Werwolf pennant

Fanatical determination existed only among those Nazis who believed that surrender in any form meant execution. They, like Hitler, were determined to ensure that everyone else shared the same fate as themselves. In September 1944, when the Western Allies and the Red Army had been advancing towards the Reich with great speed, the Nazi leadership wanted to fight on against its sworn enemies even after defeat. It decided to set up a resistance movement to be known by the codename Werwolf.

The name Werwolf was inspired by a novel set in the Thirty Years War by Hermann Lons, an extreme nationalist killed in 1914 and revered by the Nazis. In October 1944, when the idea started to be put into effect, SS Obergruppenfuhrer Hans Prutzmann was appointed Generalinspekteur fur Spezialabwehr – General Inspector for Special Defence.

Prutzmann, who had studied Soviet partisan tactics during his time in the Ukraine, was summoned back from Konigsberg to establish a headquarters. But, as with many Nazi projects, rival factions wanted to create their own set-up or bring existing ones under their control. Even within the SS, there were to be two organizations, Wermolf and Otto Skorzeny”s SS Jagdverbknde. The figure rises to three if you include the unactivated Gestapo and SD version to be known by the codename Bundschuh.

In theory, the training programmes covered sabotage using tins of Heinz oxtail soup packed with plastic explosive and detonated with captured British time pencils. A whole range of items and even garments made of Nipolit explosive were designed, including raincoats with linings made of explosive. Werwolf recruits were taught to kill sentries with a slip-knotted garrote about a metre long or a Walther pistol with silencer. Captured documents showed that their watchword was to be, “Turn day into night, night into day! Hit the enemy wherever you meet him. Be sly! Steal weapons, ammunition and rations! Women helpers, support the battle of the Wermolf wherever you can.” They were to operate in groups of three to six men, and were to receive rations for sixty days. “Special emphasis was put on gasoline and oil supplies” as targets. The Nazi authorities ordered 5,000 radios and 5,000 explosive kits, but few were ready in time. American incendiary bombs dropped in bombing raids were collected and concentration camp inmates were forced to check them and extract the material for re-use.

On 1 April 1945 at 8 p.m., an appeal was broadcast to the German people to join the Werwolf. “Every Bolshevik, every Englishman, every American on our soil must be a target for our movement … Any German, whatever his profession or class, who puts himself at the service of the enemy and collaborates with him will feel the effect of our avenging hand … A single motto remains for us: “Conquer or die.” A few days later, Himmler issued a new order: “Every male in a house where a white flag appears must be shot. Not a moment must be wasted in executing these measures. By male persons who must be considered responsible for their actions this means everyone aged fourteen years and upwards.” The true objective of Werwolf, as a document of 4 April confirmed, came from the Nazi obsession with 1918. “We know the plans of the enemy and we know that following a defeat there would be no chance of Germany ever rising again like after 1918.” The threat of killing anyone who collaborated with the allies was to prevent a “Stresemann-Politik”, a reference to Gustav Stresemann”s signature of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. The Nazi Party was rooted in the humiliation of that defeat and it brought Germany back there again with terrible interest.

Hitler Youth boys were sent off to their selected areas, where they were told to bury their explosive, then contact the local Nazi Kreisleiter for accommodation and rations. They were all given single unspecified missions, then told to go home as if nothing had happened. Towards the end, the training became very hurried, so many of them were more likely to blow themselves up rather than the enemy.

Ultimately, Wermolf achieved very little, apart from a couple of assassinations – the mayors of Aachen and Krankenhagen – and the intimidation of civilians. Hitler Youth chalked slogans on walls such as, “Traitor take care, the Wermolf is watching.” Both Skorzeny and Prutzmann seem to have become less enamoured of the project as the allies closed in – if one is to believe Skorzeny”s account in his interrogation. (Prutzmann committed suicide after one brief interview.) In any case, Himmler also had a change of heart in mid-April, just when negotiations via Sweden were on his mind. He instructed Prutzmann to change Wermolf activity “to that – exclusively – of propaganda”. The only problem was that the Wermolf sender radio transmitter, under the control of Goebbels, continued to order partisan action.

On the Eastern Front, the rapid advances of the Red Army from January to March meant that hardly any groups were trained or equipped in time, and the only stay-behind groups were usually Volkssturm members, who had been cut off. The Werwolf propaganda simply lent SMERSH and the NKVD rifle regiments an urgent focus to their usual paranoia. In the west, the Allies found that Werwolf was a fiasco. Bunkers prepared for Werwolf operations had supplies “for 5 days only” and the fanaticism of the Hitler Youth members they captured had entirely disappeared. They were “no more than frightened, unhappy youths”. Few resorted to the suicide pills which they had been given “to escape the strain of interrogation and, above all, the inducement to commit treason”. Many, when sent off by their controllers to prepare terrorist acts, had sneaked home.

Some have pointed out that the whole Werwolf project did not fit with the national character. “We Germans are not a nation of partisans,” wrote an anonymous woman diarist in Berlin. “We wait for leadership, for orders.” She had travelled in the Soviet Union just before the Nazis came to power and, during long discussions on trains, Russians made jokes about the German lack of revolutionary spirit. “German comrades would storm a railway station,” one said, “only if they could first of all buy platform tickets!”

Reports also indicate that, although not part of the Werwolf programme, members of the Gestapo had been transferred to the Kriminalpolizei on the grounds that the Western Allies were sure to reinstate them later once military government was installed. As the reality of final collapse sank in, supposedly fanatical believers turned rapidly to self-preservation. Some SS members, to avoid prosecution, simply snaffled for themselves the false documents prepared for Werwolf members. Others procured Wehrmacht uniforms and the pay-books of dead men to provide themselves with new identities. German soldiers were furious that while the SS had been carrying out random executions for desertion, many of their officers were preparing their own escape. German prisoners of war told their American interrogators that tailors had been ordered to stitch a large P on jackets so that SS men trying to hide could masquerade as Polish workers.