Was there really any post WW2 resistance to the occupying allied forces?

[LeGrande]

I made a claim in a political discussion in Rec.climbing that there was postwar resistence in Germany. My opponents claim that there wasn't a single casualty due to resistance after the war ended. Does anyone have any on line references that might support my position? Or did the Germans simply give up immediately? Are Condi, and Rush wrong?

[jbstrick]

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1373/is_10_50/ai_66157021

[jbstrick]

More...

From the period of 1944 to 1948 a secret, pro-Nazi, fascist group of SS officers and German soldiers called "Werewolves" terrorized Allied sympathizers and allied soldiers. Using tactics which can only be described as guerrilla they posed a moderate security threat to the rebuilding of Germany. They often were dressed as civilians, and almost never fought as conventional soldiers. They frequently committed acts of violence not only against the Allied occupiers, but also against other Germans who they viewed as being anti-Nazi.

Allied-supported government leaders were assassinated including the American-supported and democratically elected mayor of Aachen, the first major German city to be liberated. The werewolves came to the house of the Mayor dressed as downed pilots and killed him when he came to the door.

In a 3-month period of 1945 there were 300 incidents of violence and sabotage in which the Werewolves were suspected. They blew up railroad tracks, schools, and in some cases attempted poisoning the food and liquor supply.

In a way to further their cause they also used media to their advantage. Using bootleg radio transmitters, pro-Nazi graffiti, and by dropping leaflets, they promoted the citizens of post-war Germany to rise up against the evil occupying forces of America, England, France, and the USSR.

Though the body count of Allied soldiers was light to non-existent, they did make the rebuilding of Germany a tougher job than it had to be. These Nazi sympathizers wanted a return to a statist, fascist Nazi led government.

Things eventually got better, but during the reign of the Werewolf citizens were terrorized and frightened to cooperate with the occupiers for fear of reprisal. This small, but dedicated, bunch of Anti-American insurgents did not want to see the end of the fascist Nazi ruling party that they were a part of. The ultimately knew that if Germany became a free state, all hopes of seeing their world of hate and genocide would come to an end. With freedom would come an end to the world they wanted to live in.

[JLS]

Among the responses you could have made:

1. The US was taking problem Germans out and shooting them dead with minimal to no due process. This does not even mention what the Red Army was doing. Does your friend want us to adopt that strategyl.

2. Germany was bombed flat. The people were starving and struggling to survive the winter. Does you friend think we should have bombed more cities longer in Iraq killing civilians in the same percentage as we did in Germany in WWII?

3. Despite 1 and 2 there were causualties and even KIA in the aftermath of WWII in Germany. In one three month period the History Channel reported something like 50 KIA. Keep in mind the occupation went on until 1950ish when the elections were held. Does your friend think we should have maintained the occupation longer and made it as harsh as the German occupation?

This was more like WWI than WWII. Like WWI where we blamed the German government not the German people we have tried to make this as easy on the Iraqi people as possible, maybe even at the expense of some of our soldiers and marines lives. If the Iraqi people pick a government that causes more trouble and we have to go back in the near future, look more to the Germany WWII model.

[LeGrande]

Thank you, That was fast : ) Now at least I have some ammo to fight with : )

[LeGrande]

Thank you too : )

[The Wizard]

nope, this was a full blown war, the people had been fighting for YEARS, and most enemy were dead, dying or wounded

[SandRat]

Center for Military History search page is one good place to start to look.

[1066AD]

History Channel had a program on the Werewolves very recently, check their website for any reruns (they also sell their programs on video cassette).

[chaosagent]

PING

[Plumrodimus]

A motion picture about the werewolves was described here as well. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1145878/posts

I watched it a few weeks ago. By the looks of it, it was filmed shortly after WWII.

[1066AD]

Thanks.
I've also seen posted in various places 1945/46 articles from NY Times and Life Magazine spouting the "quagmire" crap and "no plan for the peace". I guess some things never change !

[farmfriend]

Occupational Hazards
By Pejman Yousefzadeh

To better understand what's happening in Iraq today, it's useful to examine previous American military occupations. The study of the American experience in Germany, for example, is revealing in that it shatters some commonly held myths regarding the post-World War II American occupation experience.

Many people seem to believe that once the Allies accepted Germany's surrender to end the war in Europe in 1945, any and all German resistance to Allied forces and their plans ceased completely. But the Allies had to take measures to quell resistance from various German groups. Organizations like the "Werewolves" were bred by the dying Nazi regime to hamper the Allied advance into Germany and the occupation of Germany. In his book Kommando: German Special Forces of World War Two, James Lucas tells us of Allied soldiers ambushed by Werewolf forces, clashes between Werewolf partisans and Allied forces in the closing days of the war, and leaflets found in the American zone of occupation in Germany detailing plans on how to undermine the occupation through sabotage and other measures. In addition to the Werewolves, the Nazis organized the Freikorps and the Volkssturm in a further effort to resist the Allied advance upon and occupation of Germany.

It's very enlightening read.

[Robert_Paulson2]

there were hold outs on the pacific front... according to dad... several YEARS later.

[JLS]

Of course there were pretty famous. Here is a chronology:

http://www.wanpela.com/holdouts/list.html

in it the last holdout is discovered in 1989. An equivilant insurgency in the War on Terror would last at least until 2048 if the War on Terror ended today.

BTW, there was also a popular up rising against the USSR after WWII and there are few dumb enough to claim:

1. WWII did not end in 1945 when major combat operations ended.

2. The USSR lost WWII even though the uprising happened and eventually the form of government imposed by the Soviets was changed by the populations.

[Destro]

The Werewolves were more bark than bite. Those who used them to make a point about what America was facing in Iraq were misleading if not outright liars.

Most GI KIA in the post war period were the result of black market busting. The myth of the Werewolves did cause many German casualties on the Soviet zone - where having a German uniform in your closet was all the justification the Soviet SMERSH needed to shoot a former German soldier dead. That was actually the greatest tragedy of the Werewolf propoganda. Like Goebbels Redoubt - it was a myth.

If you want to read an account of the Werewolve nonsense from a real historian read The Fall of Berlin 1945 by Antony Beevor

[JLS]

The Werewolves were more bark than bite.
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As implied by what I said in my first pots, whether the bite of the Werewolves would be greater or smaller than the Iraqi regime loyalists HAD THE ALLIES OF THE WAR ON TERROR BOMBED IRAQ AND COMPLETELY DESTROYED THE INFRASTRUCTURE LIKE THE ALLIES DID TO GERMANY IN WWII, is merely conjecture on your part.

[Destro]

We can not compare Iraq with Germany, so the point about if we should have bombed Iraq to dust is not a good one. German cooperation with the allies had zero to do with our wasting of their cities. Many reasons why post war Germans and Japanese and Italians were compliant but it would take too much time and told in generalizations.

Suffice it to say that unlike Iraq, the Axis powers were in effect failed liberal democracies. Liberal democracy and the standards for it were not foreign to these nations and they were also very homogeneous as well - unlike Iraq.

Some will add that the Germans and Japanese were also prone to following orders and if someone in uniform told them to do something they were obedient and that Italians would rather have fun in the sun riding on Vespas than fight a guerrilla war. That of course is subjective proof :)

If you want to get real trippy you can blame WW1 with creating the conditions that caused civilized nations to adopt barbarity of the Nazis and communists and fascists.

The end of the Cold War can be seen as the end of WW1 and even this Iraq war can be viewed as the fall out from WW1.

[JLS]

"We can not compare Iraq with Germany, so the point about if we should have bombed Iraq to dust is not a good one."
__________________________________________________

I did not say we should have bombed Iraq to dust. I said that not bombing Iraq as heavily and as indiscriminately as we did Germany in WWII HAD IMPLICATIONS FOR HOW EASY THE OCCUPATION WAS. My point is an excellent one.

---

"Suffice it to say that unlike Iraq, the Axis powers were in effect failed liberal democracies.
___________________________________________________

Of course I forgot about that long long Japanese history of liberal democracy. Oh and I was under the misconception that Germany had not been a nation state for even 100 years at the time of WWII and had fought WWI at the behest of a Monarch? I guess I was wrong and I just dreamed up the Kaiser? Further Italy was unified like Germany under a Monarch in the second half of the 19th Century. So you are zero for three there. All three countries like Iraq dabbled in liberal democratic forms of government and then fell sway to a Dictator or in the case of Japan a group of military dictators.

Some of the rest of your post, stereotypes aside, I can agree with and contains points I have made on this board. But if you were one of the US soldiers or German post WWII leaders killed by the werewolves they probably would not have seemed such paper tigers to you. But you consider the werewolves paper tigers, just like future historians may look back and marvel that the US liberated Iraq and set up a new government with so far few than 1,000 KIA. [You may not know this but the US suffered more than 1,000 KIA to liberate and occupy Germany in WWII.]

[Destro]

Yes, Japan was a liberal democracy as was Germany. The Kaiser's Germans in fact had more civil rights than most British citizens. Ironic being that our Russian ally was a full autocracy and we were fighting WW1 to make the world safe for democracy (I will avoid going into the colonial depravities of our ally Belgium).

That you are ignorant about Japanese democracy's history is not suprising. Few Americans know this peroid of Japanese history. A quick google search will bring up some useful articles.

In any case my point is when the allies imposed democracy and the rule of law on the Axis it was not a foreign concept to them.