The Last Japanese Soldier to surrender (in 1974!): https://youtu.be/l1-svU-5fFc
On the 7th of May 1945, the German General Alfred Jodl signed the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany at the Allied headquarters in Reims, France. It meant the Second World War had come to an end, at least, in the European theatre of war.
But… the war didn’t end for a small Wehrmacht unit consisting of 11 men that were housed at Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. The Wehrmacht unit was tasked with a secret mission named Operation Haudegen. They had to establish meteorological stations on Svalbard. In the chaos following the German capitulation, this Wehrmacht unit was forgotten… And these men would eventually, stuck on an island in the freezing cold, far from civilization, months after Germany’s capitulation. They would become the last German soldiers to surrender after the Second World War.
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Time Codes:
1:02 Wilhelm Dege
3:16 Operation Haudegen
6:38 Life on Svalbard
8:28 The Forgotten Wehrmacht Unit
10:34 Aftermath
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The content of this video covers events, people or concepts via a lecture-style presentation that is educational and historical in nature. Every video is original content by House of History. The events relating to conflict in this video are portrayed in their historical context without either value judgment or an ideological message attached to it. There is no intent to shock, upset or disgust. The goal of my channel is to make interesting lecture-style videos, no more, no less.
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Sources:
Photos, paintings and imagery: Public Domain, Wikicommons
Photographs of Operation Haudegen: Dr. Eckhardt Dege.
Der Spiegel Article: https://www.spiegel.de/einestages/kriegsende-in-der-arktis-a-946659.html
WHO Article: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/lieutenant-wilhelm-dege-the-last.html
NOS Article: https://nos.nl/artikel/2055843-de-vergeten-wehrmacht-eenheid-van-spitsbergen.html
#HouseofHistory #History #ww2
After twelve gruelling months surviving Polar bear attacks and being under constant threat of British Commando ambushes, they were ordered to destroy all their scientific and communications equipment.
1891: Fritz Todt, Axis engineer, was born. 1909: Eduard Wirths, chief SS doctor at Auschwitz, was…born…today. 1939: The Third Reich suffered its first assault from the Royal Air Force. 1941: A Reich submarine assaulted a United States warship, the USS Greer. This was one of the earliest instances of a Fascist empire making a move against its Yankee competitor. 1944: The Axis lost the Belgian city of Antwerp to the British 11th Armoured Division, and Finland exited from the war with the Soviet Union. Simultaneously, the Third Reich executed one of its generals, Fritz Erich Fellgiebel, for conspiring against the head of sate.
