a view of the edelweiss piraten from the british and american archives

'The Enemy of Our Enemy': A View of the Edelweiss Piraten from the British and AmericanArchivesAuthor(s): Perry BiddiscombeSource: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Jan., 1995), pp. 37-63Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/260921Accessed: 28/04/2010 04:03

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Perry Biddiscombe

'The Enemy of our Enem/: A View of the Edelweiss Piroten from the British and

American Archives

Although it is a story little known outside Germany, the seemingly monolithic Hitler Jugend (HJ) was challenged at the very height of the Third Reich by a number of oppositional youth gangs. Most of these were set up by working-class teenagers and were particularly clustered in the great cities and industrial conurbations of western Germany, where many such groups called themselves 'Edelweiss Piraten'. Even a conservative estimate suggests that 5 per cent of the adolescent population may have been involved in these bands, at least peripherally. Edelweiss Piraten and similar groupings were purely local clubs, which organized camping trips and sing-along gatherings, specifically outside the stifling field of control imposed by the Hitler Jugend. After 1939, when membership in the HJ became mandatory, opposition could no longer be expressed by mere absence from the movement and it thus developed through the establishment of 'cliques' within the HJ itself. In certain areas, a kind of miniature civil war broke out within the nazi youth movement, with Edelweiss elements launch- ing physical attacks upon HJ leaders and the infamous HJ-Streifen- dienst, or 'patrol service', which was a rallying point for hardboiled nazis and served as a recruitment channel for the SS.

It is especially notable, however, that while the Edelweiss reso- lutely opposed the disciplinarianism of the HJ, its own members rarely adopted any political goals at odds with the predominate National Socialist agenda. At most, there were a few nebulous connections to the Catholic and communist undergrounds, and several groups displayed some vaguely bundische influences reflected in a demeanour and sense of style reminiscent of the 'free federated youth', or biindische Jugend, of the 1920s, and even of the earlier Wandervogel groups which had proliferated in the

Journal of Contemporary History (SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi), Vol. 30 (1995), 37-63.

Journal of Contemporary History

Wilhelmine period. Overall, however, the political development of the Edelweiss was clearly limited by the age of its membership cadre and by the oppressive power of the nazi police state, which atomized all forms of social and political opposition.

Historiographically, the discussion about the Edelweiss has been marked by several stages of development. Originally, some of the most prominent historians of the German youth movement either cast aspersions upon the Edelweiss or they ignored it, mainly because it lacked positive political goals and contained a criminal element which seemed to anticipate the anti-social 'teddy boys' of the postwar period. The most notable antithesis to this view was

provided by Arno Klonne, who argued as early as the 1950s that the Edelweiss was a legitimate resistance movement which

accomplished as much as the adult opposition, and which had a

vague ideological character bequeathed to it by the pre-nazi youth Biinde, and possibly also by pre-1933 communist, socialist and Catholic youth groups. This claim was echoed in 1973 by Daniel Horn, although Horn admitted that the biindische Jugend had few

organizational links with the Piraten, and that unlike the Binde, the latter were largely working class. More recent studies have tended to synthesize some of these claims while at the same time

rejecting irreconcilable elements. Drawing on an extensive study of an Edelweiss-type organization in Leipzig called the Meute, Lothar Gruchmann argued that there was no overt bundisch influence within the youth cliques, although National Socialist

police agencies persecuted the Edelweiss on such grounds because it was the most convenient line of prosecution. Writing in 1982, Heinrich Muth agreed with this assessment, quoting Reich Justice

Ministry documents to show how the nazis used charges of biindisch influence as a formula against anyone caught harassing the HJ, whether or not they were truly politically motivated. In a

partial throwback to earlier lines of argument, Muth rejected any attempt to connect the Piraten to the concepts of Widerstand or Resistenz, and thought that the phenomenon should properly be

regarded as part of a more extended 'youth problem' in modern German society. By the early 1980s, Detlev Peukert had emerged as the most important of a new generation of historians who

regarded the Edelweiss as a key element of the Alltag history of nazi Germany. Peukert concurred with Gruchmann and Muth on the issue of continuity (vis-a-vis the biindische Jugend), but he

portrayed the Edelweiss as a form of specifically working-class

38

Biddiscombe: 'The Enemy of our Enemy'

protest against the nazis. In search of an alternative to regarding the Edelweiss either as 'hooligans' or as fully-fledged resistance fighters, Peukert was influenced by recent British theory on proletarian youth 'subcultures', and came to see the Edelweiss in these terms. According to Peukert, the Piraten manifested 'forms of insubordination' to bourgeois culture of a type that had traditionally been ignored by the workers' movement before 1933, and this was combined with a rejection of National Socialism that he described only as 'semi-political'.'

Most of this existing historiography is based upon Gestapo and Kripo records that provide a detailed history of the Edelweiss, but which also screen all information through a National Socialist lens and which suffer from the typical deficiencies of the nazi Weltanschauung. Muth notes, for instance, that very little sociologi- cal material was gathered on youth during the Third Reich, at least in empirical fashion, and that most contemporary observations were made on the basis of antiquated assumptions about human nature and social relations.2 In contrast, this essay is based upon Allied records. One must first of all approach this resource with the frank admission that information generated by Allied intelligence units was naturally affected by the nature and quality of those organizations, no less than the way in which the Gestapo and Kripo put their distinctive stamp on their material, and these Allied security agencies were not always first-class. The Counter- Intelligence Corps (CIC), for instance, was not famous for its competence, and grew even more infamous as it was ravaged by demobilization and the better elements returned across the Atlan- tic, leaving virtual carpetbaggers in their wake. Such people also filtered information through a lens coloured by a certain set of biases and perceptions, although their records at least provide a radically different point of view from the base of documentation used in earlier studies. On the positive side, one must also point out that Allied observers were never as constrained as their German counterparts in the pursuit of rational inquiry, and even despite the immense weight of wartime prejudices and incompetencies, there were a few specialists who developed some surprisingly perceptive insights about the condition of German youth. In fact, the way in which Allied analysts reacted to incoming reports of Edelweiss activity is a fascinating aspect of the more general Allied response to the German resistance movement, and constitutes a story in itself. Even more importantly, Allied records span the end

39


of the war, and reports from the immediate postwar period provide an important coda to the overall story of the Edelweiss Piraten. To state the matter boldly, the Allied archives show, first, that the Edelweiss was nearly useless to the Allied war effort; and second, that the nature of the movement eventually made it a conduit for the scattered remnants of National Socialism. By 1946, the Edel- weiss had degenerated from being a kind of Allied co-belligerent into being an outright resistance movement pitted against the occupying powers.

Allied records on the Edelweiss Piraten began with a brief mention of the movement in a POW interview from 1943, but they only reached a significant level in 1944, when the trickle of information from POW interrogations was transformed into a virtual flood.3 Perhaps this was attributable to the increasing pro- liferation of the dissident youth cliques, or to the escalating seriousness of Edelweiss attacks on nazi officials, all of which gave the movement a higher profile. German prisoners (some of them former members of the movement) reported a gradual inflation of numbers: one POW who had served over a year as a trainer in an HJ-Wehrertuchtigungslager claimed that 50 per cent of the boys he knew were 'spiritually Edelweiss Piraten'. Another informant spoke of 30 per cent of the HJ in Recklinghausen 'sympathizing' with the Edelweiss, and 7 per cent of the teenage population of Essen were said to be directly involved (including 90 per cent of the youth in the working-class quarter of Segeroth). Almost all

prisoners agreed that the movement was mainly working-class in its composition, although there was also frequent mention of

participation by students. They also claimed that there was an increasing scale of violence undertaken by the Edelweiss: in some western German cities, teenage Piraten had graduated from beating up HJ leaders to full-scale assassination attempts against Party and SS-police functionaries.4

The testimony of German POWs also seemed to suggest that although low-level members of the Edelweiss had no knowledge of a developed political ideology or of a large-scale command structure, the presence of Catholic and communist influences in various clubs showed that the movement was not immune to the sway of political agencies. In Disseldorf, for instance, one Edel- weiss Gruppe held meetings under the cover of 'Bible Study' discussions organized by local Catholic clergymen, and in Frank- furt, most members of an Edelweiss cell amongst Wehrmacht medi-

40


cal students were concurrently participants in Neudeutschland, a Catholic youth organization previously banned by the nazis.5 One of the popular founding myths of the movement was that its original hero had been a Catholic priest who had rebelled against the regime and had been executed early in the nazi period. With all this in mind, it was hardly a surprise for the Allies to learn that in the Rhineland, many priests had been called in by the

police and berated for inciting rebellion. Several prelates slipped this noose by pointing out that anit-nazi slogans blamed on the Edelweiss were frequently painted on churches. 'Do you think it likely', they asked, 'that members of the Catholic youth would write their views on churches?' After this harassment, however, the higher clergy ordered local priests to withdraw from any nebulous contacts with the Edelweiss in order to preserve the papal concordat with the Reich (and thus maintain their few surviving privileges).6

As for communist influence, some Edelweiss members told the Allies that the movement was tinged with communism, although this sway was exercised so indirectly that most members were unaware of its presence. Given the Edelweiss's working-class base, it was natural that many parents of the Piraten had voted for the KPD prior to 1933, and that they sometimes encouraged their children to join dissident cliques in order to negate nazi influences. Five children of former communists were captured as POWs in Italy - all of them Edelweiss members - but they claimed not to be communists and were vague about the meaning of communism 'except [to say] that it is anti-nazi and anything that is anti-nazi must be good'. Only in one documented case could the Allies find evidence of an Edelweiss member, who was a self-declared communist, having direct contact with an underground KPD organizer. In this case, which occurred in Cologne, the individual in question was provided with communist propaganda leaflets and scattered these around town several days prior to the city's occupation by the Americans.7 A British Control Commission study probably hit the mark in noting that, as a movement, the Edelweiss was so vacuous that its members readily soaked up the influence of their surroundings. Since the movement's main strongholds were in working-class and Catholic areas, it was no surprise that communist or Catholic political inspiration sometimes seemed to animate the members.8 Nothing was said about ties with the underground SPD.

41


Allied reports and interrogation summaries also shed light on the links between the Edelweiss and the biindische Jugend. Although Allied intelligence officers were careful to note that 'witnesses tend to know only the history [of the Edelweiss] in their own particular localities, and fill up gaps in their knowledge with speculation', there was still a considerable weight of evidence tying the early Edelweiss to the pre-nazi Biinde. According to several Edelweiss sources, remnants of the biindische groups banned in 1933/34 maintained contacts among ex-members for the purpose of hiking and camping outside the framework of the HJ. This was certainly the case with such organizations as the Pfadfinderschaft St Georg, which went underground in 1934, or the Nerother Bund in Krefeld, also colloquially called the 'Navajo'. In fact, as early as 1933, some such groups had begun to call themselves Piraten and both Piraten and Seerauber were 'orders' of the illegal Nero- ther Wandervogel. Although the senior figures in these informal groupings were eventually drafted into the army or the Labour Service, the bands they led subsequently evolved into the embry- onic Edelweiss Piraten, and presumably much of the movement's ethos and sense of style dated from this early period in the mid- 1930s. Moreover, some Edelweiss members remained self-consciously bindisch: one working-class boy from Wuppertal, in describing his Edelweiss cell, consistently preferred to call it the biindische Jugend. Finally, this biindisch influence re-emerged at the end of the war, at least in some bands. In early July 1945, 21st Army Group characterized the Edelweiss in the Ruhr simply as a 'subsidiary' of the biindische Jugend, and an underground biindisch youth group in Solingen was also described as 'possibly synony- mous with Edelweiss'.9 All of this reinforces the school of thought associated with Klonne (although we will reject some of Klonne's optimisic conclusions about the value of such biindisch resistance).

Not surprisingly, discovery of the Edelweiss created a hope in certain quarters within the Allied Command (SHAEF) that a German resistance movement might be able to aid the advancing Allied forces. Perhaps it could provide intelligence and possibly conduct direct action against the Wehrmacht and nazi security forces,10 much as the maquis had done during the summer campaign in France. The work of the Edelweiss, said one intelligence report, 'suggests at least the organization of opposition, and that [such activity] on a large scale is possible even if there is not yet evidence of their having achieved any very significant action'.11 It

42


was also suggested that the existence of the Edelweiss meant that the generation of Germans who had grown up under the shadow of National Socialism might be less ideologically contaminated than otherwise believed, and some analysts regarded this alone as a reason for hope. 'The numbers involved may not be large', said a Foreign Office (FO) appreciation, 'but the attitude shown is in some cases extremely clear and firm, such as may radiate a strong influence once the machinery of repression is removed.'12

The Allied agency most titillated by reports of Edelweiss activity was the Psychological Warfare Division (PWD) of SHAEF, whose raison d'etre was to encourage anything that might disrupt the stability of the Reich. True to its mandate, PWD remained the last important Allied agency committed to the old British strategy of crippling nazi Germany from within. It was thus natural that officers of this unit could barely contain themsleves when they began receiving reports of Edelweiss unrest, or when indications arrived suggesting that Edelweiss members might regard the Allied advance as a liberation.13 By spring 1945, the desire to encourage such trends finally bubbled over and provoked a nasty dispute with the British and American Political Advisors at SHAEF, whose job was to keep the military command running smoothly along the political rails set in place by London and Washington.

The guiding spirit at PWD was Richard Crossman, the British socialist who later achieved fame as a Labour cabinet minister. It was Crossman who developed a controversial blueprint for propaganda that implicitly contravened the 'Unconditional Sur- render' doctrine by encouraging German adolescents to take their fate into their own hands. By 1945, the idea of Germans working their passage through anti-nazi resistance was no longer approved policy in either London or Washington. Crossman's aim, in contrast, was to provide an example of heroism for German youth, thereby providing a clear alternative to the kind of self-destructive Werwolf activity then being promoted by the nazi regime. The Piraten, he argued, should be widely mentioned in Allied propaganda:

The courage and fortitude of the men and women who chose to suffer appallingly rather than to compromise with the Nazis should receive their full due, as a noble and inspiring example ... the spontaneous and widespread, if largely unpolitical and undirected, revolt of youth against regimentation should be adequately reported and discussed as an indication that Nazism had in its latter

43


days no appeal to youth, and has no future, and that there is hope for the German nation of a return to civilization.l4

Since this line of thought was not only suggested, but was actually implemented as a guideline for output, the British Political Officer at SHAEF was outraged and directed the attention of Whitehall to this contravention of the spirit of the 'Unconditional Surrender' doctrine. The Foreign Office, however, refused to take action -

perhaps it secretly sympathized with Crossman - and rather con- tented itself with the knowledge that Crossman was expected to leave military service soon in order to contest a seat in the forth- coming British general election.15

However, outside the rarified atmosphere at PWD headquarters, other Allied observers had begun to detect some unsavoury aspects of the Edelweiss movement, which gave considerable pause for thought. Alarm bells, in fact, had already begun ringing before the end of 1944, and grew progressively louder as new information came in from the field. Various reports, for instance, suggested that the Edelweiss existed not because its members had any fundamental objections to National Socialism, but merely because they were opposed to the rigid regimentation of the HJ. This interpretation seemed validated by the mild treat- ment meted out by the German police to Edelweiss members, at least until 1944.16 A report in December 1944 by the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) noted that the future pattern of development for the Edelweiss 'is in the direction of another romantic- authoritarian regime not unlike National Socialism', and added that even if the movement could be fostered by open Allied interest, which was unlikely, such a policy would probably back- fire.'7 The American historian Saul Padover, then serving as an

intelligence officer in the PWD, also poured cold water upon the enthusiasms of his own unit: the Edelweiss, he reported, 'is not a democratic movement. It follows the "leadership-principle" and is not identified with any enlightened political parties or principles ... it is the enemy of our enemy; it is not our friend.'18 The British Element of the Control Commission and the Intelligence Section of 21st Army Group went even further in such negative appraisals, each claiming that the Edelweiss's inherent antipathy toward all forms of authority would eventually convert it into a likely instru- ment for anti-Allied underground activities.19

There were other, more specific, problems as well. It was sus-

44


pected, for instance, that the Edelweiss was a gathering point for young homosexuals - which seemed to explain some of the generous aid allegedly provided to the boys by Ruhr industrial- ists20- and it was also believed that the movement had been penetrated by criminal elements whose main interest was burglary and looting, albeit under cover of righteous idealism.21 The Edel- weiss, noted a British interrogation report, 'appears to be an outbreak of youthful gangsterism on a large scale'.22 By far the most serious doubts, however, were provided by reports - some of them from the pro-Soviet Freies Deutschland organization which suggested that the Gestapo had successfully planted agents within the Edelweiss Piraten, either to destroy the movement or to use it as a future cloak for nazi resistance to the occupying powers. Interrogations of active Edelweiss members did not bear out such claims of infiltration, but Allied authorities were still warned to interpret with caution all tales of anti-nazi youth activity.23

Some of this Allied commentary was undoubtedly influenced by the stereotyped view of all things German which existed in 1944-5. On the other hand, the sad fact was that much of the criticism directed at the Edelweiss was subsequently borne out by events: many of the Edelweiss clubs did in fact remain in opposition to established authority, even once that authority was exercised by the Allied powers, and it was also true that semi-nazi resistance elements eventually draped themselves in the Edelweiss banner, a process which may not have been under way before the end of the war, but which certainly occurred during the immediate postwar period.

The fate of the Edelweiss Piraten at the end of the war was a complex tale, with elements varying considerably from region to region and from town to town, a natural development if one recalls the lack of any central direction within the movement. In a few cases, Edelweiss members admittedly provided active aid during the final Allied advance, or otherwise attempted to help the occupation forces. At Oberhausen, Edelweiss Piraten patrolled the streets during the last few hours before Allied troops arrived, and they also intimidated last-ditch nazi resisters. Simi- larly, an Edelweiss member from Alsdorf reported that his group collected vital intelligence, which was passed on to sympathetic Frontsoldaten and was in turn conveyed to the Allies (although American interrogators treated this claim with considerable

45


reserve).24 During the summer of 1945, when even semi-political German organizations were still formally banned by the occupying powers, many Rhenish Edelweiss cliques stubbornly remained in being, and sometimes continued to seek at least a vague form of co-operation with the Allied authorities. In the Rhein-Wupper- kreis, for instance, the local Edelweiss group asked permission to form a patrol service in order to fight the Werewolves, a kind of pathetic attempt to maintain modes of behaviour (e.g. beating up HJ activists) that had previously given the club a sense of purpose.25 Some of the groups dissolved once the HJ no longer existed as a foil for their attention. At Berg Gladbach, the Edelweiss disbanded after a band of communist infiltrators attempted to seize control of the group.26 In Krefeld, the local Edelweiss dissolved, but by summer 1945, former members under Ludwig Kuch- Steinmuller were attempting to revive a bundisch club which had itself previously been absorbed by the Edelweiss.27

In certain instances, however, the fate of the youth cliques was not nearly so benign. Allied intelligence officers found that many Edelweiss groups were not only useless to the Allied war effort, but that their members frequently displayed a disturbing reluctance to reveal themselves to the occupation forces. 'Interrogators from higher headquarters indicate glowing possibilities for the Edel- weiss', reported a CIC unit in early 1945.

However this detachment entertains more pessimistic hopes based upon the observations that: no leader has yet been discovered; the few members are

extremely young and apt to be unsuitable, impulsive informers; [and] members have not come forward to proffer information and help....

The 503rd CIC Detachment conducted a ten-day experiment with two young Edelweiss members who were planted as informers, but the results were not productive.28 As early as spring 1945, there was evidence that whole Edelweiss networks remained underground and were purposefully avoiding the Allied authorities. In Cologne, the CIC on 2 April raided an illegal meeting of HJ adolescents who had formed a secret organization built on a cellular basis. Some of these boys claimed to be Edelweiss Piraten and were released, although the CIC subsequently made arrange- ments to penetrate the group with an informer.29 Unfortunately, it is still unclear how many groups refused to disband, as opposed to those which complied with the wishes of the new authorities.

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The reason some of these groups remained underground does not originally appear to have been overtly subversive, but rather resulted from the particular sense of values supported and bequeathed by National Socialism, and from the difficult set of social and economic circumstances that confronted German youth. A considerable feel for these issues was developed by Allied sociolo- gists, psychologists and intelligence officers. According to these observers, the leaders of the National Socialist regime had deliberately fostered a sense of self-importance in German youth, and by so doing had undermined the influence of home and church by the substitution of the authority of the state. The Third Reich, after all, prided itself as a product of the vitality and dynamism of youth, and looked to the nation's youth as both an inspiration and as a cup to be filled with nazi doctrine. Regarded from the Allied viewpoint, the attempt to impose state control by cutting at the roots of natural authority seemed unwise, and it was not long before German children expressed their increasingly bound- less sense of contempt by developing doubts about the very power which had promised their 'liberation'.

According to Allied appreciations, the disastrous consequences of nazi policies began to appear in the early 1940s, when the pressures of war diverted the attention of the state and eroded its coercive power - students were transferred from schools and universities in order to serve in the military or work in industry, and younger children were recruited for air raid defence or put to work in soup kitchens and first aid stations. Some children basked in the glow of this premature responsibility, but many more were set adrift without the guiding hand of parental and school direction. The natural result was a drastic rise in juvenile delinquency, a severe loss of respect for all forms of authority, and the growth of dissident youth cliques. National Socialist leaders were also surprised to learn that the new generation did not judge the Third Reich by its comparative advantages to the bad times before 1933 - as did many older people - but that their thoughts were shaped solely by the effect of the regime upon themselves, and in this sense particularly by the attempt to enforce discipline and to impose the boring process of political indoctrination.

According to the Allies, this house of cards finally collapsed at the end of the war, when the shutdown of the school system and the breakdown of German industry created mass youth unemployment. The commander of US occupation forces noted,

47


for instance, that the presence of over 400,000 unemployed in the US Zone created a big reservoir of enlistments for potentially hostile underground groups. Moreover, millions of orphans were created during the final stages of the Allied bombing campaign, and the children of Party members found their fathers summarily dismissed from employment, which made their own futures equally bleak. Cognizant of the dangers posed by this situation, the Allies established make-work programmes and reopened schools in autumn 1945, but these measures were counteracted by the release of a million young soldiers from the Wehrmacht, and the ensuing stream of released POWs thereafter given their freedom at steady intervals, some of them afflicted with the second world war equiva- lent of post-traumatic stress disorder. In short, the occupying powers saw themselves faced with a large pool of disgruntled and brutalized adolescents, disillusioned with the National Socialist regime but still inspired by many of its teachings and its tawdry glories.

It seemed natural, therefore, that many youth gangs which developed during the war did not necessarily disintegrate because the war was over and the National Socialist regime was replaced. The existing bonds of cohesiveness remained intact, and were

perhaps even strengthened as Germany's dire economic straits drove many Edelweiss members toward a life of crime and black marketeering. It may be, however, that the members of what one German POW described as the 'real' Edelweiss - the teenagers who were genuinely outraged by the HJ and devoted themselves to 'resistance' - were precisely those who dissolved their organizations in summer 1945, and who thereafter drifted into the new

youth movements supported by the Allies and fostered by the German political parties and churches. The leftovers were perhaps the pseudo-Edelweiss, composed of a large fringe of rowdies and juvenile malcontents who had appropriated the romantic Edel- weiss image well before the end of the war and had already given the movement a bad name through their criminal activities.30 Whatever the case, many of the Edelweiss groups that survived the immediate Stunde Null period emerged as little more than

gangs of juvenile delinquents: the G-2 section of the American

occupation force reported in autumn 1945 that at Offenbach - to cite only one example - former HJ members operating under the Edelweiss banner had begun organizing thefts and were terror-

izing the inhabitants of the town.31

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From the Allied point of view, however, the rise of such teenage gangs was complicated by a much more ominous development: as millions of young German soldiers gradually returned home to their bomb-smashed cities and towns, many of them naturally drifted into the netherworld of the Edelweiss Piraten. Beginning in January 1946, Allied reports suggest that many local gangs of Piraten were swamped by large numbers of young ex-soldiers who drifted from town to town because they were unemployed, or because their houses had been destroyed by aerial bombing, or because their families and homes were in the Soviet Zone, to which they refused to return. 'The Edelweiss tag', noted an Ameri- can report,

is used by, or attached to, loosely knit groups of ex-soldiers and juvenile delinquents without work, home or family, who move furtively between the large urban centers, mostly by railroad, living by devious means and talking big about the things they are going to do.... These young people have nothing to do, no place to go. There is no effective authority that might reeducate or rehabilitate them.32

Although there are few statistical details, a report from Munich, based upon interrogations of 159 Edelweiss members, gives some indication of the composition of the movement, in particular its transient and nomadic character. In the heart of southern Bavaria, only 16 per cent of the 159 Edelweiss members were Bavarian; nearly 74 per cent were Prussian, and nearly 8 per cent were foreigners (probably uprooted Volksdeutsche). Nearly half the Edelweiss detainees were from the Soviet Zone, and less than a third - 31 per cent- were from the American Zone. Further- more, this particular sampling of Edelweiss members showed signs of extreme economic and social instability: over 90 per cent were unemployed; over 85 per cent lacked a permanent address; and almost 22 per cent had a previous criminal record.33 Worst of all, almost all American and British reports from this same period agreed that leadership positions within the new Edelweiss had been taken over by former SS men or ex-officers of the German navy (supposedly the most nazified of the German armed services).34

As a result of such influences, the Edelweiss fully revived in most western German cities and towns, and also developed a revised pattern of internal organization developed along strictly military lines. Some groups whole-heartedly adopted the leader-

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ship principle, and in at least one case the Piraten's traditionally lax discipline was replaced by a rigid code of authoritarianism enforced by death sentences to 'traitors and deserters'.35 The basic unit of the organization became a Zug, or platoon, of thirty to forty members, each with a headquarters in the local Bahnhof or in an abandoned air-raid shelter. The Zug was led by a chieftain who received instructions from an overall city leader - a large city was likely to have six or seven Zige - and in Munich the overall strength of the local organization was estimated at almost 2,000 members. Originally the local groups were independent, but the mobility of participants - and indeed of whole Zige - facilitated the gradual establishment of contacts and even co- ordination between city leaders. By late 1946, the Minster Piraten were directly controlled and financed by a parent group in Dort- mund, and the Hamburg gang retained a permanent liaison with its sister club in Hanover. Funding for the Zuge was provided mainly by looting raids and black market operations, and possibly also by individual contributions from former nazi leaders or members of the Royal Navy and the French Foreign Legion.36

Not content with mere criminality, the new leaders of the Edel- weiss sought to wrap their activities in a cloak of political intrigue, specifically based upon a volkisch programme of 'Germany for the Germans'. In many communities, they terrorized Polish DPs

(displaced persons), who were the leftover remnants of forced labour imported into the Reich during the war. German women who dared to consort with Allied troops were also threatened, beaten up, or had their hair cropped, and in several cases, alleged 'collaborators' were threatened. In Traunstein, a civilian employee of Military Government was waylaid and threatened with death if he contributed to any further arrests of Germans. 'In the future', he was told, 'keep your hands off the Edelweiss members.' On an even more sinister level, there was evidence of Edelweiss attempts to establish caches of weapons and booty by attacking goods trains. In Schleswig-Holstein, a sixty-man band led by a former SS officer had the temerity to ambush British military transports, and a similar fifty-man Gruppe was uncovered in 1947, in the Bremen enclave where it had busied itself looting freight trains and supply trucks.37

By early 1946, nervous Allied intelligence officers had heard rumours of impending terrorist bombings and a youth uprising38 and on this basis launched 'Operation Valentine', a counter-insur-

50


gency dragnet which resulted in the arrests of hundreds of Edel- weiss leaders and the decapitation of many local Zuge.39 The French also launched a simultaneous series of raids aimed both at the Piraten and at a similar organization, Les Epingles de Couleur, all of which netted nearly 400 young resisters.4 Allied reports noted in late spring 1946 that the Edelweiss movement had been seriously weakened and had entered a phase of retrenchment, although new groups continued to spring up occasionally, particularly in Bavaria. In various areas gangs changed their names, hoping thereby to divert the interest of the authorities; in Ansbach, for instance, Edelweiss kids began calling themselves Bindermin- ner, and identified themselves with red or blue lapel ribbons.41 There was a limited resurgence of Edelweiss-type activity in autumn 1946, and the movement sputtered on sporadically as late as 1948,42 although it never fully regained its initiative.

During this period, many Edelweiss clubs came to assume a distinctly nazi and militaristic hue, and many of these same groups positioned themselves in near-open opposition to the Allied powers. It is true that some clubs disclaimed any anti-Allied intent43 - at Sonthofen, for instance, the Edelweiss Piraten even offered to hunt down war criminals and other law-breakers if the Americans gave their group official sanction44 - but it was clear by spring 1946 that many Edelweiss groups were already engaged in direct activities against the occupation forces.45 Allied reports noted that Edelweiss members had begun to scrawl swastikas and post anti-Allied placards,46 and in Oldenburg the local Piraten distributed a document calling for Germans to murder all British and American soldiers.47 In Bonn and Cologne, the 'Navajos' provoked a wave of arrests after members had engaged in numerous instances of 'hooliganism' against British troops.48 In several other areas, local Edelweiss gangs developed grandiose plans for large- scale sabotage against the Allied powers,49 and arrested Piraten in the French Zone told their captors that their ultimate strategy was to pave the way for a German 'revival'. This would occur at a moment when the strength of Allied forces was reduced to the level of rearguard security elements.50

A question which begs asking, of course, is whether this Edel- weiss movement of 1946 could truly be considered the same organization which existed during the war, or more specifically, whether the membership of the 'old' Edelweiss remained on hand as the movement gradually turned against the occupying powers.

51


The British and American records are extremely vague in this regard, perhaps because the contemporary authorities did not have enough information to develop a clear opinion about the character of the movement. What scanty material is available delivers a mixed verdict: several reports, for instance, claimed that the Edelweiss Piraten of 1946 were quite distinct from the wartime Edelweiss, and that the Edelweiss label had been consciously adopted by neo-nazi gangs as an initial means of protecting themselves from the inquiries of Allied security agencies. 'The present Edelweiss Piraten', said a British report, 'have no connection with their predecessors, who, in so far as they were genuinely anti-nazi, will have found a legal outlet for their zeal.'51 Evidence from Bamberg suggested that the local Edelweiss was composed largely of discharged POWs from eastern Germany, and similarly the Munich study of 159 captured Edelweiss members indicated that over 47 per cent of these men were from the Soviet Zone.52 Obviously these Piraten were not long-time members of Bavarian Edelweiss bands, and it is also worth noting that although there had been dissident youth cliques in eastern Germany prior to 1945 (and these boys may possibly have been members of such cliques), the eastern groups rarely identified themselves with the specific Edelweiss label. Logic suggests that these young men had only recently begun to identify themselves as Edelweiss Piraten.

Other reports, however, suggested at least some measure of continuity between the original Edelweiss and its postwar shadow. An American report on the Edelweiss-type Scheck Band, revealed

that it was an anti-nazi organization of young people during the Hitler regime, but during the latter part of 1945 a reorganization of the group took place, and the new policies set up were anti-American and against the occupation as a whole.53

British Military Government in Hanover similarly claimed that the local Edelweiss was

an anti-Nazi gang of Germans formed in 1933 to 'fight for a free Germany, [but which] continued to operate after the end of the war by terrorizing Poles and

refugees ... members were mainly young hooligans who were attracted to the movement not because of any high ideals but because it offered a certain amount of excitement and a chance to get hold of some loot.54

A British summary from late 1946 noted that the Edelweiss at

52


Urbach-Palen was made up mainly of young miners;55 this was the same kind of proletarian compositon that characterized the wartime Edelweiss Piraten. At Recklinghausen, the 'old Edelweiss' was reported to have split into two cells: one which gravitated toward the KPD, and another composed of former HJ members still apparently possessed by nazi-influenced opinions.56 A British intelligence report summed up by describing the Edelweiss as a movement that had

gained some false celebrity in the last months of the campaign as a dissident faction in the Hitler Jugend. Now that there are no Hitler Jugend bosses to beat up, the chief sport of the Edelweiss Piraten is to discourage German girls from fraternising with Allied troops.

On the other hand, they also admitted that the name could 'crop up anywhere as a self-imposed distinction'.57

The few individual profiles of Edelweiss Piraten in 1946 imply that the membership was a mixture of old and new elements: a seventeen-year-old Edelweiss bandit arrested in Frankfurt described himself as a resolute non-nazi who had never joined the NSDAP or any of its affiliates, although he was detained in possession of a blackjack used 'to beat up Poles and United States soldiers'; an Edelweiss member captured in Babenhausen claimed to have been a member of the organization for ten years, and disclaimed any anti-American intent, pleading guilty only to anti- Polish, anti-communist and anti-fraternization sentiments; a member of the Heilbrunn Edelweiss admitted being a former member of the Waffen-SS; similarly, a young man captured wear- ing an Edelweiss pin at Witzenhausen admitted having joined the SS at sixteen and then risen to the rank of Untersturmfiihrer; a young female Werewolf captured in Frankfurt acknowledged that she had joined the local Edelweiss after the war, whereafter she found the group a suitable vehicle for the Werwolf programme of sabotage and harassment of the Allies; while in Stuttgart, an Upper Silesian refugee was arrested in possession of nazi propaganda and a swastika flag, all of which he admitted receiving from a fellow Edelweiss member who was a former trooper in the 10th SS Panzer Division.58 Unfortunately, it remains unclear whether there were more 'old hands' or newcomers in the postwar Edel- weiss, although there are a few hints that it was the latter.

What conclusions can we draw from all this? If we take all this

53


information into consideration, does it reveal anything fundamen-

tally new about the Edelweiss Piraten? First of all, it once again becomes apparent that the wartime Piraten were most characterized by their negativism, their lack of direction and their frequent failure to develop a consistent political attitude, much like the biindische Jugend before them. Moreover, their objections to the HJ, and to nazism in general, were confined to specific com-

plaints about the tone and the all-embracing reach of totalitarian control, not about many of the basic cultural, racial and social

assumptions upon which National Socialism was based. Edelweiss

activity frequently constituted the immature process of sowing a few wild oats before finally succumbing to the conformist pressures of the Volksgemeinschaft, as defined by National Socialism. Gruch- mann, Muth and Peukert have all produced evidence showing that as Edelweiss members grew older, they often dutifully moved on to

military service or membership of the Nazi Party.59 The Americans themselves were surprised by the admissions of a twenty-three- year-old Wehrmacht deserter from Rheinhausen, 'Jonny' Karbin-

sky, who displayed many of the most typical attitudes of the Edelweiss, and was sympathetic to the Allies, except for the fact that he fully supported the doctrine of Nordic racial superiority. In fact, Karbinsky was smart enough to realize that such opinions might seem objectionable to the enemy, and when the matter of race came up during his interrogation, his friendly openness disappeared and he grew agitated.60 However, when not talking to the Allies, this individual had no qualms about the most basic

pillars of belief in the nazi Weltanschauung, although it might be

argued that his primitive anti-social, proletarian biases posed an intermittent threat to the Volksgemeinschaft.

Drawing on German documents, several writers have already touched upon an interpretation of the Edelweiss fairly similar to this outline. What the postwar records show is that this debilitating lack of real purpose not only rendered the Edelweiss undeserving of the description 'resistance', but that it actually opened up the movement to exploitation by nazi remnants. Edelweiss clubs which refused to disband in 1945 obviously emerged as empty shells, devoid of any positive intent. Unfortunately we still have no indication of the numbers involved, but it is clear that many of these

surviving bands were piloted either by criminals or by vaguely bundisch elements. In the case of the latter, their volkisch sentiments, which required no explicit expression under National

54

Biddiscombe: 'The Enemy of our Enemy

Socialism, were now reawakened by supposed Allied 'oppression', fraternization, and the apparent inability (or unwillingness) of the conquerors to control the aggressive behaviour of DPs. The inadequacies of the wartime Edelweiss thus left in place a network of clubs which were likely to continue their negativism, expressed either through criminality, black market operations or vigilantism. Moreover, their sponge-like ability to reflect surrounding influences left some groups open to exploitation by elements which were not entirely disenchanted with National Socialism. The actual number of previous Edelweiss members who drifted into this postwar variant of the movement is an important but not a crucial question. The key fact was that club structures and the image of the movement were up for grabs, and that it was a wave of semi- nazi and militarized veterans who seized this opportunity in a considerable number of cases. The wartime Edelweiss members who stayed with the movement under such conditions were no doubt the most asocial and aggressively anti-political elements of a movement already given toward such tendencies.

Finally, one must wonder why wayward soldiers, sailors and SS men were drawn toward the Edelweiss, and why they chose to adopt this particular label as a badge. Perhaps a few of them had passing connections with the movement during their adolescence. Allied analysts also suggested that the anti-nazi reputation of the Edelweiss provided a safe haven for individuals who knew they were bound to evoke the hostile interest of the Allied authorities. At Ulm, for instance, an Edelweiss gang was caught deliberately posing under 'communist' cover, although its real orientation was strongly anti-semitic and it was planning resistance against the Americans.61 The full story, however, may run at a deeper level. Could it be that the bindisch reputation of the Edelweiss gave the movement an aura that was vaguely similar to National Social- ism and yet was not discredited by the disasters which nazism had brought upon Germany? In a political environment where the Allies had rendered all forms of right-wing ultra-nationalism ver- boten, the Edelweiss Piraten might have seemed a natural home for disoriented nazis and right-wing soldiers, even despite (or perhaps because of) its superficially anti-nazi credentials. At the very least, the movement provided a handy means of rationali- zation for outright criminal activities, which thereafter were car- ried out under a cover of romantic adventurism.

We can only sum up by reiterating that it is entirely fair to judge

55


the Edelweiss on the basis of the degenerate postwar character which it eventually assumed, and which the British and American records amply document. Although such a course was not the only possible outcome, and although many Edelweiss clubs did not reach this stage or veered off in alternate directions, for many groups this sad denouement was highly likely. The nature of the movement itself engendered such a result. In its essential form, Padover's claim was correct - the Edelweiss Piraten were not friends to the Western Allies, in the sense that they did not share many of their basic attitudes toward the proper constitution of civil society. In many cases, clique members lacked the maturity to have even developed such opinions beyond the most rudimen- tary level. Rather, the Edelweiss was merely the enemy of an enemy, and one which was destined to turn its negative focus upon the Allies themselves.

Notes

1. Detlev Peukert (ed.), Die Edelweisspiraten (Koln 1980); idem, 'Youth in the Third Reich' in Richard Bissel (ed.), Life in the Third Reich (Oxford 1987), 29-37; Detlev Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany (New Haven, CT 1987), 154-66, 169-72; H.W. Koch, The Hitler Youth (London 1975), 220-1; Heinz Boberich, Jugend unter Hitler (Dusseldorf 1982), 157-61; Aro Klonne, Gegen den Strom: Bericht iiber den Jugendwiderstand im Dritten Reich (Hannover 1960), 43-4, 50-69, 106-11, 154; Amo Klonne, 'Zur "btindischen Opposition" im Dritten Reich', Jahrbuch des Archives der deutschen Jugendbewegung, vol. 12 (1980), 127-8; Aro Klonne, 'Jugend Protest und Jugendopposition; von der HJ-Einziehung zum Cliquenwesen der Kriegszeit' in Martin Broszat, Elke Frohlich and Anton Grossman (eds), Bayern in der NS-Zeit: Herrschaft und Gesellschaft im Konflict (Munich 1981), part C, vol. IV; Daniel Horn, 'Youth Resistance in the Third Reich: A Social Portrait', The Journal of Social History, 7, 1 (Fall 1973); Heinrich Muth, 'Jugendopposition im Dritten Reich', Vierteljahrshefte far Zeitgeschichte, 3 (1982); Hans Christian

Brandenburg, Die Geschichte der HJ (Cologne 1982), 210-13; Matthias von Hellfeld, Edelweisspiraten in Koln (Cologne 1981); and Gerhard Rempel, Hitler's Children: The Hitler Youth and the SS (Chapel Hill, NC 1989), 56-61, 89-96, 103-5. For brief interpretations of the existing literature, see Horn, 26-8, and Muth, 369-72.

2. Muth, op. cit., 416-17. 3. PWE, 'Edelweiss-Piraten and Similar Oppositional Groups', 4 December

1944, FO 898/187, Public Records Office (PRO); and 12th AG, Publicity and

Psychological Warfare Estimate - 'Attitude of German Citizens in Path of 12

56


AG', 13 October 1944, OSS 118485, Record Group (RG) 226, National Archives (NA).

4. SHAEF PWD, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary for Psychological Warfare', no. 26, 26 March 1945, part I, FO 371/46894, PRO; SHAEF PWD (P & W, 1st US Army), 'Edelweiss Piraten in Cologne', 23 March 1945, OSS 129436, RG 226, NA; and PWE, 'Edelweiss Piraten and Similar Oppositional Groups', 4 December 1944, FO 898/187, PRO. The breakdown of law and order in West German cities, connected partially to the Piraten, was confirmed by SS-police officers later captured by the Allies. The HSSPf-West, Karl Gutenberger, admitted that in autumn 1944, an outbreak of Edelweiss violence in Cologne resulted in the assassination of an NSDAP Ortsgruppenleiter, an HJ leader, a railway official and several members of the Gestapo. Pitched battles broke out when the guilty parties were pursued. Guttenberger approved death sentences for seventeen arrestees. The head of the Kripo Leitstelle in Cologne also reported a major problem with 'terrorism' in the latter part of 1944, and he claimed that the perpetrators of various attacks and robberies were able to make their getaways by exploiting the interconnecting cellar tunnels beneath the city. He charged that underground gangs active in Cologne had the deaths of two Party Kreisleiter and one police Stapoleiter to their credit. CSDIC/WEA BOAR, '3rd Interim Report on SS Obergruf. Karl Michael Guttenberger', IR 38, p. 2, ETO MIS-Y-Sect. CSDIC/WEA Interim Inter- rogation Reports 1945-46, RG 332 NA; and CSDIC (UK), 'Notes on the Sicher- heitspolizei', Appendix '5', 10 July 1945, ETO MIS-Y-Sect., CSDIC (UK) Special Interrogation Reports 1943-45, RG 332, NA.

5. OSS Det. (Main), 'R & A Interviews with Friendly Prisoners of War', 15 January 1945, OSS XL 5580, RG 226, NA; and SHAEF PWD, 'Guidance for Output in German for the Week 23-30 April 1945', 21 April 1945, FO 371/46894, PRO.

6. Walter Hasenclever, Ihr werdet Deutschland nicht wiederkennen (1975), 23; SHAEF PWD, 'Guidance for Output in German for the Week 30 April-7 May 1945', 29 April 1945, FO 371/46894, PRO; Office of Strategic Studies (OSS), Reports FD-75a-1, -124, -155, October-November 1944, OSS L 50340, NA; and XIX Corps, MII Team 424, 'Special Interrogation Report', no. 215, 'Anti-Nazi Groups in Western Germany', OSS XL 6913, RG 226, NA.

7. P & PW, First US Army, 'Edelweiss Piraten in Cologne', 23 March 1945, OSS 29436, RG 226, NA; XIX Corps, MII Team 424, 'Special Interrogation Report', no. 215, 'Anti-Nazi Germans in Western Germany', OSS XL 9613, RG 226, NA; PWD Italian Theatre HQ, German Intelligence, 'Edelweiss Pirates', 19 December 1944, OSS 108120, NA; G-2 Periodic Report, no. 152, Annex 4, 'The "Edelweiss- Pirates" ', OSS 114151, RG 226, NA; and 21AG 'CI News Sheet', no. 8, 19 October 1944, War Office (WO), 205/997, PRO.

8. CCG (BE) Research Br., 'Intermediate Resistance in Germany', 25 April 1945, OSS 129323, RG 226, NA.

9. PWE, 'Edelweiss-Piraten and Similar Oppositional Groups', 4 December 1944, FO 898/187, PRO; US First Army, 'Intelligence Bulletin', no. 2, 6 Novem- ber 1944, WO 219/3761A, POR; 'Ps/W Report on the "Edelweiss Piraten"', 15 February 1945, OSS 118377, NA; 21 AG, 'CI News Sheet', no. 25, 13 July 1945, Appendix 'C', WO 205/997, PRO; 21 AG, 'Weekly Political Intelligence Summary', no. 1, 7 July 1945, FO 371/46933, PRO; and no. 8, 24 August 1945, FO 371/46934, PRO. It is important to note that as early as the late 1930s, bundisch leaders who

57


had fled abroad, such as Hans Ebeling and Theo Hespers, portrayed 'wild' Gruppen in the homeland as spontaneous continuations of the biindische Jugend. They claimed that the 'Kittelbach Piraten' and 'the Navajos' were typical of groups that were built upon a biindisch foundation and which 'posed a great danger for the Nazi system'. This interpretation was frequently expressed in their exile periodicals, and was also directly communicated to the Allies in a Rundbrief entitled 'Re- Education'. Whether this information influenced British and American views of the Edelweiss is impossible to determine. For primary material, see Hans Ebeling and Dieter Hespers (eds), Jugend Contra Nationalsozialismus (Frechen 1968), 29-31, 141-3, 162, 174-8, 222.

10. PWE, 'German Propaganda and the German', 2 April 1945, FO 898/187, PRO.

11. ECAD, 'General Intelligence Bulletin', no. 26, 13 November 1944, WO 219/ 3761A, PRO.

12. Foreign Office Weekly Political Intelligence Summaries, vol. 10, Summary 268, 22 November 1944, 3. See also PWE, 'Edelweiss-Piraten and Similar Oppositional Groups', 4 December 1944, FO 898/187, PRO. A SHAEF G-2 report said that Edelweiss members 'are courageous, vigorous young men and women, openly opposed to Hitler', SHAEF G-2, 'Periodic Report', no. 152, Annex 4, OSS 114151, RG 226, NA.

13. For a claim by five former members of the Edelweiss that they saw the Allied occupation of their homeland as 'a liberation from National Socialism', see PWD Italian Theatre HQ, German Intelligence, 'Edelweiss Pirates', 19 December 1944, OSS 108120, NA.

14. SHAEF PWD, 'Guidance for Output in German for the Week 23-30 April', 21 April 1945, FO 371/46894, PRO.

15. Steele, British Pol. Adv. SHAEF to Troutbeck, FO, 3 May 1945; Selby, O'Neill, Harrison, notes on file C2049, 10-11 May 1945; Sargent, FO to Steele, 22

May 1945; and Steele to FO, 27 May 1945, all in FO 371/46894, PRO. 16. CSDIC (UK), PW Paper, no. 166 - 'Further Information on Activities of

German Youth Outside the Hitler Youth', OSS XL 7177, RG 226, NA; XIX Corps, MII Team 424, 'Special Interrogation Report', no. 215 - 'Anti-Nazi Groups in Western Germany', OSS XL 6913, RG 226, NA; CC (BE), 'Intermediate Resis- tance in Germany', WO 219/1602, PRO; 'Interviews of German Prisoners-of-War', 25 April 1945, OSS 131078, RG 226, NA; and OSS Report from the Netherlands, FD-75al, -124, -155, 19 December 1944, OSS L 50340, RG 226, NA. In a first- rate study of nazi Germany conducted for the Office of War Information in the latter half of 1944, Paul Kecskemeti and Nathan Leites alerted Allied authorities to the existence of 'seemingly rebellious attitudes [which] may conceal confonnism', particularly 'a tendency to criticize shortcomings in details rather than in the nazi

system as such'. Criticism of the regime, they claimed, was often 'purely negative'; 'The absence of a positive programme presumably often denoted hidden conform- ism: the purely negative critic may more or less consciously show that, although he is dissatisfied with things as they are, he still prefers them to a possible "radical" or "chaotic" change.' They strongly linked such tendencies to the traditional

Jugendbewegung, although they did not refer specifically to the Edelweiss. Paul Kecskemeti and Nathan Leites, 'Some Psychological Hypotheses on Nazi Ger-

many: I', The Journal of Social Psychology, 26 (1947), 174-6.

58


17. PWE, 'Edelweiss-Piraten and Similar Oppositional Groups', 4 December 1944, FO 898/187, PRO.

18. 'T. Force', 12th AG to PWD, P & PW, 12th AG, 'An Impression of Germans in Germany', part I, OSS 129320, RG 226, NA. For a further expression of Padover's views, see Saul Padover, 'What About German Youth', Prevent World War III, 13 (February-March 1946), 26-7.

19. CCG (BE), 'Intermediate Resistance in Germany', WO 219/1602, PRO; and 21st AG 'CI News Sheet', no. 10, 22 November 1944, WO 205/997, PRO.

20. 'Ps/W Report on the "Edelweiss Piraten"', 15 February 1945, OSS 118377, NA.

21. PWE,' "Edelweiss-Piraten" and Similar Oppositional Groups', 4 December 1944, FO 898/187, PRO. Even a captured Edelweiss member from Diisseldorf admitted that 'in addition to the "real" Edelweiss, there is a large fringe of juvenile malcontents who, by appropriating a romantic-sounding name, give a bad name to the others'. OSS Det. (Main), 'R & A Interviews with Friendly Prisoners of War', 15 January 1945, OSS XL 5580, RG 226, NA.

22. CSDIC (UK) PW Paper, no. 166, 'Further Information on the Activities of German Youth Outside the Hitler Youth', OSS XL 7177, RG 226, NA.

23. 21st AG 'CI News Sheet', no. 14, part III, WO 205/997, PRO; SHAEF G-5, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 1, 22 February 1945, WO 219/3918, PRO; and 1st US Army, 'Intelligence Bulletin', no. 2, 6 November 1944, WO 219/3761A, PRO.

24. Die Edelweisspiraten, 19-20; Hasenclever, op. cit., 23; and SHAEF Intelli- gence Section, 'Edelweiss Piraten, Source German P/W', 6 February 1945, OSS XL 6077, RG 226, NA. For the description of a similar Edelweiss 'espionage nest', also regarded as dubious by Allied interrogators, see OSS Det. (Main), 'R & A Interviews with Friendly Prisoners of War', 15 January 1945, OSS XL 5580, RG 226, NA. Hasenclever, who spoke to numerous Edelweiss Piraten in 1944-5, main- tains that they occasionally cut telephone lines or sabotaged other minor Wehr- macht facilities, but he mentions no specific cases.

25. 21st AG, 'CI News Sheet', no. 25, 13 July 1945, Appendix 'C', WO 205/997, PRO; and 21st AG, 'Weekly Political Intelligence Summary', no. 7, 18 August 1945, FO 371/46934, PRO.

26. 21st AG, 'Weekly Political Intelligence Summary', no. 6, 11 August 1945; and no. 8, 24 August 1945, p. 17, both in FO 371/46934, PRO.

27. 21st AG, 'Weekly Political Intelligence Summary', no. 8, 24 August 1945, p. 17, FO 371/46934, PRO. According to a British assessment, many young Ger- mans, formerly in the bundische Jugend, returned from the war keen to start afresh, and displayed a natural interest in reorganizing the youth movement. However (said the British), many of these same young men realized that the great short- coming of the pre-1933 youth organizations was their lack of singular purpose, and for this reason there was great interest in the English and American scouting movement. 21st AG, 'Weekly Political Intelligence Summary', no. 9, 1 September 1945, FO 371/46934, PRO.

28. 21st AG, 'CI News Sheet', no. 13, part III, WO 205/997, PRO; History of the Counter-Intelligence Corps (Baltimore 1959), vol. XVI, 37-8, NA; The New York Times, 9 May 1945; and The Washington Post, 13 May 1945.

29. History of the Counter-Intelligence Corps, vol. XX, 152, NA. 30. For an Allied appreciation of these issues, see 21 AG, 'CI News Sheet', no.

59


7, 5 October 1944, part I, WO 205/997, PRO; 21 AG, 'Weekly Political Intelligence Summary', no. 9, 1 September 1945, FO 371/46934, PRO; USFET G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 14, 18 October 1945, 25-8; no. 33, 28 February 1946; 'Monthly Report of the Military Governor, US Zone', no. 3, 20 October 1945, 'Intelligence', all in State Dep'. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA; and The New York Times, 23 March 1946. For figures on the release of Wehrmacht troops from concentration centres by late summer 1945, see Foreign Office Weekly Political Intelligence Summaries, vol. 12, Summary 304, 1 August 1945, 3; and 21 AG, 'Weekly Political Intelligence Summary', no. 8, 24

August 1945, FO 371/46934, PRO. 31. USFET G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 14, 18 October 1945, State

Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA. 32. USFET G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 34, 7 March 1946, State

Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA. 33. USFET G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 42, 2 May 1946, State

Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA. 34. USFET G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 32, 21 February 1946; no.

37, 28 March 1946; no. 44, 16 May 1946; no. 46, 30 May 1946, all in State Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA; and CCG (BE) 'Intelligence Bulletin', no. 11, 26 April 1946, FO 1005/1701, PRO.

35. USFET G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 50, 27 June 1946, State Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA. The group which issued these threats called itself 'Werwolf, SS Kommandostelle Edelweiss- Schnellgericht'.

36. The Stars and Stripes, 22 February 1946; USFET G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 33, 28 February 1946; no. 36, 21 March 1946; no. 37, 28 March 1946; no. 44, 16 May 1946; no. 45, 23 May 1946; no. 46, 30 May 1946; no. 62, 19 September 1946, p. C6; no. 67, 24 October 1946; USFET, 'Theatre Commander's Weekly Staff Conference', no. 22, 21 March 1946, all in State Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA; CCG (BE), 'Intelligence Bulletin', no. 8, 13 March 1946; no. 11, 26 April 1946; no. 12, 10 May 1946, all in FO 1005/1701, PRO; MI-14, 'Mitropa', no. 18, 23 March 1946, FO 371/55630, PRO; CCG (BE), 'Intelligence Division Summary', no. 9, 15 November 1946; no. 10, 30 November 1946; no. 12, 31 December 1946, all in FO 1005/1702, PRO; and OMG Land Wtirttemberg-Baden, 'Weekly Intelligence Report', no. 3, 28 January 1948, OMGUS/ODI Excerpts of Miscellaneous Reports, 23a Resistance and Subversive Activities, RG 260, NA. Despite evidence of contacts between Edelweiss Zige, there was no proof of strong central control or even of an overall courier system. When the Piraten chief in Gottingen was arrested in March 1946, he told American interrogators that there was no single point of control between towns: 'Everyone', he said, 'is on his own.' However, an informer with the Hamburg Edelweiss told British Field Security in late 1946 that efforts were under way to build up a stronger national organization and develop a more coherent system of couriers. USFET G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 34, 7 March 1946; Eucom, 'Intelli- gence Summary', no. 22, 8 December 1947, both in State Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA; CCG (BE), 'Intelligence Bulletin', no. 9, 23 March 1946, FO 1005/1701, PRO; and no. 12, 31 December 1946, FO 1005/1702, PRO.

37. USFET G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 33, 28 February 1946; no.

60


34, 7 March 1946; no. 37, 28 March 1946; no. 44, 16 May 1946; no. 48, 13 June 1946; no. 50, 27 June 1946; no. 53, 18 July 1946; Eucom, 'Intelligence Summary', no. 22, 8 December 1947, all in State Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA; The Stars and Stripes, 14 March 1946; 15 April 1946; The Times, 22 April 1946; 3 June 1946; CCG (BE), 'Intelligence Bulletin', no. 8, 30 October 1946, FO 1005/1702, PRO; CCG (BE), 'Intelligence Bulletin', no. 9, 28 March 1946; and no. 11, 26 April 1946, FO 1005/1701, PRO.

38. USFET G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 29, 31 January 1946; no. 32, 21 February 1946; no. 34, 7 March 1946, all in State Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA; MI-14, 'Mitropa', no. 17, 8 March 1946, FO 371/55630, PRO; and The New York Times, 23 March 1946. A CIC undercover agent who infiltrated the Munich Edelweiss in February 1946 could find no evidence of a planned uprising.

39. USFET G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 32, 21 February 1946; no. 33, 28 February 1946; no. 36, 21 March 1946; no. 37, 28 March 1946, all in State

Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA; MI-14, 'Mitropa', no. 17, 8 March 1946, FO 371/55630, PRO.

40. C.M. Culp, Acting Chief CIC, USFET to E. Sibert, 13 April 1946, IRR File XE 049 888, 'Werewolf Activities Vol. I', RG 319, NA; MI-14, 'Mitropa', no. 20, 18 April 1946, FO 371/55630, PRO; USFET G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 40, 18 April 1946, State Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA; ACC Report for the Moscow CFM Meeting, 1947, Sect. II, 'Denazification', Part 9, 'French Report', FO 371/64352, PRO; and Henri Humblot, 'Controle et incitation des mouvements de jeunesse en Wiirttemberg du Sud - un t6moignage v6cu de 1945 i 1946', in La denazification par les vainqueurs (Lille 1981), 40.

41. USFET G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 38, 4 April 1946; no. 40, 18 April 1946; no. 48, 13 June 1946; no. 49, 20 June 1946; OMGUS Office of Director of Intelligence, R & A Sect., 'Weekly Intelligence Brief for the Military Governor', 30 May 1946; 21 June 1946, all in State Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA.

42. USFET G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 56, 8 August 1946; no. 62, 19 September 1946; no. 63, 26 September 1946; no. 64, 3 October 1946; no. 67, 24 October 1946; no. 68, 31 October 1946; no. 73, 5 December 1946; Eucom, 'Intelli- gence Summary', no. 1, 13 February 1947; no. 8, 22 May 1947; no. 22, 8 December 1947; no. 24, 8 January 1948, all in State Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA; CCG (BE), 'Intelligence Division Summary', no. 8, 30 October 1946; no. 12, 31 December 1946, both in FO 1005/1702, PRO; and ACC Report for the Moscow CFM Meeting, 1947, Sect. II, 'Denazification', Part 9, 'French Report', FO 731/64352, PRO.

43. USFET G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 37, 28 March 1946, State Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA.

44. USFET G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 45, 23 May 1946, State Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA.

45. CCG (BE), 'Intelligence Bulletin', no. 11, 26 April 1946, FO 1005/1701, PRO; USFET G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 45, 23 May 1946; and no. 58, 22 August 1946, both in State Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA.

61


46. Eucom, 'Intelligence Summary', no. 1, 13 February 1947, State Dept. Deci- mal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA.

47. CCG (BE), 'Intelligence Division Summary', no. 5, 13 September 1946, FO 1005/1702, PRO.

48. CCG (BE), 'Intelligence Bulletin', no. 15, 21 June 1946, FO 1005/1701, PRO.

49. USFET, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 50, 27 June 1946; Eucom, 'Intel- ligence Summary', no. 22, 8 December 1947, both in State Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA; and CCG (BE), 'Intelligence Division Summary', no. 12, 31 December 1946, FO 1005/1702, PRO.

50. USFET G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 40, 18 April 1946, State

Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA. 51. CCG (BE), 'Intelligence Bulletin', no. 11, 26 April 1946, FO 1005/1701,

PRO. 52. USFET G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 42, 2 May 1946; and no.

72, 28 November 1945, both in State Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA.

53. USFET G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 55, 1 August 1946, State

Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA. 54. The Stars and Stripes, 15 April 1946. 55. CCG (BE) Intelligence Division, 'Summary', no. 12, 31 December 1946, FO

1005/1702, PRO. 56. CCG (BE) Intelligence Division, 'Summary', no. 9, 15 November 1946, FO

1005/1702, PRO. In Wuppertal as well, there were two cells of the Edelweiss Piraten, each opposed to the other. One was pro-communist, the other anti- communist. CCG (BE) Intelligence Division, 'Summary', no. 1, 8 July 1946, FO 1005/1702, PRO.

57. CCG (BE), 'Intelligence Review', no. 5, 6 February 1946, FO 371/55807, PRO.

58. USFET G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 48, 13 June 1946; no. 37, 28 March 1946; no. 56, 8 August 1946; no. 58, 22 August 1946, all in State Dept. Decimal File 1945-49,740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA; US Constabulary G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 26, Annex 1, WWII Operations Reports 1940-48, RG 407, NA; and OMG Land Wurttemberg-Baden, 'Weekly Intelligence Report', no. 3, 28 January 1948, OMGUS ODI, Excerpts of Miscellaneous Reports, 23a Resistance and Subversive Activity, RG 260, NA.

59. Muth, op. cit., 398-9, 414-15. 60. 'Interviews of German Prisoners-of-War', 25 April 1945, 'Ame (Jonny) Kar-

binsky', OSS 131078, RG 226, NA. 61. USFET G-2, 'Weekly Intelligence Summary', no. 36, 21 March 1946, State

Dept. Decimal File 1945-49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA.

62

Biddiscombe: 'The Enemy of our Enemy' 63

Perry Biddiscombe is an Assistant Professor of History at the

University of Victoria, British Columbia. He is currently working on projects covering the nazi Werwolf movement in Germany and the fascist 'White Maquis' in France.

a view of the edelweiss piraten from the british and american archives

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