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Interesting article in the Telegraph about British collaborators who, once captured, decided to work for the Nazis.<\/p>\n
We all know the story of the escape attempt from\u00a0 Stalag Luft III (Air prison 3) near Sagan, immortalized as “The Great Escape”.\u00a0 Recently, it has come to light that one of the escape participants, Desmond Plunkett,\u00a0 maintained that the escape was not foiled due to bad luck or ending short of the trees as the book and film suggest, but that two British collaborators betrayed the scheme to the Germans voluntarily.<\/p>\n
Now, collaboration is a fact of life in camps – there are always those who are happier in a camp than escaping, sympathize with the enemy, whatever – any image one may have of the entire camp population working selflessly in harmony to support escapes , dreaming of their shot, is a Pollyanna-esque fantasy. Real world: even in a fairly clearly morally defined war like WWII, only about a third of the POWs even participated in an escape. Worse:<\/p>\n
Packed into a wooden theatre were several hundred Allied prisoners of war watched over by their German guards. Suddenly, heads turned and a hush fell. Two men, dressed in the uniform of the dreaded Waffen-SS, entered the room and walked down the aisle.<\/p>\n
Some noticed that there was something strange about their SS uniforms. On the men\u2019s left sleeves had been sewn Union Flag shields. There were three lions from the Royal Standard on their right collar tabs and the words \u201cBritish Free Corps\u201d had been stitched on their left cuffs.<\/p>\n
The two men mounted the stage and one of them started to speak in perfect English.<\/p>\n
The prisoners were stunned. Many were tempted to tear up the leaflets but others advised against it, suggesting that with the shortage of lavatory paper they could be put to better use.<\/p>\n
It was the spring of 1944, and the Germans were so desperate to find soldiers to fight on the Eastern Front they had launched a campaign to recruit from the ranks of Allied POWs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The “British Free Corps”. Collaborators. Traitors. Switched sides opportunistically. In any just world, dead men walking.<\/p>\n
For the most part, BFC members were either fascists or simpletons, pathetic individuals for whom concepts such as decency held little currency. Of all of them, the example of Thomas Cooper serves well to illustrate the treacherous journey these renegades took.<\/p>\n
Deeply frustrated, Cooper decided to join Sir\u00a0Oswald Mosley\u2019s Blackshirt movement in 1938, and he was soon blaming the Jews for his lack of success in the job market. In the spring of 1939, he went to Germany to find employment. Despite his fluency in German, he could find only occasional work as a farm labourer or English teacher. With the outbreak of war, Cooper found himself joining the German army. His application was noticed by a senior SS officer who invited him to join the elite SS fighting force in early 1940.<\/p>\n
By his own account Cooper performed admirably, but it was an excellence of the most horrific and criminal sort. He would later tell his fellow British traitors that he had shot 200 Poles and 80 Jews during a single day in Warsaw. His injuries won him the Silver Wound Badge, making him the only Englishman to win a German combat decoration during the war.\u00a0\u00a0 The Telegraph<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Well worth a read. The good part? Only 57 actually joined the BFC, never more than 20 in it at one time. The bad part – none were executed after the war.<\/p>\n
If you see no similarities to the would-be collaborators selling out to China or Russia, or filling the streets with pro-Islamist demonstrations… you seriously need to get your eyes checked.<\/p>\n
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Seems an appropriate topic today, my history-buff wife’s birthday is today (and it’s a biggie). We will not discuss the number. Happy Birthday, my love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"