Wermolf

What are the chances of the Germans leaving a stay-behind force in WW2? And the effects on the period after WW2?
 
This big:

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-Markus

So small a chance...
They formed the Wermolf, though. Maybe if they formed it a bit earlier (say, 1944), and trained them better and get them better equipment, would it trouble the NKVD?
 
It was called Werwolf, just for the sake of clarification. While it was started by Himmler, Bormann and Goebbels, but only the little doctor and some his lackeys in the Propaganda Ministry took it seriously.
 
It was called Werwolf, just for the sake of clarification. While it was started by Himmler, Bormann and Goebbels, but only the little doctor and some his lackeys in the Propaganda Ministry took it seriously.

Stupid PDF book. Kept alternately spelling Wermolf, Werewolf and Werwolf.

They didn't take it seriously because taking it seriously would be a signal for the German people to lose hope, that the war was lost? Form it in secrecy then, then cover it up with propaganda.
 
It was not taken seriously for several reasons. One of them was, of course, that forming such a partisan organisation would indicate that Germany had lost the war.

Thus it ended up being mainly a propaganda stunt - like the myth of the Alpine Redoubt, which was crafted by Goebbels' propagandists in order to give the appearance of a well-fortified redoubt in the Alps, from which German troops could continue the resistance (Kaltenbrunner and Wolff tried to use that myth as leverage during their negotiations with the Americans in Switzerland (Wolff negotiated with Dulles to arrange the capitulation of the German army group in Italy, while Kaltenbrunner tried to arrange for a Nazi government to remain in power in Austria, whilst also hoping to split the alliance)).

Admittedly, the Werwolf was somewhat active. The major of Aachen, Franz Oppenhoff, a German nationalist appointed by the US Army, was reportedly shot by a Werwolf commando and on 28 April 1945 there was the so-called Penzenberger Massacre near Munich, during which the "Werwolf Oberbayern", acting under the authority of Gauleiter Paul Giesler, slaughtered several members of the anti-Nazi Freiheitsaktion Bayern, including a pregnant woman.

There was reportedly also some Werwolf activity in the Sudetengau, but on the whole it was all very uncoordinated and organised very haphazardly - most of the Werwolf activists from the SS, the HJ and the BDM lacked experience and there was a lack of officers to train them (not even SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS Hans-Adolf Prützmann, former SS and police chief in East Prussia and in the Ukraine, who was their nominal commander, but did not really become active, especially because by the time the Werwolf was formed, the collapse quite swift).

Himmler also did not really concern himself with such a formation, as by that time he was more interested in arranging negotiations with the western allied powers through Count Bernadotte in order to suceeed Hitler as Führer.
 
The only way that Werwolf resistance could succeed is if someone from the outside goes on supporting it. It was always a matter of a few fanatics without much support among the people at large, ansd by '45 the German population was not only sick and tired of Hitler, but also thoroughly conditioned into being submissive to authority. The NKVD had more to worry about German Communists and their reaction to the reality of Stalinism.

Now, if some intelligence service had chosen to adopt the Werwolf and use it against the Soviets or the Western Allies, that could have worked. But who'd touch it even with a ten-foot pole?

A truly evil idea would be for the NKVD to set up a bogus 'Nazi' cabal that runs Werwolf attacks in the Western zones while it manufactures incidents in its own terrirtory to justify targeted repression...
 

Markus

Banned
.... but only the little doctor and some his lackeys in the Propaganda Ministry took it seriously.

You forgot the always paraniod Americans. They took it very seriously!
There is no hard evidence of any actual action though. The Aachen operation was undertaken by an SS-commando flown in on Himmler´s orders and the killings in Bavaria took place while the area was still under German controll.

I would not take any information on Werwolf activities in the east serious. The Soviets were seeing agents at work each time a tire blew and the Czechs had some unresolved issues with the local german population. Accusing them of armed resistance to have a pretext to carry out the planned ethnic cleansing is IMO a more likely scenario.
 
Admittedly, the Werwolf was somewhat active. The major of Aachen, Franz Oppenhoff, a German nationalist appointed by the US Army, was reportedly shot by a Werwolf commando and on 28 April 1945 there was the so-called Penzenberger Massacre near Munich, during which the "Werwolf Oberbayern", acting under the authority of Gauleiter Paul Giesler, slaughtered several members of the anti-Nazi Freiheitsaktion Bayern, including a pregnant woman.

There was reportedly also some Werwolf activity in the Sudetengau, but on the whole it was all very uncoordinated and organised very haphazardly - most of the Werwolf activists from the SS, the HJ and the BDM lacked experience and there was a lack of officers to train them (not even SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS Hans-Adolf Prützmann, former SS and police chief in East Prussia and in the Ukraine, who was their nominal commander, but did not really become active, especially because by the time the Werwolf was formed, the collapse quite swift).

The foreign legions are good candidates for die-hards. They certainly can't return to their country, and them fighting in Berlin certainly proved their prowess.

The problem was, the Werwolf was used as mainly a threat to keep the citizens from deserting. All the Werwolf activities I can find that are most prominent are scribbles on the wall saying : 'Werwolf is watching'. They killed a lot of innocent too.

Make them a proper armed force? By the time of the 1944 offensives, it was clear that Germany had lost. Better to think ahead.
 
1.Germany is not a country of partisans. Germans believe in the authority of the state, and that counts double for pre-1945 Germans.

2. A partisan organisation can only work when there is support within the population

But when the Wehrmacht surrendered, every German saw that as a sign for

a) the State could no longer resist the enemy
b) every further risistance would be futile

Remember the pictures of German streets with white flags hanging everywhere after Wehrmacht units had left.
 
i dont know much post war Germany in this context, but the idea of such resistance seems highly unprobbable, given the size and numbers of ally forces

but i do know that in Yugoslavia there were reported guerrilla activities all the way into the 70is
id say some truly fanatical nazi ss could have gone into the mountains and continued to shoot people sporadically, but theyd get killed of a few years later
 

Markus

Banned
id say some truly fanatical nazi ss could have gone into the mountains and continued to shoot people sporadically, but theyd get killed of a few years later

Knowing what passes for mountains and wilderness in Germany I say they´d be lucky to make it a few weeks. Germany is a densly populated country with a very good infrastructure. Some kind of a terrorist movement operating from the cities has better changes, if they can get the public behind them. A public that had lost faith in all but one Nazi a long time ago.
 
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