werewolfs and ww2

[patton]

i in the PitW universe i wondered sense world war 2 what side were the werewolfs on, and were there any werewolfs in the german SS? plus sense peter is part german did his family have any reative in 1930-1940 germany?

[bar1scorpio]

They'd be according to their nationality, according to their ethnic group, according to ehose problem it was.

Look, if you were a lycanthrope, who happened to have blonde hair & blue eyes, and you got someone telling you exactly how awesome you are, you'd buy into it. That's just natural. And if somebody tells you that you should be awesome, but you're being held back, by, say, 1% of the population, and if they weren't in secretly in control, you'd be cock of the walk, and all your dreams would come true, because you're entitled to that, then you'd say "well, f*** 'em.".

As for Peter's family history, the likely dated from earlier for their emigration, with the first wave in the 1840s.

[Black_Mantha]

Actually, Kris once answered that first question. ( and )

[patton]

okay what does that mean?

[patton]

reason why i m talking about it because i think gus cramer is a wana be werewolf nazi version bleving that wolves are superior to human and the strong should rule the weak

[patton]

what does that mean cock of the walk, ?

[bar1scorpio]

Means the chanticleer in charge of the hen house, the sun rising because he sings.
But there would have been zoanthropes on every side of every war. And it's been discussed in previous threads.

[Kris@WLP]

Thanks, Mantha, for calling to my attention the fact that I've posted two items on this subject which deeply contradict one another.

So, to fix it:

Hitler, and for that matter most of the top Nazi brass, knew nothing of weres. The top two who did know were Goering and Himmler's #2 man Reinhardt Heydrich (if I'm spelling his name right). Goering didn't think much about weres as anything other than hunting companions- to be blunt he was more a liability than an asset to the German war effort as a whole. Heydrich, on the other hand, wanted Himmler's job eventually and, though loyal to Himmler to a certain extent, wanted to make sure he had his own power base of sorts.

I say Hitler knew nothing- I should clarify that Hitler deeply, deeply believed in werewolves, but had no proof. Most of what he believed about them was, of course, wrong, in much the same vein as what he believed about the Germanic peoples, etc. etc. etc. He even tried to use Nazi science to create werewolves. In the interests of taste I will only say what I did before: It Did Not Go Well.

Himmler didn't believe; to him it was one part of the convenient new Teutonic myth he wanted to build to ensure total control of the German masses by the Nazi elite, read SS.

A lot of weres of all kinds bailed from Germany during the pre-war years, beginning after the Night of the Long Knives. Some, particularly the werewolves, did enlist, but of course not openly as werewolves. There were a few, though- say, maybe a hundred or so werewolves out of the tens of thousands who remained in Germany by the time of the battle of Poland- who were true Nazi believers and who, in a very quiet way, revealed their true nature to their immediate superiors.

What saved the Secret here was fascism's innate characteristic: there is no such thing as the common good. There is only, What's Good For Me? and What Can My Superiors Force Me to Do? Everybody at every level of Nazi Germany with more brains than a pigeon worked to keep a little something in reserve, something only they knew about or controlled, something to give them their own little empire. A few officers might have reported their prize up the chain of command, but at some point that chain would stop cold. Thus, except for deliberate efforts by Heydrich and a very select group of his subordinates, nobody knew about any particular werewolves except people who had every reason in the world to keep that information secret.

Heydrich, however, was specifically looking for werewolves, knew what he was looking for, and had the threat of the SS at his disposal. However, he couldn't just put them all in one unit- Himmler, always looking over his shoulder, would have smelt a rat. He did, however, find about a third of all the werewolves in the German army, and those that weren't in the SS, he put there. Most of them ended up as concentration camp guards, where they would be available to Heydrich if and when.

Heydrich also found a lot of other kinds of were... who, not being wolves, were insufficiently Aryan, and thus untermenschen. They went to the camps, they worked and starved until even lycanthropic regeneration was given a workout to keep the victims going, and then they would get slipped some wolfsbane and go to the gas chambers. Usually the gas chambers wouldn't kill them... which meant they went to the crematoria alive.

The thing is, even the most pro-Nazi werewolf felt a lot more allegiance to fellow weres than he ever would to any human dictator, no matter how patriotic he might be. A born were, given enough time to watch, observe and notice, will pick up on little habits, little deviations from the norm that say One Of Us. And the werewolf guards, scattered across a dozen or more camps including, of course, Buchenwald, Auchwitz and Birkenau (to drop some names), noticed that a lot of One Of Us, a lot more than seemed normal, were ending up in the camps.

And one fine day, us too.

Out of Heydrich's hand-picked thirty to fifty or so werewolves, all but a handful rebelled in some fashion or other before the end of 1944. Half or more simply deserted, the majority of these making their way through Switzerland to Italy and the nearest Allied lines. A few joined the feeble German Resistance or otherwise provided aid to Allied spies and agents. After the Battle of the Bulge, with the writing on the wall (usually saying KILROY WAS HERE), even the last few loyal Nazi werewolves deserted the cause.

Hitler, in his last few months, lived in the delusion that his attempts to recruit, capture and tame, or create werewolves had been successful, just as he lived in the delusion that his divisions hadn't been worn down by casualties and desertions to less than regimental strength. Operation Werewulf was supposed to have been Exactly What It Says on the Tin. It wasn't- because even if Hitler had known about the real werewolves, at that point none of them would have done a damn thing for him. They were too busy looking out for themselves, one way or another.

After the war some families took back and covered for the SS werewolves as best they could. Others either drove them out or "disappeared" them. If Mengele knew about werewolves, someone made certain he left no evidence behind of any experiments he might have conducted. Likewise, all evidence of Hitler's werewolf experiments, aside from stories, has also vanished.

And Europe's were population as a whole regards this as the closest call the Secret has had since there was a Secret- that is, before the Enlightenment made the idea of werewolves a fantasy rather than stone cold genocide-justifying fact.

It is just barely possible that the comparative peace of Europe since then owes something to some weres and human friends doing everything to make sure it never gets that close again. Or not.

[Kris@WLP]

As always, the caveat: nothing is truly official until and unless it actually goes into the comic. World War 2, as a whole, is not planned to be mentioned by so much as a single panel, but if I change my mind, what actually works for the story is what counts, not anything posted here. What's here is simply what my brain picks up when tuned to Planet Peterstown.

[patton]

interesting .how is it that you know more information on the nazi party why is that. you dident use wika did you

[Kris@WLP]

[patton]

hmmm interesting i read lot s of ww2 book s to so i always thought that i knew everything of ww2 i guess i was wrong

[Kaeto]

Don't have to look up 'Luftwaffe 1946'. I started following Ted's work with issue one of 'Tigers of Terra'.