Was there any significant resistance movement to either the allied or soviet occupation of Germany?

by burrabantha

Many common used textbooks in the United States seem to portray the occupation of Germany by the allies after WW2 and it's ensuing restructure as something of a neat and tidy affair. Given what we have seen in other occupations it seems like this would be somewhat unlikely. I'm wondering if there were any kind of resistance movements to occupation of German under foreign powers, armed or otherwise. That goes for the soviety occupation as well, though i'm more curious about the allies.

DeSoulis

Yes, there was the werewolf movement, which was mostly an abortive attempt at a guerrilla resistance movement against the occupying powers. In the 1960s-70s, you had radical left-wing student movements like the Red Army Faction which conducted terrorist attacks against the West German government and American occupying forces.

The big difference between the occupation of Germany and the occupations during the Cold War, was the extent of the physical and physiological damage done to the German people during the course of WW2.

Wolfgang Schivelbusch notes that a full 1/3 of military aged German males were killed during the war in a long, grinding 6 year conflict which broke the German nation. He also notes that this is remarkably similar to the state of the Confederate states in 1865 and helps to explain why there was not a renewed attempt at regaining independence.

At the same time it was considerably easier to establish a liberal democratic state in post-war Germany and Japan than it was elsewhere because Germany had comparable levels of economic development with the rest of Europe and had at least quasi-democratic institutions since the late 1800s.

Basically the defeat and occupation of Germany was pretty unique relative to other occupation the US conducted post-1945.

thebroadwayflyer

It helps to take into account the effects of the Marshall Plan throughout Western Europe, and the intensive de-Nazification that was conducted as early as the summer of 1945. The Soviets, on the other hand, experienced years of guerrilla warfare throughout Eastern Europe that lasted in some places until at least the end of the 1950s. It does not appear that the underground movements in Eastern Europe ever presented a truly dangerous challenge to the Soviets, but the battle in the Baltic countries in particular lasted for some years and claimed thousands of lives. This has been covered extensively in this forum. Edit:spelling