…are forever with us and must forever be combated.

There are vital lessons to be learned, writes University of Haifa professor Steven Plaut, from Allied operations during and after WWII against the terror groups known, in German, as Werwolf.

Once defeated by Allied regular forces, occupied Germany sprouted

terrorists who engaged in bombings, sniping, poisonings, and other attacks on occupation forces and on the civilian population. They operated as irregulars in small terror units, armed with automatic weapons and bazookas. Women and minors as young as eight participated in the terror attacks. They attempted to build weapons of mass destruction, using chemical poisons. They assassinated officials of the occupation regime. They had a special obsession with torturing and murdering “collaborators.” They murdered hundreds of civilians, while thousands of the terrorists themselves were killed by the occupation armed forces. The occupiers responded to terror with brutality and force, sometimes using collective punishment.

Drawing upon the work by Perry Biddiscombe, a professor at the University of British Columbia, Plaut says:

There are valuable lessons to be learned from the campaign against the Werwolf, both for the U.S.-led coalition fighting in Iraq and for Israel in its battles against Arab terrorism.For many years now the conventional wisdom has been that terrorism cannot be defeated militarily, that it can only be stopped when its underlying grievances are redressed and appeased. Moreover, the entire strategy of dealing with terrorism militarily has long been under assault by the Western chattering classes…But the claim that terrorism and guerilla warfare cannot be defeated militarily is false, as illustrated by the campaign against the Werwolf.

(tip: writer Jack Kemp)