Werwolf: SS Stay-Behind Organization
The idea of creating some kind of behind the lines German resistance organization originated with Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. The original concept was something akin to Otto Skorzeny’s commandos, highly trained and well-armed uniform formations rather than Nazi partisans.
Himmler chose SS-Obergruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prützmann to oversee the organization in Autumn 1944 after the German defeat in Normandy had apparently shown him the writing on the wall for Nazi Germany.
Interestingly the Allies were thinking along the same lines as Himmler and U.S. analysts reported in January 1945 that the Germans were preparing stay behind forces in preparation for the allied invasion of Germany.
The British and Americans were fairly concerned about a protracted guerrilla campaign behind their lines.
Further proof of German intentions seemed to be confirmed when Propaganda Minister Dr. Goebbels made a fiery speech to the German people on the 23rd of march 1945.
This speech became known as the ‘Werewolf speech’ when Goebbels exhorted every german to fight to the death against the invader.
The Propaganda Ministry organized Radio Werwolf which began broadcasting on the first of April 1945. The show was opened with the sound of a wolf howling and exhorted fighting to the death. These broadcasts unsettled Allied Forces further making troops mistrustful of German civilians.
General Prützmann apparently took some measures to turn Himmler’s and Goebbels’s ideas into a reality. A Werwolf central training center was established at a castle near Erkelenz, training bachelors of 200 older Hitler Youths and some SS volunteers in each intake.
Each regional Gauleiter was ordered to draw up lists of potential recruits for the werewolves who were then to be trained at locations in the Rhineland or around Berlin. The entire force numbered apparently about five thousand. But they were shorter weapons equipment and training. Some caches of weapons and explosives were created but most were found by the Soviets or the Allies.
While the organization broke down into unrelated or coordinated cells or even individuals who committed some acts of sabotage or assassination against the Allies.
The Americans arrested several cells that claimed to be part of Werwolf groups of servicemen hiding out in remote places some with U.S. uniforms and kits. But it is clear today that Werwolf was really more of a propaganda success than a physical reality.
Some operations have been claimed as Werwolf activities in March 1945 Himmler ordered the assassination of the American appointed Mayor of Aachen Franz Oppenhoff, who was duly dispatched by an SS hit squad on the 25th of March.
Most assassinations and attacks when the reality was conducted by regular German troops or SS in battle conditions but Goebbels’ Werwolf Radio was happy to claim responsibility in order to sow alarm and confusion in the Allied ranks.
Unfortunately, this resulted in reprisals by allied troops that according to historians killed between three and five thousand Germans. Collective punishments fines and curfews existed in west Germany until 1948.
In east Germany it was far worse the Soviets branded all Hitler youths as potential Werewolves.
And more than ten thousand were sent to special camps, hundreds were shot and in one horrendous case, an entire town Demmin was burned down resulting in hundreds of suicides among the population.
By the end of 1945, the United States herded one hundred thousand German civilians into basic camps as a security measure to prevent Werwolf activities. The British also mounting reprisals when Werwolf activities were suspected.
In the final analysis of Himmler’s idea of a uniformed army behind allied lines failed to materialize. Dr. Goebbels’ effective propaganda ensured that the paranoid Allies and Soviets came down hard on any German who resisted, citing the Werwolf organization as the reason. Goebbels only succeeded in unnecessarily killing yet more Germans when the war was almost over. Werwolf was, in the final analysis, a complete failure.
