“It’s elementary, my dear Watson.” (?)
An excellent account of what it was like to be an ‘Enemy Alien’ and then to fight for Britain is to be found in ‘Arnhem Lift’ by Louis Hagen. Hagen, who escaped to the UK as a teenage German Jew, was interned and shipped to the Isle of Man. He was eventually allowed to volunteer for the Pioneer Corps, but restrictions were soon lifted further and he volunteered for the Glider Pilot Regiment.
A couple of interesting military units are:
‘X’ Troop of No.10 (Inter-Allied) Army Commando, which was made up of Germans and Austrians.
22 Independent Company, The Parachute Regiment, which was the Pathfinder element of 6th Airborne Division and was predominantly manned by German and Austrian Jews. There are a number of these men in Ranville CWGC Cemetery, Normandy, with inscriptions on their graves such as ‘Albrecht Meyer (served as Albert May)’.
I think it says a great deal about thew character and determination of men who, having initially been classed as Enemy Aliens, volunteered for the most dangerous assignments as soon as they were permitted to.
Nah. Their idea of an intellectual is a rugby player with most of his teeth still in his mouth.
What, you mean as opposed to Soccer players with actual testosterone?
A Marc Stevens just posted this interesting bit on the photo site:
It is now known that Sir Ken Adam was not the only German-Jewish pilot in the RAF.
Georg Franz HEIN (born Feb 15 1919 in Hannover) was sent to London by his widowed mother in early 1934 (aged 14). On Sept 1-2, 1939, HEIN committed identity theft, appropriating the name of a dead London schoolmate, Peter STEVENS, and he enlisted in the RAF under that name on Sept 3/39.
He was trained as a bomber pilot, and was posted to 144 Squadron, flying Hampdens, on April 1/41. He flew 22 combat operations before his Hampden was badly damaged by flak over Berlin on Sept 7/8, 1941, and he crash-landed, out of fuel, near Amsterdam. He destroyed the secret bits of the plane and set fire to the wreckage before setting off to find help from the Dutch Resistance. Unfortunately, he was arrested by German soldiers before he could get to the Resistance.
As a POW for 3 years and 8 months, he was without any protection under the Geneva Convention. The consequences of the discovery of his true identity would have certainly been unpleasantly fatal. He went on to become one of the most ardent escapers of the war, and was awarded the Military Cross in May 1946, just after he was naturalized as a British citizen.
His full story is told in my book, ‘Escape, Evasion and Revenge: The True Story of a German-Jewish RAF Pilot Who Bombed Berlin and Became a POW’ (Pen and Sword, 2009). He died in 1979, and it took me 18 years to research and discover his full story. I’m very proud to say that he was my father, and neither I nor my mother had any idea that he was born Jewish.
Just seen that, quite interesting bit of information.
Do you have any more gen on this please ?
I think that’s relating to a badly cocked-up joint operation with the Special Interrogation Group (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Interrogation_Group) in June 1942. Rough version (can’t find the right book) is that they had a bunch of German-speaking Jewish soldiers pretending to be Germans to bluff their way through airfield defences so the SAS could start blowing the place up, and were betrayed by a real German they had along as a double (actually treble) agent to help them. The SAS mostly shot their way out, but the SIG lot were mostly captured and presumably executed.
The SIG was one unit, mostly of Jews recruited in the Middle East of Germanic cultural origins. There were others but it seems many of the files have still not been declassified. Another organization was a still very secretive inter-Allied Commando unit. From the link below:
One of the best kept secrets of World War II, however, has been the nature of the existence of No. 3 (Miscellaneous or “X” Troop) of the unique No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando/Special Services Brigade. The reason? They were virtually all German speaking Jewish refugees mainly from Germany and Austria (but also some from Czechoslovakia, Hungary and other European countries).
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/ww2/sugar13.html
Didn’t the British recruit a 100% Jewish Brigade in Palestine during WW2?
There was at least one weak infantry Bde raised and it fought in Italy, Britain was reluctant to arm and train Jews due to problems in Palestine and looking at the post war world. Individual jews could join the British army though and fight in the regular units - it was a formed trained body that was not trusted too well.
There was at least one weak infantry Bde raised and it fought in Italy, Britain was reluctant to arm and train Jews due to problems in Palestine and looking at the post war world. Individual jews could join the British army though and fight in the regular units - it was a formed trained body that was not trusted too well.
http://www.newwestend.org.uk/magP02/Rothschild.htm
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/brigade.html