The origin of Rice's and Rumsfeld's "Werewolves" theory: Back in August 2003, National Security Advisor Condi Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced that we shouldn't worry about armed guerilla resistance in Iraq, because we had to deal with the same thing in Germany in 1945-47, and look how well that turned out. Condi told the VFW:

There is an understandable tendency to look back on America's experience in post-War Germany and see only the successes. But as some of you here today surely remember, the road we traveled was very difficult. 1945 through 1947 was an especially challenging period. Germany was not immediately stable or prosperous. SS officers -- called "werewolves" -- engaged in sabotage and attacked both coalition forces and those locals cooperating with them -- much like today's Baathist and Fedayeen remnants.

And Rummy elaborated:

One group of those dead-enders was known as "werewolves." They and other Nazi regime remnants targeted Allied soldiers, and they targeted Germans who cooperated with the Allied forces. Mayors were assassinated including the American-appointed mayor of Aachen, the first major German city to be liberated. Children as young as 10 were used as snipers, radio broadcasts, and leaflets warned Germans not to collaborate with the Allies. They plotted sabotage of factories, power plants, rail lines. They blew up police stations and government buildings, and they destroyed stocks of art and antiques that were stored by the Berlin Museum. Does this sound familiar?

Well, the Aachen assassination took place more than a month before the German surrender, so it doesn't count. Otherwise, remarkably little happened after VE day. A bomb went off in Hamburg after the war was over, but it might have been one of the gazillion bombs the British and American air forces dropped on that city. And there were a few killings, but sex conflicts were a likely cause for a good number of them.

(There might have been more anti-American violence, but the Germans were grateful that we weren't raping and ethnic cleansing them, like the Russians were doing in Eastern Europe, with the post-VE Day German death total being two million or maybe higher.)

So, where did the speechwriters of the Bush Administration luminaries come up with this idea? Apparently, they misread a lame pro-war fictitious satire written on July 28, 2003 by Rand Simberg as being real! Simberg blogged:

Administration In Crisis Over Burgeoning Quagmire
August 12, 1945

WASHINGTON DC (Routers) President Truman, just a few months into his young presidency, is coming under increasing fire from some Congressional Republicans for what appears to be a deteriorating security situation in occupied Germany, with some calling for his removal from office.

Over three months after a formal declaration of an end to hostilities, the occupation is bogged down. Fanatical elements of the former Nazi regime who, in their zeal to liberate their nation from the foreign occupiers, call themselves members of the Werwolf (werewolves) continue to commit almost-daily acts of sabotage against Germany's already-ravaged infrastructure, and attack American troops. They have been laying road mines, poisoning food and water supplies, and setting various traps, often lethal, for the occupying forces ...

For many, marching in the streets with signs of "No Blood For Soviet Socialism," and "It's All About The Coal," this merely confirmed that the administration had other agendas than its stated one, and that the war was unjustified and unjustifiable.

It was then published by FoxNews.com on July 30, 2003.

Simberg later wrote:

To indicate clearly that it was satire, I attributed it, as usual, to the mythical WW II news agency, "Routers," and I incorporated my own 2003 copyright at the bottom. Subsequently, it was picked up by emailers, the copyright was stripped, "Routers" was misspelled to correspond to a more familiar (and actual) wire service, and it quickly found its way across cyberspace.

We don't know for sure that this influenced Rice and Rumsfeld, but it's the likeliest source I've heard of.

Now, Rice is supposed to be an academic expert on the Soviet Union, so the history of Central Europe in 1945-47 shouldn't be such terra incognita to her. (And Rumsfeld, who was born in 1932, is old enough to know better.) So, why were they so credulous (besides, of course, wanting this to be true to make their policy look less disastrous)?

As usual, I see an aversion to politically incorrect generalizing about ethnicities as a source of ignorance among decision-makers. One of the basic generalizations that anybody who looks around at the real world with open eyes quickly comes up with is the reverse correlation between organized violence and disorganized violence. Groups that are competent at organized violence in wartime, such as the Germans and Japanese, tend to be orderly during peacetime. And groups that tend to be anarchic during peacetime also tend to be incompetent at organized violence during wartime, with the Iraqis being perhaps the most notorious example of this.

There are many exceptions to this, but it's still one of the most obvious patterns in 20th Century history. However, if you are morally opposed to noticing patterns, as all the most respectable people are today, you'll be a sucker for idiocy.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer