Werwolf!: The History of the National Socialist Guerrilla Movement, 1944-1946

Grant Dawson is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in military history at
Carleton University.

Biddiscombe’s monograph is an excellent research achievement in an
area that usually, in the author’s words, “merits not even a
mention.” While he is careful not to exaggerate the impact or
importance of the short-lived, inchoate partisan movement, Biddiscombe
is right to alert us to the Werwolf and its significance as one of the
chief initiatives of the dying Third Reich.

Fortunately for the author, the Werwolf’s short life span enables him
to survey the organization’s structure and most of its activities in
his text. He discusses the Werwolf’s major redoubts, its operations
along Germany’s periphery, and its changing relations with the
Wehrmacht. The roles of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and Hitler Youth—the
backbone of the Nazi guerrilla movement—are examined in detail, and
there is a fascinating chapter on the Allied response to the Werwolf.
The author also provides numerous examples of the pinprick attacks
carried out by the Werwolf all over Germany.

Biddiscombe is particularly interested in how the movement’s
structural problems limited its effectiveness. He argues that the
guerrillas’ potential was curtailed from the start by several factors,
and in particular by the ideological mindset of the Werwolf planners.
With its commanders unwilling to contemplate defeat, the movement was
designed as a weapon of reach to be used in support of military
operations on the periphery of Nazi-controlled territory. Thoughts of
postcapitulation guerrilla warfare were last-minute and generally led to
nothing. In the postwar era, acts of sabotage and sniping were
committed, but on the whole the Werewolf’s influence on the course of
events was minimal.

Despite this, Biddiscombe clearly demonstrates that the Werwolf is
significant to the history of Nazi Germany in particular and World War
II in general. The fear of partisans influenced Allied occupation
policies and even altered wartime strategic thinking. “[T]he Werwolf
had an impact,” writes Biddiscombe, “not because it succeeded, but
merely because it existed.”