Title: Werwolf! :
Authors: Biddiscombe, Alexander Perry,
Date: 1998
Publisher: University of Toronto Press,
Physical description: xi, 455 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm
Language: English
LC classification: U
Abstract: Near the end of the Second World War, a National Socialist resistance movement, known as the Werwolf, flickered briefly to life in Germany and its borderlands. Dedicated to delaying the advance of the Allies on both fronts, the Werwolf succeeded in scattered acts of sabotage and violence. By the spring of 1945, it also showed signs of becoming a vengeful Nazi reaction against the German populace itself. 'Collaborators' and 'defeatists' were frequently assassinated, and crude posters warned that certain death would follow any failure to resist the enemy. Werwolf violence failed to mobilize a spirit of national resistance. Biddiscombe argues that the group was poorly led, armed, and organized, and that it was doomed to failure given the war-weariness of the populace and the hesitancy of young Germans to sacrifice themselves on the funeral pyre of the regime. He also demonstrates that although the group failed to assume a popular character, its influence was still great and its revolutionary sentiments would have grave implications for the future.
Contents: Gothic Guerrillas: The Bureau 'Prutzmann' and the SS-Werwolf -- A Nursery Tale: The Hitler Youth and the Werwolf -- A Werwolf War: The Military and the Kleinkrieg -- Reign of Terror: The Party and the Werwolf -- Werwolf Redoubts -- The Werwolf along Germany's Periphery -- Western Allied and Soviet Reactions to the Werwolf -- Consequences and Significance of the Werwolf -- The Werwolf as a Research Problem: A Historiographical Essay -- Charts and Tables. Dienststelle Prutzmann. The SS-Police Command Structure. An Example of Regional Werwolf Organization - The Werwolf Staff of HSSPF Gutenberger. HSSPF in the Greater Reich, Autumn 1944. Gauleiter in the Greater Reich, Summer 1944.
Subject headings (LCSH): Anti-Nazi movement--Germany.; Germany--History--1945-1955.; Guerrilla warfare; Sabotage--Germany.; Unternehmen Werwolf.; World War, 1939-1945--Germany.