Anzac Guerrillas is the incredible true story of how a handful of escaped Australian soldiers became resistance fighters, double agents and spies during World War II, evading the Nazis and exposing a group of genocidal collaborators.
When the Germans took thousands of Allied prisoners during the catastrophic Greek campaign of 1941, a handful of Australian soldiers escaped from prison trains in occupied Yugoslavia. What awaited them was not passage home, but a brutal underground war where the fate of a nation was at stake.
Told through the eyes of two of the Australian escapees – mineworker Ross Sayers and storeman Ronald Jones – Anzac Guerrillas is the incredible true story of how these men became resistance fighters, double agents and spies, evading the Nazis and exposing a group of genocidal collaborators.
Yugoslav resistance against the Nazis was divided – royalist Cetniks battled communist Partisans while the Germans retaliated with terror. The escaped Anzacs faced grave threats from all sides, and even as they came face-to-face with two of World War II’s most divisive figures – Josip Broz Tito and Draza Mihailovic – their sense of what was right never wavered.
Finding allies and sympathisers among Jewish refugees, British agents and suffragette resistance fighters, those who made it home alive had to fight to have their work with British Intelligence recognised. Once recognition was granted, they seldom spoke of their experiences again. Instead they quietly raised families, shunning Anzac Day and their own traumatic memories of the war.
None of these men began World War II as an officer or had been to school past the age of thirteen, but each proved himself with selfless courage and remarkable wisdom, working to save millions of lives. The war would continue to haunt them, and their stories would remain untold, even to those closest to them – until now.
This podcast episode is by Warwick O’Neill from the Australian Military History podcast, a regular History Guild contributor.
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