The Georgian Uprising of Texel (April 5, 1945–May 20, 1945) was an insurrection by a battalion of Soviet Georgian soldiers on Texel (pronounced Tessel) against the German occupiers of that Dutch island during World War II. It is sometimes described as Europe's last battlefield.
The island had become a pivotal point in the German Atlantic Wall and was heavily fortified. The Georgians were soldiers from the Soviet Republic of Georgia captured on the Eastern front, who were now fighting instead for the enemy Germans (that is, they were ex-POWs who had chosen to defect rather than starve in the German POW camps) and were stationed on the island in a prisoner-of-war camp serving as auxiliary troops against Germany's enemies.
On the night of April 5-6, 1945, expecting an Allied landing soon, they rose against the Germans and took control of the island for a short while (approximately 400 Germans lost their lives that night), but they failed to capture the naval batteries on the north and the south of the island. Thus they were unable to stop German reinforcements from being brought in. The Germans launched a counter offensive supported by armour from the Dutch mainland and retook the island after weeks of very tough fighting.
During this Russian war (as it is known on Texel) approximately 800 Germans, 570 Georgians, and 120 Tesselans were killed. The destruction was enormous; dozens of farms went up in flames. The pointless bloodshed lasted beyond the German capitulation in the Netherlands and Denmark on May 5, 1945, and Germany's general surrender on May 8, 1945. Not until May 20, 1945 were Canadian troops able to pacify "Europe’s last battlefield."
The fallen Georgians lie buried in a ceremonial cemetery at the Hogeberg near Oudeschild. The survivors did not have a happy ending: pursuant to the terms of the Yalta Conference, they were forcibly repatriated by the Allies from the German POW camp to the Soviet Union. Stalin considered the POWs' initial capture by the Germans, or surrender to them, as treason because the soldier did not fight to the death, so most of the two million Soviet POWs who were sent back to the Soviet Union by the Allied forces after the end of the war were executed upon their return.
The final resting places of Allied flight crews can be found in the community cemetery in Den Burg .
A permanent exhibition about this event is in the Aeronautical Museum at the island's airport.
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