20. Manfred Gans and X Troop

This episode explores the intriguing story of Manfred Gans and his involvement with X Troop, an elite secret unit of commandos during World War II.

1. Manfred Gans, a German Jew, changed his identity to join an elite British commando unit, X Troop, to fight against the Nazis.
2. X Troop consisted of Jewish refugees who performed crucial roles in intelligence and combat, significantly influencing key WWII events.
3. Personal stories from the unit highlight the severe risks and emotional burdens carried by these soldiers.
4. The episode reveals the intense training and secret operations of X Troop, showcasing their strategic importance during the war.
5. Gans' post-war efforts to rescue his parents from a concentration camp illustrate the personal battles that continued beyond the war’s end.

1: Introduction and Background

Manfred Gans' transformation from a German refugee to a British commando is outlined, setting the stage for the formation of X Troop.
Helena Bonham Carter: "These men had embarked upon whole new identities."

2: Training and Missions

Details the rigorous training and the early missions of X Troop, emphasizing their preparation for high-stakes operations.
Helena Bonham Carter: "They would do live fire at each other with guns."

3: D-Day and Beyond

Covers X Troop's involvement in D-Day and subsequent operations, highlighting their strategic impact on the war.
Helena Bonham Carter: "They were sent as the tip of the spear in battle to capture the enemy."

4: The Personal Cost

Explores the emotional and personal challenges faced by Gans and his comrades, including the eventual fate of Gans' family.
Manfred Gans: "And after maybe a minute or maybe less there, my parents came out."

• Reflect on the impacts of personal heritage and history in shaping one's identity and life choices.
• Recognize the importance of resilience and adaptability in overcoming challenging situations.
• Understand the value of strategic thinking and training in preparing for critical tasks or roles.
• Appreciate the profound impacts of war on individuals and families, fostering empathy and historical awareness.
• Engage with and support veterans and others who have experienced the traumas of conflict.

Manfred Gans joins an elite, secret unit of Jewish commandos to take on the Nazis with advanced fighting and counterintelligence skills. But can he save his own family?

People

Manfred Gans

Books

X Troop: The Secret Jewish Commandos of World War Two by Leah Garrett

Content Warnings:

None

BBC
This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK.

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Helena Bonham Carter
BBC sounds Music Radio podcasts autumn 1942 Aberdove station, Wales. A train pulled up at the platform carrying a group of german men. These men were not prisoners of war, but refugees from the Nazis, and as. They get off the train, they're met by a young commanding officer. The british officer told them to line up.

Then he said, men, you need to. Come up with new names, and you have about five minutes to do so. As their minds whirled with this, the men were ushered into an airless, cramped room. None of them quite realized that these names that they were about to come up with would be the names that most of them would end up keeping for the rest of their lives, and their children and grandchildren would have those names. Towards the end of the line, one man was struggling with this decision.

Manfred Gantz, a young soldier with sandy blonde hair and clear blue eyes, was Orthodox Jewish. He knew his name meant a great deal to his family, and as he. Walks forward, he says, okay, I'm going to make this a bit easier on myself. I'm going to go with Fred. When he was a boy, Manfred's friends had shortened his name to Fred, so it was familiar to him.

The commanding officer replied, what's your last name? And he's stumped. He can't think of a name. So the commanding officer opened a telephone. Directory, puts his finger in and touches the word gray.

And now we have Fred Gray having gone in as Manfred Gans, and now he's Fred Gray. In just five minutes, these men had embarked upon whole new identities. The commanding officer told them, well, you've. All changed your name. Now you need to all go back to wherever you're staying and get rid of anything with your name on it and anything that has any clue to your old life.

Helena Bonham Carter
Gantz was lodging in the village with a local family, and he went into. His room and he gathered up all of his religious objects that he had, and he put them in an envelope and he sent them away. And that was it. They were gone now.

And he said at that moment that it was much more important to him that he was being reborn and he was going to become this new fighter. And if he had to put the stuff aside, then so be it. Under the name Fred Gray, Manfred Gantz would become part of an elite secret unit of commandos, X Troop. These 87 men would take on the Nazis with advanced fighting and counterintelligence skills playing a crucial role in the success of D Day. Most of them, like Gantz, were jewish and had no shortage of motives to fight the Nazis.

Helena Bonham Carter
For Gantz, it became deeply personal. By joining X Troop, he would one day have the chance to pull off the ultimate victory against the Nazis, saving his own family. I'm Helena Bonham Carter, and for BBC Radio Four, this is history's secret heroes, true stories of deception, acts of resistance and courage. From World War Two, Manfred Gantz and X Troop. I tell a quick story as a little boy that I think everyone can know.

BBC
Those nights you wake up and you're sure somebody's gonna come into the house and grab and take you away. This is Daniel Gantz, son of Manfred Gantz. One of those nights, I asked him, I said, dad, what would you do if somebody came into the house and was doing something and he had a gun? He was very comfortable with the question and said, I'd start to talk to him and ask him what he was doing and why he was feeling like this, and I'd talk to him and talk to him, and then I'd get real close and grab the gun.

As a child, it was like, oh, that makes me go to sleep. But you felt a lot of comfort in his ability to be able to deal with any situation. Manfred Gantz's father, Maurits, had lost a leg fighting the Italians in the first world war and was now the only jewish person in their german town of Borken to be elected to the council. Young Manfred adored his father and his mother else and enjoyed an idyllic childhood. He was very close with his parents.

He had a huge respect for his father. He was close to his mother. She ran a beautiful household, was a wonderful cook. Manfred Ganz looked like a runner. Leah Garrett is the director of jewish and hebrew studies at Hunter College in New York City.

Helena Bonham Carter
She's the author of X Troop, the. The secret jewish commandos of World War Two. When you look at pictures of him, he was thin, he was tight muscled. He had sort of lightish brown hair, very square features, very kind of strong looking, strong and compact, like a long distance runner. Whenever he went to dances, he would always find local jewish women who were interested in dancing with him.

After the Nazis came to power in 1933, they made life for Jews in Germany more and more difficult. The first anti semitic laws were passed in April 1933. Hundreds more followed. Jewish people were excluded from professions, the army and citizenship. They were banned from marrying non Jews.

Almost every aspect of life and freedom was curtailed in 1938 as the persecutions became more and more extreme. Manfred's parents secured their son a visa to travel to the United Kingdom. They reassured him that he could return to Germany in two months, time to start university. Manfred arrived in the UK in 1938 and he was 16 years old. So he decided to go up to Manchester, where there was a large orthodox jewish community.

At first, Gantz was excited to be in England, a country filled with a promise of new adventure, away from the overt state anti Semitism he'd experienced in Germany. Rather than returning home, he would enroll in classes at Manchester University with a view to becoming an engineer. But then, in September 1939, the german. Supreme command announced at 11:30 this morning that german troops had crossed all the frontiers, that the german air force had gone into action, and that the german navy had taken charge of the Baltic. According to the Poles, it was at about 06:00 this morning that the first full scale attacks began.

These were air raids on big towns in the corridor and upper Silesia. Britain declared war on Germany. Gantz was desperately worried about his family. Back home, he scanned the papers for news. He thought of his parents and he wanted to be with them again and he wanted to get them to safety.

One day he comes home from school, there's two policemen at his apartment, and they say to him, you need to pack up. You're being interred. The british government had initially offered a safe haven to thousands of people fleeing nazi persecution after war broke out. Though, the welcome called. Despite the fact that many of these refugees were jewish or anti nazi activists, they were suddenly redefined as a potential threat.

Helena Bonham Carter
Winston Churchill agreed to the internment of all enemy aliens between the ages of 16 and 60. Manfred Gantz was shuttled between a series of internment camps in Bury, Shrewsbury and finally the Isle of Man. From behind the barbed wire, he continued his engineering studies. And one of the ways that the men could get out of the internment camps was, if they put their hands up to sign up to fight in the military. Gans joined the Pioneer Corps, a labor force of sorts serving in the british army.

Though the Pioneer Corps was a combat unit, many of its recruits were deemed unfit for active duty, owing to a history of criminal behavior, lack of fitness or low intelligence. Many of the unit's troops performed manual labor rather than combat, digging ditches, clearing roads, unloading trucks. It was probably two of the most frustrating years of his life in that he felt that there wasn't enough that they were really doing to help the war effort. In the summer of 1942, Gantz's fate would change. The Allies had faced serious setbacks.

Japan had taken Singapore, the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines. 35,000 allied troops had surrendered to the german general Erwin Rommel at Tobruk in North Africa. The allied raid against the german occupation at Dieppe ended in retreat. Hoping to turn the tide, Lord Mountbatten, chief of combined operations, visited Churchill in his war offices. To propose something drastic, Mountbatten suggested setting up an inter allied commando unit.

It would be made up of exiled men from countries Germany had invaded. There would be a polish unit for Poles who wanted to fight the Germans and a similar unit for displaced Frenchmen. Churchill thought this a fine idea. Then Lord Mountbatten said, but I propose something even more extraordinary. I think that we should also create a german speaking unit.

This meant letting some of the jewish and german refugees Churchill had interned out of captivity and incorporating them into the british army. Churchill agreed to this remarkable pivot because they will be unknown warriors. They must perforce be considered an unknown quantity. Since the algebraic symbol for the unknown is x, let us call them x troop. Shortly after this meeting, messages started appearing on pioneer call notice boards.

They read, please contact us if you want to sign up for dangerous duty. From the 350 men interviewed, just 87 made it through mi fives vetting process. One of them was Manfred Gantz.

On that day in Aberdovey, when he adopted the name of Fred Grey, he was given a new backstory to explain his accent. Supposedly, Fred Grey's father had been a british ambassador to Germany. Gantz was given a british commandos Green berry. His jewish identity also had to be obscured. Should he be killed in battle, he had to agree that he would be buried under a christian cross.

BBC
When he finally was able to put on a uniform, he said, that's when the world really changed. The Men of X Troop prepared for war. Commander training was things like running up and down the local mountain with full packs on without complaint, doing landings on the beach, where they would do live fire at each other with guns, having to be blindfolded and take apart weapons. All of these things that were completely new to these men. One of the men said of it was, I never held anything more complicated than a pair of scissors.

And now blindfold is put around my head, and I'm told to take apart a Colt 45. For the final stage of commando training, the men were dropped off in the Scottish Highlands. They were given nothing and told to make their way to London. Some lived on grass and snails for a week. One of them, rather enterprisingly, stole a motorcycle.

Helena Bonham Carter
He was arrested. But endurance and ingenuity were only part of the job. Unlike other commando units, in which the commandos were trained as commandos, as fighters to take the lead, fight and capture the enemy, the X Troop would also be trained in counterintelligence. This hadn't happened before. These men would be sent as the tip of the spear in battle to capture the enemy as a commando would.

But then they would switch hats, and then in the heat of battle, they would interrogate the men that they had captured. They would say, where are the mines laid? It took a year of training before X Troop were deployed on their first missions. In summer 1943, they were sent behind enemy lines in France and Yugoslavia to gather intelligence. The only people who had access to a list of X troops real names during the war were one secretary at Mi five and the units commanding officer.

Helena Bonham Carter
If any of the units men were captured by the Nazis, their real identities would put them at deadly risk. They would be killed if it was discovered that they were jewish, they would be killed if it was discovered that there were commandos. They would be killed if it was discovered that they were Germans, because they were Germans fighting Germans. And the fourth thing that would happen would be that their family, if they were hiding anywhere, the Gestapo would go to all lengths to capture them and kill them. Gerntz wondered if his parents managed to leave Germany.

They had relatives in the Netherlands who they might have gone to stay with. I think he kept the hope alive that they were somewhere and he could find them. It became clear to the british military that the men of X Troop were highly motivated and highly effective. Rather than risk keeping them in a single group, the army split them up. To help maintain their cover, groups of three or four X troopers were placed with existing commander units.

The men of X Troop were often required to capture, interrogate, and extract information from high ranking nazi officers. They had a very high moral standard when they were fighting, and they werent there just to try to hurt people and torture people and try to get some type of vengeance that way. The Nazis themselves were notorious for coercion, but Manfred Gantz made a point of refusing to adopt those methods. Would say that any time you thought of torturing somebody, anything information you got from torturing somebody wasn't good information. And the only way to get real information from people was to sit down and talk and keep talking and push them emotionally into a place where they wanted to open up.

BBC
He was very successful at that. During a battle for the dutch island of Valcheren in the North Sea, Gantz landed with the 41 commander on the western shore. And there was a lighthouse that had a lot of german soldiers in there. And he puts down his gun and walks out and calls out to them, come out, I want to talk to you. Certainly, he could have been shot.

Right then a german officer comes out to speak to him. The german sergeant said he would only surrender under certain conditions. Gantz began to negotiate. Meanwhile, behind the sergeant, another ex troop commando made his way through a row of dilapidated houses and into the lighthouse, picking up german soldiers as he went. Soon he had led the whole german troop outside.

Helena Bonham Carter
The german sergeant was still deep in conversation with Gantz and hadn't even noticed his men were already captive. Ganz told him the game was up. Your troop has surrendered. I cannot accept conditions. They ended up taking all those guys prisoners, and there were many, many stories along the way where they were able to do that, convince soldiers to put down their arms.

BBC
What he felt best about was getting soldiers off the battlefield. Not every mission could be completed without a shot being fired. X Troop were fighting a brutal, bloody war, and Manfred Gantz saw his share of action. His officer sent him out for reconnaissance, and all of a sudden the Germans that he was watching ended up setting up for the night. Not very far yards away from where he was hidden in the bushes, Gantz waited till dark.

The officer who sent him out, when he didn't come back in the evening, went out with a group to go try to find him. That officer was killed that night. The responsibility weighed heavily on Gans. In May 1944, he was among the troops of the 41 commando sent across the English Channel to invade France, the operation known as D Day. Gans was in a later wave.

Helena Bonham Carter
By the time they landed on Saud beach, many had already fallen. The carnage was absolutely horrific, and as 41 commando landed, half of them were wiped out on landing. Monford Gans, who had been so well trained at this point turned to the men of 41 commando and said, boys, follow me. We need to get off the beach.

He ran ahead of them. He went up the beach and immediately he ran into 25 armed Germans at the top of the beach. In idiomatic German, Montfort Gans yelled out to them, boys, give me your guns and show me where the mines are laid. The Germans, who are so shocked to see this british guy coming at them, speaking German, fluently, dropped their arms, and they showed Montfort, Gans and the other remnants of 41 commando how to get off the beach. And Manfred Gans led them all to safety.

Helena Bonham Carter
Some of Gantz's fellow X troopers were with other commander units as they stormed the beaches. And not only that, when the fighting would quiet at night, the X troopers would then be sent behind enemy lines to gather crucial intelligence for next day's fighting.

Towards the end of 1944, information began to trickle through to X Troop about the fates of their loved ones back home. Finally, Manfred Gantz received news of his parents. But it was not the news he'd hoped for. They were in hiding in Holland and they were betrayed by somebody. They had been on a farm and they were apprehended and first taken to a camp in Holland, and then they were going to go to Bergen Belsen and they ended up being sent to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia.

Theresienstadt was a transit settlement from which Jews were deported to other concentration camps where they would be forced into labour or killed, even though some internees remained there for longer periods. The living conditions were horrific and many died as the war ground down and months passed. Gantz had no idea if his parents would survive the camp or if they might be sent elsewhere. His goal, to find his parents, I don't think ever left him. I don't think it was something that he outwardly showed to people or discussed, and it may have seemed too wild a thought even to discuss something like that.

This is the BBC home Service. Here is the news. The Allies finally declared victory in Europe in May 1945. The end of the war in Europe was officially announced by Mister Churchill at 03:00 this afternoon in a broadcast from ten Downing street. He said.

Yesterday morning at 02:41 a.m. at General Eisenhower's headquarters, the representative of the german high command and government signed the act of unconditional surrender of all german land, sea and air forces in Europe to the allied expeditionary force and to the soviet high command. Just two days later, Manfred Gantz seized the opportunity. He goes to his commanding officer and he says, I need to go rescue my parents and the commanding officer, who at this point knows the secret story of who he is and knows that this guy is like a superhero and can conceivably do anything, says, okay, I'm going to give you a jeep and I'm going to give you a petrol and I'm going to give you a driver. Go for it.

BBC
The jeep didn't have any brakes because they couldn't give him anything that was, I think, decent. The two of them took off into war torn Europe, and they drive through. Germany, which is a completely apocalyptic. He drives through his hometown, where he had undergone the hatred of the Nazis and the terrible things they had done to him there. They ran into russian soldiers.

They ran into german troops that were begging him to take them prisoners. They picked up a group of canadian pows, and he kept hearing over and over again from the pows, you think this is bad? You should see what they did to the Jews. After three days of driving, they finally arrived at theresienstadt, where local people showed them the way to the camp. As Gantz approached the gate operated by a soviet guard, he felt a lump in his stomach.

Helena Bonham Carter
Towards the end of his life, he spoke about the experience, and I told. Him what I wanted. And we drove into the camp, a massive number of people there, and a lot of the people were too weak to get out of the way. We went up to the central register, and there was a girl working there. She looked through the list and she found the house where my parents were supposed to live.

Manfred Gantz
We took this girl on our jeep and she directed us to the house, and they were living on the second floor. And I went upstairs. I just stood, and it was about half dark there. Of course, there were no lights inside there. And after maybe a minute or maybe less there, my parents came out.

Of course. They were in an unbelievable state. My father was highly recognizable. He was so decimated. And they were totally swept up, crying.

They could hardly speak. And then, of course, downstairs on the street, a lot of people crowded around and they were singing. We spent the evening and the night in that fashion.

Helena Bonham Carter
The soviet guards would not allow camp inmates to leave. And in any case, Gantz's parents were in no state to travel. In his jeep, Gantz told them he would get them out as soon as he could. Maurits and Elsa replied that seeing him had given them the will to live. The next morning, Gans and his driver had to leave.

His urgent task was to organize a rescue operation. Ganz brought a letter to Princess Juliana of the Netherlands. She helped arrange a plane to take Moritz and Elser Ganz and other dutch survivors to safety in the Netherlands. Like many survivors, Maurits and Elser Gans eventually moved to the new state of Israel. Gantz returned to England, where he completed a degree in chemical engineering.

Afterwards, he emigrated to the United States, where his family still live. He died in 2010. Meanwhile, the story of the jewish commandos of X Troop and their extraordinary contribution to the war effort faded into obscurity. And so it was so top secret that they only started speaking about it years after the war because all of them had taken on fake names and Personas, which most of them kept after the warmth war. Many of them were reluctant to tell their children about what they had actually gone through.

BBC
I knew my father from my youngest age had been in the war. To me, he had single handedly defeated the whole german army. As I got older, I learned that that part of it may not have been true. He'd tell anecdotes, humorous anecdotes, the stories about the officer who went out looking for him. These are the stories that came much later in his life.

He had really been able to separate that part of his life and put it in a closet somewhere and not think about a lot of the horrors that had occurred to him.

Helena Bonham Carter
Gantz told Daniel that his biggest victory was having his own family. In a letter from 1945, Gantz recalled the moment when he had returned from Theresienstadt. By that time, he had secured the release of his parents and knew that they would be finally safe. So after this is all done, he goes back to his office and he had a cup of tea and he got out his diary and he wrote down, I've just won my own private warm.

History. Secret Heroes is a BBC studios audio production for BBC Radio Four and BBC Sounds. It's an eco audio certified production. It's narrated by me, Helena Bonham Carter. The series is written by Alex von Tunzelmann.

The series producer is Suniti Somaya. The assistant producer is Lorna Reeder. Melvin Rickeby is the edit producer. Episode two is co produced by Lena Boateng. Fact checking by Caitlin Raith.

Additional research and production from Fumbi Bakari and Rhiannon Cobb. The executive producer and editor is Paul Smith. The Commissioner for BBC Radio Four and BBC Sounds is Rhianne Roberts. And the assistant commissioner is Abigail Willer. Anya Saunders is the development executive.

Our theme is composed by Jeremy Walmsley. The mix engineer is Melvin Rickeby. Elena Boating is the production manager, Juliet Harvey is the production coordinator. Lucy Bannister. Is the unit manager and Laura Jordan Rowell is the production executive.

Legal and business affairs advice from Edward Murdoch. The editorial policy adviser is Sarah Nelson. Archive from BBC Archive, Pathe News and Stephen Carras. Thanks to Bina Katani, Clem Hitchcock, Amy Leibovitz, Bushra Siddiq, Georgia Mosley, Richard Knight, Greg Steiger, Cassian Harrison, Helen Pendlebury, James Murray, Andrew Stevens, Tess Davidson, Kate Plumpton and Molly Milton.

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I'm Kavita Puri, and in 3 million from BBC Radio Four, I hear extraordinary eyewitness accounts that tell the story for the first time of the Bengal famine, which happened in British India in the middle of the Second World War. At least 3 million people died. It's one of the largest losses of civilian life on the allied side. And there isn't a museum, a memorial or even a plaque to those who died. How can the memory of 3 million people just disappear 80 years on, I tracked down firsthand accounts and make new discoveries and hear remarkable stories and explore why remembrance is so complicated in Britain, India and Bangladesh.

Listen to 3 million on BBC sounds.

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