Iraq Attacks Recall Nazi 'Werewolves', Part 3

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Werwolf itself was filled not so much by fearsome SS officers but 
teenagers too young for the front. Beevor writes:

In the west, the Allies found that Werwolf was a fiasco. Bunkers prepared 
for Werwolf operations had supplies "for 10-15 days only" and the 
fanaticism of the Hitler Youth members they captured had entirely 
disappeared. They were "no more than frightened, unhappy youths." Few 
resorted to the suicide pills which they had been given "to escape the 
strain of interrogation and, above all, the inducement to commit 
treason." Many, when sent off by their controllers to prepare terrorist 
acts, had sneaked home.

That's not quite the same as the Rumsfeld version, which claimed that 
"Today the Nazi dead-enders are largely forgotten, cast to the sidelines 
of history because they comprised a failed resistance and managed to kill 
our Allied forces in a war that saw millions fight and die." 

It's hard to understand exactly what Rumsfeld was saying, but if he meant 
that the Nazi resisters killed Americans after the surrender, this would 
be news. According to America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to 
Iraq, a new study by former Ambassador James Dobbins, who had a lead role 
in the Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo reconstruction efforts, and a 
team of RAND Corporation researchers, the total number of post-conflict 
American combat casualties in Germany—and Japan, Haiti, and the two 
Balkan cases—was zero.

So, how did this fanciful version of the American experience in postwar 
Germany get into the remarks of a Princeton graduate and former trustee 
of Stanford's Hoover Institute (Rumsfeld) and the former provost of 
Stanford and co-author of an acclaimed book on German unification (Rice)? 
Perhaps the British have some intelligence on the matter that still has 
not been made public. Of course, as the president himself has noted, 
there is a lot of revisionist history going around.


Daniel Benjamin was a Germany correspondent for Time and the Wall Street 
Journal from 1990-1994 and served on the National Security Council staff 
from 1994-1999. He is the co-author of The Age of Sacred Terror.


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