Evert Radema was a Dutch secret agent who served the British intelligence services during the Second World War. His life shows how an ordinary man, trained in a practical trade, could become a vital link in the Allied intelligence effort, and how dangerous such work was inside occupied Europe.
Radema was born in the village of Foxhol, the son of inland skipper and carpenter Rutger Radema and Peitje Drijfholt. After attending maritime school in Amsterdam, he began a career at sea that promised stability and steady progress. He married Frederika Annechina Olthof in 1927, and the couple welcomed two children in the following years, a daughter in 1928 and a son in 1929.
Beginning in 1933, Radema worked as a radio operator for the shipping company Maatschappij Nederland. This technical background, especially his skill in wireless communication, would later become essential to the role he played during the war.
When war broke out in 1939, Radema happened to be in the United Kingdom, unable to return home once the Netherlands fell under German occupation. While stranded abroad, he was approached by the Dutch Central Intelligence Service and trained by the British service MI6 as a secret agent and wireless operator. Like many early war agents, he was selected not for espionage experience, but for practical professional skill.
On the night of 22 to 23 February 1942, he was brought ashore on the Dutch coast near Katwijk by Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, the well known resistance figure later nicknamed the Soldier of Orange. Fellow agent Ernst de Jonge was also landed during this mission. Their task was to build an intelligence link between the occupied Netherlands and London.
Radema successfully set up his radio set in Amsterdam and began sending coded messages to MI6 during April 1942. These early transmissions reported political developments inside the Netherlands, including information on figures such as Koos Vorrink, who had refused a request sent from London through De Jonge and the Hazelhoff group.
The mission was short lived. De Jonge was arrested by the German Sicherheitsdienst on 22 May 1942. Radema managed to avoid detection for one more week, but he too was captured on 29 May 1942. His radio equipment fell into German hands, and they tried to use it for the notorious Englandspiel, a counter operation designed to deceive the British by sending false messages. Because Radema had refused to give the Germans his security check code, MI6 realized the transmissions were compromised and refused to answer, preventing greater losses among incoming agents.
After his arrest, Radema was held first in the Oranjehotel prison at Scheveningen, then transferred to Kamp Haaren, a detention site for political prisoners. In November 1943 he was moved with about fifty others to Assen, and in April 1944 they were deported to Rawitsch, now the town of Rawicz in Poland.
Later that year, Radema was selected among a group of forty Dutch prisoners for transfer to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. He arrived there on 5 September 1944. The following day, 6 September, he was executed. He was only 41 years old.
Evert Radema remains one of the many agents whose names are not widely known outside historical circles, yet whose courage and technical skill were essential to the Allied intelligence effort. He worked alone, far from support, knowing that capture meant certain death. His refusal to surrender his security code, even under extreme pressure, prevented further British losses during the Englandspiel.
Today, he is remembered as one of the quiet heroes of the Dutch resistance and Allied intelligence. His journey from Foxhol to the front lines of secret warfare shows how deeply the conflict reached into the lives of ordinary men, and how much was risked by those who carried the burden of communication between occupied Europe and the free world.
