As World War II drew to a close, the Nazi leadership faced the grim reality of impending defeat. By June 6, 1944, the Allies had successfully landed in Normandy, France, signaling a turning point in the war. In response, the Nazis devised a desperate plan to continue their fight through a covert resistance movement known as Operation Werewolf. This initiative aimed to maintain Nazi ideology and disrupt the advancing Allied forces.
Operation Werewolf was not intended to win the war through guerrilla tactics but to prolong resistance in hopes of negotiating a more favorable political settlement for Germany. The movement was symbolically linked to werewolves and wolves, representing German strength against their enemies. It was designed to be decentralized, allowing regional groups to operate independently, even if parts of the network were compromised.
Heinrich Himmler, head of the Waffen-SS, recruited Hans Erdoff to establish and train the Werewolf units. These elite volunteers were taught guerrilla warfare, sabotage, assassination, and the creation of improvised explosives. Equipped with specialized gear like suppressed pistols and sniper rifles, their mission was to disrupt the Allies and suppress German collaboration.
One notable mission was Operation Carnival on March 20, 1945. A Werewolf unit parachuted into a Belgian forest to assassinate Franz Oppenhof, the Allied-appointed mayor of Aken. The mission succeeded, but the unit faced casualties during their escape.
Despite the limited success of Werewolf operations, the propaganda surrounding them was significant. German newspapers exaggerated the threat, and figures like Otto Skorzeny and Jurgen Stroop were brought in to enhance the units. However, they found the Werewolf cells disorganized and lacking resources.
Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister for Propaganda, fueled the myth with his “Werewolf Speech,” urging Germans to resist the Allies. Radio Werewolf broadcasted messages encouraging resistance, although its claims of successful assassinations were largely unfounded.
Following Hitler’s suicide on April 30, 1945, the fear of Werewolf resistance persisted among the Allies. This led to strict policies against fraternization with Germans and harsh reprisals against suspected resistors. However, the anticipated large-scale insurgency never materialized, and the Werewolf threat gradually faded.
Ultimately, the propaganda value of Operation Werewolf outweighed its actual impact. The Allies implemented a successful denazification policy to eradicate Nazi influence in Germany. As the Cold War emerged, the focus shifted to the Soviet Union, and the German people prioritized addressing this new threat over continuing resistance against the Allies.
Conduct a detailed research project on Operation Werewolf, focusing on its objectives, key figures, and missions. Prepare a presentation to share your findings with the class, highlighting how this resistance movement aimed to influence post-war negotiations and its impact on Allied strategies.
Participate in a class debate on the effectiveness of guerrilla warfare tactics used by Operation Werewolf. Consider the strategic goals versus the actual outcomes and discuss whether such tactics could have realistically altered the course of post-war Germany.
Analyze the role of propaganda in Operation Werewolf. Examine Joseph Goebbels’ “Werewolf Speech” and other media used to promote the movement. Discuss in groups how propaganda can shape public perception and its potential to instill fear or motivate resistance.
Engage in a role-playing exercise where you assume the roles of Allied military and political leaders. Develop strategies to counter the perceived threat of Operation Werewolf, considering both military and psychological tactics to ensure stability in post-war Germany.
Conduct a comparative study of Operation Werewolf with other historical resistance movements. Identify similarities and differences in objectives, methods, and outcomes. Present your analysis in a written report, emphasizing lessons learned from these movements.
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Now, let’s discuss the “Werewolf Holdouts: Last Ditch Nazi Resistance.” In 1944, there was a widespread realization among the Nazi leadership that they could actually lose the war. Then, on June 6th of that year, their worst fears came true when the Allies successfully landed a massive invasion force at Normandy in northern France and threatened to retake occupied Europe. The Nazi leadership quickly started to fall apart after that point, and there was even a serious attempt on July 20th, 1944, to assassinate Hitler with a bomb at his Wolf’s Lair headquarters in East Prussia.
Hitler and his senior officials were looking for a last resort to keep Nazi ideology alive and turned to the supernatural for inspiration. The Germans proceeded to put a contingency plan into place, codenamed Operation Werewolf. The idea was to create a covert resistance force to continue the Nazi struggle as the Allies advanced through Germany. The strategy was not so much to win the war by guerrilla fighting but to hold out long enough for a political settlement more favorable to Germany.
Werewolves and wolves were used as symbols of German strength against those seeking to destroy them. The movement was designed to be decentralized and was mainly overseen by regional security officials. This was partly a reaction to the military bombardment under which Germany found itself. Decentralization would allow groups to operate independently should any part of the network fail.
Towards the end of that year, Heinrich Himmler, who was head of the feared Waffen-SS, had recruited one of his most senior officers, a Nazi fanatic called Hans Erdoff, to set up, train, and coordinate the new Werewolf units. These elite groups of volunteers were to be trained in guerrilla warfare tactics, sniping, sabotage, assassination, and fashioning improvised explosives. They were ordered to sabotage, commit acts of terrorism, suppress German collaboration, and generally make life as difficult as possible for the occupying Allies.
They were supposed to be provided with the latest specialized equipment, like suppressed pistols, fireproof coats, and high-tech sniper rifles to carry out these missions. However, the Werewolf units never saw their full realization as Nazi Germany fell into total disarray from the constant Allied aerial bombing. This caused severe equipment shortages as Germany’s industrial base was almost completely destroyed by the end of 1944.
By early 1945, several hundred recruits had been trained at the Werewolf’s chief training camp at the medieval Hohenzollern Castle near Aichach in Germany. Most of these recruits were drawn from the Hitler Youth. One of the few wartime missions carried out by members of the Werewolf organization was Operation Carnival on March 20th, 1945. During this mission, a Werewolf unit parachuted into a Belgian forest on the Dutch-Belgian border outside of the German city of Aken, using a captured Luftwaffe-operated U.S. Army B-17 Flying Fortress bomber. Their target for assassination was the Allied-appointed mayor of Aken, Franz Oppenhof, who the Nazis considered to be a traitor.
They used intelligence to discover Oppenhof’s whereabouts and successfully assassinated him on March 25, 1945. In fact, he was killed by an SS unit composed of Werewolf trainees from Hohenzollern Castle. One of the six-person team was Issa Hirsch, who was a League of German Maidens girl and a captain. She was chosen because she would arouse less suspicion as Allied patrols were looking for military-aged men wandering around. The Werewolf unit pretended to be German pilots who were looking for the front lines. As Oppenhof persuaded them to surrender, they shouted “Heil Hitler” and shot Oppenhof in the head. One of the assassins was killed, and Hirsch was injured afterwards when they triggered a landmine while fleeing through a nearby forest. The landmine was likely placed by the German army. The rest of the Werewolf unit escaped into the countryside.
A small group of SS Werewolf staff were able to make their way into the Alps after the surrender, where they joined forces with a few soldiers and attempted to make a last stand. The makeshift unit was beset with problems: bad weather, breakdowns, and unsurprisingly, desertions, and was finally defeated by U.S. forces.
Much was made of the propaganda value of these so-called Werewolf units, with German newspapers running sensational and mostly fictitious headlines such as “Fury of Nazi Werewolves to be Unleashed on Invaders.” Lieutenant Otto Skorzeny, a commando specialist and holder of the Knight’s Cross, was later brought in to oversee training and further development of the Werewolf units. Jurgen Stroop, famous for crushing the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, was also asked to consult. They were stunned to find out that the number of Werewolf cells had been greatly exaggerated and that those few units in existence were highly disorganized. Even the secret supply dumps buried around the country were not properly recorded, so few of the units knew where any of them actually were.
The explosives, ammunition, and weapons had been buried in 1939, but by 1945, no one knew their location, and the advancing Soviets discovered most of them. Skorzeny then turned the efforts of Operation Werewolf towards establishing a Nazi underground railroad, which allowed thousands of SS officers to travel along escape routes called ratlines and flee.
On March 23, 1945, Joseph Goebbels, the Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, gave a speech known as the Werewolf Speech, in which he said it was every German’s duty to fight to the death. Then, on April 1st, Radio Werewolf started broadcasting from a small town in eastern Germany, and its message was simple: resist the Allied invaders by whatever means possible. It began each program with a howling wolf sound and a song with the words “My Werewolf teeth bite the enemy.” The radio station was on the air for only a matter of weeks but enthusiastically claimed several high-ranking Allied officers had been successfully assassinated by Werewolf units, including Major General Maurice Rose, commander of the U.S. 3rd Armored Division, and British Major John Poston, liaison officer of Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery. In fact, both of these deaths were actually due to being in combat against German regular army units.
In early April 1945, Goebbels’ top aide and Nazi, Karl Naumann, sent out a long and rambling message to the heads of all major propaganda offices across Germany. He called on them to encourage the German people to prepare and continue fighting beyond the end of the war. All of this created the illusion of an organized and dedicated Nazi secret resistance, so much so that the Allies took the threat seriously. Operation Werewolf was highly effective in its psychological impact on the Allies and on German civilians.
Hitler committed suicide by shooting himself on April 30, 1945, in his Führer bunker in Berlin. But for a while, every act of sabotage, mysterious accident, or misfortune that befell the Allied occupiers in Germany after the war ended in Europe on May 8, 1945, was credited to the Werewolves. For a long time, Allied commanders had been concerned that they would face a wide-scale German insurgency and were terrified they were going to become embroiled in a partisan war that could drag out for years. Rumors concerning Operation Werewolf played directly into this fear.
Allied propaganda meant that for the first few months of the occupation, there was a strict policy of non-fraternization with German citizens. Resistors were often shot or hanged, and it was believed that any German showing their right ear in an ID card photo was a secret wolf. Even local groups who offered to assist in the hunt for Nazis were not above suspicion. Strict regulations were placed on the German population, curfews were established, and it was made illegal to own firearms. By some estimates, between three to five thousand German civilians and soldiers lost their lives in Allied reprisals out of fear of Werewolf units.
This fear eventually subsided as the Werewolf threat seemed to simply fade away, as the danger of the Nazis continuing an armed struggle never really materialized. Ultimately, the Werewolf’s propaganda value ended up far outweighing its actual achievements. In fact, the damage done was mostly to the German citizenry, since historians estimate that several thousand deaths resulted from the Werewolf campaigns because they targeted all those who welcomed the Allies.
A few other groups of Werewolves were able to hold out until 1947, but for the most part, they were limited to slogan painting and acts of sabotage. After the war, the Allies carried out a highly successful policy of denazification, which was designed to eradicate all the symbols, political organizations, and figureheads that had been created to support the Nazi culture from German society. Then the new rising danger was the Soviet Union and its allies. Rather than continue to fight against the occupying forces of Great Britain, the United States, and France, the German people were more concerned with dealing with this new impending threat.
Operation – A planned military action or mission – The operation to liberate the occupied city was meticulously planned by the allied forces.
Werewolf – A mythical creature that is said to transform from a human into a wolf, often used metaphorically in historical contexts to describe clandestine resistance fighters – During World War II, the term “werewolf” was used to describe German insurgents who continued to resist after the official surrender.
Resistance – The refusal to accept or comply with something; the attempt to prevent something by action or argument – The French Resistance played a crucial role in undermining Nazi operations during World War II.
Guerrilla – A member of a small independent group taking part in irregular fighting, typically against larger regular forces – Guerrilla tactics were effectively employed by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War.
Propaganda – Information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view – The government used propaganda to maintain public morale during the war.
Sabotage – Deliberately destroy, damage, or obstruct something, especially for political or military advantage – The resistance fighters engaged in acts of sabotage to disrupt enemy supply lines.
Assassination – The act of deliberately killing a prominent or important person, often for political reasons – The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand is often cited as the event that triggered World War I.
Germany – A country in Central Europe, historically significant for its role in both World Wars – Germany’s reunification in 1990 marked the end of the Cold War era in Europe.
Allies – States formally cooperating with another for a military or other purpose – During World War II, the Allies worked together to defeat the Axis powers.
Cold War – A state of political hostility between countries characterized by threats, propaganda, and other measures short of open warfare, in particular that which existed between the Soviet bloc countries and the Western powers from 1947 to 1991 – The Cold War led to the development of nuclear arsenals and a race to space between the United States and the Soviet Union.
