Roy Courlander

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Roy Courlander

Roy Nicolas Courlander (born December 6, 1914 in London , United Kingdom , † June 1, 1979 in Lethbridge Park , Australia ) wasa New Zealand soldier, collaborator , co-founder of the British Free Corps and a member of the Waffen SS during World War II .

Life

Roy Courlander was born in London on December 6, 1914. His father, Leonard Henry Courlander , was a cameraman by profession, and his mother was Edith Cater . After his parents divorced in 1933, he moved with his father to the New Hebrides Condominium and emigrated to New Zealand in November 1938 . There he initially worked in the Income Tax Department in Wellington . In June 1939 he was involved in a break into a house in Napier , for which he was sentenced to 18 months suspended prison sentence. On September 30, 1939, he married Joan Beryl Marchand , whom he had met in Auckland . Three days later he reported to the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force .

In January 1940 he came to Egypt with the 18th Battalion of the New Zealand Army and was promoted to Corporal in December 1940 . He learned German and became a member of the battalion's intelligence department. After he was used in Greece , he was taken prisoner on April 29, 1941 near Kalamata . After a short escape, he was transported to the Stalag XVIIID prison camp in Maribor in Slovenia , where he worked as a translator. In mid-1943 Courlander was sent to Genshagen , near Berlin, where he began to cooperate with the Nazis by composing propaganda material for German radio broadcasts. Courlander sympathized with fascism early on . Now he had the opportunity to indulge in this ideology. In early 1944 he was together with John Amery , a British fascist, co-founder of the British Free Corps of the Waffen-SS, for which he u. a. should recruit British prisoners of war. In April 1944 he was promoted to Unterscharführer .

In September 1944, Courlander , meanwhile with the rank of SS-Untersturmführer , traveled to Brussels , where he separated from the German troops and briefly joined a Belgian resistance group and was wounded in a street fight against German soldiers. After the city was liberated by the Allies , Courlander was arrested by the British and handed over to the New Zealand military authorities in England . A court martial there sentenced him to 15 years imprisonment for supporting the enemy. He served his sentence in a prison in Mount Eden in Auckland , but he was released prematurely on October 2, 1951 and dishonorable from the New Zealand army.

On the same day after his release, Margaret married Josephine Spence , a former girlfriend of his late wife. Courlander worked for a trading company in Auckland , became an alcoholic , joined non-civic groups, and was involved in the New Zealand Social Credit Political League in the late 1950s . His second marriage ended in 1968. He moved to Australia in the 1960s, where he died on June 1, 1979 in Lethbridge Park , a suburb of Sydney .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Roy Nicolas Courlander . Auckland Museum , accessed February 16, 2016 .
  2. ^ JAB Crawford : Courlander, Roy Nicolas . In: Dictionary of New Zealand Biography . Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand , June 7, 2013, accessed February 16, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Guy Walters : The face of Hitler's British SS: Chilling pictures of the traitors who joined the Fuhrer's most evil unit - with a Union Flag on their sleeve . In: Mail Online . Associated Newspapers , March 22, 2010, accessed February 16, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Andrew Stone : The war in black and white . New Zealand Herald , August 15, 2009, accessed February 16, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Courlander, Roy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Courlander, Roy Nicolas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION New Zealand deserter and member of the Waffen SS
DATE OF BIRTH December 6, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH London , UK
DATE OF DEATH June 1, 1979
Place of death Lethbridge Park , Australia