Werewolf: The Story of the Nazi Resistance Movement 1944-1945 by Charles Whiting

Author:Charles Whiting [Whiting, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2014-12-22T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five – The Last Battle

‘Je starker der Sturm, desto kräftiger der Widerstand.’

(‘The stronger the storm, the mightier the resistance.’)

Dr Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister, April 1945

The news that the first Allied-appointed burgomaster of an occupied German city had been murdered was flashed round the world. The New York Times headlined the story as ‘Non-Nazi Mayor of Aachen Killed by 3 German Chutists in Uniform,’ and commented, ‘The assassins shot the Mayor in gangster fashion and escaped. Hitler often has threatened retaliation against Germans who co-operated.’

The London Times was more reserved and simply ran the Reuter report that ‘Oppenhoff, who was 41, was an attorney and had been burgomaster for 8 months. He was a right wing Catholic, but had never been active in opposing the Nazis. He was chosen by the Allied authorities because of his administrative experience and the authority he enjoyed in Catholic circles.’ All the same the newspaper registered shock at the fact that such things could still happen in occupied Germany and reported that the ‘patrol on duty in the street chased the three men and fired at them but was unable to catch them.’

The news of Oppenhoff’s death brought a feeling of despair to the Allied headquarters in France and Luxemburg, especially when, in the last days of March, Goebbels’ propaganda machine went into action and revealed what organization had committed the murder. The feeling aroused by the murder was to have a decisive effect on allied strategy for the rest of the war in Europe.

On 29 March Goebbels’ German Press Agency announced boldly that ‘The Burgomaster of Aachen, the lawyer Franz Oppenhoff’ had been executed at the orders of the ‘German People’s Court of Justice’ because of ‘collaboration with the enemy.’

This bold announcement, which was based on Allied reports, because as yet Berlin still had no word directly from the murderers who were now fleeing through the Eifel, was taken up immediately by the Nazi press. The Flensburger Nachrichten for 31 March wrote, ‘As reported by the official English news agency, Reuter, and confirmed by Allied military authorities, the Allied-appointed burgomaster of Aachen, Franz Oppenhoff was killed a few days ago by German freedom-fighters.[80] We would like to add this information to the news. Oppenhoff was condemned to death by the “Court for the Preservation of German Honour” immediately he entered the service of the hated enemy.’ The Berlin Völkischer Beobachter took up the same theme, commenting, ‘A dishonourable treacherous creature deserved the fate he brought upon himself by his actions. And in the future anyone who infringes the highest law of the land, the law of national honour and loyalty, will inevitably meet the same fate.’

In the last days of March and the first weeks of April, the press was full of tales, true and imagined, calculated to alarm Allied Intelligence at the prospect of fighting a protracted partisan war with the Germans once the real fighting was over, and to bolster up the German will to resist in the last great battle.

On

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