Dan Snow's History Hit - Night of the Bayonets

Episode Date: January 29, 2020

75 years ago this spring a fascinating but forgotten battle was fought in the dying days of the Second World War. A group of Georgians rose up against their German overlords on the Dutch island of Texel. Thousands of Georgians served in the Soviet forces during World War II and among those who were captured, given the choice of “starve or fight”, some took up the German offer to don Wehrmacht uniforms. When the opportunity arose, the Georgians took the decision to rise up and slaughter the Germans, seizing control of the island. In just a few hours, they massacred some 400 German officers using knives and bayonets to avoid raising the alarm. Hitler urged retaliation and it wasn't until 12 days after war had ended that Canadian forces landed on the island and finally put an end to the slaughter. In this podcast Dan is joined by author Eric Lee to hear how he uncovered this little known story.

Hi everyone, welcome to Downsend House History. I'm just standing on the edge of the River Thames. You can probably hear it lapping on the stones below me. I've got Southwark Cathedral across the Thames from me now. I've got the replica of the Golden Hind, the first British, first English ship to circumnavigate the globe in the 1570s under Sir Francis Drake. He was knighted on his return. Looking east, I've got HMS Belfast that saw service on D-Day and in the Korean War which began 70 years ago this year and beyond that Tower Bridge. London Bridge right next to me. The reason that London exists, this was the

furthest point downriver on the Thames that could be bridged by the Romans so they put the bridge here and then the settlement grew up around it and then just under one of the arches of the bridge i can see the tower of london there the walls built by the plantagenets around the central white keep the white tower of william the first william the conqueror and i'm uh i'm looking down here because i'm mudlarking everybody i'm making a film for history hit tv we're looking for archaeology on the foreshore and we found a lot, I've got to say. So check out the documentary

on History Hit TV when it goes out. Remember, if you're listening to this, you can use the code POD6, P-O-D-6, to see what we found. One of the best things we found was a Georgian coin

from the 1750s. Very cool. Just under our feet as we walked on the beach. Very, very cool indeed. So go and use the code POD6. Check out History Hit TV. This podcast does not have anything to do with mudlarking.

This podcast is the remarkable story of the forgotten battle at the end of the Second World War. 75 years ago, there was a group of Georgians who'd been in the Red Army, fighting for the USSR in the Red Army. They'd been given the choice to starve or fight

in the Wehrmacht, in the German Army. They'd reluctantly chosen to fight in the German army. And the dying days of the war, they rose up and massacred their German overlords, if I want to have a better word. And Hitler ordered a savage counterattack. And there was brutal fighting on this Dutch island of Teckel, spelt Texel, in the spring of 1945.

And as you'll hear, with tragic consequences. So I talked to the historian Eric Lee, who uncovered this story and helped to recreate the Night of the Bayonets and the Georgian Legion's uprising. Enjoy. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Happy to be here. So tell me, this is again one of those unknown stories.

I did not know anything about the Texel. Right. And I'm going to correct you now and say it is not Texel, which is how it's written, T-E-X-E-L. They pronounce it Tessel. Okay. And the locals will tell you it's because X means SS. I suspect that's not the last time you'll correct me in this podcast.

No, I'll correct you tons of times. Okay, let's set the scene before we tell people what happened. It's the dying days of the Second World War. It's the final month. Final month. We're a month away from the end of the war. Holland has been largely liberated? Half of it.

Only half of it? Yeah. Allied armies in Holland have only one purpose at this point in the war. It's to get to the German border as quickly as possible and cross into Germany. The German armies in the Netherlands are not really fighting very hard against them. They're trying to cross the border It's a race toward Berlin So the Allied armies are moving toward the east of the country very quickly many Canadians in the British That's that's their job

So they're dashing through Arnhem and other places trying to get into Germany as quickly as possible and they're ignoring Western Holland which is Western Netherlands, which is remaining in the hands of the Germans. And they were left there almost to the last days of the war? They were left there to the last days of the war and beyond. That's the story of the Tesla uprising, it lasts beyond the end of the war. So what happens? What's the story of the uprising? Yeah. Why does it begin?

Well, it's a long story, but it begins with this, a battalion of Georgian soldiers, Soviet Georgian soldiers, who had been in the Red Army, captured in the early days of the war, put in POW camps, given a choice of starve or fight, who agreed in their hundreds to join the German army. They became Muslims of the Georgian Legion, a totally unreliable force. When in the Soviet Union and Poland, they would routinely defect back to the Soviet lines. Hitler himself said they were unreliable. He in the Soviet Union and Poland they would routinely defect to the others back to the Soviet lines Hitler himself said they were unreliable and trust Georgians. He wants Muslim soldiers not Georgian soldiers. They're not they're not reliable And they wind up on this island off the coast of the Netherlands called Tessel So it's the largest of the Wadden Islands. There's a string of islands along the Dutch coast And this island is part of the Atlantic wall. It's totally fortified. There are literally hundreds of small bunkers across it, airfields,

naval batteries. And they're sent there to basically sit out and wait till the end of the war. But on April 5th, this is literally a month before the war ends in the Netherlands, their commander, Major Klaus Breitner, receives an order from high on up, take half of your Georgians, and there's like 800 Georgians, take half of your Georgians, and there's like 800 Georgians, take half of them tomorrow morning, get on the ferry, get them over to Arnhem, because Arnhem is about to be retaken by the Allies. It sort of was taken in Market Garden, and now it's going to be really taken for good. Get them over there.

They won't have to defend Arnhem. These Georgians have never actually fought for the Germans. They haven't gone to combat against the British army. Their job has been Antipartisan actions in the Eastern Front and the Western Front they've been kind of guarding things haven't really done much So they don't want to go against the British Army and they have long Laid plans to rebel that go back a year or more They've been plotting and scheming and talking to the Dutch resistance, especially the Dutch Communist Party, and planning a rebellion. So on April 5th, when the order comes,

you guys have to go to the mainland to fight, they're thinking, no, we don't want to do that. That's when they decide to rebel. Wow. And so they have German officers, do they? They have German officers. So it's Georgian soldiers, German officers, and a handful of the Georgians become officers. So one of them is a lieutenant named Shalva Doladze. He was a captain in the Soviet Air Force. He was actually a commander of a number of planes, whatever you'd call it, in the Soviet Air Force who was shot down in 1942, captured.

He's the leader of the Georgians, the highest ranking Georgian officer. All the higher officers are German. And there are Germans with them. They're sharing barracks with hundreds of Germans intermingled with the Georgians. So the Georgian plan, they call this Operation Day of Birth. But my Georgian friends tell me it's birthday, not day of birth, birthday. Anyway, the Dutch always say it's day of birth because it sounds more exotic. They decide at 1 o'clock in the morning, they only find out about this late in the afternoon. They meet in the evening in a wood,

a secret, like, you know, whatever you call it, in the middle of a wood. It's very small woods on a tessel. They meet there and they decide we'll launch Operation Day of Birth at 1 o'clock in the morning. And we'll do it using bayonets, razors, which they call shaving knives, and our blades, whatever knives we have. And we'll slash the throats of as many Germans as we can silently to start the operation. So they kill an estimated 400 Germans in their beds, in the barracks. 400, which is probably more than the Dutch resistance killed in the entire war.

They've killed in just literally an hour. That's how it begins. Wow. Yeah. Is the alarm raised? It is raised because some of them have to shoot and some shooting begins. And the alarm is raised.

One of the biggest problems is they have to kill major bright. He's the commander of the battalion He's the guy who was the direct line to Berlin major Brighton was not in the barracks major Brighton According to all the accounts, especially the Dutch he's with his mistress and they will take you on the island and show you That's the house for Brighton. Er was with his mistress that night in Brighton his own account No, no, no, he had some medical problems and he had to be somewhere. He was with the mistress. He survives. He survives and he sneaks away under cover of darkness when he hears all the shooting

to raise the alarm. And how many loyal German troops do they have on the island? It's a few hundred of them. One of the problems is there's two types of Germans on the island. There are the German soldiers of the Wehrmacht who are with the Georgians. They're being slaughtered wholesale. Then there are Germans who are part of the Navy. The batteries are under the control of the Navy.

So while the Georgians can move about freely anywhere on the island, they can't get into these two naval batteries. The sentries won't let them pass. And it's all mined and barbed wire around them, very tight security, They can't get into these two naval batteries. The sentries won't let them pass. And it's all mined and barbed wire around them, very tight security, because they don't trust the Georgians at all. So the two batteries remain in German hands, even as the Georgians are taking over the rest of the island. They're taking over the airfield and the lighthouse and the main town and the main German bunker complex. They all fall to the Georgians, but not the two batteries. And is there a fight?

The fight begins immediately now at first for the first few hours until lunchtime The Georgians are winning and they tell announced to the Dutch the islands have been liberated Just like lots of other parts of the Netherlands. We can now all celebrate and all the flags come out They're how they do this in second world. You probably know more than I do How all these people have flags hidden away and take them out on Victory Day, I don't know. And Soviet flags. They all have these red flags and Dutch flags flying in the streets. They're all celebrating. And the Lodz issues an order that all the Dutch men who are fit to fight are to report to him in the main town, Den Burg. So a lot of them show up, and they start passing

out weapons to them and tell the Dutch, you'll go you'll go there you'll go there and they're all gonna be we're gonna just like do the mopping up but meanwhile breitner sent a message to hitler to the furor bunker and this is now this is april 6th hitler is now below ground the soviets are in two weeks launching the final offensive against berlin and from there he gets this message saying that tesla's fallen the georgians have risen up and he gives an order to exterminate all the Georgians there at any cost. Which he did a lot of those kinds of things in the last days of the war. It's kind of a, you think you really want to use your troops for that purpose? Is it that important to you to recapture this island? But he was infuriated that Georgians who had sworn an oath of loyalty to the Fuhrer and were wearing

uniforms of the Wehrmacht had done this. So he issues orders to do whatever necessary. The first thing that's done is these naval batteries turn their guns inland. These are guns that were designed to shoot at Allied battleships. They're turned inland to pummel the main town and all the farms and anywhere they think there's people with deadly accuracy. And they kill large numbers of Dutch people on the very first day, including children who had gone to the island seeking safety because it was a relatively safe place This is how it begins the German counter-attack begins

They'd be in landing troops and from then on it's a story of a slow steady German advance across the island inch by inch Mopping up killing every Georgian they can find Wow, you know against ferocious Georgian resistance. I might add they can fight. Wow. Yeah, against ferocious Georgian resistance, I might add. So on the very western edge of Europe, a kind of arguably rogue element of the Red Army, sort of, is engaged in a house-to-house fight with the Wehrmacht in the last days of the war. Yep. And the Georgians have been pretending that they're not very good at being soldiers. And some of the Dutch people tell stories about them pretending like they don't know how to use guns, but actually they're all sharpshooters.

And the Germans are extremely cautious because if they don't handle it right, a lot of Germans die in the fighting. So the Germans will besiege a house, and they realize they don't want to get in a shooting battle because they'll be wiped out. So they set the houses on fire. They use flamethrowers. When they actually capture Georgians alive, which they do on some occasions, Georgians surrender, they make them strip off their uniforms because they're not allowed to wear them for the Wehrmacht,

and then they shoot them. They take no prisoners at all. Nor do the Georgians take any prisoners at all. How many people are involved in the fighting at its peak? At its peak, I would say 2,000, more. Not that many more. I mean, in the end, a bit over 500 Georgians die and We don't know the number Jones's Germans keep taking their corpses off the island in ferries

So there's no we don't know exactly but we know it's many more than Georgians So thousand two thousand Germans have died there But all the Georges who died their bodies remain there. So we know exactly how many Georgians died and Does it come to an end with the end of the war? MICHAEL GREENSTONE This is the extraordinary thing about it, it never ends. The Georgians, of course, are militarily defeated early on. And they try to hold on to their strategic assets, like the airfield, because they're desperate that the British will arrive. And they want the planes to be able to land.

This is their vision of how it's going to work out. But they're retreating northwards. And their last stand is in the lighthouse, which is still standing on the northern part of Tessel. And there the Germans arrive on Hitler's birthday, April 20, with a unit of the Hermann-Gering Division. And their sappers are sent in with tons of explosives and flamethrowers. And they try to burn the Georgians out.

And they kill all of them except for about two. They're hunting them down. And still, over 200 survive. They're hiding in the dunes. They're hiding in the dunes. They're hiding in the ditches, in the farms. Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence.

Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills

needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. And why don't the British or the Canadians intervene

when they find out what's going on? This is a question. The first thought would be, well, they don't know what's going on, right? Which is what the Georgians assumed. And at one point, four Georgians early on get in a boat with a bunch of Dutch people and sneak away at night and come to England to inform the British, make sure the British will know. And most of the stories of this battle, the handful of stories that have been written, mentions, but no one says what happened when they arrived in Britain.

So I was reading about, well, what did happen to people who arrived in Britain this way? And they were taken off to a particular Kempton Park race course, I think, which is where they would interrogate them. And I found the interrogation records of these Georgians. They give a very detailed account. I heard the English translation, the English version the interrogators had written. They give a very detailed account of the situation, about the rebellion, about the German deployment, about what was needed, which was bombing.

They wanted the RAF to intervene quickly and show the Germans that the war was over for them. Why didn't the British go in? I think because, as with many other things, why didn't they bomb Auschwitz? Why didn't they do a lot of things? Because their drive was to defeat the Germans as quickly as possible. And Tessel is not on the road to Berlin. It would have meant diverting forces who were desperately needed for the final battles. So the British did nothing

the other thing we know now because it's all in the National Archives here is Every message the Germans sent about the uprising on Tessel from the very first night was picked up by the British Decrypted at Bletchley Park and the records are there you can read them each day What the Germans were reporting back to Berlin the British knew within a few Hours what was happening they knew and they did not intervene And me and the civilian the island it was terribly badly damaged with it Yes, well they're burning farms after another and they were Germans also not just like randomly you could argue Oh, well, you know accidents happen in war

They didn't really tend to kill Dutch people But they really did it and like on the first day of the fighting They rounded up 14 Dutch men in the main town, Dinburg, put them in a lorry, began driving away. Four of them jumped out Somehow. The other ten stayed in the lorry. They put them in another part of the island and executed them Why? They thought they were sympathetic to the Allies, which because everyone was But they accused them of collaborating with these terrible Georgians because everyone was. But they accused them of collaborating with these terrible Georgians. So the Germans were killing wholesale.

And also the batteries and the shelling, and it was indiscriminate because they knew the Georgians could have been anywhere, so they would just burn down farms. And so let's come back to the, is it the final stand of the lighthouse? That's the final stand on April 20th, but the fight continues after that.

It's become now, ironically, the Georgians have a whole discussion about this strategy, becomes partisan warfare. Originally, they imagined this battle as being a more conventional battle. They realized there was going to be a war of attrition by this point, certainly after April 20th. So they're sniping at the Germans. The Germans are sneaking up on houses and setting fire to them, hoping Georgians will come running out.

And they're doing a lot of that. But there are hundreds of Georgians that are still there, hiding, and the Dutch people are giving them food, and they're baking extra loaves for them. There's a lot of Dutch help for that. And the war ends in the Netherlands on May 5th, three days before VE Day. Everyone knows about this.

The radios come on and so on. Neither side backs down. The Germans will not put their weapons down. They're patrolling. They're terrified someone's going to shoot at them especially now the georgians are terrified of the germans because they're still heavily armed and seeking revenge and they keep shooting at each other and their deaths right up until may 20th 15 days after the germans surrendered the netherlands and 12 days after v-day when a canadian unit the royal canadian artillery surveyed regiment lands

on the island, they've been ordered to remove the Germans. And they didn't know what was going on. No one had told them what they would find there. And their commander, I've got a copy of their war diary, and the commander writes, what we found was a musical comedy situation. That's how he describes it. Because both sides were terrified of each other, and they both wanted to get off the island as quickly as possible, and they were both delighted the Canadians had arrived.

So it was a kind of a comic element in the final days. So the last fighting in Europe, well, actually, I have to be careful here, because I know there was Ukrainian nationalists fighting at the Red Army in Ukraine. But among the last fight, it went on until after the end of the Second World War in Europe. There was still, the Wehrmacht was still in action. The Wehrmacht was still a disciplined force.

Even at the end of the war, the idea they all marched under their commanders back to Germany, you know, in formation, they were still a disciplined army. It wasn't like the First World War. They didn't break down as an army. So when people say, my publisher has written, accidentally, this was the final battle of the Second World War, I said, don't say it was the final battle of the Second World War. Because my father was fighting in the Philippines at the same time. So this is not the final battle of the Second World War in my father was fighting in the Philippines at the same time So this is not the final buses front about a second row in Europe. Maybe arguably in Western Europe Yeah, but you're quite a surprised when the Canadians rise and found that the war had not ended there They just company celebrations and Amsterdam. Yeah, they probably groggy and there's still a war zone. Yeah, they had no idea

I mean they weren't they weren't shot up because everyone's relieved to find them but they part of what they were doing was they helped Unearth the mass graves Which was quite a shock How many Georgians then make it back to Georgia poor things over 200 and the question make it back to George is an interesting one most accounts of this kind of thing and with the Soviet soldiers get deported back and Stalin has them all killed or says the most of the Gulag and There there are accounts of this that actually end that way. So all these Georgians then died.

But actually, they do make it back to Georgia. And almost all of them return to their peacetime lives and die in their beds. I mean, they have good lives. It's an extraordinary ending to the story. So do we think that Stalin was taken with their uprising? And did he? That's a complicated question. Stalin, of course, gave orders that no one was ever to surrender.

You see, he used to say there were no Soviet POWs, only traitors. So they had direct orders not to surrender to the Germans. So their first act of treason was to surrender. And the second act of treason was to put on the uniform. So they say that, as in one of the interrogation records, one of the Georgians said, the Germans lined us up in a POW camp, made stand you and said all enemies of the Reich step forward So no one stepped forward and they knew to be shot. They said congratulations your induction ceremonies can complete

You're not members of the German army So they expected that they would be punished in Soviet Union's one of the reasons why they did this rebellion to kind of show Stalin that actually were loyal Soviet citizens, but we know that doesn't work because to kind of show Stalin that actually we're loyal Soviet citizens. But we know that doesn't work because Vlasov and his army did the same thing in Prague. In the final days of the war, launched this rebellion, fought against the SS, quite bravely liberated Prague, and they were turned over to the Red Army, and Vlasov was hanged for his treason.

So the question of why the Georgians were treated so well is complicated. Part of it is the Canadian general in charge, Fulks, as well as Eisenhower. Each one wrote letters to the Soviets, which we have copies of, saying these guys are great, these Georgians. They're allies. They fought the Germans. We praise them. Be nice to them. And in the immediate post-war period, that had some influence.

Also, the role of the Dutch Communist Party. The Dutch Communist Party, who had worked with these Georgians, insisted they were patriots and pro-Sovietiet and they were wonderful communists and they should be treated as heroes and so on in the Soviet Union. The Dutch communists had their own reasons for saying that. They had their own stuff to cover up and their own things that embarrassed them.

So these guys were treated in many cases as heroes and over time, increasingly as heroes, and by the 60s, the Soviets made a big feature film about them. Oh, really? Yeah. So it's a well-known story if you go to the former Soviet Union now. It why I've been told never say it's an unknown battle It's very well known in Georgia as well known in the Netherlands, but the Georgians know is a myth They know the Soviet myth that Stalin had engineered that these were the myth was these were POWs were unarmed

Who at the last moment in active terrorism rebelled against the Germans and grabbed their arms somehow? This is how it's depicted in this terrible film, which no one should ever see but it's an awful film It shows it in that way This is completely untrue and the myth was created by the Dutch communists by the Georgians themselves To explain to explain away their stuff, but also the Soviets at that time were trying to bring Georgian exiles home There's a large Georgian exile community in Europe to convince them it was safe to come back to Georgia, that all was forgiven. And the commander of the Georgian Legion, who was not on TESOL, but who was one of the

guys who founded and led the Georgian Legion for a while, was actually kidnapped by the KGB in 1954 in West Germany, where he was working for Adenauer as a military advisor, whisked off back to Georgia, where everyone thought he'd be tried and executed, and set free. And lived, I think, as a lawyer in Tbilisi until he died. It's very weird behavior. Because if you weren't in this particular unit, chances are you were not going to survive your trip back to the Soviet Union. Stalin was merciless and unforgiving.

Soviet citizens, Soviet soldiers who surrendered to the Germans but did nothing else, just surrendered or were captured, were quite often punished. This was quite unusual these these Georgians were not punished and The people of tassel today Even though actually if they just if the Georgians just gone quietly probably been no fighting at the end of the war Are they are they proud of? They mind their property was destroyed many of them were killed or? Oh yes, that's not understood. There's been documentaries made about this and you watch the interviewees and most of

them are quite hostile looking back over the Georgians. They saved their own necks, they only figured themselves if they just shut up, you know, and waited till the end of the war, nothing would have happened, which is true. But it's not the Georgians went around slaughtered, the Georgians themselves became victims the vast majority of them died so it wasn't an act of real heroism but from the point of view of many of the Dutch too bad they did it and from the point of view of the Germans

the Georgians were completely wrong Major Breitner survived the war and lived for decades afterwards gave interviews, wrote about it and talked about he was like the best commander ever he said I would take my Georgians with me when I would go back to my family home. They would spend Christmas with my family. I was such a nice guy.

I had no idea what I did wrong. He was like, what are you talking about? You were the commander of a captured Soviet people. What did you think, that they liked you? But he thought that. He thought that. They, of course, all the survivors, whipped up this idea that they were always, always loyal communists, that they adored Stalin, thought of nothing else but Stalin all the time.

And one of the most famous survivors, a guy named Artemidze, who they said was the political commissar of the rebellion. Artemidze would always say, my uniform was Hitler's, but my heart was with Stalin. He had his little house, his little museum there in his house in Georgia. And he has these headlines saying that, pictures of Soviet flags and pictures of Stalin. They made this whole mythology around themselves. And he looked like Stalin, Artemidze, Stalin mustache. People called him Little Stalin.

This was their, they created the myth. What's weird about the myth is that I get why the Soviets did it. It survived Soviet times. In Georgia today, this is still believed and when President Saakashvili Visited Tessel and think 2005 he repeated the same Soviet story Even though they knew everything the Soviets had ever told my history was untrue They figured this out Stalin wasn't a good guy barrier was not a good person communism was not a success They learned all that and figured out this story they believed. And to this day, this is almost George and Seatt.

Amazing. Well, thank you very much for sharing it with us. What's it called? Night of the Bayonets. Yeah, grim. Yeah, well, it's accurate. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Dan.

I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished and liquidated. One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world. He tells us what is possible, not just in the pages of history books but in our own lives as well i have faith in you i hope you enjoyed the podcast everyone massive favor to us if you go to itunes wherever you get your podcasts give it a rating five stars obviously and then leave a glowing review that'd be great my mom is getting overwhelmed with the amount of different email accounts she's set up to leave good reviews for me. So you're gonna have to do some of the heavy lifting. Thank you.