X Troops : The secret Jewish Commandos of WW2 by Leah Garrett 2021 330pg

This is the story of British Jews who escaped the Nazis or were kinder train children.3/10/21

They were Jewish refugees from Germany , Hungary and Austria 87 men to wreak havoc against the German's. They fought in France, Sicily, Italy, Greece,  Yugoslavia, Albania and Netherlands.

Interned at Warth Mills Camp in Bury Greater Manchester, Prees Heath outside Shrewsbury in tents. Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man had 14000 inmates. Including Arthur Koestler and Fred Uhlman.

The HMS Ettrick had 1307 internees and in the hold, 1345 German POWs who were protected by the Geneva Convention in cabins  but they were not, to Canada.

1940 The HMY Dunera 2732 internees on board on a trip to Australia that took 54 days.  Sigmund Freuds grandson Walter Freud was there as well as  Ulrich Boschwich. They were treated so badly that when the Australian authorities saw the conditions the anti-semantic officer in charge was court marshalled. 

1905 UK Aliens Act and 1914 Aliens Restriction Act

1938  March Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg was apposed  to unification with Germany and had to resign. Austria and Germany played against each in the Soccer World Cup and Austria won this was a protest against  unification, even though the game was meant to be a draw. Later. 9 Austrian players were in the Nazi team in Paris but with the antifascist protests they lost heavily Later on the rigged vote got Nazi approval of the Anschluss.

1939 3 Sept there were 70 000 UK residents from Germany Austria 55,000 of them were Jews.  There were nearly 10 000 Kindertrain orphans in the UK.  The Enemy Alien could volunteer for the Pioneer Corp and those in Australia could get back to England by volunteering for this, there task would be clearing roads, building bridges and basic tasks to prepare for war. When the Pioneer Corp volunteered for active military they were refused. One passed a pilots course but was turned down when he was found to be an enemy alien. They also did fire watch duty, clear bomb damage and build camps for the arrival of the Americans.

There were many foreign troops units in the UK but Mountbatten wanted a special unit of German speakers. This was kept secret and only 6 men knew about it. They had to take on English names and pretend to be British some did it with the help of a phone book.

1942 Dieppe Raid  August 300 ships 700 aircraft and 6000 troops mostly Canadian invaded but the German navy saw them and the Germans were ready for them.  there were X troops sent with them. It is now believed that on of the objectives was to get a 4 rotor enigma machine and code books for Bletchley Park. This was one of the worst blunder in WW2 63% of the Canadian were dead missing captured.  Lieutenant George Lane was captured in France and taken to see Rommel and is sent to a POW camp where the other prisoners thought he is a stooge . He had to go to the British officer in charge and he had to confirm he was a British. Meanwhile he described where Rommel's base. which was Chateau de la Roche Guyon with the result RAF Spitfires shot at Rommel's car and he had injuries.

The X troops were taken to Aberdovey for training and trained on Mount Snowden, facts about them were kept secret. Trained in many forms of field survival and warfare and billited in the local homes so got to know the Welsh residents who they met at weekly dances held there, as well as the Welsh novelist Bertha Ruck.  Other foreign troops had national identities and songs but not them they had to keep the ruse that they were British. The less they knew about their foreign identition the better in case they were captured.They also trained for 3 weeks in Achnacarry Scotland.

The Allies had retaken North Africa and were getting control of Sicily and the Suez Canal was now secure.

1943 May. At the Trident conference the Allies agreed with Churchill that they should knock Italy out of the war. They also needed a second front against German to relieve pressure on Russia. Some X troops saw action in Italy.

Before the Normandy invasion commanders landed at Normandy to check out the "New type" of mines on the beach. German mines were in the water on stakes but the salt water corroded theri safety pins and when the RAF bombed they went off in a chain reaction.

1944 July. X Troops in vaded the Island of Vis as a diversionary move and joined Tito partisans there so that the Germans were not ready for them when they invaded Sicily. Evelyn Waugh was there on the island.

X Trooper Corporal Gerald Nichols because his Aryan looks had a blond appearance in the 1936 Olympics and appeared in Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda film Olympia.

General Bernard Montgomery was popular with the troops despite what his superiors thought of him, his success in N. Africa went to his head. He warned the soldiers for Normandy to advance from the beach and not stay there. On sappers blowing their way through the German steel barricade an X Trooper found Germans capitulating and asked them the way through the minefields and led the troops on. Some of the POWs  only spoke Russian and Polish.

D day had been more successful than the Allies had hoped. However supplies took time as they had to assemble 2 Mulberry harbours and learn how to get tanks through the bocage - the high thick hedges. There were Sherman flail tanks that exploded mines. At a German bunker they saw a periscope and smashed off the top and put a phosphorus hand grenade in and 200 Germans charged out and put up their hands. Eventually these Jewish refugees were trusted enough to be given top roles.On had even been a the best German military boarding school.

Af 41 X trroops who landed on D day 27 had been killed wounded or taken prisoner.

They captured a German soldier who had been put into a punishment batalian and was prepared to draw a map of German positions and where mines were laid. 

Corfu had to be captured as it was strategic. A few months before the Jews had been taken away. The X  troops were welcomed by Greeks and under a flag of truce managed to persuade the garrison to surrender without firing a shot.

1944 November 1st Antwerp was the mouth of the Shield River, the Germans had a heavily armed Island of Walcheren This was quite a costly invasion adn only 2 of the tanks had got through but the dyke had been breached and water poured in. The X trooper called to the Germans come out and surrender before our tanks start shooting. They found supplies of food here to feed everyone around. Now the Antwerp Shipping lanes were open could be used to transport troops far into Europe. Many X troops would have got battle field commissions be Montgomery was against this.

Hitler realized the importance of Antwerp and launched the failed Battle of the Bulge as a counter offensive to get this.

 

After capturing Wesel the soldiers moved onto Osnabruck where an X trooper on a jeep negotiated the surrender of the entire German garrison and the news reel show the jeep single handedly leading hundreds of surrendering soldiers. Many officers wanted their troops to surrender to the American and not the Russians. When the Germans talked of the Russian looting and destruction they said yes but the Germans had done worse in Poland and Russia.

1945 April 4th The last push of the war to drive the Germans out of Northern Italy.

Heirich Himmler had released 1200 Jewish prisoner from Theresienstadt in exchange for 5 million Swiss Franks that Jewish organizations had collected.  Manfred Gans had heard that his parents who were hiding in the Netherland had been taken to Theresienstadt. He arranged a jeep and driver and documents and drove from Holland through parts of Germany he knew well and into Czechoslovakia through the American lines and to Russian occupied areas, he found Jewish Russian officers who spoke Yiddish and in Theresenstad found on the list that his parents were there and met them. They were high value citizens who could be used for exchange blackmail. Seeing a British officer indicated for the Russians that the war was over as they could never rely on the propaganda news the got. When he got back to Holland had a direct meeting with Princess Juliana and she arranged for Dutch citizens in Theresienstadt to be repatriated.

1945 May 7th was VE day Demobilized British soldiers had homes to go back to but the X troops were not even naturalized British citizens.  18 X troopers were commissioned during the war and were picked for the denazification programs and hunting Nazis. The Russians were dismantling factories and moving them east while refugees were moving into the Allied sector.

FIAT the Agency Technical sought to exploit German scientific advances. Colin Anson whose mother was alive had been treated badly by her coworkers and friends as she refused to divorce her Jewish husband. He had to translate documents from Albert Speers Ministry of armaments and war production.

Near Munster a number of SS had hidden as inmates of an insane asylum. Manfred Gans in Brocken arrested his school biology teacher who had introduced anti-Semitic initiatives into the town and school.

Polish and French troops received  naturalized papers during the war. Only in 1946 did Mountbatten explain about these hush hush troops. Most of the UK X troops embraced the new names and lived as Brits and frequently raised their children as Anglican but had to explain to their children how they had a Jewish cousin. However 2 who had family in the States reverted to the birth names and remained Jewish.

In the town of Aberdovey (Aberdyfi) in Wales a plaque stands for the 22 killed in action and refers to 86 German speaking troops who trained there it does not mention that all except 7 were Jewish. The X troops were a means for them to get roots again.

The authors previous book was The Young Lions about how Jewish servicemen such as Herman Wouk , Joseph Heller, Norman Mailer and Leon Uris taught American about WW2 and the holocaust.