An American Werewolf in Baghdad

Great Debates
1

Those readers alive in the 1960s will recall the widespread guerilla warfare that raged throughout the United States. It took federal forces years to defeat the guerilla armies and one guerilla army, the Symbionese Liberation Army, held out and was still fighting well into the 1970s. You do remember the Second US Civil War right?

Or in the First US Civil War, history buffs will remember that Confederate forces continued fighting long, long after the southern surrender. It took months for Union forces to mop up die-hards and for instance one confederate unit, the raider Shenandoah refused to surrender until November 1965. Surely you remember that?

Of course these things wont be remembered in this manner as they simply aren’t true. Although there is a small kernel of fact in my above statements its been so ridiculously and grossly exaggerated and distorted that they must be classed as lies. There was a Symbionese Liberation Army of course and the Shenandoah did remain at sea not knowing the war was over, but the scale and perspective of things needs to be remembered. One swallow does not a summer make, and if you pervert the scale and significance of something enough you pass to caricature and to fraud.

So, werewolves. I’ve been hearing quite a bit about werewolves lately, to both my surprise and dismay. Condoleeza Rice has brought them up, our own December has raised them here and now too Donald Rumsfeld got into the act in San Antonio comparing the resistance in Iraq to the werewolves of Germany in WW2 which is what prompted me to this post.

Now the werewolves of reality were essentially a ‘stay-behind’ force, they were to operate behind allied lines and disrupt allied administration as the allies advanced into Germany. They were not civilians, they fought in uniform and were a part of the regular German armed forces. A great deal of propaganda was devoted by Gobbels to them, in an attempt to maintain German loyalty and to frighten the allies. They made some attacks, they killed the American-appointed mayor of occupied Aachen in one, but overall they had a miniscule impact upon the course of the war. When Germany surrendered such werewolves as were still at large were ordered to cease operations and surrender themselves by Admiral Donitz. Which as uniformed servicemen they duly did.

Thus exit the proper werewolves from history as merely a very minor footnote to the history of WW2, chiefly known until now only by strange individuals such as myself. Germany accepted occupation docilely, and acts of violence against allied forces were rare, and acts of sabotage were infrequent and generally minor. Lets call these post-war resistants such as they are ‘pseudo-werewolves’. I have not been able to find any indication that more then a grand total of five American soldiers were killed in the three years following WW2 by this ‘resistance’ and if anyone has evidence of more then by all means prove me wrong.

It must be said that the minute details of Nazi Germany exert a considerable facsination for many military buffs and large multi-volume sets can be readily obtained upon Luftwaffe fighter aces, SS Panzer divisions and everything else. And the werewolves have as part of this enduring fascination equally attracted more literary attention then their due. And nowhere in 20 plus years of personal interest and reading of WW2 history have I ever, and I mean ever, encountered anything that supports the notion that there was any substantial resistance after the German surrender. Surely this guerilla war must have attracted notice by American or German participants? Where are the memoirs of search-and-destroy missions in the Alps in 1947? Where are the decorations given in this campaign? Where are the casualty lists and unit histories?

When December first raised the werewolves in this thread (linked below) I responded by quoting American corps records indicating the type of ‘resistance’ encountered and it was graffiti and cutting of telephone lines in the main. An American veteran then responded with his personal recollections of how quiet things were in occupied Germany. No conflicting evidence has emerged.

Comparing this with the situation in Iraq where in this month alone already more Coalition soldiers have been killed then in the entire fictional three year resistance war that Rumsfeld & Rice have fabricated in post-war Germany is just crass.

Now this isn’t exactly a topic well-known to the average guy in the street. The sort of person who knows anything at all about the werewolves and the extent of post-war German resistance knows it to be inconsequential and works that discuss the werewolves will tell him so. Which is the distrubing element, the people that began this comparison aren’t ignorant they are being consciously fraudulent. And whatever I may have previously suspected about Donald Rumsfeld I now know him with certainty to be a liar for political ends.
First appearance of December’s Super Werewolves on SDMB and assorted refutations in this thread:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=200438

Rumsfeld singing same tune

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/08/26/1061663791295.html

2

I think the comparison is more built around the idea that the Wehrwolves were supposed to be more like the baathist assassination campaign in Iraq now.As it was, they simply collapsed along with Germany.

3

Spooky. Maybe december is actually Donald Rumsfeld IRL. That would explain a lot. :wink:

Seriously, though, whilst I quite enjoyed reading your post, I can’t see a serious linkage between december’s argument and Rumsfeld’s.

All that Rumsfeld said was:

That was pretty dismissive. Rumsfeld’s point seems to be that there wasn’t any serious resistance in Germany.

I think that all you can get out of this is that any comparison with post WWII Germany is a complete wank, and that people that argue for the comparison are wankers.

4

I think the comparison is more built around the idea that a comparison must be found that is as far off as possible as a comparison to ‘resistance movements’.
'cause, naturally, the resistance were the good guys and we have to paint these Iraqi’s as black as possible. Plus we must find an examlple of a bad/evil resistance movement that was actually defeated.

The werewolves are indeed ideal.

5

Yes, exactly right. They did collapse with the German surrender. Thats the historical reality.

However as december would have it:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=200438&perpage=50&pagenumber=2

Which is unmitigated nonsense. Unfortunately the same line is being spouted by Rumsfeld and Rice.

I am currently reading the official US Army history on the occupation of Germany which is available online. Its a weighty tome covering the whole gamut of difficulties faced by the occupation force. I am yet to find a single reference to resistance in it other then a comment on page 320 that the occupation:

THE U.S. ARMY IN THE OCCUPATION OF GERMANY

6

This is an interesting point. How many American and allied solidiers were killed during the three-year period beginning in mid 1945 after Germany capitulated? Do you have a cite?

7

Thanks Eolbo for this most interesting post. I think comparing post-war Germany to todays Iraq completely turns things upside down. The obvious failure is that the administration thought things in Iraq would be as in Germany '45: People being relived that the war is over, the tyrant gone and things will get back to normal.
Now we have to learn, that Iraq is not Germany - and I dare say, there were enough folks who pointed that out well before the invasion.

8

If Rumsfeld’s point is that there wasn’t any serious resistance in Germany his comment is meaningless as there clearly is serious resistance in Iraq. However he did explicitly make the comparison of Iraq and Germany and yes its a complete wank. The situations just aren’t comparable and to juxtapose them in this manner is to lie.

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3333797

9

You set yourself up as the expert by bringing up the subject in the first place. You tell us.

10

December the only references to American fatalities attributed rightly or wrongly to post-war resistance I am able to find at all are 5 soldiers killed in Bremen in the one bomb blast in June 1945, and 3 civilians killed at Passau in 1946. A cite for Bremen you know as you used it in your first werewolf post. That is the sum total of what appears to be available. I will give you back your cite, but details of the same attack occur on repeated sites, so I am inclined to think its “the” attack rather then one of many.

http://www.command-post.org/oped/2_archives/007763.html

Now at some point absence of evidence becomes significant. In my earlier refutation I posted US army corps records indicating resistance was insignificant. We have seen David Simmons post his personal recollections of his time in the occupation forces that confirm this. The official US Army history of the occupation says resistance was “not evident”. Every source I have looked at that even mentions the werewolves dismisses them as a non-factor.

I think we are at the stage where if you wish to maintain your position that there was a substantial guerilla war in Germany that lasted two or three years as you have alleged that its upon you to provide a shred of evidence for this proposition. Official documents and standard works do not support that point of view.

Meanwhile moving away from the fictional guerilla war in Germany, in the very real war in Iraq another two American soldiers were killed in action just today.

Two U.S. Soldiers Killed in Ambushes in Iraq

And coalition spokesmen state coalition forces are being attacked 12 times daily

[Fixed link. – MEB]

11

This is fascinating. I’ve had numerous people dismiss the Iraq resistance as nothing unusual, commenting that this sort of thing is normal, using post-WWII Germany as evidence.

I’ve just assumed that there probably was significant German post-war resistance.

Now I’ll have some facts to counter their minimization of the post-Iraq casualties. Excellent.

12

Thanks for the info. I would also be interested in the figure for total American fatalities in post-war Germany, i.e. due to all causes, because many sources continue to report the count of total American deaths in Iraq.

13

Eolbo,

It sounds to me as if you are certainly right, in that Rumsfeld’s analogy was not a particularly apt one. I don’t really see what significance you’re trying to infer from this, however.

The two possiblities behind his use of this flawed analogy are:

a) Ignorance.
He may have used the werewolf example without fully understanding, as you, or another serious student of the Wehrmacht would, why it wasn’t a particularly accurate one. Taking his age into account, the thing that pops into his mind when searching for an analogy may very well be a World War Two reference – so, relevant or not, that’s the phraseology he’s going to borrow from to illuminate his points. It may even be as simple as his awareness that he can use a World War Two reference and be reasonably assured that everyone will “get it” ; after all, if he started littering his press conferences with obscure references to battles known only to serious scholars, he would appear even more aloof than he currently does. :slight_smile:

b) Willful fraud.
If this is the case, I guess I’m left with the question of “why?” in that there seems to be no benefit for him or the administration to knowingly sneak a historically inaccurate reference into his speech. Perhaps even a tenuous link to (gasp) the Nazis (who EVERYONE knows were bad and evil) makes it easier to hate the Iraqi resistance fighters?
Besides, it’s not as if his analogy contained an outright lie… there was some element of resistance left behind in Germany, which was not effective in staving off the occupation. Same deal in Iraq, although the comparisons used to get to that point are fraught with inconsistencies.
People deviated from the truth for a reason – and the motive in this case seems very elusive.

I think once Occam’s razor comes slicing through these possiblities, the likelihood that Don Rumsfeld simply put his ignorance on display, an event not wholly unprecedented, is the one left behind on the cutting board.

14

Perhaps its just me but I see an obvious political gain in such a lie. A great many people are deeply alarmed at the deteriorating situation in Iraq, and recent polls suggest support for the administration is dropping. Add in the whole fiasco over WMD, and suspicions of government fibbing and Iraq is potentially quite damaging from a political viewpoint.

However if you can convince people that there is a parallel with the German occupation, which was very successful, then you may calm some jittery nerves. You can say “See? Its not so bad, we been through this before, and it turned out ok so dont worry so much”. A form of political damage control.

And its appeared all over in recent weeks. The Wall Street Journal and many rightwing sites and blogs. Most people don’t have sufficient background knowledge or historical training to know that its such a gross distortion and will believe it so the lie becomes their truth.

You can see an example of that process just up above in this thread where the poster Algernon says “I’ve had numerous people dismiss the Iraqi resistance as nothing unusual, commenting that this sort of thing is normal, using post-WWII Germany as evidence.” Now where do you think they are getting that from? I doubt one person in fifty had even heard of the werewolves until recent weeks.

So the lie is very useful to Rumsfeld and Co. Now perhaps he is merely ignorant rather then consciously fraudulent. However this is after all the Secretary of Defense, and he has competent staff to brief him. I find it hard to swallow that he seriously believes this new party line that US armed forces spent three years subduing nazi guerillas after the war.

15

I guess I’ll be the first to say it

RE the title- I’d go see that movie!

16

Thanks, I was quite pleased with it :wink: Anyhoo time for me to go to bed.

17

I had never heard of the werewolves until a couple of weeks ago in rightwing sites. But, my searching of google says that postwar Germany was a bloody affair. E.g.,

Note that sniping, mining roads, arson, decapitation amd poisoning are all actions that kill people.

Confirmation of death and destruction.

So, to measure the deaths caused by Werewolves, one must count Germans and Russians, as well as Americans.

Note the sentence, “every unexplained fire or explosion associated with a military installation tended to be blamed on the Werwolf.” Whether or not these fires and explosions were caused by Werwolf, they damaged property and killed and injured people.

From these descriptions, it appears that the number deaths in post-war Germany was likely a great deal higher than what we’ve seen so far in Iraq. OTOH, if the bloody attacks in Iraq keep up long enough, there may be no limit on the number of deaths there. There’s no question that the US has to find a way to end these attacks.

18

Sweet Lord december have you no shame? You are citing an EZ-Board thread? Your quote does not show “Confirmation of death and destruction.” in post-surrender Germany. All sources indicate the werewolves were for the most a late-war terror tactic to keep people from surrendering. You blandly restate ignorance that should have been dispelled in your thread about the Werewolves.

There was a lot of destruction and starvation around in post-war Germany but it was not due to German resistance. That of course is the point of this discussion, comparing resistance groups. Your attempt to confuse the issue is moronic at best, purposely misleading at worst.

19

  1. Your cite is primarily talking about wartime activity as should be apparent from the reference to a paratrooper attack in March 1945 and the reference to such activity slackening off at the capitulation. As such it is not relevant to a discussion of post-war resistance. In your response you need to clearly delineate between wartime and postwar acts. Yes naturally German soldiers killed Allied soldiers during the war.

  2. All these right-wing sites seem to rely upon a single article, that is parroted and rephrased. I earlier asked you to come up with some evidence for your proposition, not another cite which takes its information from the same source as the cite from your first werewolf post.

In other words do not rehash or relink to the article ‘Minutemen of the Third Reich’ or sites that rely upon it.

A. The repetition adds nothing new
B. It is very vague about the post-war period. It mentions the Bremen attack in June 1945 and then merely mentions ‘incidents’. An incident could mean a car bomb that kills 30 people or it could mean a teenager painting ‘Yankee go home’ on a wall late at night. Its important to know which.

These are the known fatal incidents

  • One incident, an explosion in Bremen in June 1945 kills 5 Americans
  • One incident, in 1946, 3 Americans killed in a fire in Passau

Given that WW2 is exhaustively documented, and one of the most written about subjects in human history, it should surely be easy to demonstrate your thesis that postwar Germany was a “bloody affair” of a guerilla war that lasted 2 to 3 years if that was the case. While you are at it, you might want to explain how the extent of this struggle escaped notice of the historical profession until luckily discovered by the right wing 50 years later just in time to make a bad analogy.

Yes I did note that sentence and I also note you omitted the first part of it. The sentence without your omission reads: “They committed arson, though perhaps less than they are credited with : every unexplained fire or explosion associated with a military installation tended to be blamed on the Werwolf”. This suggests of course a bit of a bogeyman factor for our dear old werewolves. And in relation to your second sentence “Whether or not…” you are glossing over the importance of that distinction. If a house burnt down and werewolves had nothing to do with it, then its got nothing to do with them and any damage is not material to this discussion.

No, that’s just being silly. Leaving aside the wartime attacks and some rhetoric the factual data contained in your cite is a total of 5 American dead from Bremen in June 1945.

To which if we add the 3 Passau dead from 1946 is a total of 8 dead, which is less then half the US dead from Iraq in this month alone. If you have any evidence for further dead please present it.
Historical sources please, no blogs, and pre-war Iraq war so we can be sure its not tainted by politics.

20

Correcting myself, it was not december’s thread but his posting in the thread linked in the OP. Sorry.