Stay-behind organizations

military operation

The Palmach (Hebrew: , acronym for , Plugot Maḥatz, "Strike Phalanges/Companies") was the elite combined strike forces and sayeret unit of the Haganah, the main paramilitary organization of the Yishuv (pre-1948 Jewish community in Palestine) during the period of the British Mandate. The Palmach was established in May 1941. By the outbreak of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, it consisted of over 2,000 men and women in three fighting brigades and auxiliary aerial, naval and intelligence units. With the creation of Israel's army, the three Palmach Brigades were disbanded. This and political reasons com

thumb|Werwolf Pennon|pennant with the [[Wolfsangel symbol in horizontal form]]

A stay-behind operation is one where a country places secret operatives or organizations in its own territory, for use in case of a later enemy occupation. The stay-behind operatives would then form the basis of a resistance movement, and act as spies from behind enemy lines. Small-scale operations may cover discrete areas, but larger stay-behind operations envisage reacting to the conquest of whole countries.

Defunct militia of Imperial Japan.

The Schnez-Truppe or Schnez Organisation was an illegal clandestine paramilitary organisation formed in West Germany in 1949 by veterans of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS under the leadership of Albert Schnez. The paramilitary was intended to fight against the Soviet Union in the event of an invasion or German communists in a civil war. It has been reported as having been founded with a membership of some 2,000 former officers; later obtaining a total strength of up to 40,000 members.

thumb|Seal of the U.S. Office of Defense Cooperation. The 13 stars represent the original 13 US states, and indicate a [[United States Department of Defense organization (see seal).]] Counter-Guerrilla () is a Turkish branch of Operation Gladio, a clandestine stay-behind anti-communist initiative backed by the United States as an expression of the Truman Doctrine. The founding goal of the operation was to erect a stay-behind guerrilla force to undermine a possible Soviet occupation. The goal was soon expanded to subverting communism in Turkey.

World War II operation developed by James Bond author Ian Fleming

Projekt-26, best known as P-26, was a stay-behind army in Switzerland charged with countering a possible invasion of the country. The existence of P-26 (along with P-27) as secret intelligence agencies dissimulated in the military intelligence agency (UNA) was revealed in November 1990 by the PUK EMD Parliamentary Commission headed by senator Carlo Schmid. The commission, whose initial aim was to investigate the alleged presence of secret files on citizens constituted in the Swiss Ministry of Defence, was created in March 1990 in the wake of the Fichenaffäre or Secret Files Scandal, during whi

Finnish criminal case during the late 1940s