I had never heard the term “Werewolf” related to post war resistance. That I know of the term was used for disguised German soldiers used in the Battle of the Bulge to confuse American Units and stop reinforcement and coordination. They mostly did minor sabotage.
The confusion caused was pretty big and the number of arrested Real American soldiers and officers was an added and amusing hassle.
From the cites given... the more deadly "werewolf" actions happened within 3 months of surrender. Considering that the German Army numbered millions and the fanatical SS several divisions the comparison to the beaten up Iraqi army of 500k shows that in relative terms the Iraqi invasion is WAY WORSE than Germany 1945.
Most Germans were also pretty relieved to be under US control instead of Russian sphere... so not much relevance there either.
december, if you follow the links, your EZ-board post cites the same article that it appears all these rightwing sites are using, in the prior thread it’s what your blog ultimately was using as a source as well. It is this book review for The Last Nazis. If you read the review, you’ll notice that the text of it has repeatedly been lifted verbatim – it’s in the EZ board and your blog from the original thread you mentioned the Werewolves in. You’ll also notice that it lists a grand total of 5 Americans killed in the Bremen police headquarters bombing as the extent of post war fatalities. That is all that your googling has found, the same text from the same book review used repeatedly. Postwar Germany was most emphatically not a bloody affair, read some of the official histories provided by Eolbo. Occupation duty in post war Germany did not involve massive sweeps to hunt down Werewolves in the cities, raids to discover huge hidden caches of weapons, search and destroy operations against bands of Werewolves roaming the countryside, and daily attacks against US personnel.
I love the thread title. In my estimation now that Rumsfeld finally had to come out and admit that US and Coalition troops are facing guerilla action in Iraq rather than ‘dead-enders’ or criminals, he had to find some way to cast the in the worst possible light, so he used the misreading of history in regards to the Werewolves and Godwinised them.
Fair enough. I have one source. Those calling Rumsfeld a liar have no sources.
That statement is so incomplete as to constitute spin. It takes one example as if it were the entirety of what the Werewolves did, but it ignores other key points. Acording to the article:[ul][li]That particular attack in Bremen also killed 39 Germans.[]There were a lot of Werewolves: “Some 5,000 – 6,000 recruits were raised by the winter of 1944-45, but numbers rose considerably in the following spring”[]They “specialised in ambushes and sniping”The Werewolves were active from 1944 to 1947. It stands to reason that thousands of people committing murderous attacks for a 3-year must have perpetrated a great many deaths. [/li]
E.g., if 5,000 people each averaged one successful attack a month for 3 years, there would have been 180,000 Werewolf attacks. Reduce this by a factor of 10 and we’re still talking about 18,000 – an enormous number. Reduce it by a factor of 100 and you’ve got 1800, still a lot more than there have been in Iraq so far. (Although, to be fair, I have read that some Iraqi collaberators have been killed, but I don’t know how many.)[li]The article gives many other suggestions of substantial bloodshed. E.g.:[/li]
– “Werewolves…took the lives of many Allied and Soviet soldiers and officers.”
– “Buildings housing Allied and Soviet staffs were favourite targets for Werewolf bombings;”
– “Werewolves…soon began to undertake scorched-earth measures and vigilante actions against German collaborators' or defeatists’.”
– “Attempts to blow up factories, power plants or waterworks occasionally provoked melees between Werewolves and desperate German workers”
– “vigilante attacks caused the deaths of a number of small-town mayors and, in late March 1945, a Werewolf paratroop squad assassinated the Lord Mayor of Aachen, Dr Franz Oppenhoff”[/ul]So, what does the article show?
– The Werewolves were active for 3 years from 1944 - 1947
– They did kill a lot of people
– We don’t know how many other American soldiers died during the occupation, but I’ll bet there were plenty of accidents and unexplained deaths. There always are.
Today’s lead editorial in the New York Times complains about the total number of American deaths in “post-war” Iraq (all deaths, not just those due to enemy attacks). I’ll bet that the figure is nowhere the total number of deaths in post-WW2 Germany. The improvements in auto safety alone would have made a significant difference.
The difference in POV is that we’re focused on each individual death in Iraq (and properly so.) But after tens of millions died in WW2, the deaths of a few thousand during the post-war period aren’t important enough to be in the history books.
[quote]
Some 5,000 – 6,000 recruits were raised by the winter of 1944-45, but numbers rose considerably in the following spring"[li]They “specialised in ambushes and sniping”The Werewolves were active from 1944 to 1947.[/li][/quote]
that is not the same as 5.000-6.000 were active from 45-47
**As you have already been told ** the vast majority surrendered on Donitz’s orders.
So, this is utter rubbish.
Now that you have nicely established that there was a (**totaly fictitious[/b) high number of casualties, you then compare it to Iraq. Again with the intent to nullify any importance of current casualties.
Sometimes I wonder if you’re being paid to write this sort of spin.
I adjusted for that. I pointed out that if you reduced my estimate 10-fold or even 100-fold you would still get a number quite a bit larger than the American deaths in Iraq to date.
My estimate is an order of magnitude guess, based on what the book review said. A range of 1,800 to 180,000 more-or-less is obviously imprecise, but I think it’s reasonable. Before retirement I made order-of-magnitude estimates professionally, and I was pretty good at it.
OTOH, the opposing figure of 5 American deaths is unreasonable. It’s based on one single attack, even though the source tells us that there were numerous attacks, which “took the lives of many Allied and Soviet soldiers and officers.”
The New York Times doesn’t pay me, but they will be publishing a Letter to Editor from me tomorrow on the subject of Iraq.
Blindingly untrue, links to official US histories from the occupation period have been provided. They show no evidence whatsoever of widespread attacks after the German surrender. Most of the attacks by the Wolverines occurred during the war, and the 5,000-6,000 recruits were raised during the war and by and large surrendered afterwards. You are making up numbers from thin air when you decide that these 5,000 wolverines were active after the war and conducted anywhere from 1,800 to 180,000 attacks. It’s pure unadulterated rubbish. It never happened. I’d suggest looking up this title at your local library, if they don’t have a copy they can no doubt obtain one through inter-library loan:
THE U.S. ARMY IN THE OCCUPATION OF GERMANY, 1944-1946, by Earl F. Ziemke. (1975, 1985, 1990; 484 pp., maps, charts, illustrations, note on sources, glossary, index). CMH Pub 30-6, paper, GPO S/N 008-029-00090-3, $24.00.
The role of the U.S. Army in the post-World War II occupation of Germany.
It is the official US Army history of the occupation of Germany, part of the ‘Green Book’ series. You will find that Wolverine activities against US forces occurred almost entirely prior to the end of hostilities in Europe on May 8, 1945. The “numerous attacks†conducted by the Wolverines occurred almost entirely during the war.
I’m having an awfully hard time coming up with a number for you, december. Want to know why? From RAND’s America’s Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq, there’s a link here, warning, it’s a pdf file, bolding is mine:
I feel like you guys are doing a pretty good job of debunking december (not that he’d ever realize it), but this is actually a fair point. I can’t imagine Soviet records of the time are as accurate as our own.
Still, like Eolbo said (I think it was him), you’ve got to start to question the paucity of evidence. If these Werewolves were so nasty, why are only the two attacks mentioned time and time again?
Also,
This is so ridiculous it’s almost criminal. I bet I could find out what Ike ate on April 2, 1943 if I wanted to. WW2 is clearly THE most significant event in human history. You think people were lazy in writing about it?
Besides, if this is your argument, why are there records of the Bremen and Passau attacks? Shouldn’t those be considered not “important enough to be in the history books”? Hell, we’ve got records of deaths in the Pacific after the end of WWII… why are those recorded, but not the German ones?
Why is the comparison with German resistance and not, say, French ?
In fact, why is there a comparison at all given the Iraqi army mostly just went home (and didn’t stay around long enough to be defeated), the entire Iraqi border is open and people come and go as the please (like the Afghanistan/Pakistan border during the USSR occupation and not like post-WW2 germany) and the ideology driving this particular resistance is a desire to be free of western occupation (rather than a Nazi ideology) ?
Well, the circumstances of the Soviet held territory aren’t being used for comparison (and I’m not sure that would help out the pro-occupation argument ).
If we are including German casualties of Werewolf attacks then Iraqi casualties would have to be as well. However it muddies the issue since Rumsfeld is talking about military casualties. From the 2nd link in OP:
(my emphasis)
So while it is worth considering if we really want to compare the situations-- in this debate it is a typical december dodge.
December there never was a debate, your position was a complete non-starter without even a shred of historical credibility. Now I hope you will stop propagating a lie.
Already online. To the surprise of, well, no one, you simply repeat as fact something which has been repeatedly and patiently explained to you here is not a fact, that the UN was never going to approve an invasion of Iraq under any circumstances. There’s a word for what you do - but at least you’re consistent about where you do it, namely everywhere. But, if you really want to look foolish to the entire world as well as here, that’s your business.
As for the Werewolf stuff above, it’s noticeable that you have no basis for saying what you have about it, that any issue of fact has always, always fallen on others to support, that you have repeatedly demanded information that you have the time and knowledge to find out yourself, and that you have in short been stalling through this entire thread in order to avoid confronting your fear of finding that the facts do not comport with your preconceptions of the world. You owe several posters here your gratitude for their unwarranted patience.
After you guys have thoroughly put away with this stupid comparison of post-war Germany and Iraq, one big question remains:
How come nobody (in charge) ever thought about it that there might be differences? Did Rumsfeld really belive, that after Saddam is gone, everything would go as smoothly as after WWII?
On the one side we have a people totally exhausted after 6 years of war - and a total defeat.
On the other hand an army that fled after a couple of month of fighting.
And - surprising as it might be - I see some differences in mentality between the two nations, too…
T. Mehr, I don’t think there is any chance that Rumsfeld ever believed it. He was, after all, actually alive at the end of WW2 (he was about ~13-16 yrs old during the 3 years following). This is merely a false talking point to try and make the Iraq pill easier to swallow. Business as usual.
I find no definition for “subversive acts” within the text of this (albeit short) document, but the fact that there is nothing specific mentioned leads me to believe that these were not considered especially important, especially given the information provided by the more comprehensive work above. I assume that had the constabulary (38,000 strong), the enforcement division of the occupation, been involved in suppression of guerillas this would have been mentioned.
It does look like XII Corps was harrassed for about 3-4 weeks post surrender, with one definite casualty (the injured officer). It seems like much of the harrassment came from teenagers rather than highly-trained SS werewolves. (Yes I know that kids 12 and up were trained and sent into combat but most of the descriptions show largely amateurish and ineffective attempts).
The work then describes SWOOP raids to uncover black markets and werewolf-like subversive activity. There is considerable description of black marketeering activity caught.
Occupation-related casulaties are described however
Overall several things have come out of some diligent googling and web surfing:
The Occupation forces in Germany were able to provide security (from both criminal and subversive elements) to both Germans and DP’s/refugees to the extent that mutual trust was built up fairly quickly.
Sabotage and attacks seem to have trailed off fairly steeply after surrender - at least in XII corps sector.
3.) The US Army has done a very, very good job of transferring its excellent histories, analyses and other documents to a web readable format. So far I have not found a comparable British Army website (although I have found indexes of documents which can be found on microfilm in the appropriate archives). If anyone knows of one please post it. I am not holding my breath for the Russian WWII/post-war archives to be available on the web (in English)
).