The Last Nazis: SS Werewolf Guerrilla Resistance in Europe 1944-1947

204 Pages·2013·2.23 MB·English

by  Biddiscombe

First published 2000
This edition first published 2004
The History Press
The Mill, Brimscombe Port
Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG
www.thehistorypress.co.uk
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