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Podcast: New Books in German Studies
Episode: Eric Lee, "The Night of the Bayonets: The Texel Uprising and Hitler's Revenge, April–May 1945" (Greenhill Books, 2020)
Description: Eric Lee's new book The Night of the Bayonets: The Texel Uprising and Hitler's Revenge, April–May 1945 (Greenhill Books, 2020) tells the story of the events leading up to the little-known revolt of Georgian Wehrmacht recruits against the Germans on the island of Texel, which was part of the Atlantic Wall fortifications off the Dutch coast. These Georgians had been captured as POWs and recruited into or “volunteered” for the Georgian Legion, a Wehrmacht unit made up of former Soviet Georgian troops, often given the choice to join or die. They served unreliably on the Eastern Front before being transferred to the...