Georgian volunteers

Foreign volunteers, collaboration and Axis Allies 1939-1945.

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Loïc L.
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Re: Georgian volunteers

Post by Loïc L. »

Division Brehmer or Aktion Brehmer was just the name given to the troops (and operation) under Generalmajor Walter Brehmer commanding the 325 Sicherungs Division (Paris) and sent to Périgord
for an important antipartisan operation called too "Operation B" between 26 march and 2 april 1944, known as the Semaine Sanglante "bloody week" for the inhabitants of this southwestern department
the troops came mainly fron the 325th Security Division (Sicherungs Regts 1, 5, 6, 190)
799 Georgian mentionned and 958 Flak
Feldgendarmerie

perhaps others troops


Regards
Loïc
"A Moi Auvergne"
alan newark
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Re: Georgian volunteers

Post by alan newark »

Hi, buddies. Good to see you all still pluggng away on the Georgian / Foreign Volunteers front.
Good to see so much information contributed.
Good, also, to see your messages, Gogi. I hope that you remember your promise to send me a copy of the second edition of your book, in relation to your researches for which I contributed a lot of information, and, no offence intended, that you remembered to credit me as the source of that information.
I remain actively interested in (a) the history, documents, 1945 mutiny on the Dutch island of Texel and the mid-1945 repatriation to Georgia and later experiences of veterans of the 822nd Georgia Infantry Battalion and (b) the Western Allies' compulsory repatriation, before and after the February 1945 Yalta Conference and Stalin's demand for this action, of Soviet Displaced Persons, POWs and German Army Soviet 'renegades' to the USSR..
Al:->
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alan newark
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Re: Georgian volunteers

Post by alan newark »

Destroyed or not destroyed. The rights and wrongs of the 1945 Texel Mutiny

By: Alan Newark

Re-reading Feldgrau.com's impressive thread contributions regarding the Wehrmacht's Georgian Legion I have again noted the statement that the 822nd Georgia Infantry Battalion, which revolted against their battalion's German cadre and the German garrison of the Dutch island of Texel, was 'destroyed in the battle'.

As veteran Legion researchers have long known I do not accept that statement.

The Texel Mutiny, known locally as 'the Russian war' and gaining recognition as 'Europe's Last Battle', began at 01.00hrs on 06 April 1945 and followed the Germans' decision to use half of the 822nd battalion as mainland combat troops against the advancing Allies. Determined not to fight the Allies, and to therefore seek mercy from Joseph Stalin and his secret police regarding their mostly desperate enlistment in the Georgia Legion, the battalion's secret Communist Party committee had chosen instead to reject the combat role and to stage a mutiny.

After the Georgians killed most of their battalion's German Cadre as the latter slept - many Germans were drunk after a seemingly friendly going away party - and also shot and killed many Germans at the island's garrison HQ, plus other Germans shot by Georgian snipers, the 822nd batttalion's uprising was initially successful.

For over 2 weeks, while vainly waiting and hoping for Allied help, the mutineers of the Georgia Legion's 822nd 'Queen Tamara' Battalion fought pitched battles from fixed positions and, under bombardment from Texel's two coastal guns - which the Georgians had failed to capture - and being fired on by German batteries in the mainland port of Den Helder and on the adjoining island of Vlieland - held various towns and villages. They also held the island's airport and, at the northernmost point on the island, the distinctive lighthouse.

The constant German bombardment also took a heavy toll on Texel's civilian population with many town houses being shelled and many farms, especially in the Eierland polder area, being destroyed; many Dutch homes were also caught in exchanges of gunfire between the Germans and the Georgians. The revolt led to the loss of over 100 Dutch civilian lives.

During that time German reinforcements - chiefly from the 163rd Marine Infantry Regiment but also comprising a ersartz mix of volunteers from other naval and coastal defence units - were brought to Texel. At the beginning of the third week of the mutiny, with no sign of Allied airdrops of paratroops or food and ammunition, or of requested Allied bombing of the coastal guns and and other German positions, with ammunition running low and local Resistance volunteers having been disengaged, the Georgian commander, Lieutenant Schalwa Loladze, ordered his men to break out of fixed positions, to form fighting groups and to begin partisan warfare.

Around that time Loladze, a former Red Army captain, and several fellow Georgians were sleeping in a ditch alongside a farmer's field. The farmer panicked over a possible reprisal so told the Germans about the Georgians. A German patrol shot Loladze and his sleeping band. The Germans did not know that they had killed Loladze as they soon afterwards put up posters offering a reward for his capture or death.

In that week, the Germans re-took the airfield and the lighthouse became the scene of a bloody battle. The Germans, who could not take the lighthouse because of the murderous fire of the 80 or so Georgians, called in a team of mainland sappers from a Hermann Goering Division unit. Meanwhile over 30 Georgians escaped either from that structure or from defensive positions nearby and, slipping through a minefield which they reportedly had re-arranged, took shelter in nearby sand dunes. It is worth noting, because of disagreement on the alleged truth of this, that other Georgians around the island claimed to have re-arranged minefields both to scare away the Germans and to render beaches safe for a Allled landing.

The Hermann Goering Division sappers, protected by suppressing fire from heavy machine guns, placed satchel charges against and blew in the Texel lighthouse's heavy wooden door. German troops quickly took the lighthouse, shooting stunned and wounded Georgians as they found them. Some Georgians had already leapt to their deaths from the top of the building. Captured survivors were made to dig a trench, to strip off their German Army uniforms and, under Wehrmacht martial law and following a Hitler Bunker order to exterminate all mutineers, were executed.

The Germans were angry, too because (a) the Georgians had executed 8 German officers, including their Naval Padre, who had been taken prisoner and had given their parole not to try to escape and (b) the Georgians had captured a group of German pioneer troops whom they locked in a 'barracks', near the lighthouse, which was sprayed with kerosene and set on fire. Any German soldier trying to escape the inferno was shot. The Germans' 1945 Texel Graves Registration Officer wrote a post-war report - requested by the German Navy HQ - in which he said that the above Germans had included men he had known but that many of the bodies were severely charred and unrecogisable,

From the very start both sides engaged in atrocities and the fighting was brutal.

Having brought in 2,000 reinforcements the Germans formed a huge, coast - to -coast, dragnet line with a soldier or sailor every few metres and began a bottom to top sweeping search of the island. Many Georgians were hiding in woodlands, in sand dunes and in the barns, ditches, haystacks and homes of Dutch farmers and townsfolk; many of those hiding in coastal areas in or near minefields escaped capture but others were found and shot or hung. Any Dutch folk found harbouring a Georgian were themselves shot and their homes destroyed. The Germans also executed a dozen or so Dutch hostages and buried them in a sand dunes mass grave.

From the beginning of April until the belated arrival on Texel on 18 May 1945 of troops from a Canadian Army artillery unit, the Georgians kept up a lively partisan campaign. Eventually, a fragile agreement was reached; the Germans could come and go in daytime and the Georgians could move freely at night. However, when a Allied reconnaissance team reconnoitred Texel on 17 May 1945 they found, said the Canadian regiment War Diary, 'sporadic shooting' by both sides and saw a wounded Georgian in a minefield.

Some Georgians might, as individuals, have surrendered to the Germans but at no time did the 822nd Georgia Infantry Battalion surrender as a unit.

After the German 25th Army in North-West Holland and other German units surrendered to the Allies, whose signatories included Holland's Prince Bernhardt, on 05 May 1945 Texel's German commandant refused to surrender either to the Dutch Resistance or to the Georgian partisans. Eventually, sometime between 19th and 21st May 1945, the commandant did surrender but only after the Canadians brought over their local commander and a large car with senior German officers.

When the Canadians arrived both the Germans and the Georgians refused to voluntarily disarm while their opponents remained on the island and were armed. During the 2-day evacuation of the Germans from Texel there continued a series of small, sometimes violent and one potentially critical clashes between the Germans and their Georgian adversaries. Texel's main garrison force of 900 or so German marines were allowed to evacuate with their personal weapons.

They were later disarmed and searched on the quayside in Den Helder, where the Canadians had to call on the Resistance to help them disarm and search the marines while also helping the Royal Navy to search, embark and guard 2000 German Navy / Kriegsmarine personnel who, unlike the 25th Army's Wehrmacht troops who were mostly walking to Germany and who all passed through Den Helder, were being sent home by sea. A number of German troops were the exception to that rule, being transferred from Den Helder to a port north of the Zuider Zee sea dyke in landing craft.

The Georgians should have been evacuated from Texel on 22 May 1945 but were not. Instead, while policing themselves and retaining their weapons, they were billeted in a building, a hotel of sorts, named 'Kalifornia' and remained on Texel until the 17th of June 1945. In addition to refusing to disarm until the Germans had gone the Georgians had also told the Canadians that they would not disarm or voluntarily leave Texel until the Canadians could provide proof of having spoken on the Georgians' behalf to the Red Army.

Unlike thousands of fellow Georgians, Stalin's fellow countrymen, who had also donned German uniform but had not conducted a revolt, and in keeping with other Georgians in other countries who had shot and killed their German officers and NCOs before going over to the Allies or to the partisans but were still mistreated by the Soviet regime upon their homeward return, the survivors of the 822nd Georgia Battalion mutiny were worried that in spite of their uprising and of the loss in combat or other causes of 476 of their number, Stalin and his NKVD secret police henchmen might still regard and treat them as 'renegades, traiors and deserters'.

While on Texel they were visited respectively by 'American' and Red Army intellligence officers who had variously offered them service in American - backed special forces units fighting against Soviet occupation forces in Eastern Europe and American passports and, also, a safe return to the Soviet motherland and an audience with Joseph Stalin. Initially dazzled by these offers the Texel Mutiny survivors were tempted but seem mostly to have refused the offers. They were particularly concerned about any Soviet reprisals which might, if they refused to go home, be imposed upon their families in Georgia.

This writer, for the record, has, with others, long believed that the Western Allies and Soviet military intelligence deliberately blurred the number of Georgian war dead and survivors, that some of the Georgians may have accepted the above offers and that some may, during the mutiny, have escaped to the Dutch mainland and been helped to reach Paris and Spain. These suggestions are strongly opposed by some Dutch observers. Only time and lucky access to documentary proof of the Germans' battalion personnel lists for 06 April 1945 will bring closure to that argument.

While discussing numbers it is worth repeating, and using the number lost as a measure of commitment and of the mutineers' claimed continuing loyalty to Jospeh Stalin and the Red Army, that the 822nd Georgia Battalion lost 2/3rds of its number in the Texel rebellion. At no time, however, did the battalion surrender and between 220 and perhaps up to 250 Georgians survived the fighting. It was therefore NOT 'destroyed'. Most of the Georgians refused to accept 'American' offers of a new life. They were willing to risk Stalin's wrath by returning to Soviet custody and they returned to Georgia on most of their journey as a cohesive unit.

Again for the record, while the Texel Mutiny survivors were waiting to be repatriated some did ask the Dutch authorities if they could be granted residence and work visas. The Dutch said no, that the Georgians must firstly return to the USSR then apply for visas via the Soviet bureaucracy.

It is also worth noting that while America, Britain, France and Belgium signed the February 1945 Yalta Conference secret agreements binding those nations to the compulsory return to the USSR of all Soviet citizens liberated or captured by the Western Allies, Holland did not sign that document and could have made the Texel Georgians' repatriation a messy affair. Many Soviet nationals repatriated from Holland had, for example, firstly to go to Belgium and from thence by ship to Odessa or by land through Germany to Soviet-occupied East Germany.

However, the Georgians were having to be fed from Texel food stocks and this was causing resentment. The Dutch government also wanted rid of the Georgians, in Canadian eyes so-called 'heroes' and 'valiant alllies',and wrote to the British Foreign Office and the War Office asking for their removal. Some time after their evacuation the Soviet authorities also wrote to Whitehall, this time asking about '1000' Soviet nationals, ex-Red Army personnel, who were allegedly being held on Texel against their will. So much political dust was kicked up regarding the Texel Georgians that the UK government discussed launching an investigation. For reasons unknown the matter was quietly dropped.

On 17th June 1945 the Texel Georgians were finally evacuated, disarmed and began their long jouney of repatriation to their Caucasus Mountains homeland. Shipped from Texel to Den Helder on the local ferry boat, they were lined up onn a quayside and were read a letter about the Georgians' mutiny which the commander of the Canadian Army's 1st Corps had the day before sent to the Red Army General Staff. The letter described the Georgians and their rebellion in glowing terms and strongly urged the Red Army High Command to receive the Georgians as heroes and to immediately rehabilitate them.

On 21st June, after a journey through Holland and Germany which this writer, after 21 years' research is still investigating, the Georgians finally arrived at a Canadian Sector transit camp for Soviet nationals on the outskirts of the German port of Wilhelmshaven. Cutting a long story short, they were repatriated from Canadian jurisdiction and returned to Soviet custody, George Mamoulia shared with me, in late-August 1945.

As for the Canadians' call for their rehabilitation, it can be said that in September 1945, in a Soviet Repatriation Mission camp in the north of Soviet-occupied East Germany, shortly after the Georgians' repatriation via Magdeburg and after two months in their Wilhelmshaven transit camp, two Soviet High Command officers interviewed and rehabilitated the Texel Mutiny survivors. Additional information held by this writer about the September process was supplied by Georges Mamoulia.

After a long and at times worrying journey through Eastern Europe - documented by various UK, Dutch, Russian and Georgian writers - and across the Black Sea to Azerbaijan, the Georgians mostly arrived home in early-mid 1946. In that year the Soviet newspaper 'Pravda' called them 'Soviet patriots' and published a British Foreign Office apology for the Allies' 1945 failure to support their uprising.

Mostly left alone by the secret police, some were placed under temporary house arrest. As Texel Mutiny eye witness Maria de Graaf said to this writer one stupid man who had brought back an ordinary transistor radio and boasted to fellow villagers that he was a Western spy was thrown into prison. The veterans otherwise enjoyed a calm enough existence. In 1947, during a Communist Party purge, in contrast, some of the survivors were tried by tribunals and sentenced to imprisonment in labour camps. The main camp, as, our dispute aside, Georges Mamoulia, kindly told me, was in Novo-Sibirsk.

In the mid-1950's, following an amnesty declared by Nikita Kruschev, the Texel veterans and thousands of others who had served in German uniform were rehabilitated and released. A few years later about half of the Texel mutineers attended a reunion in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi.

Five years ago, to mark the 60th anniversary of the rebellion, the Georgian president and his Dutch wife, supported by the Metropolitan head of the Georgian Orthodox Church, visited the Georgian War Cemetery on Texel and formally recognised the rebellion and the 476 Georgian mutineers.

A short step or two from the single grave of their wartime leader Schalwa Loladze, the 822nd battalion's many fallen Georgian rebels lie buried in long mass graves - beneath richly red flowers and flanked by tall, sighing, dark green cypress trees - commemorated by a pink granite, 1950's, marble monumental stone and slate-coloured metal relief panels one of which bears a lyrical salute and a profile of Joseph Stalin.

65 years later, the good folk of Texel and Texel Mutiny historians remain divided as to the motives, status and value as icons of the above men and their 1945 rebellion. Dutch relatives of those civilians killed during the rebellion question why the Georgians had to wait until so close to the end of the war to rise up against their German overseers. Some ask why the rebellion had to happen at all. Other Texelaars say that the Georgians were, indeed, 'heroes' and 'valiant allies' and that civilian casualties are an unavoidable price of war.

Researchers and mutiny specialists like this writer and Georges Mamoulia, can collaborate with research but remain divided about the Texel Georgians.

I view the Georgians' leaders and uprising as brave allies forced by circumstance to launch a bloody and unavoidable insurrection against greatly superior forces while George Mamoulia has variously accused its leaders of being communist extremists and 'war criminals' who executed a fellow, pro-German officer and committed atrocities against German soldiers.

One of those1945 Georgian leaders, Yevgenny Artemidze, was, says George, interrogated by the Soviet secret police in 1947 and denounced as pro-Nazi a wartime battalion officer.

The official Soviet correspondence about the interrogation report, which, thank you, George, I have seen, clearly says that Artemidze denounced the above officer. The officer was later tried for treason, was sentenced to 20 years' hard labour in Stalin's notorious Gulag prison camp system and eventually died in one of those camps..a death which George believe made Artemidze guilty of facilitating a murder.

Pro-rebellion sources, meantime, whether aware or not of the above acusations, continue to promote the Canadians' 1945 view of the mutiny, that the Texel Georgians' uprising was a timely diversion which pinned down more than 2000 German soldiers, caused over 2,000 German casualties (later figures suggest 800) and ultimately saved many Allied lives. The high number of Georgian casualties has also compelled many observers to assume a sober, supportive view of their revolt.

Whichever view readers of this missive share there can be no doubt that the Texel Mutiny was, especially as Europe's Last Battle, a pivotal event against which the modern writer and reader can view the still widely vexing issues of the horrific conditions in which hundreds of thouands of captured Red Army soldiers felt desperately forced to enlist in the German Army's ethnic legions and, also, of the equally horrific reprisals which awaited many of the German Army Soviet volunteers and conscripts compulsorily repatriated by the Western Allies.

Ends: Copyright: Alan Newark, 21 March 2011
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