German defence union, founded in 1923, which merged into the Sturmabteilung (SA) in 1933. The name was also given to the national socialist underground movement (19445) recruited from adolescents and dedicated to minor acts of sabotage in German territories occupied by the Allied forces.
Werwolf (also Wehrwolf, a less common variation) was a Nazi plan at the end of World War II for a force which would aid the Wehrmacht by means of guerrilla attacks against the Allies in the Allied-occupied regions of Germany. The word "Werwolf" is the German cognate of werewolf, in the sense of lycanthropy; "Werwolf" was the favoured name of the movement, although "Wehrwolf" was also sometimes used.
Plans
The original plan for Werwolf was to act as a guerrilla force to interfere with the logistics of Allied armies preparing to assault the Nazis' "Alpine National Redoubt." Prutzmann had studied guerilla tactics used by the Russians while stationed in the occupied territories of the Ukraine and the idea was to teach the Werwolf members these tactics.
It originally had about 5,000 members recruited from the SS and Hitler Youth, and specially trained in guerrilla tactics. However as it became increasingly clear that the Alpine Redoubt was yet another grandiose delusion, Werwolf was converted first into a terrorist organisation, and then largely dismantled by Heinrich Himmler and Wilhelm Keitel in the last few weeks of the war.
Disorganized attempts were made to bury explosives, ammunition and weapons in different locations around the country (mainly in the pre 1939 German-Polish border) to be used by the Werwolf in their terrorist acts after the defeat of Germany, but not only were the amounts of material to be "buried" prohibitively low, at that point the movement itself was so disorganized that few actual members or leaders knew where the materials were, how to use them, or what to do with them. Almost none of these materials were actually used by the Werwolf.
On March 23, 1945, Joseph Goebbels gave a speech, known as the "Werwolf speech", in which he urged every German to fight to the death. The partial dismantling of the organized Werwolf, combined with the effects of the "Werwolf" speech, caused considerable confusion about which subsequent attacks were actual Werwolf attacks, as opposed to solo acts by fanatical Nazis or small groups of SS. Werwolf agents were supposed to have at their disposal a vast assortment of weapons, from fire-proof coats to silenced Walther pistols. the Werwolf never actually had the necessary equipment, organization, morale or coordination.
Operations
Werwolf's most prominent victim was Dr. Franz Oppenhoff, the new anti-Nazi mayor of Allied-occupied Aachen, who was murdered outside his home in March of 1945.
Werwolf radio propaganda also claimed the assassination of General Maurice Rose, the most senior Jewish U.S. officer. It has been claimed that in Poland the Werwolf carried out massacres of civilians, and a few substantial attacks against Soviet troops.
One often overlooked aspect of Werwolf is that the Hitler Youth component was also responsible for developing a new political youth movement which was intended to outlast the war, and which was called "neo-Nazism". Some current German neo-Nazi groups refer to themselves as Werwolf or Wehrwolf.
The post-war longevity of German resistance movements, such as the Werwolf, was partly due to the continued desperation of the German people who for two years suffered under the U.S. occupation directive JCS 1067.
Werwolf references in politics today
Recently the history of Werwolf has been employed in arguments about the American-led occupation of Iraq . Some aspects of Werwolf which are relevant to this discussion are:
Werwolf was principally a war stratagem of the Nazi government. As a war effort, Werwolf was truncated by the stratagem of accepting defeat at the hands of the Western Allies to avoid occupation by Russians. Werwolf had a mythological reputation which was deliberately fostered by Nazi propaganda. Nonetheless, Werwolf was far weaker than many other historically significant guerrilla insurgencies, for example, those in Vietnam and Iraq.Werwolf in fiction
In the 1977 movie, Shock Waves, staring Peter Cushing, a "super-soldier" spin on the Wehrwolf soldier is used as a plot device. It moved there during the last months of the war and some of its officers are referred as being Werwolf.
In the graphic novel Hellboy: Wake the Devil, there is a mention of a Nazi project called "Vampir Sturm" (Vampire Storm/Assault), which would utilize the minions of the Romanian vampire Vladimir Giurescu against the Allies.
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