Aided by Lutheran missionaries, who gave him food and supplies, he spent the next four years hiding out in the jungle-all the while continuing to fly the Imperial German flag. Upon learning of the war, Detzner refused to surrender and retreated into the jungle with a small force of German officers and natives. His small band of explorers was deep in the forest when World War I broke out in the summer of 1914, and Detzner was unaware there was even a conflict until after Australian troops had captured German New Guinea. Hermann Detzner was a land surveyor who was sent to present-day Papua New Guinea-then partially controlled by Germany-in January 1914 with orders to map the dense jungle. World War I combat may have ended with the armistice on November 11, 1918, but at least one German colonial officer managed to avoid capture until the following January. By all accounts, the surrender was a friendly affair-the Germans were reportedly so relieved to be rescued that they treated their captors to a celebratory feast. In laying down their weapons, the weather technicians became the last armed German soldiers to capitulate during World War II. Rescue finally came in September 1945, when the Norwegians overheard one of the expedition’s distress calls and dispatched a seal hunting boat to the island. Marooned in the Arctic Circle with no sign of help, the men of Operation Haudegen spent the next four months battling subzero temperatures, high winds and the constant threat of polar bear attacks. While the crew received a message in May 1945 telling them the war had ended, they subsequently lost all contact with German forces. Their mission was top-secret-so top-secret, in fact, that after the collapse of the Nazi government the men were accidentally abandoned on the island. ![]() In September 1944, an 11-man crew journeyed to the blustery island of Spitsbergen to gather data on North Atlantic weather patterns. World War II’s Operation Haudegen was a German expedition to establish a meteorological station on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. Teruo Nakamura, a Taiwan-born infantryman, held out on the Indonesian island of Morotai until November 1974. Amazingly, the 51-year-old Onoda was not the last Japanese straggler to surrender. He would not surrender until March 1974-nearly 30 years after the war had ended-when his former commanding officer traveled to the island and ordered him to stop fighting. ![]() The Japanese government attempted to track him down with search parties and even dropped leaflets over the jungle telling him the war was over, but Onoda dismissed these attempts as trickery. But despite being left alone, Onoda refused to surrender and went on to evade dozens of Philippine army and police patrols. One of Onoda’s companions surrendered to Philippine forces in 1950, and by 1972 police had killed the other two. ![]() They would continue to wage their own guerilla war for several years, eventually killing some 30 Filipinos during raids and shootouts. When Allied forces captured Lubang in 1945, he and three other soldiers stole away to the island’s densely forested hills. An intelligence officer, Onoda was dispatched to the Philippine island of Lubang in 1944 with orders not to surrender under any circumstances. ![]() Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda is the most famous of the so-called Japanese holdouts, a collection of Imperial Army stragglers who continued to hide out in the South Pacific for several years after World War II had ended.
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