“The Georgians’ 45-day fight against the German army, which did not end until two weeks after the war was over, is now remembered as the final battle of the Second World War in Europe.”

By Eric Lee

IT WAS APRIL of 1945 and the Second World War entering its final phase. Some 800 Georgians, former Red Army men who had been captured by the Germans, found themselves on the Dutch island of Texel. They were serving in the 822nd battalion of the Wehrmacht, a part of the Georgian Legion.

Their job was to guard the island against an Allied invasion that was no longer coming. British and Canadian forces were liberating the Netherlands, but avoiding the western part of the country as they raced to cross into Germany.

On April 5, the German commanders on Texel ordered half of the Georgians stationed there to prepare to leave the island the following morning. The plan was to redeploy them to Arnhem, where they were to join the Wehrmacht’s last desperate fight to hold onto territory it had initially captured five years earlier.

After the battalion commander, Major Klaus Breitner, broke the news to a handful of Georgian officers, the group met secretly in a small wood to discuss a bold plan. For many months they had talked about a possible mutiny, even a march on Amsterdam. They were even in touch with Communists in the Dutch underground. Now, with their redeployment to the front lines at hand, the time had come to act.

Years later when asked to explain why they took this decision, survivors of what was to follow said that they were certain that any Georgians sent to the mainland would refuse to fight, and would be killed, and that those remaining behind on Texel would be severely punished too. But they also feared the fate awaiting them at the end of the war when they would be repatriated to the Soviet Union.

Stalin had made it clear that any Red Army soldier who surrendered to the enemy had committed treason. Men had been ordered to fight until the last bullet. To then put on German uniforms made the treason even worse. The only hope these Georgians had of survival after the war was to redeem themselves by turning their weapons on the Germans.

The Dutch resistance leaders on Texel were alerted the evening before, but it was too late – they could not move around the island to give warning. Even the Georgian soldiers were given very little advance notice. An hour before the revolt was to begin, recalled Grisha Baindurashvili, “every Georgian soldier was told which bunker to enter and which German to kill.”

Another Georgian, Noe Gongladze, remembered that “we calculated exactly the number of Germans that had to be killed and by whom. Some had to kill ten, others just five or one.”

The attack began at 1 a.m. and was codenamed “Operation Day of Birth.”

Initially, the Georgians aimed to kill all the Germans they could as silently as possible. They would use their shaving knives, daggers and bayonets to slash the throats of German soldiers as they slept. Others were shot.

As dawn broke, more than 400 Germans were dead and the island was largely in the hands of the Georgian rebels, many of whom spread the word among the Dutch civilians that they were now free.

Some of those civilians were already members of the resistance and joined the Georgians from the beginning. Huug Snoek was one of them. He remembered stopping anyone in German uniform and demanding they give a pre-arranged password to help conspirators tell friend from foe.

“None of [the Germans] knew it. Actually, I couldn’t pronounce it either,” he recalled. “The Georgians were all marksmen and every German we came across was shot. They were all shot in the head, straight through their helmets.”

One of the key leaders of the rebellion, Evgeni Artemidze, claimed that he had personally killed 28 Germans.

The Georgians started with a number of strategic targets including the German bunker complex known as Texla, the island’s sole airfield and its ports, particularly Oudeschild.

Also among the objectives were the naval batteries at the southern and northern ends of Texel. But these were under the control of the German navy, and difficult for the conspirators to infiltrate. Other parts of the island also proved a challenge to capture, including the village of De Koog. This was due to unexpectedly tough resistance from small groups of German soldiers.

The Georgians also failed to locate Major Breitner, the Wehrmacht commander who was not in the barracks. He’d spent the night with his mistress in Texel’s main town, Den Burg. As a result, the major was able to get to safety and raise the alarm.

Berlin responded immediately: The island was to be re-taken and the Georgians shown no mercy.

Word quickly reached the Dutch civilians that the Georgians had taken control of the island. Locals took out their flags from hiding and waved them from their windows.

“We realized that something incredible had happened,” one Dutch civilian, who was 12 years old at the time, recalled,

Shalva Loladze, a former Red Air Force officer, was the highest-ranking Georgian on the island and the leader of the rebellion. He announced to locals they were now free of the Germans and ordered all available men to report to Texla to help the rebels secure the island.

“Anyone disobeying,” he declared, “will be severely punished.”

The Georgian commander addressed the 200 Dutch men who turned up; half of whom had previously served in the military.

“The rebellion against the hated oppressor has started in the whole of Holland,” Loladze told the volunteers, even though that was not true.

“We have reached the point of no return,” he added, which was true.

“Long live Holland. Long live the Soviet Union,” he shouted, as the

Georgians passed out weapons and instructions to the Dutch.

At that moment, the German-controlled batteries on Texel opened up. They had been installed to defend the island from Allied invasion, now they were turned on the villages and farms. The Georgians were quickly forced to abandon Texla and Den Burg, which were both being pounded by German shells.

On April 6, German reinforcements began landing on the island. They immediately rounded up 14 Dutch civilians suspected of helping the Georgians

The men were taken in a truck to De Mok, an isolated part of the island to be shot. Four managed to leap from the vehicle and escape. The others were killed.

The tide of battle was turning against the Georgians. More Germans were arriving on Texel every day; the reinforcements were slowly retaking the island. It was no easy fight; the Georgian rebels tenaciously held on to the airfield in the hope that the Allies would come to their aid.

Desperate for assistance, a group of Georgians seized a lifeboat and set off to summon help. After a 24-hour voyage across the North Sea, they arrived on the English coast. The Georgians were taken to Kempton Park, south of London and interrogated. During the questioning, the men appealed for Allied intervention.

They had no way of knowing that the British were already well aware of the mutiny; codebreakers at Bletchley Park had been intercepting German radio communiques about the situation on Texel. The Allied brass had chosen not to intervene. All their efforts were focussed on defeating Germany, and their commanders did not see any way to divert any troops or planes to help the Texel rebels.

By Hitler’s birthday – 20 April – the uprising was entering its third week. The Germans had captured the last Georgian stronghold: the lighthouse on the northern tip of the island.

Loladze was captured a few days later and shot. The Germans were taking no prisoners. Any Georgians who did surrender were ordered to remove their Wehrmacht uniforms, as they no longer had the right to wear them. They too were shot.

Despite the crackdown, more than 200 Georgians remained in hiding. Periodic skirmishes continued for weeks. In fact, not even the surrender of all German forces in the Netherlands on May 5, ended the fighting on Texel. Skirmishes persisted after V-E Day three days later. It was only when Canadian troops landed on the island on May 20 that the rebellion on Texel finally came to an end.

The Canadian commanding officer, Lt. Col. W.D. Kirk, was astonished by what he found there.

“They are still fighting spasmodically,” he wrote in the unit’s war diary. And noting the surreal nature of the fighting, he added, “it would seem to be a musical comedy situation.”

The captured Germans were swiftly taken off the island, while the Georgians were given time to bury their dead.

The Canadians were impressed with what the mutineers had accomplished. Lt.-Gen. Charles Foulkes, commander of Canadian troops in the Netherlands, wrote a letter to the Soviets praising the Georgians for their contribution to the Allied victory. That document, and another one penned later by General Eisenhower, helped the Georgians receive amnesty upon their return to Stalin’s Soviet Union.

Instead of being punished for their “treason,” the survivors were allowed to live out the rest of their lives in peace. They would later be held up as national heroes for what they had done.

Their 45-day fight against the German army, which did not end until two weeks after the war was over, is now remembered as the final battle of the Second World War in Europe.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Eric Lee is the author of Night of the Bayonets: The Texel Uprising and Hitler’s Revenge, April–May 1945. His other books include The Experiment: Georgia’s Forgotten Revolution in 2017 and Operation Basalt: The British Raid on Sark and Hitler’s Commando. He lives London where he works as an author, journalist and political activist.