Order of Battle
Order
of
Battle
Order
of
Battle
Hitler’s Werewolves
Ib Melchior
Premier Digital Publishing - Los Angeles
Also by Ib Melchior
EVA
Sleeper Agent
Code Name: Grand Guignol
The Marcus Device
The Watchdog of Abaddon
Order of Battle:
Hitler’s Werewolves
Copyright © 1972, 1991, 2000 by Ib Melchior
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 0-595-00759-7
eISBN-13: 978-1-938582-19-6
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With love to my wife, whose constant encouragement and understanding when she found me staring into space made it possible for me to finish this book.
“
ORDER OF BATTLE”
intelligence consists of carefully sifted and evaluated information received from a great variety of sources on the organization, strength and disposition of enemy forces. This information, if complete and accurate, not only facilitates the planning of military operations but helps commanders in the field to judge the enemy’s local capabilities and to make their decisions accordingly.
ORDER OF BATTLE
OF THE
GERMAN ARMY
1943
MILITARY INTELLIGENCE SERVICES
Washington, D.C.
Restricted
Contents
Prologue
As I write this prologue, bands of terrorists, unleashed by the desperate and defiant Saddam Hussein in the weeks before his defeat, spread foreboding and fear throughout the world:
• In Manila, the Philippines, Iraqi terrorists attack a U.S. establishment, the Thomas Jefferson Library, resulting in the death of one terrorist and the wounding of another. The first secretary of the Iraqi Embassy is expelled for his complicity.
• In Cairo, Egypt, the speaker of the parliament is gunned down by an Iraqi terrorist, who kills not only the diplomat, but also his driver and bodyguard in a hail of machine-gun fire.
• In the Turkish cities of Iznir and Istanbul, Ankara and Adana, U.S. installations and the French consulate are bombed and a U.S. civilian is struck down on the street.
• On the Pakistan-India border a bomb placed in a passenger car kills five people and injures twenty-seven.
• In Athens, Greece, government troops are employed to reinforce the police in an attempt to stem a wave of bombings and rocket attacks on British and American facilities by terrorists supporting Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
The list of such senseless atrocities is growing daily.
Nearly half a century before, another ruthless dictator let loose
his
gangs of savage terrorists—Hitler’s Werewolves. As a crumbling Nazi Germany faced her
Götterdämmerung,
in November 1944, on orders from the Führer, Adolf Hitler, Reichsleiter Martin Bormann decreed the immediate formation of a guerilla/terrorist organization to be known as “Werewolf.” Its members were to be recruited from fanatic Hitler Youths and BDMs (
Bund Deutscher Mädchen,
the equivalent female group), from the SS and the Wehrmacht, the German Army, and even from the ranks of civilians.
Bormann placed an officer from his own staff,
Gruppenführer,
(SS Major General) Hans Prützmann, in overall charge of
Unternehmen Werwolf
—Operation Werewolf. Prützmann was to orchestrate and supervise the recruiting, training, and logistics of the organization, but there is relatively little evidence or knowledge of his contribution. Caught by the British at war’s end, he committed suicide by swallowing a hidden cyanide capsule before he could be interrogated, taking his knowledge with him, in contrast to other high ranking Nazis such as Baldur von Schirach, the Hitler Youth Leader; Hans Fritzsche, Head of Radio Broadcasting in Goebbel’s Propaganda Ministry; and Albert Speer, Hitler’s Armament Minister, whose testimonies regarding
Unternehmen Werwolf
can be found in the records of the Nürnberg War Crimes Trials: “International Military Tribune—Trial of the Major War Criminals,” Volumes XIV, XVI and XVII. In my own correspondence with Albert Speer, which took place after his release from Spandau Prison in Berlin, he wrote to me regarding the Werewolves in a letter dated 3 April 1972:
The biggest and strongest German transmitter, as a matter of fact, broadcast daily Werewolf messages. In addition Dr. Ley [Dr. Robert Ley, Leader of the German Labor Front, IJM] and several other hot-headed gentlemen concentrated on building up a sabotage operation behind the American and English lines which in general was named the Werewolves. Already conferences to that effect with the Army and other agencies had taken place, regarding making supplies of weapons, ammunitions, etc. available.
The name was aptly chosen. According to encyclopedic sources the term
werewolf
comes from the old English words
wer,
meaning man, and
wulf
—man-wolf: a person, according to medieval lore, who was transformed into, or was capable at will of assuming the form of, a ferocious man-eating wolf at night, returning to human form by day. Thus the Nazi Werewolves would appear to be normal citizens by day, but at night would venture out to “deal death and destruction” to their enemies.
From the beginning Hitler’s Werewolf organization, had its own radio program aimed at both Allied personnel and Germans who might be tempted to surrender to, or even cooperate with, the enemy, a program that began with a bloodcurdling wolf howl, followed by a sepulchral voice intoning: Beware Americans! Nightly the program would boast of new acts of terror inflicted on the enemy by the Werewolf.
A feature article in the Army paper,
Stars and Stripes,
dated April 21, 1945, quotes a Werewolf broadcast of April 1st, which in their own words describes the aims and purpose of the organization’s members:
A free German movement called the “Werewolf has been formed in the enemy-occupied areas. Every Bolshevik, every Briton and every American standing on German soil is free booty for our movement. Wherever an opportunity presents itself to extinguish his life we shall take it with joy without regard for our own life. The German, whatever his class or profession, who places himself at the disposal of the enemy and collaborates with him will come to feel our avenging hand.
The Werewolf is an organization born in the spirit of Naziism. It does not know the restrictions in battle which are imposed upon regular troops. Every means is legitimate in order to inflict injury upon the enemy. Be as brave as lions and as poisonous as snakes. Work in the dark. Make night your ally. Fall upon the enemy whenever a favorable opportunity offers itself. Do not hesitate at the thought of taking his life since he wants to destroy the life of our people. It is up to you to exact vengeance upon every foreign soldier now standing on German soil. There is only one watchword now: Conquer or die!
Leaflets and proclamations such as the one below, adorned with strangely twisted swastikas, began to appear throughout Germany:
| “The Werewolf | To all Townships: 25.4.45 |
| Upper Bavaria |
WARNING
to all Traitors and Collaborators with the Enemy
The Upper Bavaria Werewolf warn all those who would lend support to the enemy, threaten or harass Germans and their allies, or withhold their allegiance to the Füihrer. We warn you! Traitors and criminals against the people will pay with their lives, they and all the members of their families.
Townships that offend against the lives of our own, or show the white flag of surrender sooner or later will suffer an annihilating disaster.
Our vengeance is deadly!
“The Werewolf
Upper Bavaria
It was not long before the Werewolves made their deadly presence known. The
Stars and Stripes
reported many murders and attacks on Army troops and installations in the rear, and other killings that spread fear among the German population. Decapitation wires were found strung across country roads—thin, taut wires stretched across the roadway at neck height to catch unwary drivers riding in open jeeps or on motorcycles; incautious GIs were waylaid and killed; mines would be placed on thoroughfares frequented by military traffic. And there were other murders, some gruesome in the extreme:
In the town of Giessen just thirty miles north of Frankfurt, Werewolves led by a Belgian SS officer penetrated the American lines and executed a doctor who had been accused of collaborating with the
Amis
—the German derogatory slang word for Americans. Further south, near Ulm in Bavaria, a GI was found shot to death, a Werewolf leaflet pinned to his chest, his penis cut off and stuffed in his mouth.
In Bavaria, a 4th Armored Division gasoline dump went up in flames, one of several. Also in Bavaria, in April, eight GIs were killed and three wounded when members of a bomb disposal squad lifted a box of TNT from a pile of four crates of enemy explosives which previously had been inspected and found free of booby-traps. Witnesses recalled that three innocent-looking young boys had been lurking in the vicinity that afternoon. One of these youngsters was subsequently caught and confessed to being a Werewolf, trained for just such action.
Near Lübeck to the north, on 3/4 May, British troops shot and killed a Werewolf in civilian clothes who had been sniping at them; but in another Werewolf ambush/sniping confrontation, Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery’s favorite liaison officer, a young officer of the 11th Hussars named John Poston was killed by a group of teenage Werewolves when they ambushed his jeep on a country road.
There were numerous such acts of terrorism by the Werewolves, but perhaps the most notorious, code-named Operation Carnival, took place in March of 1945 in the German town of Aachen in North Rhine-Westphalia, hard on the Dutch-Belgian border. A group of Werewolves was parachuted into the vicinity of the town from a Flying Fortress captured by the Nazis. There were seven of them, including a sixteen-year-old Hitler Youth and a girl—a former member of the BDM, as well as SS personnel. Their prey was a classic Werewolf target, a “traitor” who had to be eliminated, the mayor of Aachen, Franz Oppen-hoff, an official who had been installed in office by the Americans.
On March 25 they invaded his home and gunned him down. The Werewolf radio bragged about the action for weeks and used it as a warning to all those who would collaborate with the enemy.
At SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force) most of the staff officers were concerned about the Werewolves— an “unknown factor” in the scheme of things. Even as the Russians encircled Berlin, and the end of the war was mere days away, Gen. Omar Bradley was still worried that the Werewolves would rendezvous in the National Redoubt in the Bavarian Alps, the
Alpenfestung
—the Alpine Fortress, as it was called by the Nazis—there to dig in for a last ditch, long lasting fight. Allied strategies and battle plans were influenced by apprehension about the Werewolves.
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower in his
Crusade in Europe
writes:
Equally important was the desirability of penetrating and destroying the so-called “National Redoubt.” For many weeks we had been receiving reports that the Nazis’ intention, in extremity, was to withdraw the cream of the SS, Gestapo, and other organizations fanatically devoted to Hitler, into the mountains of southern Bavaria, western Austria, and northern Italy. There they expected to block the tortuous mountain passes and to hold out indefinitely against the Allies.
Eisenhower goes on to describe one of the fanatical organizations he feared would be part of that Alpine resistance:
The purpose of the Werewolf organization, which was to be composed of loyal followers of Hitler, was murder and terrorism. Boys and girls as well as adults were to be absorbed into the secret organization with the hope of so terrifying the countryside and making so difficult the problem of occupation that the conquering forces would presumably be glad to get out.
Many historians of international renown have in their writings corroborated the above information about the Werewolf organization. Prominent among them are such chroniclers of history as H. R. Trevor-Roper and Glenn B. Infield; Gerhard Boldt and Simon Wiesenthal; Cornelius Ryan and Charles Whiting, who in his book
Hitler’s Werewolves
details Operation Carnival, the murder of the mayor of Aachen.
Order of Battle
is closely based on fact, told in the form of a novel for dramatic reasons, particularly the desire to be able to present both the American and the German sides. It was my own case, while working as counter-intelligence agent with CIC Detachment 212 of XII Corps, as a member of MII Team 425-G. A note on one detail: Because of the nature of a CIC agent’s work, which depended upon being able to obtain the instant assistance and cooperation of any troops available at any given moment, the rank of a CIC agent was confidential; he wore no rank insignia of any kind except the Officer U.S. emblem on his collar, be he an enlisted man or officer. Should anyone up to and including a full colonel ask for the agent’s rank, the standard reply was: “My rank is confidential, but at this moment I am not outranked.” Only general officers were entitled to a full answer.
Order of Battle
is the complete and accurate account of the ferreting out and destruction of the vaunted Werewolf headquarters,
Sonderkampfgruppe Paul.
The action begins on 28 April 1945, eleven days before the war would be over. It is the eleventh hour. The Werewolves are deployed and ready to go into action in earnest. Like the venemous snake Reichsführer SS Hein-rich Himmler had extorted them to become, they are ready to strike.
It is at this time the story of
Order of Battle
begins.
Ib Melchior
February 1991