence officers such as Schellenberg and Gehlen had the foresight to know that Germany had lost the war by 1944 and begin to orientate towards preserving their network contacts and handling them to the Allies in order to continue the struggle against the Soviets after Germany's surrender)

Indirect resistance such railway gauge sabotage, wire-cutting, damaging manufacturing equipment were also conducted by some Germans particular in the Soviet sector but as usual, the Soviet response is to unleash fire and steel against those who were caught. German stragglers and deserters still hiding out in the East, continued to take pot-shots and conducted small scale ambushes against the Red Army and it is reported that it continued until 1946 especially at the forests of East Prussia.

Such incidents were hardly reported in the mainstream press due to Allied strategy go not giving any major coverage to postwar German resistance action but a lot of after-action and intelligence reports (that were classified at that time) by the Allied units (which is true for the western Allies as their archives relating to German postwar resistance has been declassified, however the files of the NKVD/KGB are still restricted until today) shows that the German resistance was a reality

In fact, Konrad Adenauer's West German government continued to tried to circumvent the social/economic/military restrictions imposed upon it by the Allied Control Council and this could be seen as a type of resistance even until the end of 1950s.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I believe you nailed it with your last paragraph!
For all his wayward ways- 'Der Ault" was probably the greatest German leader Since Arminius rallied the resistance boys- at Teutonburger Wald..
Showing up in Israel in 1962 with Marlene Dietrich in tow was , perhaps the coup of the postwar ...
That is BTW, one excelllent analysis, Panzermahn

[MAJ T]

Jan:

The sufferings of the first war weren't enough to deter the waging of the second war.

While the average German might not have had much say in the starting of the Second, there was very wide spread support of the it until things went bad. They may have been victims, but were very supportive victims until the end.

Tom

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Waldzee,

Examining the text you posted of Panzermahn's doesn't leave the impression of much resistance: "Indirect......", "pot-shots.....", "small scale ambushes....", "tried to circumvent.....restrictions.....".

The most serious of the above (the pot-shots and small scale ambushes) seem to have been a short-lived feature of only the quarter of Germany occupied by the USSR. Yet even this was no Yugoslav Partisan movement, which inflicted tens of thousands of casualties on the German forces alone.

In the western three-quarters of Germany it seems more akin to the Danish wartime experience, which was usually more by way of civil disobedience.

Cheers,

Sid.