WW2 German Special Operations Forces (or lack there of)

[LineDoggie]

Germans had a good variety of Spec ops units besides the Skorzeny units like Einhiets Steilau

FJ Bn 500/600
Brandenburgers
Kampfschwimmer
Sonderverbande 287 & 288
Abteilung von Folkersam @ Maikop
Lehrkommando 300 & 350, 400, 700

[Royal]

Some German soldiers dressed as Americans and drove jeeps and captured tanks during the Battle of the Bulge, but there were really no environments in which the Germans could have operated successfully. Every country between Germany and Spain wanted liberation, so when odd people showed up, the population was generally helpful.

The Brandenburgers pulled off some very significant coups in the Balkans and on the Eastern Front - the capture of the dockyards on the Danube dpring to mind - that Op led Ian Flemming to suggest the creation of what was to become 30 Commando. I think that it's fair to say that the Brandenburgers and Fallschirmjaeger inspired our own commando and parachute units.

You mention the British SOE as an example for allied professionalism - did you know that this unit essentially by geeks who started out with virtually no experience in special operations? After all, they wouldn't get much support, certainly not from the side of MI6

I struggle with that given that a significant percentage of SOE officers came from SIS - and went back there in 1945. A significant proportion of those who didn't were graduates of Lochailort or Achnacarry.

In fact, the most well known special operative, Otto Skorzeny was just a con man who hijacked a successful operation and apart from a kidnapping in a friendly country, never pulled off a successful operation.

Admiral Horthy

[Polarisbrian]

Thanks you all for the information - I consider myself to know a thing or two about WW2, but regarding the Brandenburgers I was unaware of the role they played in so many operations. All I really knew was that they were under the guise of German Military Intelligence and disbanded after the Hitler Assassination plot. One can truly learn a lot from the members on this board.

I must say it still baffles me that when you consider the amount of damage caused and manpower tied up by partisans in Yugoslavia, French Resistance, The Home Army in Poland and other such forces. The Germans never considered creating a "stay behind unit". Men specially trained in sabotage, direct action and soldiers who could live off the land. I know communications and other logistical concerns would have to be worked out, as would how to retrieve such an unit after the mission was over. Not that this would have changed the outcome of the war, but it would have been a thorn in the side of the Allies and tied up Allied troops to hunt them down, that otherwise could have been on the front lines.

[DasVivo]

Thanks you all for the information - I consider myself to know a thing or two about WW2, but regarding the Brandenburgers I was unaware of the role they played in so many operations. All I really knew was that they were under the guise of German Military Intelligence and disbanded after the Hitler Assassination plot. One can truly learn a lot from the members on this board.

I must say it still baffles me that when you consider the amount of damage caused and manpower tied up by partisans in Yugoslavia, French Resistance, The Home Army in Poland and other such forces. The Germans never considered creating a "stay behind unit". Men specially trained in sabotage, direct action and soldiers who could live off the land. I know communications and other logistical concerns would have to be worked out, as would how to retrieve such an unit after the mission was over. Not that this would have changed the outcome of the war, but it would have been a thorn in the side of the Allies and tied up Allied troops to hunt them down, that otherwise could have been on the front lines.

This involves leaving small isolated groups of men in a rabidly hostile territory where the locals and enemy armies are not likely to show much mercy to you and your every movement put at risk, where your own supplies are likely to be limited and where you actually would hope best for the Allied Armies to catch you.. By this point in Time aswell many Soldiers are getting tired of fighting a war year after year and as their own armies are being pushed back the only outcomes for those conducting such an operation would be:

Capture by Allies
Capture by Allies (and being killed)
Capture by partisans (likely to die)
Death

There is no returning those men home, their impact might be limited before too long and they would soon find themselves being hunted down like dogs by large bands of locals who know the land better than they do

[Polarisbrian]

This involves leaving small isolated groups of men in a rabidly hostile territory where the locals and enemy armies are not likely to show much mercy to you and your every movement put at risk, where your own supplies are likely to be limited and where you actually would hope best for the Allied Armies to catch you.. By this point in Time aswell many Soldiers are getting tired of fighting a war year after year and as their own armies are being pushed back the only outcomes for those conducting such an operation would be:

Capture by Allies
Capture by Allies (and being killed)
Capture by partisans (likely to die)
Death

There is no returning those men home, their impact might be limited before too long and they would soon find themselves being hunted down like dogs by large bands of locals who know the land better than they do

Sounds like the Japanese model of how to use highly trained paratroopers. Wasn't it sometime in July or August 1945 that the Japanese sent their most highly trained paratroop unit the Giretsu to Okinawa to destroy B-29's and create as much chaos as possible. IIRC only one plane made it to Okinawa and the Japanese traded the lives of 160 of their best men for 9 American bombers and some destroyed fueldumps. It was a one way mission.

[JCR]

The Brandenburgers were the only standing special force of the Wehrmacht, but german military has a long tradition (to the 30 Years War or earlier) of the Handstreich, (stroke of hand) which means a high risk small operation with a select force of hand picked volunteers. However these units were to be assembled at local level on an ad hoc basis.
Eben Emael was just a very well organised Handstreich, the special force was disbanded afterwards and its members merged into larger Fallschirmjäger units.

Also, due to the Wehrmacht's remarkable talent for quick improvisation, many operations that would have required "special" forces, were often dealt with on local initiative.
One good example for this is how a in 1943 german naval officer with two german S-Boats, on news of the italian mined Brindisi harbor with their last mines and then moved up the whole adriatic to Venice, which they managed to con into surrender by threatening a devastating air strike, accomplishing the surrender of a garrison thosands strong to thirty german sailors.
And they sank a british large minelayer, a italian destroyer and Mussoli's yacht on the way.

Due to high training, morale and Auftragstaktik such initiative was expected and, at least before 1944, often delivered by junior commanders.

Btw, there was a scheme similar to Giretsu conocted by Hajo Herrmann shortly before the end of the war:
Light planes were to land at night at Foggia and other major allied airfields, with one or two crewmembers who were then to blow up allied planes in the darkness.
This hare brained scheme was never attempted but the light planes and crews were assembled and Herrmann himself flew one of them over to the soviets, in an act that might have been self-distructive bad conscience...

[Lurking]

This is a good book on the Brandenburgers. They were amazing and ahead of their time.

http://www.amazon.com/Brandenburgers...1683030&sr=1-1

[Toddy1]

Complete misunderstanding of nazi ideology and German military doctrine here.
German propaganda was much more about individual acts of heroism than the British or American one.

Also in the german army itself elite units played a much bigger role. Another example would be the airforce, which was much more about producing and supporting ace pilots (Experten) than their Allied counterparts.

Other than that, just see Kitsune's post.

And some people should read up on the Brandenburgers.

Try looking up sarcasm in the dictionary

[James]

My reasoning for believing that a German unit similiar to the OSS could have been effective is to have them be a "harrassing" force. For example when the allies where running the "Red Ball Express" the Germans could have penetrated into the rear and sabotaged the roads, hit and runs attacks on the convoys and blown fuel dumps when Allied supple lines were strectched thin. Another example where is a Airborne Special Tactic unit may have helped them is during Operation Barbarosa, The Germans could have airdropped men again behind the front, and during the early 40's there were enough dissident Russian groups like the Cossaks that may have linked up with the Germans again to create havoc behind the front. To have a unit that understood guerrilla tactics would also have been beneficial to fighting the partisans in the Balkans and to an extent all the Underground movements.

Why train a unit when a single Bf-109 could do more damage strafing?

[Kandak]

@Polarisbrian:

I think that the basic assumption of this thread is something of an illusion. The Germans did employ well trained special forces units like the Brandenburgers or the Kleinkampfverbände - the Luftwaffe even had a specially trained unit of crack pilots using captured enemy aircraft for reconnaisance and secret transport missions. On the other hand, the much vaunted Allied special units are generally given too much credit. This is basically caused by the giddiness of the American and British public to fancy about the heroics of their alleged super-commandos, an appetite which is well served by people like Clancy. But in the end, the Allied Special Forces were not that terribly important for the war effort and the most spectacular special operations were in fact undertaken by the Germans.

EXACTLY! Kleinkampfverbaende of the Marine and Brandenburger small tactics units were far ahead of Allied SF type units at that time.

[JustBrowsing]

One should not forget that he Brandenburgers like all parts(SpecOps,Navy,Air Force,Infantry) of German Army in WW2 were first and foremost the armed forces of Nazi state. Thus like the other parts they are tainted with atrocities characteristic to that regime. In September 1939 their forces invaded Poland they engaged in numerous executions and mass murder of Polish civilian population and PoWs. At this time the unit was named Freikorps Ebbinghaus not Brandenbrugers(the change in name was made in October 25th 1939).

One typical case of mass murderer performed by the Nazi German formation:

The fate of Polish children during the last war

Roman Hrabar, Zofia Tokarz, Jacek

On September 4, members of the Freikorps Ebbinghaus organization executed 17 defenders of the town in the Three Oaks Park, among them boy scouts from the Pszczyna secondary schools


The largest massacre was in Katowice where several hundred Poles were summarily executed by the unit.

Other places of murder committed by German SpecOpsForces include(but are not limited to) Orzesze(33 victims),Siewierz(10 victims), village Mokre(12 victims), Nowy Bytom(18 victims), village of Grodno(12 victims)...
This is just a brief information, many more people were mass murdered by Brandenburgers.

[JCR]

Just board a Tupolev please.

[JustBrowsing]

Just board a Tupolev please.

Excuse me? The thread is about WW2 German special forces. I believe massacres comitted by those forces are relevant to the topic.
What does your comment mean? Do you have something against mentioning the character of Nazi Germany's armed forces and their actions ?

[LineDoggie]

I seem to recall reading how Polish armored troops in Normandy murdered wounded German Panzer troops in a field hospital because the black uniforms made them think them SS. I also recall Poles turning in Jews to the Einsatzgruppen

and who can forget that hero among poles

Czeslaw Geborski burning POWs to death and machinegunning survivors

After all one should not forget right?

[JustBrowsing]

After all one should not forget right?

Indeed one should never forget-no matter if there were individual exceptions to soldier's behaviour as in case of Allies in their fight to oppose German aggression and genocide or standard behaviour as in case of Nazi forces led by the ideology of racist war of genocide aiming to exterminate whole nations.

Now that we have cleared that up I have good news. I have access to publication about atrocities of Brandenburgers and will translate some soon.