How strong could a Nazi insurgency in Germany/Europe be?

Turtledove wrote a middling novel called "The Man Woth The Iron Jeart", where Heydrich survives his assassination and lays the ground work for a Werewolf insurgency.

It's basically Turtledove transplanting the Iraq insurgency into post-war Germany, complete with the WAllies losing to Homefront to thinly veiled Cindy Sheehan stand ins, and abruptly pulling out of Germany entirely, turning the country over to the USSR because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Oh that's actually rather funny lol! Apologies for any Turtledovesque similarities. To clarify, any German insurgency would of course fail eventually, but I think a moderate insurgency wouldn't be ASB.
 
Why would Switzerland back a Nazi insurgency? Switzerland was democratic republic not a fascist state.

Exactly my point. There is no neighbouring country which could support their insurgency. All others were allied agains Germans or neutral.
 
At absolute maximum, we're talking a couple of scattered and ill-coordinated die hard groups that manage to plant the occasional bomb and/or assassinate the occasional collaborator before they are hunted down and killed by the occupation forces after a few months (at most).

Germany at the end of the war is not the kind of country that is suitable for an insurgency. The general population is simply no longer supportive of the Nazis and thoroughly cowed by the occupying forces which effectively dooms any kind of resistance movement. A certain minimum of popular support is a base perquisite for an insurgency, as the populace is where insurgents get their material support from. Without it, they are doomed.
 
At absolute maximum, we're talking a couple of scattered and ill-coordinated die hard groups that manage to plant the occasional bomb and/or assassinate the occasional collaborator before they are hunted down and killed by the occupation forces after a few months (at most).

Germany at the end of the war is not the kind of country that is suitable for an insurgency. The general population is simply no longer supportive of the Nazis and thoroughly cowed by the occupying forces which effectively dooms any kind of resistance movement. A certain minimum of popular support is a base perquisite for an insurgency, as the populace is where insurgents get their material support from. Without it, they are doomed.

Exactly. On top of that, insurgencies almost always require some kind of foreign benefactor (the Vietnamese had the USSR and the PRC, ISIS/Da'esh has various wealthy patrons, etc). The Nazi's allies were Jack and shit, and Jack had just fled the country.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
It is worth pointing out that the US and British

Operation Werwolf was a scrapped plan for an insurgency in the event that Nazi Germany lost the war, made in winter of 1944. How strong could the resistance movement be? Including Men, women, and children. Any potential?

It is worth pointing out that the US and British were actually successful in defeating insurgencies in the immediate postwar era, as witness the results of the Greek Civil War and the Hukbalahap Insurrection in the Philippines, as well as various anti-guerilla campaigns during the Korea War.

http://fas.org/irp/agency/army/cic-wwii.pdf

and:

http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/us_army_counterinsurgency/index.html

The British, for their part, managed the Malay Emergency and the insurgency in Kenya as well; the counterexample in the immediate postwar years is the conflict in Palestine, bit it can be argued the ultimate result amounted to a Western "victory."

Which raises an interesting point: insurgencies are most easily defeated by a counterinsurgency force recruited from those who know the insurgents the best, and the obvious question is who among the Western Allies in 1946 know the individuals to be expected to be active in a SS-directed insurgency the best?

One might expect the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd battalions of the Palestine Regiment to be extremely useful in such a conflict, along with No 3 (X) Troop of No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando, and the veterans of the CIC and related organizations in the US, British, and French occupation zones.

Best,
 
It is worth pointing out that the US and British were actually successful in defeating insurgencies in the immediate postwar era, as witness the results of the Greek Civil War and the Hukbalahap Insurrection in the Philippines, as well as various anti-guerilla campaigns during the Korea War.

If you are a major power willing to accept a few thousand casualties like the U.S. in the Philippines then defeating insurgencies usually isn't that hard. Compared to the normal conventional battles of the time a insurgency would be considered a nuisance to the armies of the era.

More recent restrictions on the force that can be used by Western powers against insurgents and much greater risk aversion for casualties makes insurgencies harder to deal with in the modern era.

Still we often forget that the South Vietnam wasn't beaten by an insurgency. It was beaten by a conventional army and even in Iraq when we left there was no insurgency and hadn't been one for a number of years.

Insurgencies batting averages are historically quite bad.

Off topic to the thread but I must say that even with all the news that you'd think would otherwise replace its spot on the front page the fact that Rommel's death having been found out to be forced suicide making it gives me a nice chuckle. The Wallies really did have a hard on for him didn't they?

There are reasons for that, reasons that don't make nearly so much sense from a modern prospective, but lets just say he was the face of the Germany Army for the Anglo-American world from 1941 thru 1944.

You went into a movie theater in 1942 in most small towns and all cities in America or Britain you had a film reel of war events. It was the first war where some of the generals started holding interviews and press conferences during the war to give war updates (not so much in the Eastern front) that much of the world got to see parts of during the weekly film reels before movies and cartoons all around the developed world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMsrjOZsxbI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfSr_13hJtM

It turned the military commanders into universally known public figures.
 
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The most effective Nazi insurgency would be one where the war starts say two years later and the German Army is defeated in France and a German military coup against the Nazis fails and the French and British try something unreasonable given the situation like occupying and splitting up Germany on their own and the population decides to resist it big time.

Keeping Stalin from gang piling on in and taking Eastern Germany or more then that is the biggest problem in such a scenario which could be wiped away say with a coup and counter coup and political instability in Moscow.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
All true...

If you are a major power willing to accept a few thousand casualties like the U.S. in the Philippines then defeating insurgencies really isn't that hard. Compared to the normal conventional battles of the time a insurgency would be considered a nuisance to the armies of the era. More recent restrictions on the force that can be used by Western powers against insurgents and much greater risk aversion for casualties makes insurgencies harder to deal with in the modern era. Still we often forget that the South Vietnam wasn't beaten by an insurgency. It was beaten by a conventional army and even in Iraq when we left there was no insurgency and hadn't been one for a number of years. Insurgencies batting averages are historically quite bad.

All true... although the idea of the CIC and MI-6 (or whatever) and the Jewish Brigade winning hearts and minds in a post-Nazi Germany is an interesting one.;)

Best,
 
Still we often forget that the South Vietnam wasn't beaten by an insurgency. It was beaten by a conventional army and even in Iraq when we left there was no insurgency and hadn't been one for a number of years.

This ignores that the insurgency created the preconditions for said conventional invasion to succeed. This is fully in line with the Maoist school of guerrilla warfare.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
So are the Nazi guerrillas going to follow Marxist thought?

This ignores that the insurgency created the preconditions for said conventional invasion to succeed. This is fully in line with the Maoist school of guerrilla warfare.


So are the Nazi guerrillas going to follow Marxist strategies?

And where does the NVA equivalent come from?

Best,
 
So are the Nazi guerrillas going to follow Marxist strategies?

And where does the NVA equivalent come from?

No and nowhere. Even if by some wave of the ASBs wand ITTLs Nazis insurgents did read On Guerrilla War and decide it makes a great instruction manual to follow, it's a little too late for them to try and obtain popular support since that bus has left the station, driven off a cliff, and exploded before it hit the bottom. I was just making a minor counterpoint to a part of jmc's post addressing an OTL event instead of saying anything about a hypothetical Nazi insurgency.
 
This ignores that the insurgency created the preconditions for said conventional invasion to succeed. This is fully in line with the Maoist school of guerrilla warfare.

Unless you have a conventional army ready to take up the slack after you have gutted yourself as an insurgent force and are lucky enough to have a major media personality universally respected amongst your enemy decide your suicidal offensive means his side is losing what the Vietcong did was not a good idea by any stretch of the imagination.

What Cronkite did would have been impossible in the WW2 and the Korean War era BTW were the government did put on war time controls on the press in both wars. Those wartime controls also shielded the public from the real horror that war is and thus made the wars easier to continue for the govenment.
 
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Unless you have a conventional army ready to take up the slack after you have gutted yourself as an insurgent force

Which the North Vietnamese did. So...

Vietcong did was not a good idea by any stretch of the imagination.
As far as the North Vietnamese were concerned, the Vietcong served it's purpose well even in defeat. That they were then able to keep an insurgency going by replacing the lost VC with VPA regulars certainly helped.

What Cronkite did would have been impossible in the WW2 and the Korean War era BTW were the government did put on war time controls on the press in both wars. Those wartime controls also shielded the public from the real horror that war is and thus made the wars easier to continue for the govenment.

It also would have required the American government to admit to the populace that the war in Vietnam was going to be a long and hard affair, which would be quite a backpeddle from their previous statements (which was the main means through which the Tet Offensive did it's political damage, rather then anything Cronkite said).
 
Which the North Vietnamese did. So...

As far as the North Vietnamese were concerned, the Vietcong served it's purpose well even in defeat. That they were then able to keep an insurgency going by replacing the lost VC with VPA regulars certainly helped.

I get your point that the Vietcong weakened U.S. public resolve something I never disagreed with, but they didn't win the war and didn't even really survive the war as a real force, a conventional army won the war.

The Vietcong as you said didn't even finish in public support for the war it was a conventional army using assymetic tactics and waiting for the big offensives not an insurgent force.

A conventional army fighting a guerrilla war isn't an insurgency. Let me put it this way the IJA resorted to insurgent tactics in the jungles at times, but you don't hear anyone labeling them insurgents. It should be no different for the NVA.
 
A conventional army fighting a guerrilla war isn't an insurgency. Let me put it this way the IJA resorted to insurgent tactics in the jungles at times, but you don't hear anyone labeling them insurgents. It should be no different for the NVA.

Well infiltration tactics are not quite the same thing as insurgent tactics (although obviously insurgents make use of them quite a bit), but I certainly see your point and certainly agree that Vietnam was more of a conventional jungle war then people these days sometime seem to remember it as.
 

ThePest179

Banned
It is worth pointing out that the US and British were actually successful in defeating insurgencies in the immediate postwar era, as witness the results of the Greek Civil War and the Hukbalahap Insurrection in the Philippines, as well as various anti-guerilla campaigns during the Korea War.

The British, for their part, managed the Malay Emergency and the insurgency in Kenya as well; the counterexample in the immediate postwar years is the conflict in Palestine, bit it can be argued the ultimate result amounted to a Western "victory."

Okay, I'm not the most educated on the subject, so forgive me if I'm wrong, but weren't those counter-insurgency strategies pretty brutal?

Again, if I'm wrong please tear me to pieces.
 
Okay, I'm not the most educated on the subject, so forgive me if I'm wrong, but weren't those counter-insurgency strategies pretty brutal?

Yes. The idea that terror and other immoral strategies doesn't work as a counter-insurgency strategy is more a result of modern western humanitarian scruples then actual objective analysis of it's effectiveness. It's just that such brutality needs to be applied in a calculated manner along with other strategies to be effective.

The success or failure of an insurgency (and conversely a counter-insurgency) is fundamentally a question of whether the insurgents can outlast the counter-insurgents will before the counter-insurgency is able to attrit away the insurgents physical assets. A counter-insurgent patient enough and ruthless enough can, with time, effectively genocide out an insurgency.
 
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