I’ve read some accounts of die hard Nazis continuing to fight after VE Day. Who were the leaders and was it very widespread or effective?
The German Government had built somewhat secret facilities they called “Werewolf Redoubts” These were stocked with supplies, and weapons and munitions which could be used in such a circumstance. I do not recall any of these being used though. IIRC.
I think the Werewolves basically fizzled as a resistance movement as they enjoyed little popular support and suffered harsh Allied reprisals. The movement basically devolved into an escape movement designed to keep Nazi war criminals from prosecution and as sort of a post-war secret society and “old boys network” AFAIK…
Wiki states that some redoubts were used on a smaller scale, locally built ones. Historians universally state they were no real threat to the occupation(s). But one historian states they might have lasted longer and done more damage to an already stressed economy than is generally acknowledged…
It fizzled out and ever existed as an actual force. Guys wised up and went home and tried to get on with things. There was simply no point in continuing. Life was hard enough, plus all the bosses had been rounded up or left the country.
I seem to recall those same things Nick, and Forager, designed as support for resistance, or sabotage efforts, but not really used. I read about them many years back while still in Germany, so my recollection may be fuzzy.
As with the others above, my recollection from ancient reading is that the Allies were seriously worried about and prepared for Werewolves but the feared threat never materialised.
Thanks to Dr Google, it appears that there was a tiny amount of Werewolf action. http://canadafreepress.com/2005/rubin082005.htm
There was some action and some claim that a few remained on the lam into the late 40’s or early 50’s. Another reason for the lack of enthusiasm may have been the conduct of the senior Nazi leadership that wanted to fight to the bitter end of everyone else while they and their families fled. They were referred to as “Golden Pheasants” after the eagles of Nazi pageantry…
I’ve been reading recently a lot about so -called “Riese Complex” in Owl Mountains, Lower Silesia, Poland. Its purpose is unknown, as all the documentation and plans vanished after the war. Around 40000 slave workers were based in the camps all around the site and were used for construction on and under ground. There is a lot of rumours, legends and stories about that place. Some of them already confirmed. Probably it was meant to be a huge weapons factory (including various V and wunderwaffe project) with all related research facilities (nuclear research too) and according to some, a main HQ for Hitler and all the other HQs. Anyway, after the war the Werewolf was very active in that area, guarding the secrets of that complex.
Some of them were employed undercover in many mines around, as the new polish authorities lacked proffesional mining personnel and people who knew the mines and the complex. It is said, that they remained active till mid 50’s.
Even later, some of them were still around, obviously in a different role, spreading disinformation when the government was trying to exploring the site and find out what was really going on there during the war.
I/m not sure about the germans unit - most of germans did not accept the idea of partisan war, but in the East the manies armed groups ,ideologically closed to nazis ethnic extremist, were figting till the mid 50yy. Biggest one of them was so called “UPA” - whose ethnic crimes toward the poles and jews become well known just after the war. Ironically, the exactly UPA was used by CIA later , during the Cold war
I/m not sure about the germans unit - most of germans did not accept the idea of partisan war, but in the East the manies armed groups ,ideologically closed to nazis ethnic extremist, were figting till the mid 50yy. Biggest one of them was so called “UPA” - whose ethnic crimes toward the poles and jews become well known just after the war. Ironically, the exactly UPA was used by CIA later , during the Cold war
Interesting.
So there was armed guerrilla resistance to the Soviets in Soviet occupied territories after 1945, up to the mid-1950s?
Not surprising that we haven’t heard of it in the West, as Stalin wasn’t likely to advertise it.
What were the main countries / areas it occurred?
As for the link you’ve given for entry to the US for a former criminal, there’s nothing unusual about that. The best example is the Gehlen group of former Nazis recruited by the Americans as its intelligence group shortly after WWII in Germany. In Australia we were hosts to various people rightly accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but not necessarily former Nazis as some of the genocidal bastards from Yugoslavia were particularly popular with our intelligence people. Anyone who was a staunch anti-communist (which often meant a rabid fascist) already scored 90 out of a 100 points for approval.
I think the west was well aware of guerrila warfire on Western Ukraine but tended not to focused on it. Few thousands mens fought the NKVD since 1944-1953 and they were planned ot use in a possible war against USSR. Though , the Korean war has changed the priorities, US has concentrated the military efforts over Asia and UPA finally has lost the game.
… Anyone who was a staunch anti-communist (which often meant a rabid fascist) already scored 90 out of a 100 points for approval.
The secret services are all doing by the say dirty way:))) The specific of its work. I’m not wonder if i will once have learned that KGB used former nazis as well))
In Poland the strongest anticommunist resistance lasted until 1947-48 and covered large areas of the country. It’s estimated that there were some 150000 armed fighters.
Gradually they were eliminated by the NKVD and polish security police MBP. The last fighter was killed in the firefight in 1962.
Obviously, the polish resistance was also active in the polish territory which was given to USSR by the Allies in Yalta conference.
But their situation was much worse, than those in post-1945 Poland.
I know UPA was also active after the war. Lithuanian anti-communists caused the NKVD a lot of headache too.
Hello friend Kovalski. Glad to see you come back to faterland- Poland. Haw was the general expression about Ireland?
You mean the territories of Western Ukraine and Belorussia - where UPA has operated post-war? But UPA was hostile to AK - were here a known post war conflict between those forces or they have agreed and allied in common fight against NKVD?
Hi Chevan, i stayed in Scotland, not Ireland. It was wet and an windy, same as Ireland I assume.
Back to the post - I meant polish territories taken over by USSR after September 17 1939. As far as I remember AK never cooperated with UPA, as UPA was openly anti-polish and polish efforts to reach the agreement ended in murder the polish emissaries. Therefore AK decided to start a self-defence campaign agaist UPA (which was acting with wide acceptance from Nazi Germany). Obviously, it wasn’t possible for AK to work together with UPA - not after Wolyn Massacre.
Hi Kovalski & Chevan.
You two are talking about something that I think is completely unknown in the West, outside perhaps some specialised historians. It’s certainly all new to me and probably to most in the West whose knowledge is limited to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Sounds like a civil and or guerrilla war within WWII in Poland and related territories.
How did this fit within the larger conflict as Germany moved east and then the Soviets moved west in the war?
Where did the Polish security police MBP fit in, and who / what were they aligned with?
It creates a very different picture to the notion of Poland just being somewhere that the Germans and Soviets moved through and controlled as the war ebbed and flowed without any armed resistance from the locals, apart from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Rising Sun,
I’ll do my best to provide more detailed info on what was happening back then in Poland. I just need some more time.
Meanwhile, please visit viki here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursed_soldiers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-communist_resistance_in_Poland_(1944–46)
And some more detailed info here: http://www.doomedsoldiers.com/introduction.html
You’ll
Well, the Germans had much deal to rise of OUN-UPA movenment since 1941 but uncontrollable UPA’s mass ethnic murders in rural become the problem for reich ecomonic, that Germans themself since 1943 was forced to start the some anti-UPA police actions and even used some troops from Eastern front for that. They send the matured the ss-bitcher Bach Zelewsky.
So AK , in fact, had waged a two-front compain in areas of former Eastern Poland( which UPA considered as own-base territories) - against beasts from UPA and NKVD from the another hand. I never heard about AK-UPA fight.Do you know any details about military operation AK against UPA that period?
Thanks for those links, Kovalski.
They reveal events of which I had not the slightest idea. I wonder if they were publicised or generally known in the West at the time? Presumably they were known, to some degree at least, to Western intelligence agencies? Or even actively supported by them?
When one compares the liberty, democracy and respect for human rights in post-war Western Europe, however less than ideal they may have been at times, when compared with what is described in your links they suggest that Churchill was correct in his desire to push on and defeat the USSR after Germany was defeated, although I doubt this was possible as:
- The West had had enough of the European war by then.
- Westerners had been fed propaganda for several years extolling the virtues of their heroic and (genuinely, if perhaps not always voluntarily) stoic Soviets as allies in the war against Nazism, so it would have been difficult to convince them suddenly to turn on their supposed ally.
- The Soviets probably would have won, or at least stopped a Western advance before it went much beyond the eastern border of Germany, and more so if the Soviets did not deploy the troops and resources sent against Japan after Germany surrendered. The Soviets might even have advanced further west.
Then again, from the Soviet viewpoint Stalin and Co would have argued that they were bringing the Marxist promised land to the oppressed, which as communist regimes (e.g. Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot) generally did they achieved by oppression unimaginably beyond the worst oppression of the oppressive Western democracies .
As for Poland, what can one say about its great misfortunes and the misery of its people from getting no material support from Britain and France in 1939 despite them going to war against Germany to defend Poland’s independence (but not going to war against the USSR when it invaded the other half of Poland a few weeks later by Soviet agreement with the Nazis) to the atrocities by the Nazis and Soviets during their occupations and then the abandonment by the Western Allies of Poland in the conclusion of WWII, and then the matters raised in your links and post-WWII Poland under the Soviets? There are no words adequately to describe it. Beyond, perhaps but disappointingly, realpolitik.