Louis De Jong - The German Fifth Column in the Second World War

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ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
GERMAN HISTORY

Volume 25

THE GERMAN FIFTH COLUMN IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR

THE GERMAN FIFTH COLUMN IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR

LOUIS DE JONG
TRANSLATED BY C. M. GEYL

First published in English in 1956 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.

This edition first published in 2020
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

1956 English translation Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-367-02813-8 (Set)
ISBN: 978-0-429-27806-8 (Set) (ebk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-24628-0 (Volume 25) (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-28359-8 (Volume 25) (ebk)

Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

The German Fifth Column in the Second World War

by

LOUIS DE JONG

Translated from the Dutch by

C. M. GEYL

De Duitse Vijfde Colonne in de Tweede Wereldoorlog
First published in Holland 1953

Revised edition, translated into English and first published 1956
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited
Broadway House, Carter Lane, E.C.4
Printed in Great Britain
by Butler & Tanner Limited
Frome and London

I N 1949 the International Council of Philosophic and Humanistic Studies, a body affiliated to Unesco, requested the State Institute for War Documentation at Amsterdam to contribute to a history of national socialist Germany and fascist Italy, to be written by historians from various countries. The subject was to be the so-called German Fifth Column. The request was acceded to; the Board of Directors of the Institute entrusted me with the task of writing the required study, which (a comparatively short piece) was finished in the last half of 1951.

At first I had confined myself to forming an idea of the intrigues carried out by the Germans outside Germany (usually summed up under the term Fifth Column work), first from the literature on the subject and afterwards from other sources as well. At a later stage it struck me that, especially as regards the war years, the contrast between the activities ascribed to the German Fifth Column and its actual work constituted a problem in itself of general importance.

Thus a book came about that fell into three parts almost of its own accord.

The first part (Fear) sketches how, after 1933, those outside Germany began to become increasingly afraid of sinister operations on the part of German agents and the partisans of national socialism; how this fear developed into a veritable panic each time Hitler passed on to a fresh deed of aggression; and finally how the conceptions born of fear and panic were embodied in what was written later on.

Numerous examples will be found later in this book of the mysterious omnipotence ascribed to the German Fifth Column. Here, however, I should like to quote a description given by a level-headed American journalist in order to conjure up a picture of what was, I believe, a fairly generally accepted view in most of the Western countries in the years in which Hitler, dizzy with success, stood at the very height of his power. It came from the pen of Otto Tolischus in the week in whichafter Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, LuxemburgFrance in turn lay in her agony:

Functions of the fifth column may be divided into peacetime and wartime activities. In peacetime chief functions consist in creating propaganda which is not always merely pro-German or pro-Nazi, in supplying detailed information on commercial, industrial and political activities and national morale which, when collated in Berlin, gives a complete picture of every countrys life; in maintaining surveillance of important citizens of the host land; in outright espionage and, above all, in preparation for an emergency to the point of training shock troops for the first blow. In this work the fifth column skilfully utilises all the social, political and idealistic ambitions and aspirations of various elements of the host land to lull that land in a false sense of security, undermine its defence preparations and sow political, class and racial dissensions.

Its wartime activities were disclosed with startling results especially in Poland, Norway and the Netherlands. But for wartime activities the fifth column usually is reinforced with determined men from Germany herself, who come in many disguises, principally as tourists, sportsmen, commercial agents and cultural representatives, and often carry their uniforms in their suitcases. They take charge of previously organised resident armies, which, often in disguise or in the uniforms of the enemys own forces, seize strategic points, reinforce parachute troops, organise espionage and sabotage behind the enemys lines and throw confusion into the enemy army and population through false orders and reports.

This general picture which Tolischus sketched tallies with the ideas which had arisen about the German Fifth Column in all the countries which Hitler had successively attacked: Poland in September, 1939; Denmark and Norway in April, 1940; the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg and France in May, 1940. But these ideas existed elsewhere too: in England, in the United States, in the republics of Central and South America, in the Balkans and, after the invasion at least, also in the Soviet Union.

How far were these ideas in keeping with reality? Was German propaganda really so all-powerful and their espionage really so omniscient? Had the Germans who lived in the states with which Germany was at war formed groups in order to attack the armies of those states in the rear, and were those groups reinforced by persons who arrived from Germany in disguise so as to be able to carry out deeds of sabotage, to spread false orders and to sow panic? Did this military German Fifth Column actually exist during the war?

Otto D. Tolischus, How Hitler made ready. I. The Fifth Column, New York Times Magazines June 16, 1940.

We shall look for the answers to these and similar questions in the

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