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Old talk

I deleted the section "similair organizations": - The Jagdverbände were no "stay-behind" but the commandos of the Waffen-SS (like the Special Air Services of the British or the Brandenburger of the Wehrmacht). Simply check Misplaced Pages or Google. They had nothing in common with the werewolf. - The Bundschuh was a locally hatched plan that never got over paper-ware status and had no effect whatsoever. I can't see any reasons for mentioning it. 141.13.240.31 07:57, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

The original Bundschuh was a revoulutionary movement in Germany from 1493-1517. 141.13.8.14 13:36, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Some facts in the article were simply wrong and were corrected. 141.13.240.31 09:17, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

(copied from Talk:Werewolf):

What is the justification for:

1. Redirecting Talk:Wehrwolf to here, when the topics are barely related; and/or
2. The claim "some doubt that was ever really active at all"?

Point 2) sounds like historical revisionism, and point 1) like a trick to disguise point b. There is immense evidence of not merely the existence of Wehrwolf, but of its organisation, internal politics, and many of its operations, e.g. the assassination of the anti-Nazi mayor of Aachen. It was certainly smaller than its creators hoped, but largely because Wilhelm Keitel spent the last few weeks of the war trying to shut it down. I will change both in a couple of days unless I hear a reason not to do so. Securiger 01:24, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Point 2 is not entirely historical revisionism. Just about all credible reports about "Werwolf" activity in the west are older than the surrender of Germany; i.e. technically happened in wartime. Poland is another story, but as far as western Germany is concerned, there are few to none reports post 1945. (The Bremen bombing is not attributd to "Werwolfs", according to most sources.) The bigger issue is the neo-Nazi structure still existing in present time. --HBS 14:37, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Redirect now removed. Securiger 15:00, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Historifictive text:

Hello, anonym. Sorry I missed your comments when you posted them, and they have been left so long without a reply. We don't delete legitimate criticism. I will respond to your criticisms in a couple of days, as I have to go to the library to get the reference that I used, but I include a few quick comments straight away. Securiger 08:56, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Typical Werwolf tactics included sniping attacks, arson, sabotage, and assassination although in Poland they also carried out massacres of civilians, and a few substantial attacks against Soviet troops.

I know there were Estonian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian (Stepan Bandera) fighters, which were active until 1950, but I have never heard about German military attacks after May 9th 1945 except two towns in Soviet Occupation Zone: Altenberg and Demmin. These towns were destroyed by Soviet troops as a reaction for SINGLE sniping attacks against them.

Please let me know if you know other examples.

I don't know much about that, as that text was from another user, who, however, appears to be an expert on Polish history. The reference I hope to find in the library does include an account of a fixed battle between a company of Werwolf and a Soviet battalion (the Werwolves were slaughtered). If I recall correctly, it was near the main Werwolf training camp. My only other comment is to wonder why you restrict it to after 9th of May when the writer did not?Securiger

Their most costly single attack in the western zones of occupation was a bombing which killed 44 persons.

Please inform about place and time.

Bremen police headquarters, June 1945. Source: Perry Biddiscombe, Minutemen of the Third Reich, accessed here.Securiger

There do not seem to be any sources regarding the incident except for that one article.

Their most prominent victims were Dr. Franz Oppenhoff (the new anti-Nazi mayor of Aachen and most prominent democratic politician left in Germany),

That's true.

It was prior to the German surrender, though.

Major John Poston (Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's liaison officer)

He died in battle

I'll need to check the details, but—if I recall correctly—whilst conducting a reconnaissance in his jeep he was ambushed by youths in civilian clothing, armed with submachineguns, some distance from the front. He died in battle certainly, but probably not battle with regular forces. Securiger

and (possibly) General Berzarin (Soviet commandant of Berlin).

General Bersarin had a motorbike accident. However, it may be possible to cause a motorbike accident, but there is no proof for a planned accident.

Werwolf propaganda radio claimed it was an assassination, the Soviets claimed it was a motorbike accident. If the Soviets had said nothing, probably no-one would have believed Werwolf; but some do, because the Soviet story contains a number of errors and inconsistencies; what type of accident it was, and the location where it happened, changed over time. And you'll notice that the article says possibly. Securiger

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, although the association is probably fanciful.

On 25th August 2003, Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld compared the problems faced by US troops then in Iraq, to those faced by US troops in post-World War II Germany. In particular, they mentioned Wehrwolf.

Like in Iraq, Germany was threatened after World War II by CRIMINAL gangs who were just interested in robbery, stealing and black market supply. However, the political background of these attacks was marginal in Germany after WW2.

Your point is? Securiger 08:56, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The more conventional view is that while Werwolf was too disorganised to provide any significant military impediment to the occupiers, it delayed economic reconstruction and democratisation by three or four years.

Reconstruction was delayed by Allied bureaucracy (there was a cartoon "How your request will be handled by military government"). CRIMINAL activities had some negative impact on the economy.

Sorry, you're completely wrong here. There was a deliberate policy to reconstruct Germany last, and it was partly motivated by ongoing resistance. I'll have to hunt around for the references. Securiger 08:56, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

If you want to publish facts, you may write that former Werwolf members started a criminal career after World War II.

I am not angry, I do not demand correction because I like phantasy. You may delete my comment and continue your historifiction. However, it would be honest to rename Misplaced Pages from Encyclopedia to Fairytale.

Utter Nonsense

Werewolf = wolf man bcz in English "were" once meant "man" (whence - see at least any Merriam-Webster dict that includes etymology --also world, from "were" and "alt", meaning "man's age" or "human realm".)

Wehr is unrelated, with its senses clustering around "force" and "protection".

The implausible name should be enuf to show this is a hoax, IMO.
--Jerzy(t) 18:14, 2004 Sep 10 (UTC)

It is not a hoax, but the etymology was indeed inaccurate. I tried to fix it.

--Greg Kuperberg 15:18, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hello Greg, I'm going to have to hunt around for my references, but ISTR that the two names were due to the discovery that some pre-war communist group had called itself "Werwolf", so there was a half-hearted attempt to change the name. Or something like that. Securiger 08:56, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Werwolf and Iraq

I didn't like the way that this article supported the Rice-Rumsfeld comparison between chaos in Iraq and Werwolf, so I rewrote it. I could not find evidence that Rice's remark is the "more conventional view" among historians. I would be happy to be proved wrong with the aid of credible references.

--Greg Kuperberg 23:49, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm afraid I have several problems with your changes:

1. The article did not support "the Rice-Rumsfeld comparison"; it merely mentioned it in passing, with complete neutrality. It did however attack one of Benjamin's various false statements—the most widely quoted and most widely repudiated one—which is not the same thing at all. You have changed it very much into an attack on Rice and Rumsfeld, or more particularly, an attack on what some hostile reviewers have claimed they meant to imply, but did not say. The sole reason I mentioned the issue at all (which I now see may have been a mistake) was because the previous version of the article consisted almost entirely of a paraphrase of Benjamin's "next to nothing" claim. I really would hope that we can make this an article about the history of Werwolf, and keep the modern politics to a minimum.
2. Your changes are supported by a pay-only reference, which makes it rather hard for others to examine. I would like to do so, because the statements which you make immediately after that link - giving the impression that they are criticisms of Rice and Rumsfeld by Biddiscombe - do not refer to anything Rice or Rumsfeld actually said. Thus I wonder if you are reading too much into Biddiscombe's statement, or paraphrasing it awkwardly? For example: "the Allied occupation of Germany was much larger than the Coalition Force in Iraq". Quite true, but totally unrelated to anything that Rice or Rumsfeld said.
3. Benjamin's statements, some of which are quite false and others of which are greatly exagerrated, have been widely quoted and widely believed. You have completely removed all criticism of them, giving the impression that they are basically true.

I recommend you read Rice and Rumsfeld's speeches. In my opinion, the whole idea—that they are trying to claim that post-war Iraq and post-war Germany are/were very similar— is Benjamin's straw man. These speeches, given to a group of veterans of the occupation of Nazi Germany, are about the difficulties that those veterans endured. They barely mention Iraq. Rumsfeld's only apparent reference to Iraq was to say "Does that sound familiar?" after referring to looting of art treasures. Rice is a bit closer to a comparison, but still quite weak: "SS officers?called 'werewolves'?engaged in sabotage and attacked both coalition forces and those locals cooperating with them?much like today's Baathist and Fedayeen remnants." I suppose the extent to which you can call this a comparison depends on what nuance you want to give "much like", but it would be drawing a long bow to insist that this is a claim of parity. Securiger 08:56, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

First of all, I agree with you that the article has digressed too much into modern politics. And I still think that it can be edited to satisfy both of us, if maybe only by cutting out this tangent entirely.

I concur, and will attempt to avoid any reference to it. I'm pretty happy with your current edits, with just a couple of comments:

• (1) Werwolf was a Nazi construct and not a durable insurgency. I'm a bit puzzled by what you mean by this one. You seem to be suggesting that Nazis necessarily could not establish a durable insurgency. If so, surely that's speculation?

What I meant was not that it necessarily couldn't, but that it decidedly didn't. I should rephrase this; what I had in mind is that whether by fate or by choice, German surrender severed the umibilical cord of Werwolf and that it withered by the month afterwards. - Greg

• (2) Especially after German surrender, Werwolf had a mythological reputation, perhaps deliberately fostered by its name. And also fostered by deliberate propaganda. I already mentioned this in passing, but it should bear emphasis that they were actively claiming all sorts of things as Werwolf operations, many of which probably were not.

I agree with you almost completely, and I agree that it should be stated better. I would only say that in this case, Nazi propaganda was reinforced by an Allied tendency to see ghosts. - Greg

• I'd like to add (5) and (6) (or put them before your (4), if you like, and feel free to tinker): "(5) Germans had just endured 5 years of total war, suffering 4.5 million dead, and for the most part just wanted peace" and "(6) By early March 1945, it had become clear that delaying the Western Allies would just give the Soviets a larger share of Germany." Securiger 16:57, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Your point (5) is really part of what I had in mind for point (1). Your point (6) is well taken, although it should not come last since I would like this paragraph to follow chronological order. Confusion between wartime Werwolf and postwar Werwolf is related to the current "Iraq disease" in the United States. After Thanksgiving break I will think about revising this paragraph a bit more. - Greg

That said, I'm going to stick to my guns on the whole Rice, Rumsfeld, and Benjamin issue. I've read Benjamin's article three times now, and I have Rice's and Rumsfeld's speeches in front of me as well. I just don't see your point about Benjamin "attacking a straw man". At the end of the day, Rice and Rumsfeld couldn't care less about Werwolf; their jobs depended and still depend on the outcome in Iraq. They were clearly trying to influence public thinking about the war on terrorism in general and the invasion of Iraq in particular; otherwise they wouldn't waste people's time with history lessons. It wasn't fair pool to only worry about how widely quoted Daniel Benjamin was, moreover to drop that he once worked for Clinton. Rice and Rumsfeld were even more widely quoted, and of course they also have political appointments.

"to only worry about"? My one sentence summary was - I believe - critical of exagerrated impressions given by both parties. That is, it stated that Werwolf did not provide "any significant military impediment to the occupiers", but that it did not amount to next to nothing. I added that comment about Benjamin because he is completely unknown in my country, and at the time "Daniel Benjamin" was a redlink; by comparison Rice and Rumsfeld are household names, and also have extensive articles. Securiger 16:57, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I believe you that the impression of your comments to an American like me is unintentional. I think that you just may not realize the extent to which the Bush administration has exploited the history of World War II to rationalize the situation in Iraq -- while denouncing any comparison to Vietnam as gross ignorance. If you want to start to really get it, read Rumsfeld's speech (linked just below) from beginning to end, and then imagine many more similar comments from Bush, Rice, Cheney, on Fox News, etc. I can see your point that in the abstract, Daniel Benjamin's comments were strange. But in context, they weren't so bad. What Benjamin meant was that if you take only the postwar existence of Werwolf, it was "next to nothing" compared to the current war in Iraq. And that's just true. --Greg Kuperberg 16:26, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"Does this sounds familiar?" was not Rumsfeld's "only apparent reference to Iraq" in his full speech. He referred to both Iraq and Germany all over the speech; see . He explicitly used the "Nazi dead-enders" to argue that victory in Iraq is both righteous and inevitable. Moreover, this is against a background of frequent Bush administration references to World War II, starting with the "Axis of Evil", conveniently another trio of belligerent regimes. They want to inflate the war on terrorism to World War II because they want fiscal and diplomatic carte blanche, and they are equally eager to prove that the invasion of Iraq will have a happy ending.

For those more directly interested in Werwolf, I think that you're mostly right that none of this needs to be mentioned. Still, there is a danger in exaggerating Werwolf just by dwelling on it, even more so if you give a laundry list of tactics without a quantitative assessment. Your most quantitative statement was the concluding sentence, "The more conventional view is that while Werwolf was too disorganised to provide any significant military impediment to the occupiers, it delayed economic reconstruction and democritisation by three or four years." Conventional according to who? It took four years to restore German sovereignty. But how much of these four years were a "delay", how much delay could be attributed to anti-occupation violence, and how much of that violence could be attributed to Werwolf?

The problem of mental exaggeration of Werwolf is compounded further by the Bush administration's politicized historical references. I have been told several times that I just don't know postwar German history if I think that the invasion of Iraq is going badly. So I think that it definitely would be useful to point out that Werewolf was far smaller than many other anti-American insurgencies, e.g., the Phillipines, Vietnam, and Iraq. It would also be useful to say that Werwolf before surrender was much stronger than Werwolf after surrender,

Well, I already had "then largely dismantled by Heinrich Himmler and Wilhelm Keitel in the last few weeks of the war." Securiger

and that Werwolf after surrender was exaggerated by wild attributions and urban rumor. I cannot accept Rice's assertion that Werwolf was "much like" the Iraqi insurgency either quantitatively or qualitatively. Other than that they were both anti-American, anti-occupation insurgencies, they have almost nothing in common. (I also don't see what is so terrible about Daniel Benjamin's column, but we don't have to go there.)

On the other hand, I will grant you that my LA Times reference is also tangential and weak in that it is not freely accessible. You can read it in the Google Usenet Database .

--Greg Kuperberg 14:47, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I rewrote the last section again to at least make it better. My goal was to make the last section sufficiently neutral, factual, and germane to make it acceptable to all sides. I would prefer that to deleting it outright.

Generally quite acceptable to me. See above for comments. Securiger 16:57, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Along the way I did notice that Rice recycled her werewolf lines for another speech, this one to a group of black journalists .

--Greg Kuperberg 15:32, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Factual accuracy

I think that the factual accuracy problem has been addressed, and the Iraq distraction has also been handled better. So I am removing the accuracy warning. --Greg Kuperberg 14:33, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Operations

The mayor of Aachen was killed by an SS-Commando as a result of an order given by Heinrich Himmler. This was not a spontaneous action by locals. Nikolai Berzarin did die in a traffic accident – driving a motorbike is still unsafe today, imagine how it must have been in 45- or he was assassinated by Stalin if you prefer a conspiracy theory. The part about Major John Poston seaks for itself.

Bottom line this whole section is full of unknowns, unprovens and speculation, not information. Markus Becker02 18:14, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Please don't delete or revert anything that displeases you without providing support for your opinion. The author you are deleting is a known author and academic, and we know nothing about you that would indicate that you're more knowledgeable about this topic. Explain your position here, as described in WP:XFD before deleting anything Hoserjoe 06:12, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Did you bother to read the US Army´s official history of the occupation of Germany? One get´s a somewhat different picture of the so-called german insugency. Furtheremore none, but one historian makes the claim a german insugency existed in the first place and last but not least all the politicians started to talk about it only after the shit hit the fan in Iraq. So what about you providing some facts to back up your claims?Markus Becker02 09:21, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

The Penzberg massacre can hardly count as a werwolf operation, because it was conducted before the war ended in german held territory. The local city council wanted to surrender, the Nazis found out and the Army executed eight people. That some loacal Nazis led by an SA official killed anoher eight. No insurgents here.Markus Becker02 09:36, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

I have reverted your disrespectful deletions. Please don't abuse the Misplaced Pages forum in this manner. You are being destructive assuming that your opinion is correct. Please read the welcome page to learn more about editing etiquette. Hoserjoe 06:06, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, as long as there are no facts to back up something, it does not belong here. So give us facts, like dates, names, units and places. So far these newspaper articles are just making some unspecific claims. Disprove the US Army´s official history and dozen of historians!Markus Becker02 10:20, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Werwolf exagerated

In a pervious history I have read that Werwolf was a "fiasco". This stands to reason. Hitler and Goebbels were often victims of their own propaganda. Naziism had a lot less staying power than they wanted to believe. They may have thought that they could duplicate the effectiveness of the partisans efforts against the Nazis on the eastern front in reverse. While in some parts of the Soviet Union the Nazis were initially greated as liberators, e.g. some part of the Ukraine, the populous would have soon been disabused of their mistake. The vast majority of citizens in countries under Nazi domination wanted them out, and many risked and/or gave-up their lives fighting the occupation as partisans and irregulars. At that late stage of the war (1945) Hitler was grasping at straws, his thinking more and more fantastic (which he was prone to all along). If Hitler, Goebbels, and other prominent Nazis thought that their own people would rise up behind enemy lines in the same way, they were sadly mistaken. Werwolf was little more than a fanciful gimmick borne of desperation. Once the Nazis were gone people were relieved. There was even a party in the Füher bunker after Hitler's suicide, and an air of euphoria. Comparsons are odius, but are not Bush & Rice victims of their own propaganda. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 4.178.105.81 (talk) 19:40, 18 March 2007 (UTC).

Warnings

Mostly the article acknowledges that there is next to no evidence of actual resistance to the allied occupation in post war Germany, but recently some users have been warning up the " insurgency in Germany"-theory, providing sources like newspaper articles that give either false or only vague information. Except for one historian none has so far considered the Werewolf much more that a propaganda ploy. As a result parts of the article contradict itself, hence the warning.Markus Becker02 08:30, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

You should have worked on making clear that there are two conflicting positions, rather that trying to remove information that does not conform to your pet position on the matter. Especially removing sourced information is considered vandalism in Misplaced Pages. Please do not do so again.

Beevor and Ziemke seem to argue that the werwolf was nothing, while Biddiscombe argues they were more influential and long lived.

Biddiscombe wrote a book on the topic of the werewolves, so he should be regarded as the pre-eminent expert on the subject.

Now, Beevor wrote a book focusing the Battle for Berlin, not really something that indicates he devoted much attention to the post-surrender resistance movement. Ziemke on the other hand wrote a story of the U.S. army in the occupation of Germany. The customer who paid him for writing that book is as far as I know the same army. From what I've read in it I'm doubtful about its accuracy.

What exactly has Ziemke written about the Werewolves? If he has written little, is that "fact" really of any value?

From Reading books such as Vladimir Petrov, "Money and conquest; allied occupation currencies in World War II" I know that the U.S. troops behaved atrociously, with plunder and black market activities. They sent home twice as much money each month than they were receiving in wages. A picture corroborated by sources such as this .

Does Ziemke mention any of this, or does he perform a whitewash by pretending everything was just fine? Reading Várdy, Steven Béla and Tooly, T. Hunt: "Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe" ). Columbia University Press, (2003) ISBN 0-88033-995-0 bSection: by Richard Dominic Wiggers, "The United States and the Refusal to Feed German Civilians after World War II" I learned about the deliberate policy of starvation for the German population. Does Ziemke mention any of that?

Since Beevor and Biddiscombe seem to be the real sources of information for this article, we should try to make sure we clearly state what each of them has said on the topic. Sourcing everything. E.g. according to Biddiscombe this was a werewolf assassination, while Beevor claims it was a traffic accident.

As to the articles providing "false or vague information", what is your expertise to be able to judge that? It seems to me the articles depend on the two aforementioned authors, sometimes without knowing that there are two positions on th subject. For example the fire breathing author of this link that you added seems blissfully unaware of Biddiscombes work, relying instead on Beevor and Ziemke too "prove" that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rices description of the werewolves was completelyy wrong. My impression is that either Rice had read Biddiscombe, or had access to other unpublished information. If we're going to clean out "false" articles, this one's gotta go as well.--Stor stark7 01:09, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

What sourced information are you talking about? The one of one author taking a completely different position than dozens of others during the previous five decades? They either say it was a PR ploy or don´t consider it worth mentioning. One book and the words of some politicians spoken after the insurgency in Iraq began is poor prove. And as far as the US troops are concerned, they bought cigaretts for a low price in a PX and sold them at market prices to Germans. Can´t they the Germans were unhappy about this.Markus Becker02 04:21, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Markus Becker, you appear to be playing the part of a nazi sympathizer and intent on deleting anything contrary to your opinion that the German people were merely innocent shop-keepers and victims, and that the brutal American terror-mongers were the real villains. The logical conclusion is that it's all GW Bush's fault, and the Werwolf were just a small theatrical group working for Steven Spielberg?! Am I reading your position correctly? Correct me if I'm wrong, please.

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