As Sparty laid out at the end of this episode, the end of the war has truly brought about the destruction of Nazism as a political force in Germany. Those now living in the shattered remains of the Third Reich endured nightly bombing, the invasion of their homeland, and will soon have to face the hardship of a harsh winter under occupation. On the whole, they have no time for the people and the ideology that brought this fate upon them.
Thank you for not being a passive voice when it comes to the analysis of the Second World War. In an era where fascism and deranged hatred is hidden behind a smirk and a funny meme (especially with young men “interested” in history) your affirmation of these ideologies as inherently wrong and destructive is very much needed and extremely important. I value that fact and it’s why I believe this channel, the people behind it and its impeccable analysis is truly a treasure and beacon of historical morality.
@@LordVader1094 of course they matter. How much of the worlds population is on the Internet now? They’re an extremely important tool of communication. What rock do you live under?
@@LordVader1094 Read carefully: he said that the problem is that fascism is often hidden behind funny memes, and therefore is not considered as dangerous and criminal as it was and is.
My grandfather grew up in 50s Poland, he told me once that the Werewolves became kind of a myth in his town. When he was a kid, his mother would always tell him and his friends to not go too deep into the forest, or the Werewolves will get them. This story has always stuck with me
I'm from Poland too. Back in the 40's people associated with the "ORMO" militia, ex-WWII soldiers, were guarding factories with their Mausers, Lugers and PPSz because they were afraid of Werewolves. My Grandfather was born in '27 and remembered that time. Especially in Silesia and East Prussia regions. My town Kętrzyn [Rastenburg] is located 8 km from the Wolfschanze. When I was a child a knew a lot of legends about some underground tunnels and the SS-members, German treasures, execution sites, etc.
In the forest next to my house, some of them actually robbed and killed a dude just wandering around the forest. And that was 1948… 3 years after the war was lost.
In the mid 80"s I met an old free France veteran. His brother had been shot by the German and even 40 years later he had strong anti-German views. He was saying that at the end of the war, he was shocked to see train loads of brand-new civilian equipment for the Germans. He mentioned tractors if I remember right. According to his account, they were going out at night to blow those trains out, out of jealousy. I wonder if some of those actions have been assigned to werewolves.
@@francisdotso8594 blowing up trains full of agricultural equipment, isn't a atrocity. The German's committed their fair share of real ones though. People have long memories especially in regards to ill treatment. !
@@Free-Bodge79It may not be a direct atrocity like concentration camps, but the destruction of tools used to grow needed food definitely caused additional indirect suffering.
@@Free-Bodge79 Lmao, stop justifying terrorism, last I checked the French still had a global empire and would go on to use some lessons taught to them by the Nazis on their indochinese and Algerian subjects. Pathetic imperials
@@Free-Bodge79why are you saying that all of the Germans committed atrocities? It were the Nazis, which were all of the SS, the SA, large parts of the Wehrmacht and other high ranking positions. I agree, there were bystanders and even helpers in the common population, but you can’t just say that every German back then committed atrocities!
My grandfather told me that his cousin was one of the volunteers who fought against the German werewolves in Belgrade after the communist occupation. Beneath the city is a vast system of ancient tunnels connected to modern sewers. A few hundred Germans remained underground and caused a huge problem. Then the communists promised that they would give a full military pension to all surviving volunteers who freed the tunnels, regardless of age, length of participation in the war and whether they were in the Chetniks before that. Thus, my grandfather's cousin became a pensioner at the age of 26.
Spartacus, sir. You truly are a gentleman and a scholar. It's been a difficult road we've all walked with you, watching war against humanity. Lord only knows how difficult it must have been researching and producing each episode. Just wanted to say, thank you for the way you've presented it . With so much empathy, compassion and sincerity. I've learned a lot from you sir. Many thanks again. ! 👊💛👍
Nah. The Forest Brothers were destroyed as a force and those civilians who were involved in connection with them were deported to Siberia under Stalin. Those who remained were only formal members but did not wage an armed struggle in any way, perhaps they were agitating
Harold Cole, a British soldier who turned traitor and collaborated with the Germans, tried to cover himself postwar by killing a former German officer named Georg Hanft, claiming Hanft was a Werwolf. Cole later fled and went underground in Paris but was eventually tracked down and killed in a shoot-out.
In the book "Exorcising Hitler", author Frederick Taylor includes an excerpt from the British newspaper, The Times, about this: "A werewolf is a human being who transforms himself temporarily into a wolf. There is no Hague Convention for the protection of werewolves." It's comforting to know that the British have always been pithy.
took the title from the instruction manual the nazis issued "werwolf: tips for ranger units." displayed and translated @ 4:05 of the video. perhaps if you had watched and listened, ya?
When the US declared mission accomplished in Iraq and continued to face attacks, there was a brief flurry of interest in Nazi Werewolves, with the assumption that this was parallel to the situation in Iraq. In reality Iraq 2003 and Germany 1945 were very different.
Similar to when Saddam took notes from the Vietnam war about elements of attrition based warfare. But that's also different because it depends on terrain too (Jungle vs Desert)
I had wondered why, to my knowledge, die-hard Nazis apparently just gave up when defeated, when other guerrilla forces in other wars carried on. Thank you for explaining how this was not entirely the case, but why at a strategic level, it may as well have been. It helped other guerrilla forces (the ones which were successful) that they tended to have foreign support - which of course was not available to the Werewolves.
I suspect the most diehard Nazis died in conventional war, or committed suicide at the end. The available pool of recruits for a partisan war was not there.
Germany was too profoundly defeated. Quite a few surviving Nazis, in the Western zone at least, repackaged themselves as anti-Communists and took advantage of the Cold War. Hans Fritzsche, acquitted at Nuremberg though he served a short jail term, was along with others involved in infiltrating the Free Democrats party in an attempt to turn it in a Nazi direction. Fritzsche died of cancer in 1953. This kind of thing was more attractive for diehards than guerrilla warfare. So was working for the Gehlen Organisation.
You know, I am a rather brilliant surgeon. I could fix that. Fix what? That hump. What hump? ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Nevermind...................................
@@aze94 This notion of unending wars is I think an integrate part of the total wars typical of modern warfare. And when we look at it, past 1905 few peace treaty has really been accepted by the losing side.
@@Aeonicentity Defending the icewall and the flat Earth …. I have always suspected that NASA has behind that but …. Werner von Braun … Things start to make sense to me, FINALLY!
Inga: Werewolf! Dr. Frankenstein: Werewolf? Igor: There. Dr. Frankenstein: What? Igor: There, wolf. There, castle. Dr. Frankenstein: Why are you talking that way? Igor: I thought you wanted to. Dr. Frankenstein: No, I don’t want to.
Werwolves? More like " *where* are the *wolves* ?" I guess they were supposed to attack and do cleanup for Steiner. Also, can we talk about how awesome Spartacus's suit look?
Considering the soviet union never signed the Geneva convention and non-uniformed combatants, (,partisans) don't fall under it anyways, there is no irony. Just victors writing history
My Grandpa, who served in the Canadian army overseas from October 1944 until the end of the war, and then served in the occupation, said that during the war, he slept with a knife under his pillow. During the occupation, he slept with a pistol under his pillow.
Imagine a found footage horror movie where someone comes across an old post ww2 nazi hideout and gets chased by werewolf SS soldiers, that would be awesome.
Always tragic seeing the fanaticism to Hitler, even having children taking up arms, while the man they died for was hiding in a hole and when he finally did pick up a gun it was only to shoot himself.
Wow! Bad Kreuznach made the news. I lived there for 3 years when my dad was stationed there with the US Army. Didn't think the town important enough to ever get a mention.
Excellent job, as usual. Is there going to be a "Spies and Ties" episode about the Gehlen Organization and the first rumblings of the Cold War? (You mentioned the NKVD trying to shut down Nazi cells in East Germany, and my first thought....}
It's remarkable that the Nazi leadership spent so much time on "wonder"-weapons that broke down before they could be fully utilized instead of planning a real partisan resistance that could have been effective. It speaks a lot to how they viewed mass mobilization - it was a tool to gain power, but not something to be sustained beyond hammering loyalty to the state into the heads of citizens. Even though one could argue the same about Stalin's view of mass politics, even the USSR was able to field effective partisan forces of ideologically committed soviet citizens. At the end of the day, fascism of the nazi variety just promised blood and suffering, and perhaps there just weren't enough Germans willing to die for that vision. As Slovenian philosopher Zizek once argued, Stalin promised to do good things and did bad things, while Hitler promised to do bad things and did bad things.
The Nazis, and the german people as a whole, despised partisans on a ideological level all the way back to the Franco-Prussian war with the fear of the dreaded francs-tireurs. The Nazi's were notoriously brutal against partisans and would react reprisals on all villages in a area of an attack, alot of times killing the entire population of those hamlets. The Nazis adopting such an institution would be a hard break in policy and rhetoric. The volkstrum was more a less an answer to utilizing mass mobilization without adopting the hated partisan system As for if the German people going for such a program, while the Nazis did promise and deliver some good things to the Germans until the war really started to turn, during the days of the Volktrum many Germans refused to serve without a uniform (Since the Soviets would just summarily shoot them as partisans, and the Nazis did to Soviet partisans). Since non-uniformed volkstrum is essentially partisans, I think it's fair to say the Germans wouldn't go for anything like true state supported partisans.
I'm not really well-versed in National Socialist ideology, but in fascist philosophy a people defeated by strength of arms has no right to exist. Such an event is indicative of a lack in "strength of spirit" and, as such, planning for beyond a final defeat is meaningless.
Great video and thank you for sharing. I can certainly see how the German people were really tired of the war and wanted to part in any guerrilla war activity. If only because they viewed WW II as a continuation of WW I - in essence they had been at war since 1914 and they were ready for it to be over. They had no desire to continue a fight they had no hope to win.
“…but the werewolves were plagued by poor organization, lacked competent leadership, were often poorly trained and motivated, and lacked resources…" which pretty much sums up the big h's thousand(12)year régime in the final stages of this bloody war. I would say "never again" but the forces of fascism are rising once more. so I will have to only say, never forget.
their aesthetics and rhetoric may change, but the results never will. think positively tho- we can learn from the past and fight it in the here and now rather than wait for it to consume an entire continent.
@@oscaranderson5719 and so we must. the rhetoric they use disguises their true intent. that is how fascists entrap those they need to accomplish their drive to dominate. metaphorical smoke and mirrors, that will eventually turn into real shattered mirrors and smoking cities. fear and division are their tools.
Doomed effort from the get-go, as the cruelty needed for the critical support was severely lacking. If i have learned one thing from this series, it is that cruelty inspires resistance movements. The allied occupation was never going to be as cruel as German occupation, they lacked that clear racial idiology.
Even in the Soviet zone, the authorities distributed food even though the USSR faced famine conditions in a number of places postwar. They did not want an insurgency to develop among Germans out of sheer desperation.
Somebody once said that the werewolves were neutralized by the economic rebound of Germany (West Germany) after the war ended. I think the rebuilding of Europe is a marvelous story that is overlooked. Of all the homeless people in Germany during the Summer of 1945, how long did it take to get shelter for those people before Winter came?? There must have been temporary housing erected while the cities were being rebuilt. What industries were restarted after the war and what was the employment situation like?? I find it amazing to look at pictures of Berlin, Cologne, Warsaw, and other cities heavily damaged during the war and contrast them with how they look today. What a massive effort it took to make those cities habitable again. One last thought. If the SS was busy telling everyone that wonder weapons would turn the tide of the war before Germany was overrun, then it would have undercut this message if they were preparing for a guerilla war. When you are in a hopeless situation against a numerically superior enemy, neither one of these options is going to help you. Thanks for another great video.
My grandmother feed from the Russians as a child. She mentioned that they had to live from the land until sharing tiny rooms which the original German owners. Basically everyone who still had a house had to share it.
@@molybdaen11 A room in a building in Dachau concentration camp was filled with inmates' corpses when the Americans arrived in late April 1945. In the 1950s a Polish woman was living in the same room - it was the only accommodation she could find.
Timing is weird sometimes. Last night I watched The Aftermath (2019) starring Keira Knightley, Alexander Skarsgard and Jason Clarke. It is set in post war Germany. One of the characters' daughter is friends with a boy that is a Nazi Werewolf. It was not the core to the plot but it was important. Afaik that is the only film I've watched about Nazi Werewolves. And I watched it less than 12 hours before you gave us this video. Timing is weird sometimes...
@@DeerBoy736 I had no idea, I watched it blind coming into it. So it came as a surprise at its inclusion. And yeah, romantic triangles, cheating etc are meh to me. Still, the timing just hit my wtf brain.
@@AceMoonshot Same, kinda. All I knew was it's a movie set in post war germany and the werewolf movement is in it so I was intrigued. But it turned out to be as you said love triangles, cheating and an annoying female lead.
Planes would occasionally make a crash landing reasonably intact or even surrender if badly damaged in the interests of crew survival. It wouldn't be too hard to piece together a working B-17 from successful crash landed planes and other wrecks. -TimeGhost Ambassador
@@WorldWarTwo As I recall that's how the Allies got their hands on their first Zero. But then again both sides did that with a lot of aircraft and armor.
It crashed mostly intact and they rebuilt it. There were various plans to use it as a weapon, but it mostly ended up sitting at an airfield (if I remember correctly, there is an entry on it the Time-Life WW2 books)
Many Allied bombers carried a small explosive device. If the plane crash-landed in enemy territory the pilot was supposed to detonate it to destroy key technology like the bomb sight and also render the plane unusable. Even so, intact or repairable planes fell into German hands.
''Hier spricht der Sender Werwolf, sender der Deutschen Freiheitsbewegung in den vom Feind besetzten Gebieten." I remember hearing that in school in germany. We actually talked about Werwolf a few years later I met an old man who could tell me first hand about it.
2:48 now that you mention them I'm curious, did the Sturmabteilung do much notable during the war? It seems after 1938 and Kristallnacht they just vanish from the history books.
They continued to exist but lost much of their active membership to the armed forces or other Nazi formations. SA units were part of the German occupation force in Poland, sometimes implicated in atrocities. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer-Grenadier-Division_Feldherrnhalle This German Army unit was in large part recruited from SA personnel, but is a good example of how the SA as an organisation was bled away into other parts of the Nazi or military machine.
Soviets and Polish communist government dealt with werewolf the same way like they dealt with Ukrainian armed groups. They locked thousands of civilians in camps and gradually expelled them to Germany and Ukraine respectively. That effectively removed any support for armed resistance. Somewhat ironically some camps for German and Ukrainian civilians were staffed by Jewish camp survivors drafted by Soviets. Few camps had very bad reputation for starvation, bad treatment and occasionally torture.
Jews tended to be trusted as their anti-Nazi and anti-German credentials were considered good. For example, Erwin Weit, an Austrian-born Jew whose family moved to Poland before the war, was freed from prison by the Soviets and then given a green questionnaire to complete. He was then told he had just joined the Workers' Party of Poland. His autobiography is rather thin on what he did in the Stalin period but later he was a German-Polish interpreter at high-level talks in the 1950s and early 1960s.
There’s even a third and a fourth… www.youtube.com/@TimeGhost www.youtube.com/@TheKoreanWarbyIndyNeidell Although I should point out that we don’t produce The Great War channel since 2018, when Indy completed the coverage of WW1.
If anyone has read the excellent novel by Harry Turtledove, "The Man With the Iron Cross", you well know how much worse this could have been for the allies, and the world at large had certain members of the SS not been eliminated when they were. Now I feel the urge to go reread that and his "The War that Came Early" series
All Korean War content will be on the Korean War channel, Sparty may appear a few times to cover war atrocities on there but we don't plan on having a regular series at this time. Sparty will be focusing on our other upcoming series. History of Democracy.
Hey, you should make a video talking about the Anti-Treaty IRA's campaign from 1942 to 1944 in Northern Ireland, aided by the Nazis. The IRA were in a weird position of ideological split at the time which makes it even more interesting, along with both the obscurity and importance of the event in decades to come. It also served as an example of Nazi plans in the UK insurrectional wise.
I've known about these werewolves for years since I'm a scholar of 20th century history but it never fails that I still picture actual werewolves instead of humans 😂 Ngl would make a cool movie.
Late to the party, but heres a personal funny thing. In area where i live, there was a wehrwolf school - yes, literally - on a castle near Aussig. They did some ruckus in 1945, but not much to be said - except for one shootout at old Obergrund train station but thats not whats interesting here - The Red army launched an operation to quell them, together with the red guards of bohemia, and they managed to find full list of equipment hidden in nearby forests - from aprox. 570 caches, to this day only 6 were found by the law enforcement, from that time period and todays one. Metal detector treasure hunting is popular here, and we got our hands on some interesting pieces - from medals dating to the spanish civil war given to the german expeditionary forces, to STG-44, magazines, lugers. you name it. No the guns dont work, yes we always call the police if its gun and explosive stuff. When it comes to the knives, medals and that kind of stuff... restoration it is!
@@kingericson490Doesn’t really make sense to me though, before they ascended to power they had elements of it but that was quashed after the Munich Putsch wherein they ran a successful election campaign and got into power that way. They were also considered a legitimate government by the rest of the continent, unlike, say the Taliban who despite diplomatic overtures and offers have been routinely denied purely based on the fact that actually discussing with them would imply they’re legitimate.
I get your meaning but there is a distinction to be drawn between state terrorism, like the kind practiced by the Third Reich, and the actions of a terrorist insurgency.
I've often thought that Germany's surrender in May of 45 gave the allies and the rest of the world time to prepare for the upcoming winter. Can you imagine the suffering had Germany survived, say, into September before capitulating?
I’m not so sure. As Sparty mentioned, it made it more difficult to appointment non nazi mayors which meant that some “former” nazis would remain seated in power and wield some degree of influence.
the werewolf fiasco shows that the guerilla fight does not fit the German mindset. Throughout the war, in the occupied countries, smaller groups with less resources and training achieved better and longer standing results
Lotta nazi apologists in the comments on this one, really sad. You’d think people would put on their thinking caps considering this series is about war crimes, a concept to which Naziism is faithfully married
The Nazi leaders slinked away to hide when the chips were down or sought to bargain the lives of their subordinates and slaves in self-serving deals. Can't see anything to admire there.
Could you guys do a special on lend-lease and the donations made to rebuild Europe? And what happened to the Mothball Fleet. i never hear on those topics and I think it'd be fascinating.
Honestly they mightve been viable if they were concieved at the beginning of the war and where trained less as a sabotours and more infiltrators then they could've maybe pulled a Hydra
As Sparty laid out at the end of this episode, the end of the war has truly brought about the destruction of Nazism as a political force in Germany. Those now living in the shattered remains of the Third Reich endured nightly bombing, the invasion of their homeland, and will soon have to face the hardship of a harsh winter under occupation. On the whole, they have no time for the people and the ideology that brought this fate upon them.
Thank you for not being a passive voice when it comes to the analysis of the Second World War. In an era where fascism and deranged hatred is hidden behind a smirk and a funny meme (especially with young men “interested” in history) your affirmation of these ideologies as inherently wrong and destructive is very much needed and extremely important. I value that fact and it’s why I believe this channel, the people behind it and its impeccable analysis is truly a treasure and beacon of historical morality.
@@chins9217Bro is bringing up memes as a serious issue as if it matters 😭
Most fearmongering thing I've seen lol
@@LordVader1094 of course they matter. How much of the worlds population is on the Internet now? They’re an extremely important tool of communication. What rock do you live under?
@@LordVader1094 Read carefully: he said that the problem is that fascism is often hidden behind funny memes, and therefore is not considered as dangerous and criminal as it was and is.
@@LordVader1094 Found the closet Nazi.
My grandfather grew up in 50s Poland, he told me once that the Werewolves became kind of a myth in his town. When he was a kid, his mother would always tell him and his friends to not go too deep into the forest, or the Werewolves will get them. This story has always stuck with me
Ok but was it the nazi kind and not the big ugly animal man kind?
@@TheUSgoverment Why couldn't it be both? An ugly animal man who also happens to be a nazi.
I'm from Poland too. Back in the 40's people associated with the "ORMO" militia, ex-WWII soldiers, were guarding factories with their Mausers, Lugers and PPSz because they were afraid of Werewolves. My Grandfather was born in '27 and remembered that time. Especially in Silesia and East Prussia regions. My town Kętrzyn [Rastenburg] is located 8 km from the Wolfschanze. When I was a child a knew a lot of legends about some underground tunnels and the SS-members, German treasures, execution sites, etc.
In the forest next to my house, some of them actually robbed and killed a dude just wandering around the forest. And that was 1948… 3 years after the war was lost.
In the mid 80"s I met an old free France veteran. His brother had been shot by the German and even 40 years later he had strong anti-German views. He was saying that at the end of the war, he was shocked to see train loads of brand-new civilian equipment for the Germans. He mentioned tractors if I remember right. According to his account, they were going out at night to blow those trains out, out of jealousy. I wonder if some of those actions have been assigned to werewolves.
@@francisdotso8594 blowing up trains full of agricultural equipment, isn't a atrocity.
The German's committed their fair share of real ones though.
People have long memories especially in regards to ill treatment. !
@@Free-Bodge79It may not be a direct atrocity like concentration camps, but the destruction of tools used to grow needed food definitely caused additional indirect suffering.
@@francisdotso8594Anything to be surprised at with that general, nay, universal association of Germans with atrocities !?
@@Free-Bodge79
Lmao, stop justifying terrorism, last I checked the French still had a global empire and would go on to use some lessons taught to them by the Nazis on their indochinese and Algerian subjects. Pathetic imperials
@@Free-Bodge79why are you saying that all of the Germans committed atrocities? It were the Nazis, which were all of the SS, the SA, large parts of the Wehrmacht and other high ranking positions. I agree, there were bystanders and even helpers in the common population, but you can’t just say that every German back then committed atrocities!
My grandfather told me that his cousin was one of the volunteers who fought against the German werewolves in Belgrade after the communist occupation. Beneath the city is a vast system of ancient tunnels connected to modern sewers. A few hundred Germans remained underground and caused a huge problem. Then the communists promised that they would give a full military pension to all surviving volunteers who freed the tunnels, regardless of age, length of participation in the war and whether they were in the Chetniks before that. Thus, my grandfather's cousin became a pensioner at the age of 26.
Like the new york tunnels
Spartacus, sir. You truly are a gentleman and a scholar. It's been a difficult road we've all walked with you, watching war against humanity. Lord only knows how difficult it must have been researching and producing each episode. Just wanted to say, thank you for the way you've presented it . With so much empathy, compassion and sincerity. I've learned a lot from you sir. Many thanks again. ! 👊💛👍
My father arrived in Germany in 1946 and was in the Constabulary (American Police for Germany). He talked of being shot at by children.
Ami go home
@@ulysses1320 Aber, ich liebe Deutschland!
The Werewolves were a sorry joke compared to the Forest Brothers. The Forest Brothers were a thorn in the side of the Soviets for years to come.
Indeed, I thought about them while watching this episode. Some of them persisted until the fifties, I think.
I never heard of "The Forest Brothers". I hope Time Ghost Army covers their story too!
Nah. The Forest Brothers were destroyed as a force and those civilians who were involved in connection with them were deported to Siberia under Stalin. Those who remained were only formal members but did not wage an armed struggle in any way, perhaps they were agitating
Harold Cole, a British soldier who turned traitor and collaborated with the Germans, tried to cover himself postwar by killing a former German officer named Georg Hanft, claiming Hanft was a Werwolf. Cole later fled and went underground in Paris but was eventually tracked down and killed in a shoot-out.
I heard about them, Soviet's couldn't deal with them for a decade and longer 😁
In the book "Exorcising Hitler", author Frederick Taylor includes an excerpt from the British newspaper, The Times, about this: "A werewolf is a human being who transforms himself temporarily into a wolf. There is no Hague Convention for the protection of werewolves." It's comforting to know that the British have always been pithy.
Wehrwolves surely
Lol
Wehrwolves lol
There wolves!
took the title from the instruction manual the nazis issued "werwolf: tips for ranger units." displayed and translated @ 4:05 of the video. perhaps if you had watched and listened, ya?
@@avnrulzTherewolves?
When the US declared mission accomplished in Iraq and continued to face attacks, there was a brief flurry of interest in Nazi Werewolves, with the assumption that this was parallel to the situation in Iraq. In reality Iraq 2003 and Germany 1945 were very different.
Similar to when Saddam took notes from the Vietnam war about elements of attrition based warfare. But that's also different because it depends on terrain too (Jungle vs Desert)
Amazing video as always, also war against humanity is one of my favorite sections of this channel, thank you so much!!
Thanks for watching, never forget!
I had wondered why, to my knowledge, die-hard Nazis apparently just gave up when defeated, when other guerrilla forces in other wars carried on. Thank you for explaining how this was not entirely the case, but why at a strategic level, it may as well have been.
It helped other guerrilla forces (the ones which were successful) that they tended to have foreign support - which of course was not available to the Werewolves.
I suspect the most diehard Nazis died in conventional war, or committed suicide at the end. The available pool of recruits for a partisan war was not there.
Germany was too profoundly defeated. Quite a few surviving Nazis, in the Western zone at least, repackaged themselves as anti-Communists and took advantage of the Cold War. Hans Fritzsche, acquitted at Nuremberg though he served a short jail term, was along with others involved in infiltrating the Free Democrats party in an attempt to turn it in a Nazi direction. Fritzsche died of cancer in 1953. This kind of thing was more attractive for diehards than guerrilla warfare. So was working for the Gehlen Organisation.
'I saw a Werewolf drinking a Pina Colada at Trader Vics... his hair was perfect. Yeep!'
You know, I am a rather brilliant surgeon. I could fix that.
Fix what?
That hump.
What hump?
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Nevermind...................................
"AhWoooooo"
And all this time I thought it “was purple”. This really is an educational channel.
I saw a werewolf with a chinese menu in his hand
Better not let em in!
“The folly of war is that it can have no natural end except in the extinction an entire people.” - Joyce Carol Oates
And yet almost all wars have ended before that point.
@@aze94 This notion of unending wars is I think an integrate part of the total wars typical of modern warfare. And when we look at it, past 1905 few peace treaty has really been accepted by the losing side.
nazis had werewolves and zombies
Wait til you learn about the backside of the moon -TimeGhost Ambassador
@@WorldWarTwoThe base in Antarctica, was that the jump-off base to the Moon?! And are there still SS-penguins left?!
@@Soundbrigadewhy do you think they all still wear those boss suits?
The Soviets had the Vampires.
@@Aeonicentity Defending the icewall and the flat Earth …. I have always suspected that NASA has behind that but …. Werner von Braun … Things start to make sense to me, FINALLY!
Never forget. Great job Sparty. Great job TimeGhost.
"War is all hell."
-William T. Sherman.
It's okay for the Germans to have werewolves. The Poles had a bear.
Werewolfs originate from Poland
@@Game_Hero you mean germany and prussia? xd
Inga: Werewolf!
Dr. Frankenstein: Werewolf?
Igor: There.
Dr. Frankenstein: What?
Igor: There, wolf. There, castle.
Dr. Frankenstein: Why are you talking that way?
Igor: I thought you wanted to.
Dr. Frankenstein: No, I don’t want to.
Frau Blücher
Suit yourself, I'm easy.
If you're blue and you don't know where to go to, why don't you go where fashion sits?
@@c1ph3rpunk (distant whinnying)
@@dudesqr Puuin on da riiiiz
Interesting coincidence, I recently submitted a question about werwolves for OOTF. Excellent video, as always!
So many young adults and teenagers who lost their lives in the last months of the war. Terrible!
Werwolves? More like " *where* are the *wolves* ?"
I guess they were supposed to attack and do cleanup for Steiner.
Also, can we talk about how awesome Spartacus's suit look?
They didn't see any irony considering their attitude to partisans?
"Rules for me but not for thee" except totally reversed lol
What irony? Their convictions seem mainly politically driven.
@@JurassicClark96 classic nazi logic.
@GeertTheDestoyer yeah it's all gotchas and zingers with these types
Considering the soviet union never signed the Geneva convention and non-uniformed combatants, (,partisans) don't fall under it anyways, there is no irony. Just victors writing history
Always nice to see a video from Spartacus Awesome
Nazi werewolves sounds so much worse than vampires.
It's a matter of perspective, really.
Wait until you hear about the nazi cyborg that brought zombies to London to fight the vampires
Some Hellsing references here
@@h3069 But WHY was he a CYBORG, though?!
@@h3069Wasn’t he powered by a hamster on a wheel?
My Grandpa, who served in the Canadian army overseas from October 1944 until the end of the war, and then served in the occupation, said that during the war, he slept with a knife under his pillow. During the occupation, he slept with a pistol under his pillow.
I had never heard of the werewolves before, really interesting video
Imagine a found footage horror movie where someone comes across an old post ww2 nazi hideout and gets chased by werewolf SS soldiers, that would be awesome.
Thank you for this video. I learned a lot in this that I didn't know before. Never Forget!!
Glad it was helpful! Never forget.
"Werewolf!"
"There wolf!!"
Young Frankenstein
There, Castle!
Why are you talking like that?@@Deridus
It's pronounced Fronk-en-steen!!
@@TheBearInTheChair I thought you wanted to?
Always tragic seeing the fanaticism to Hitler, even having children taking up arms, while the man they died for was hiding in a hole and when he finally did pick up a gun it was only to shoot himself.
Volun-told. I learned a new useful word.
Wow! Bad Kreuznach made the news. I lived there for 3 years when my dad was stationed there with the US Army. Didn't think the town important enough to ever get a mention.
Excellent job, as usual. Is there going to be a "Spies and Ties" episode about the Gehlen Organization and the first rumblings of the Cold War? (You mentioned the NKVD trying to shut down Nazi cells in East Germany, and my first thought....}
It's remarkable that the Nazi leadership spent so much time on "wonder"-weapons that broke down before they could be fully utilized instead of planning a real partisan resistance that could have been effective. It speaks a lot to how they viewed mass mobilization - it was a tool to gain power, but not something to be sustained beyond hammering loyalty to the state into the heads of citizens. Even though one could argue the same about Stalin's view of mass politics, even the USSR was able to field effective partisan forces of ideologically committed soviet citizens. At the end of the day, fascism of the nazi variety just promised blood and suffering, and perhaps there just weren't enough Germans willing to die for that vision. As Slovenian philosopher Zizek once argued, Stalin promised to do good things and did bad things, while Hitler promised to do bad things and did bad things.
The Nazis, and the german people as a whole, despised partisans on a ideological level all the way back to the Franco-Prussian war with the fear of the dreaded francs-tireurs. The Nazi's were notoriously brutal against partisans and would react reprisals on all villages in a area of an attack, alot of times killing the entire population of those hamlets. The Nazis adopting such an institution would be a hard break in policy and rhetoric.
The volkstrum was more a less an answer to utilizing mass mobilization without adopting the hated partisan system
As for if the German people going for such a program, while the Nazis did promise and deliver some good things to the Germans until the war really started to turn, during the days of the Volktrum many Germans refused to serve without a uniform (Since the Soviets would just summarily shoot them as partisans, and the Nazis did to Soviet partisans). Since non-uniformed volkstrum is essentially partisans, I think it's fair to say the Germans wouldn't go for anything like true state supported partisans.
I'm not really well-versed in National Socialist ideology, but in fascist philosophy a people defeated by strength of arms has no right to exist.
Such an event is indicative of a lack in "strength of spirit" and, as such, planning for beyond a final defeat is meaningless.
They tried the same thing in my hometown in 1944/45 but falled by using ex post Office workors with combat experience (Vojvodina, Backa Palanka)
4:28
So we meet again Mr.Skorzeny
Great video and thank you for sharing. I can certainly see how the German people were really tired of the war and wanted to part in any guerrilla war activity. If only because they viewed WW II as a continuation of WW I - in essence they had been at war since 1914 and they were ready for it to be over. They had no desire to continue a fight they had no hope to win.
This video certainly explains the popularity of the wulfsangel with neo-nazis and other edgelords
Hello, Spartacus. 🙋🏻♂️ 0:32 I studied that the Werewolves were active until 1947. 🇺🇸🤝🇩🇪
As I say at the end, even later than that.
“…but the werewolves were plagued by poor organization, lacked competent leadership,
were often poorly trained and motivated, and lacked resources…"
which pretty much sums up the big h's thousand(12)year régime in the final stages of this bloody war.
I would say "never again" but the forces of fascism are rising once more.
so I will have to only say,
never forget.
Yeah, antifa and modern Israel border polices are pretty facist. Could you do something about this with your activism please
their aesthetics and rhetoric may change, but the results never will. think positively tho- we can learn from the past and fight it in the here and now rather than wait for it to consume an entire continent.
@@oscaranderson5719 and so we must.
the rhetoric they use disguises their true intent.
that is how fascists entrap those they need to accomplish their drive to dominate.
metaphorical smoke and mirrors, that will eventually turn into real shattered mirrors and smoking cities.
fear and division are their tools.
What fascism? Are you okay mate
@@GaiusCaligula234 if you can’t easily spot it…
I don't use Instagram but thanks for talking about the Aachen Operation. Good stuff!
We also post the day by day series on our website which you can find here: timeghost.tv/blog/ww2-day-by-day/
I saw a trailer once for a whole movie called Warewolf Women Of The SS, didnt know it was a documentary
18:40 couldn’t not have said it better myself.
Doomed effort from the get-go, as the cruelty needed for the critical support was severely lacking. If i have learned one thing from this series, it is that cruelty inspires resistance movements. The allied occupation was never going to be as cruel as German occupation, they lacked that clear racial idiology.
yet again, not being a massive dick wins out!
Even in the Soviet zone, the authorities distributed food even though the USSR faced famine conditions in a number of places postwar. They did not want an insurgency to develop among Germans out of sheer desperation.
Somebody once said that the werewolves were neutralized by the economic rebound of Germany (West Germany) after the war ended. I think the rebuilding of Europe is a marvelous story that is overlooked. Of all the homeless people in Germany during the Summer of 1945, how long did it take to get shelter for those people before Winter came?? There must have been temporary housing erected while the cities were being rebuilt. What industries were restarted after the war and what was the employment situation like?? I find it amazing to look at pictures of Berlin, Cologne, Warsaw, and other cities heavily damaged during the war and contrast them with how they look today. What a massive effort it took to make those cities habitable again. One last thought. If the SS was busy telling everyone that wonder weapons would turn the tide of the war before Germany was overrun, then it would have undercut this message if they were preparing for a guerilla war. When you are in a hopeless situation against a numerically superior enemy, neither one of these options is going to help you. Thanks for another great video.
My grandmother feed from the Russians as a child.
She mentioned that they had to live from the land until sharing tiny rooms which the original German owners.
Basically everyone who still had a house had to share it.
@@molybdaen11 A room in a building in Dachau concentration camp was filled with inmates' corpses when the Americans arrived in late April 1945. In the 1950s a Polish woman was living in the same room - it was the only accommodation she could find.
@@stevekaczynski3793 Frightening isn't it?
And the worst thing is that we learned nothing.
Timing is weird sometimes.
Last night I watched The Aftermath (2019) starring Keira Knightley, Alexander Skarsgard and Jason Clarke.
It is set in post war Germany. One of the characters' daughter is friends with a boy that is a Nazi Werewolf.
It was not the core to the plot but it was important.
Afaik that is the only film I've watched about Nazi Werewolves. And I watched it less than 12 hours before you gave us this video.
Timing is weird sometimes...
I watched that movie exactly because of it. The romance getting the more focus was aletdown to me.
@@DeerBoy736 I had no idea, I watched it blind coming into it. So it came as a surprise at its inclusion.
And yeah, romantic triangles, cheating etc are meh to me.
Still, the timing just hit my wtf brain.
@@AceMoonshot Same, kinda. All I knew was it's a movie set in post war germany and the werewolf movement is in it so I was intrigued. But it turned out to be as you said love triangles, cheating and an annoying female lead.
Werwolf featuring also in Lars Von Trier's movie "Europa"
A captured B-17? Flyable? That must be an interesting story. I can't recall any bomber command airfields getting overrun so how'd that come about?
Planes would occasionally make a crash landing reasonably intact or even surrender if badly damaged in the interests of crew survival.
It wouldn't be too hard to piece together a working B-17 from successful crash landed planes and other wrecks.
-TimeGhost Ambassador
Google for Kampfgeschwader 200😮
@@WorldWarTwo As I recall that's how the Allies got their hands on their first Zero. But then again both sides did that with a lot of aircraft and armor.
It crashed mostly intact and they rebuilt it. There were various plans to use it as a weapon, but it mostly ended up sitting at an airfield (if I remember correctly, there is an entry on it the Time-Life WW2 books)
Many Allied bombers carried a small explosive device. If the plane crash-landed in enemy territory the pilot was supposed to detonate it to destroy key technology like the bomb sight and also render the plane unusable. Even so, intact or repairable planes fell into German hands.
Informative 👍👍
Thanks for watching.
A comment to show my support for the channel, and to feed the YT algorithm
Much appreciated Salty.
There was an interesting movie, 'Zentropa' (/'Europa' in the US) which dealt with this topic. Enjoy.
Them Werwolf dudes sure sound a lot like they are some kind of nazi flavoured Gladio, ain't them?
''Hier spricht der Sender Werwolf, sender der Deutschen Freiheitsbewegung in den vom Feind besetzten Gebieten." I remember hearing that in school in germany. We actually talked about Werwolf a few years later I met an old man who could tell me first hand about it.
2:48 now that you mention them I'm curious, did the Sturmabteilung do much notable during the war? It seems after 1938 and Kristallnacht they just vanish from the history books.
They continued to exist but lost much of their active membership to the armed forces or other Nazi formations. SA units were part of the German occupation force in Poland, sometimes implicated in atrocities.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer-Grenadier-Division_Feldherrnhalle
This German Army unit was in large part recruited from SA personnel, but is a good example of how the SA as an organisation was bled away into other parts of the Nazi or military machine.
That's it, I'm writing the script WerewolveSS.
1 hell of a great history video👍👍
Thank you!
He said Bremen so perfectly
Reap it, Is-not-real...REAP IT!!!
Another group fallout you could look into "Operation Gladio" created by the Allies back in 1948.
thank you...
Never forget.
Wonderful program
Thank you.
Soviets and Polish communist government dealt with werewolf the same way like they dealt with Ukrainian armed groups. They locked thousands of civilians in camps and gradually expelled them to Germany and Ukraine respectively. That effectively removed any support for armed resistance.
Somewhat ironically some camps for German and Ukrainian civilians were staffed by Jewish camp survivors drafted by Soviets. Few camps had very bad reputation for starvation, bad treatment and occasionally torture.
Jews tended to be trusted as their anti-Nazi and anti-German credentials were considered good. For example, Erwin Weit, an Austrian-born Jew whose family moved to Poland before the war, was freed from prison by the Soviets and then given a green questionnaire to complete. He was then told he had just joined the Workers' Party of Poland. His autobiography is rather thin on what he did in the Stalin period but later he was a German-Polish interpreter at high-level talks in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Detention centres for Germans in Czechoslovakia varied from bad to very bad. A camp at Kolin, east of Prague, had an especially bad reputation.
A good “alternate history “ on this is The Man With the Iron Heart by Harry Turtledove.
Nice video.
Glad you enjoyed. Never forget.
So I've been a subscriber of The Great War. And THERE'S A SECOND CHANNEL?!
There’s even a third and a fourth…
www.youtube.com/@TimeGhost
www.youtube.com/@TheKoreanWarbyIndyNeidell
Although I should point out that we don’t produce The Great War channel since 2018, when Indy completed the coverage of WW1.
lucky you, you are in for a hell of a ride
If anyone has read the excellent novel by Harry Turtledove, "The Man With the Iron Cross", you well know how much worse this could have been for the allies, and the world at large had certain members of the SS not been eliminated when they were.
Now I feel the urge to go reread that and his "The War that Came Early" series
And yet, it raises it's hideous head in our times.
Thank you for the lesson.
Will this channel be cover atrocities that occured during the Korean war?
All Korean War content will be on the Korean War channel, Sparty may appear a few times to cover war atrocities on there but we don't plan on having a regular series at this time. Sparty will be focusing on our other upcoming series. History of Democracy.
@@WorldWarTwo Thank you for the answer.
I am looking forward to the new series.
NEVER FORGET
Bremen was in the British zone, but it was agreed that the Americans would use the harbor at Bremerhaven, that's probably why the police were there.
U guys are awesome
Thank you, and thanks for watching!
Awesome as usual
Thank you so much!
Never.
Forget.
16:25 wasn't that the work for SMERSH rather than NKVD?
18:30 and then we get Gladio and revisionist groups
Reminds me of Turtledove's The Man with the Iron Heart
Werwolf? There wolf. IYKYK
Wot about the Whenwolves and How-wolves not to mention the Who-wolves???
What knockers!
@@Soundbrigade Why wolves?
Romeo, Romeo, wherewolf art thou Romeo?
Why are you talking like that?
Hey, you should make a video talking about the Anti-Treaty IRA's campaign from 1942 to 1944 in Northern Ireland, aided by the Nazis. The IRA were in a weird position of ideological split at the time which makes it even more interesting, along with both the obscurity and importance of the event in decades to come. It also served as an example of Nazi plans in the UK insurrectional wise.
WHAT?!! Irishmen not agreeing with each other?! Faith an' Begora!
I've known about these werewolves for years since I'm a scholar of 20th century history but it never fails that I still picture actual werewolves instead of humans 😂
Ngl would make a cool movie.
Great video
Glad you enjoyed it.
Late to the party, but heres a personal funny thing. In area where i live, there was a wehrwolf school - yes, literally - on a castle near Aussig. They did some ruckus in 1945, but not much to be said - except for one shootout at old Obergrund train station but thats not whats interesting here - The Red army launched an operation to quell them, together with the red guards of bohemia, and they managed to find full list of equipment hidden in nearby forests - from aprox. 570 caches, to this day only 6 were found by the law enforcement, from that time period and todays one. Metal detector treasure hunting is popular here, and we got our hands on some interesting pieces - from medals dating to the spanish civil war given to the german expeditionary forces, to STG-44, magazines, lugers. you name it.
No the guns dont work, yes we always call the police if its gun and explosive stuff.
When it comes to the knives, medals and that kind of stuff... restoration it is!
Nazi gorillas? That is a terrifying thought.
"Nazi Terrorists" is redundant
?
@@Bandog23 he is saying nazi's are terrorists so there is no need to say nazi terrorists
@@kingericson490Doesn’t really make sense to me though, before they ascended to power they had elements of it but that was quashed after the Munich Putsch wherein they ran a successful election campaign and got into power that way. They were also considered a legitimate government by the rest of the continent, unlike, say the Taliban who despite diplomatic overtures and offers have been routinely denied purely based on the fact that actually discussing with them would imply they’re legitimate.
I get your meaning but there is a distinction to be drawn between state terrorism, like the kind practiced by the Third Reich, and the actions of a terrorist insurgency.
Perhaps the term Nazi Guerillas to distinguish them from the Nazi government is in order, because yes.
I've often thought that Germany's surrender in May of 45 gave the allies and the rest of the world time to prepare for the upcoming winter. Can you imagine the suffering had Germany survived, say, into September before capitulating?
Yeah for such an intimidating name, they really had little impact lol
Yeah well it's kinda hard to really do much when you are constantly being hunted
There were a couple hundred of them at most and very few who remained active until 46.
I’m not so sure. As Sparty mentioned, it made it more difficult to appointment non nazi mayors which meant that some “former” nazis would remain seated in power and wield some degree of influence.
“Heh 😏”
There's something so hardcore about the phrase 'Nazi Werewolves'
Yeah
17:21 well said nice video
the werewolf fiasco shows that the guerilla fight does not fit the German mindset. Throughout the war, in the occupied countries, smaller groups with less resources and training achieved better and longer standing results
Werewolves? Paper tigers are more like it.
Lotta nazi apologists in the comments on this one, really sad. You’d think people would put on their thinking caps considering this series is about war crimes, a concept to which Naziism is faithfully married
The Nazi leaders slinked away to hide when the chips were down or sought to bargain the lives of their subordinates and slaves in self-serving deals. Can't see anything to admire there.
are you telling me it took until today to find they do WWII videos as well?!
We are also covering Korea, starting in 4 days! Find it here: www.youtube.com/@TheKoreanWarbyIndyNeidell
Well they have 1 werewolf yes, but mostly vampires
Thank you thank you thank you I love you this is the best and I love you have the wonderfulest life !🎉
Thank you very much for the comment!
Now let me get this out of the way before I actually watch this episode but I remember that "operation" to be a completely over organized failure?
mind blowing video
Thanks for the comment and thank you for watching.
@@WorldWarTwo 👍
good story. G,old veteran
There wolf! There Spartacus!
Never forget.
Too late
Could you guys do a special on lend-lease and the donations made to rebuild Europe? And what happened to the Mothball Fleet. i never hear on those topics and I think it'd be fascinating.
Some escaped to London and were the basis for Warren Zevons song Werewolves of London 😂
Honestly they mightve been viable if they were concieved at the beginning of the war and where trained less as a sabotours and more infiltrators then they could've maybe pulled a Hydra