Englandspiel Tragedy

The Englandspiel was a counter-espionage operation set up by the Germans that lasted from March 1942 to April 1944. Secret agents of the SOE who had been dropped over the Netherlands were often arrested immediately upon landing and forced to maintain radio contact with England. Despite hidden warnings in their broadcast messages, British intelligence continued to send secret agents, eventually over 50 of them were murdered in captivity. The majority in Mauthausen.

Churchill had set up the SOE in 1940 to “set Europe ablaze”, by helping the resistance movements in occupied countries. At its peak it had some 10,000 men and 3,200 women working for it, running agents and arranging resistance and sabotage behind enemy lines. The organisation had many successes, especially in France, but it had some failures, of which the disaster in the Netherlands was by far the worst.

Recently released records show that poor leadership of the…