Kidnapping German Generals

In 26 April 1944 2 British agents P. Lee Fermor and Stanley Moss with the help of local resistance managed to kidnap General Kreipe Commander of Festung Creta. It was the only successful kidnaping of a German General throughout WWII...

I was wondering could it be possible that the allies would have authorised more German Generals kidnappings? It would be a huge moral blow for the Germans to see their Generals snatched by Allies right under their noses...
 
A kidnapping is similar to an assassination, except it requires even more planning and contains even more risk of complete failure. A failed kidnapping could even turn into an assasination as the Allied agents decide to cut their losses, shoot their hostages and run.

And it should be noted the allies decided to stop assassinations after it lead to major reprisals against the Czechs. A kidnapping isnt much different from an assassination, and you run the risk of massive reprisals against the locals if they are involved.

Its also a rather high risk-low reward use of agents and resistance members.

So you could do it i suppose, but the results would hardly be worth what you sacrifice for it.
 

The Vulture

Banned
Trouble with kidnappings is that even with local support there's way too much that can go wrong in reaching the target, physically abducting them, and then transporting them to an area of relative safety. Huge risk of being discovered when you have some guy locked in your trunk, not to mention the fact that the abductee might very well attempt to escape or resist his captors.

I know you're going to say "but they'll have useful information that could be extracted". Well, so will less guarded and lower profile people, if you really have to grab someone.

Really, kidnapping specific people in wartime is Boy's Own stuff and serves no practical purpose. Unnecessary complications for not much payoff. If you want to shake morale and disrupt the chain of command, just whistle up a squadron of bombers and drop some HE on their headquarters.
 
Same reason why during the cold war the CIA and KGB didn't spend all their time bumping off each others agents. Just a distraction from the real job.

If we did, they might do it to us too and then our generals would spend all their time looking over their shoulders...
 
Well at least in Kreipe's case his subordimates were happy to see him gone and they didnt retaliate harshly upon local population... Maybe a few selected high ranking Generals snatched right under Germans noses could have bend their morale...
 
Well at least in Kreipe's case his subordimates were happy to see him gone and they didnt retaliate harshly upon local population... Maybe a few selected high ranking Generals snatched right under Germans noses could have bend their morale...

That's because the British left evidence that it was they who did the kidnap, not the local population.

That time the occupied were lucky. Happens one or two more times, and the Germans might go ahead and start shooting local hostages, maybe a high number of them too just to send the message to London that kidnappings are also not cool.
 
Promoting the wrong people, etc

Three points. One, if you're about to kidnapp German Officers try the chiefs of staff or the operations officers rather than the top generals. You'll do more damage. Two, if you kidnapp the commander at a critical time, make sure you're not actually putting a replacement in charge that will actually do a better job. Third, if you know were the man is,just drop a bomb on him. It works.
 
From what i read Hitler had the same idea too... He had authorised a few kidnappings (though almost none was materialised) in order to crack allies morale... So this could be an interesting game... As everyone would try to kidnap anyone just to retaliate...
 
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