WW2: The Texel Uprising
Warfare
History Hit
4.5 • 943 Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2021
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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 when captured and given the choice to “starve or fight”, some took up the German offer to don Wehrmacht uniforms.
When the opportunity arose in April 1945, these Georgians rose up and slaughtered their German captors, 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. Dan is joined by author Eric Lee to hear how he uncovered this little known story, about the retaliation ordered by Hitler and about the end to the slaughter when Canadian forces landed on the island 12 days later.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone welcome back to the history hit warfare podcast I'm your host James Rogers and you join me for the first time in a long time in a pub beer garden with a pint on a nice spring evening is absolutely bloody bliss, isn't it? Now for this episode of the History |
| 0:15.8 | Hit Warfare Podcast, I've dug through the Dan Snow's History Hit Archive and I've pulled out a hell |
| 0:20.9 | of a history. There were thousands of Georgians who served in the Soviet forces during the Second World War, |
| 0:25.9 | but as Hitler swept through into the Soviet Union, they picked up so many of these and held them as POWs. Now these Georgians were given a choice, quite a stark choice. |
| 0:36.1 | You can serve or you can starve and so unsurprisingly many of them donned a German uniform. |
| 0:42.0 | Yet when the time came they decided to rise up and to slaughter |
| 0:47.2 | their German captors. Now in this episode Eric Lee takes us through these pivotal moments and he explains what has come to be known |
| 0:56.0 | as the Knight of the Bairnets. Thanks so much coming on the show. |
| 1:03.0 | Happy to be here. Thanks so much coming on the show. |
| 1:14.0 | Happy to be here. |
| 1:15.0 | So tell me, this is again one of those unknown stories. |
| 1:18.0 | I did not know anything about the Texel. |
| 1:19.0 | Right, and I'm going to correct you now and say it is not Texel which is how it's written |
| 1:22.6 | G E XL they pronounce it tessell okay and the locals will tell you it's because X means |
| 1:27.4 | S S I suspect that's not the last time you'll correct me in this podcast now correct |
| 1:31.5 | I'll correct you tons of time okay let's set the scene before we tell me what happened. |
| 1:34.8 | It's the dying days of the Second World War. |
| 1:38.0 | It's the final month. |
| 1:39.0 | Final month. |
| 1:39.6 | We're a month away from the end of the war. |
| 1:41.0 | Holland has been largely liberated? |
| 1:43.4 | Half of it. |
... |
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