The Resistance (1939-1945) in a few documentaries (2)
Englandspiel ("England Game") was a catastrophic World War II counterintelligence operation in the Netherlands, running from 1942 to 1944. German intelligence (the Abwehr) captured British operators, almost all with the Dutch nationality, forced them to transmit using their own radios and codes, and duped somehow the entire British military establishment into parachuting over 50 more highly trained people directly into the hands of the Germans.
The Gestapo thus also could successfully infiltrated the entire communication pipeline between local resistance cells and the Dutch government-in-exile in London, turning the whole setup into a death trap for anyone operating with the help of the British. Working entirely in the dark, local resistance people realized their own radio channels were compromised, severely hampering their ability to plan any coordinated operation against the Nazi occupation.
Because the radio operators were required to make deliberate, pre-arranged mistakes or security checks —which the Germans also forced them to send— London was theoretically warned that the agents were compromised. Moreover, because the Germans flawlessly mimicked Allied communications, the British authorities mistakenly blamed the Dutch resistance for the leaks, leading to severe Allied distrust.
In the separate documentary "Churchill's Secret Army" (or the Special Operations Executive that was in charge of continuing the war on the continent in the various occupied European countries), one recounts how a captured wireless operator even ended a telegraphic radio communication with "HH", which stood for Heil Hitler and was the usual closing for German communications.
Despite all these clues, British intelligence and government ignored the warnings and kept on sending weapons, supplies, and more agents according to the messages via the operators. Englandspiel became a terrible catastrophe for SOE and the Dutch resistance, "a textbook illustration, the world over, in how not to conduct clandestine work" as the above mentioned documentary described it.
Fifty-four agents sent from England were captured by the Germans and only four survived. Fifty were executed or died in concentration camps. Some of the officials of the Dutch government-in-exile in London refused to cooperate with SOE when the details of Englandspiel were finally made known to them. They were ordered, however, to do so by Prince Bernhard, and a fresh start was made in mid-to-late 1944 under a new leadership.
Conspiracy theories in the Netherlands after the war alleged that a traitor inside SOE caused Englandspiel and that Dutch agents were sacrificed to conceal allied plans for an invasion of the Netherlands. "For many, it was simply impossible to fathom how the devastation caused by das Englandspiel could have been the result of stupidity and ineptness" is what Lynn Olson in own her book 'Last Hope Island' concluded.
[media=https://youtu.be/A7zU2hjltuc]
The Gestapo thus also could successfully infiltrated the entire communication pipeline between local resistance cells and the Dutch government-in-exile in London, turning the whole setup into a death trap for anyone operating with the help of the British. Working entirely in the dark, local resistance people realized their own radio channels were compromised, severely hampering their ability to plan any coordinated operation against the Nazi occupation.
Because the radio operators were required to make deliberate, pre-arranged mistakes or security checks —which the Germans also forced them to send— London was theoretically warned that the agents were compromised. Moreover, because the Germans flawlessly mimicked Allied communications, the British authorities mistakenly blamed the Dutch resistance for the leaks, leading to severe Allied distrust.
In the separate documentary "Churchill's Secret Army" (or the Special Operations Executive that was in charge of continuing the war on the continent in the various occupied European countries), one recounts how a captured wireless operator even ended a telegraphic radio communication with "HH", which stood for Heil Hitler and was the usual closing for German communications.
Despite all these clues, British intelligence and government ignored the warnings and kept on sending weapons, supplies, and more agents according to the messages via the operators. Englandspiel became a terrible catastrophe for SOE and the Dutch resistance, "a textbook illustration, the world over, in how not to conduct clandestine work" as the above mentioned documentary described it.
Fifty-four agents sent from England were captured by the Germans and only four survived. Fifty were executed or died in concentration camps. Some of the officials of the Dutch government-in-exile in London refused to cooperate with SOE when the details of Englandspiel were finally made known to them. They were ordered, however, to do so by Prince Bernhard, and a fresh start was made in mid-to-late 1944 under a new leadership.
Conspiracy theories in the Netherlands after the war alleged that a traitor inside SOE caused Englandspiel and that Dutch agents were sacrificed to conceal allied plans for an invasion of the Netherlands. "For many, it was simply impossible to fathom how the devastation caused by das Englandspiel could have been the result of stupidity and ineptness" is what Lynn Olson in own her book 'Last Hope Island' concluded.
[media=https://youtu.be/A7zU2hjltuc]
