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| - The German Freedom Front, sometimes called the Werewolves, were a resistance movement in Germany which continued the war against the Allied Forces following the end of World War II. The group adopted a variety of tactics, including roadside bombings, panzershrek attacks, political assassinations, and kamikaze style events to inflict substantial casualties upon the various Allies.
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| abstract
| - The German Freedom Front, sometimes called the Werewolves, were a resistance movement in Germany which continued the war against the Allied Forces following the end of World War II. The group adopted a variety of tactics, including roadside bombings, panzershrek attacks, political assassinations, and kamikaze style events to inflict substantial casualties upon the various Allies. The basic concept of the GFF was developed by SS officer Reinhard Heydrich following the failure of the German siege of Stalingrad in early 1943. Although a devout Nazi, Heydrich was canny enough to realize that the tide of the war was turning against Germany, particularly on the Eastern Front. He concluded that now was the time to begin preparing for a possible invasion and occupation of Germany. Taking cues from the various partisan groups that had appeared in the countries Germany had occupied, Heydrich proposed his plans to his immediate superior, Heinrich Himmler. Although a devoted Nazi himself, Himmler was persuaded by Heydrich's arguments, seeing it as more than simple defeatism. Without Adolf Hitler's knowledge, Himmler sanctioned Heydrich's plan. Over the next two years, Heydrich made use of laborers from concentration camps to build a substantial network of tunnels in the base of the Alps. He also began a stockpile of weapons, including firearms and explosives, and began pulling very specific men (mostly SS) out of the frontlines for the specific purpose of training them as partisans. Heydrich himself quietly relocated to a secret underground bunker in the Alpine Redoubt. The GFF struck immediately after Germany surrendered, waging an aggressive terrorist resistance against the Allies. While all of the Allies quickly realized that they faced an organized resistance, mutual distrust, particularly between the Anglo-Americans on the one side and the Soviet Union insured that the cooperation that had won the war would not help to win the peace. However, a few months before the Anglo-Americans began to leave Germany, cooperation allowed for the Allies to hunt down Heydrich and kill him. Ironically, had the Allies acted more vigorously in those first months, the GFF could very well have been stopped. Privately, Johannes Klein, Heydrich's former driver and confidante, noted that morale among the GFF was initially quite low, and that with enough losses, the whole network could have easily disintegrated. However, due to the Allies' slow response, the GFF thrived. When Heydrich was killed in 1947, Allied commanders hoped that the GFF would die. Instead, Joachim Peiper took and just continued the organization's activities. In the meantime, the United States had began to pulling its troops out in 1947, giving the GFF a substantial victory. The war-weary British also were in the process of pulling out, leaving only the vengeful Soviets and equally brutal French holding onto to their respective occupation zones. The evacuating countries also unknowingly left behind GFF sympathisers to govern western Germany, so as to deny giving territory to the USSR.
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![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)