Biddiscombe, Perry - The Last Nazis_ SS Werewolf Guerrilla Resistance in Europe 1944-1947-The History Press (2013).

285 Pages·2013·2.57 MB·English

by  Perry Biddiscombe

First published 2000
This edition first published 2004
The History Press
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This ebook edition first published in 2013
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© Perry Biddiscombe 2000, 2004, 2013
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EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 9642 9
Original typesetting by The History Press
CONTENTS
List of illustrations
Preface and acknowledgements
Introduction
1 The nature of the beast
2 The trouble with werewolves
3 The watch on, before and behind the Rhine
4 Man is wolf to his fellow man
5 Swept by the red tide
6 Werewolves after the fact
7 The wolf hunt
Maps
Notes
Bibliography
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Picture sources:
Illustrations are from the author’s collection.
Plate Section
1 Freikorps ‘Werdenfals marches into Munich, 1919
2 The Schlageter Company of Self-Defence Storm Battalion ‘Heinz’,
1921
3 A Hitler Youth leader caught behind Allied lines
4 ‘Siegen oder fallen!’, Völkischer Beobachter, 3 April 1945
5 The ‘Wolfsangel’
6 ‘Anschlagsarten bei der Panzerfaust’ Völkischer Beobachter, 18
February 1945
7 Dead SS and Luftwaffe men in civilian dress, April 1945
8 Hitler Youth radio operators
9 Wreckage of a locomotive driven onto an American armoured column,
April 1945
10 A train derailed by saboteurs, April 1945
11 HSSPf Jürgen Stroop
12 SA rifle training, Illustrierter Beobachter, 15 June 1944
13 Boy snipers captured in Aachen, October 1944
14 Georg Heidorn, a Werewolf guide
15 Hans Zöberlein, Freikorps ‘Adolf Hitler’ chief
16 Swastikas cut into ice on the Neckar river, 23 December 1945
17 Hitler Youth leader Fred Borth
18 Siegfried Kabus, leader of the ODESSA bombing gang in Stuttgart
19 ‘Nest for hatching new Nazis’, The Milwaukee Journal, 1946
20 A dead sniper on display, Lübeck, May 1945
Maps
Map of ‘security incidents’ in the Rhineland, May – June 1945
Map of ‘civil and internal security incidents’ in the US zone, November
1945 – January 1946
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is a sequel to one that I wrote several years ago titled
Werwolf!, published by the University of Toronto Press and the
University of Wales Press. In Werwolf!, I argued that the Nazi guerrilla
movement of 1944-45 – the ‘Werwolf’ – had a considerable impact on the
invasion and occupation of Germany, and that it provided the main thematic
focus for a distinctive final stage in the history of the Nazi regime. I also
contended that the movement reflected some important characteristics of
the Nazi state, particularly with regard to its allegedly totalitarian character.
In order to drive these points home, Werwolf! was written and organized in
an expository fashion, and a large number of examples were deployed in
order to validate the main themes of the book.
The present work is a very different kind of effort. If Werwolf! was an
attempt to provide a broad survey of the topic, this book is best understood
as giving the proverbial view from the ground, and it emphasizes
corroborative detail. The introduction covers the folklore and cultural
motifs that Werewolf organizers exploited in trying to establish historical
precedents for the movement. Chapter one sketches out the basic nature of
the Werewolf movement, and chapter two the training and tactics used by
Werewolves. The next three chapters detail Werewolf operations behind
both the Western and Eastern Fronts, as well as attacks on German
collaborators. Chapter six describes some of the activities of post-war
groups that carried on the Werewolf tradition in occupied Germany.
Chapters three to six are comprised of a number of vignettes, some brief,
some quite lengthy, depending on the quality and depth of source material.
The conclusion spells out some of the consequences and significance of
Werewolf militancy.
In all of this, I have refrained from trying to be exhaustive in covering
the scope and range of Werewolf activities, preferring instead to address a
limited number of incidents, groups and persons with some degree of
narrative and descriptive precision. Who were the Werewolves? What did
their training entail? How did it feel to be deployed in hostile terrain behind
the lines of the most powerful armies ever assembled, or to be told to hunt
one’s own countrymen in murderous vigilante actions? How were such
operations rationalized by the people who planned and executed them? I
have trusted that such questions will provoke interesting answers. In the
final analysis, I hope that the resulting work complements its predecessor
but also works independently of it, providing the reader with stories and
moments of the past that are intrinsically absorbing and which, given the
neo-Nazi revival in Germany, have some importance.
Like all writers, historians tend to have a solitary reputation. Ours,
however, is actually a highly collaborative effort that usually involves large
numbers of people standing behind the shoulder of the author. My heartfelt
thanks go to these mainstays who have made this work possible, especially
the inter-library loans staff at the University of Victoria. Through their
ability to lay their hands on hard-to-find material, these women have proven
to be intellectual life-savers. Thanks also to the archivists at the US
National Archives and the various bureaux of the Bundesarchiv, who
helped me gather fresh documentary material and photographs for this
study. In particular, John Taylor at Archives II in College Park deserves
commendation for his encyclopedic knowledge of American intelligence
records, the benefits of which he shares most willingly. Thanks as well to
my colleague David Zimmerman, who kindly read a draft of chapter two
and offered many helpful comments.
My publisher, Jonathan Reeve, helped me devise the project and gave
me some sense of what the book could be. His unflagging enthusiasm kept
me inspired, while his good sense kept me on the straight and narrow.
Most of all, my heartfelt thanks to my wife, my son and my dogs, who
put up with me as I dived into my files for a six month hiatus, only to
occasionally emerge in order to hog computer time. As always, my family’s
patience, love and support has been crucial.
Perry Biddiscombe
Victoria, BC
INTRODUCTION
The Werewolves were no bit players on the stage of modern European
history. Although they are often portrayed in World War Two literature
as minor supernumeraries in a tragic Nazi finale, the instruments of a last
gasp effort that was derided, ineffective and ignored, in reality the
Werewolves did considerable damage. Their malicious combination of
guerrilla warfare and vigilantism caused the deaths of several thousand
people, either directly or through the Allied and Soviet reprisals that they
provoked. The property damage inflicted upon the already devastated
economies of Central Europe equalled tens of millions of dollars. In
addition, the policies of Germany’s occupiers and neighbours, which in a
best case scenario could have been expected to have been tough on
Germany, were prompted by the Werewolves to become tougher yet. The
Soviets and their Polish and Czech friends moved quickly and brutally to
eject German minorities from the eastern part of Central Europe, and inside
Germany the occupying powers imposed rigorous non-fraternization and
denazification policies and severely prohibited German civilian movement
and right of assembly. Almost all the country’s soldiers, sailors and airmen
were incarcerated, at least temporarily, and Germany’s central government
was dismantled. Anyone who thinks that Allied occupation policies in
Germany were too harsh, however, should keep in mind what the
Werewolves were trying to do, and what impact the organization of such a
movement under the noses of the invaders and occupiers – was likely to
have had.