Wehrwolf

German auxiliary organizations 1919-1945.
Post Reply
User avatar
88L/71
Member
Posts: 35
Joined: Sun Nov 10, 2002 1:24 pm
Location: Italy

Wehrwolf

Post by 88L/71 »

I know very little about some Wehrwolf who were active during the battle for Berlin. Can you help me?
Besides I know that some german soldiers (Wehrwolf?) in russian uniforms, clothes and miscellaneous weapons fought against russian army after the end of war and till 1946 -1947 in some forests located in Baltic regions. It is true? Any hand?
Many thanks
User avatar
Wurger
Contributor
Posts: 364
Joined: Mon Sep 30, 2002 8:19 am
Location: Establishing a 5th column in your country . . .

Werwolf

Post by Wurger »

Hello,

Perry Biddiscombe has written two very good books on the subject:
"Werwolf! The History of the National Socialist Guerilla Movement 1944-1946" and "The Last Nazis". Both deal with the organization and activities of the Werwolf at the end of the war and into the post-war era.

The post-war activities of the Werwolf were confined to attacks on Russian occupation forces in East Germany. From what I understand, these guerillas were hoping that the western powers would soon be at war with the USSR and therefore continued to operate. The Russians organized several hunts for these guerilla cells and fought several pitched battles with them in 1946.

Regards,

Wurger
User avatar
88L/71
Member
Posts: 35
Joined: Sun Nov 10, 2002 1:24 pm
Location: Italy

Post by 88L/71 »

many thanks, Wurger
User avatar
past
Member
Posts: 47
Joined: Mon Sep 30, 2002 1:09 am
Location: Wroclaw Poland

Post by past »

in polish territory , till 1945 German( Silesia and Pomerania) was Werwolf forces , but it was only small forces like partisants , I did not find big effects of them "work" . In Poland it is big???????? I think that more information are in German intelligence documents.
George Lepre
Moderator
Posts: 193
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2002 5:55 pm
Location: United States

Post by George Lepre »

Hi guys -

One of the most destructive Werwolf operations was conducted in the West. Inexplicably, however, Biddiscombe makes no mention of it in his otherwise excellent book Werwolf!

On the night of 6-7 January 1946, the Koller Villa in Eggendobl near Passau was burned down. Three U.S. Army officers died in the blaze. The subsequent investigation surfaced a local NSDAP member as the subject, and a Werwolf connection was found. The man committed suicide while in pre-trial confinement.

Best regards,

George Lepre
LukeMiguez
Member
Posts: 37
Joined: Wed Dec 03, 2003 4:58 pm

Post by LukeMiguez »

The Mayors of Aachen and Krankenhagen were assassinated by the Werwolf. Hitler Youth also chalked Warnings to the civil Population about supporting Allied occupiers.
User avatar
101stDoc
Associate
Posts: 742
Joined: Mon Jul 21, 2003 7:55 pm
Location: Midwest, United States of America

Post by 101stDoc »

George:

Do you know any books or websites with info re: Werwolf activities (or other "resistance" groups) operating against the western occupation forces (ie Brit Commonwealth forces, Americans, French, etc)?

Doc
Helly Angel
New Member
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Oct 04, 2004 4:42 pm
Location: Venezuela (Southamerica)

Post by Helly Angel »

The Colonel of the "Wolf" Kurt Guttenberger organizated a meeting on march 22, 1945 in castle of Hülchrath with the first group: SS officer Herbert Wenzel, SS Sturmann Joseph Leitgeb, HJ and BDM Erich Morgenschweiss and Hilse Hirsch, SS George Heidorn and carabiner Karl Heinz Hennemann.

They received the order of kill Fran Oppenhoff, mayor of Aquisgran.

Midnight the same day they taken a B17 captured in a air camp in Hildesheim. They fled until Vijlen, triple point above Germany, Belgiium and Holand were they junped in parachuted.

This same night they shoot and killed a dutch carabiner called Jos Saiven. They hidded in a house in Hasselholzer Weg. They did found the house of the Mayor in Eupenerstrasse 251.

The night of march 25, 1945 Leitgeb cut a phone line in the garden of the oppenhoff´s house. This line was not the line of the Mayor, is just the line of another house. The wolfs enter at the house. Hennemann meet the doncel Elisabeth Gillissen.
"Where is the Mayor?... We are americans and ned talk with teh Mayor right now!"
She fall in the trap and said:
"The Mayor is not here, He is in the house of Dr Faust in front of the street!.
"Call him!"
Elisabeth was calling the Mayor and he walked to the house. Three minutes after he is died.
In this moment, americans soldiers are looking for the fail in the phone line in the garden.
All the group hidden by separately.

In the next morning Leitgeb is in the forest of Belgium and arrive to the Dam of Dreilägerbach and kicking a mine died inmediately.

The rest of the group: Hilse Hirsch, Morgenschweiss and Heidorn.

In march 28, Hilse step above a mine and result with deeply injuries. She can´t continue the escape. The rest leave the place but all are wounds.

Morgenschweiis and Heidorn arrive to Urft river. But Morgenschweiss is very very wound and can´t cross the river, He decide stay here.

Heidorn crross the river and take the way to farm in Hombush near of Mechernich the place to the final meeting of all the group. Hilse and Morgenschweiss were captured and sent them to the hospital.

In 1949, the Main Trial of Aquisgram pronuncied Sentences against Kurt Gutenberger, Karl Hannemann and George Heidorn. Hilse Hirsch was acquited, Erich Morgenschweiss was excluid because he was a too young. The killed of the Dutch carabiner was considerated like a "War Act". The main chief of the herd, Herbert Wenzel never was captured.

This was -I think- the only official operation of the Werwolf.
"SPQV"
User avatar
Will
Supporter
Posts: 196
Joined: Fri Feb 21, 2003 11:59 pm
Location: Northern Ireland

Post by Will »

Actually though I had always assumed that there wasn'nt much in the way of information on the wehrwolf or thier operations, I guess they must have operated much like the I.R.A still I find it odd that after several years of war a few hard-core idiots found it necessary to carry on a futile struggle. although I guess they could be justified by sighting the atrocities visited on the germans when the red army came tearing through the fatherland :evil:
Will


"Where The German Soldier Sets Foot, There He Remains"
Adolf Hitler-27 September 1942
TheFerret
Supporter
Posts: 79
Joined: Mon Jan 03, 2005 12:43 am
Contact:

Post by TheFerret »

I did find some interesting stuff about the "Werewolves":



http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cach...lves+Nazi&hl=en

The Werewolves were originally organised by the SS and the Hitler Youth as a diversionary operation on the fringes of the Third Reich, which were occupied by the Western Allies and the Soviets in the autumn of 1944. Some 5,000 -- 6,000 recruits were raised by the winter of 1944-45, but numbers rose considerably in the following spring when the Nazi Party and the Propaganda Ministry launched a popular call to arms, beseeching everybody in the occupied areas -- even women and children -- to launch themselves upon the enemy. In typical Nazi fashion, this expansion was not co-ordinated by the relevant bodies, which were instead involved in a bureaucratic war among themselves over control of the project. The result was that the movement functioned on two largely unrelated levels: the first as a real force of specially trained SS, Hitler Youth and Nazi Party guerrillas; the second as an outlet for casual violence by fanatics.

The Werewolves specialised in ambushes and sniping, and took the lives of many Allied and Soviet soldiers and officers -- perhaps even that of the first Soviet commandant of Berlin, General N.E. Berzarin, who was rumoured to have been waylaid in Charlottenburg during an incident in June 1945. Buildings housing Allied and Soviet staffs were favourite targets for Werewolf bombings; an explosion in the Bremen police headquarters, also in June 1945, killed five Americans and thirty-nine Germans. Techniques for harassing the occupiers were given widespread publicity through Werewolf leaflets and radio propaganda, and long after May 1945 the sabotage methods promoted by the Werewolves were still being used against the occupying powers.

Although the Werewolves originally limited themselves to guerrilla warfare with the invading armies, they soon began to undertake scorched-earth measures and vigilante actions against German `collaborators' or `defeatists'. They damaged Germany's economic infrastructure, already battered by Allied bombing and ground fighting, and tried to prevent anything of value from falling into enemy hands. Attempts to blow up factories, power plants or waterworks occasionally provoked melees between Werewolves and desperate German workers trying to save the physical basis of their employment, particularly in the Ruhr and Upper Silesia.

Several sprees of vandalism through stocks of art and antiques, stored by the Berlin Museum in a flak tower at Friedrichshain, caused millions of dollars worth of damage and cultural losses of inestimable value. In addition, vigilante attacks caused the deaths of a number of small-town mayors and, in late March 1945, a Werewolf paratroop squad assassinated the Lord Mayor of Aachen, Dr Franz Oppenhoff, probably the most prominent German statesman to have emerged in the occupied fringes over the winter of 1944-45. This spate of killings, part of a larger Nazi terror campaign that consumed the Third Reich after the failed anti-Hitler putsch of July 20th, 1944, can be interpreted as a psychological retreat back into opposition, even while Nazi leaders were still clinging to their last few months of power.

Although the Werewolves managed to make themselves a nuisance to small Allied and Soviet units, they failed to stop or delay the invasion and occupation of Germany, and did not succeed in rousing the population into widespread opposition to the new order. The SS and Hitler Youth organisations at the core of the Werewolf movement were poorly led, short of supplies and weapons, and crippled by infighting. Their mandate was a conservative one of tactical harassment, at least until the final days of the war, and even when they did begin to envision the possibility of an underground resistance that could survive the Third Reich's collapse, they had to contend with widespread civilian war-weariness and fear of enemy reprisals. In Western Germany, no one wanted to do anything that would diminish the pace of Anglo-American advance and possibly thereby allow the Red Army to push further westward.

Despite its failure, however, the Werewolf project had a huge impact, widening the psychological and spiritual gap between Germans and their occupiers. Werewolf killings and intimidation of `collaborators' scared almost everybody, giving German civilians a clear glimpse into the nihilistic heart of Nazism. It was difficult for people working under threat of such violence to devote themselves unreservedly to the initial tasks of reconstruction. Worse still, the Allies and Soviets reacted to the movement with extremely tough controls, curtailing the right of assembly of German civilians. Challenges of any sort were met by collective reprisals -- especially on the part of the Soviets and the French. In a few cases the occupiers even shot hostages and cleared out towns where instances of sabotage occurred. It was standard practice for the Soviets to destroy whole communities if they faced a single act of resistance. In the eastern fringes of the `Greater Reich', now annexed by the Poles and the Czechoslovaks, Werewolf harassment handed the new authorities an excuse to rush the deportations of millions of ethnic Germans to occupied Germany.

Such policies were understandable, but they created an unbridgeable gulf between the German people and the occupation forces who had pledged to impose essential reforms. It was hard, in such conditions, for the occupiers to encourage reform, and even harder to persuade the Germans that it was necessary.

By the time that this rough opposition to the occupation had started to soften, the Cold War was under way and reform became equally difficult to implement. As a result, both German states created in 1949 were not so dissimilar to their predecessor as might have been hoped, and changes in attitudes and institutions developed only slowly. Thanks partly to the Werewolves there was no German revolution in 1945, either imposed from above or generated from below.
Post Reply