The handbook issued to Americans soldiers in Britain during WW2

[Leighgull]

There is a German handbook somewhere, I read it about 20 years ago, that had a huge list in the back of all well known British figures on it.

A whole host of people were on the blacklist that had been compiled by the Gestapo, both well known and average folk. The more well known variety came from across the spectrum of politics, journalism, the arts, sport and medicine; some of which included -

George VI and family (he was to be replaced by the abdicate Edward VIII who was more "Nazi-friendly")
Churchill, Clement Attlee, Neville Chamberlain, Lord Beaverbrook and the rest of the coalition war cabinet. Other political entries were: Lady Astor, "enemy of Germany," George Lansbury, "rules German emigrant political circles"; Richard Acland, "anti-Fascist Liberal M.P."; Robert Vansittart, "leadership of British Intelligence Service, Chief Diplomatic Adviser to the Foreign Office"

Prominent refugees included De Gaulle, Von Starhemberg, the former Austrian Heimwehr chief; Paderewski, the pianist-statesman; Eduard Benes, Jan Masaryk, Stefan Zweig, Dr. Hermann Rauschning, the former German naval captain Franz Rintelen, and Dr. Sigmund Freud. The list also included all available responsible officials of the exiled Governments or the National Committees of occupied France, Holland, Belgium, Norway, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Austria, as well as large numbers of refugees from Germany.

From the arts were included Jacob Epstein, Noel Coward, David Low, Paul Robeson, Dame Sybil Thorndike, Laurence Olivier, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, E M Forster, Douglas Reed and Rebecca West.

Members of the peerage included Lord Baden-Powell, Strabolgi, Burnham, Dawson of Penn, Camrose, Derby, Burghley, and Simon. Other notable people were Sir Archibald Sinclair, Sir Walter Citrine, and Sir Stafford Cripps. Lord Harewood and Lord Reading were listed together with their family names, "Lascelles" and "Isaac" which were of Jewish extraction.

There were far more from each area but these are the ones i'm aware of.

 

[jakarta]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_Home
Trig,please learn your military history before you make statements like that....I lived through the war and I'm a military historian...take a look at radar stations 1940...link above...we had over 20 radar stations as well as spotters as well as concrete walls to reflect engine noise.

I think you will find that the sound locators were an almost completely useless technology and had been ditched by the RAF for many years by 1940. As per your article CH was a very crude radar which for technical reasons could not track aircraft inland so yes we did rely on the Observer Corps who were excellent, unless it was cloudy of course and then they were guessing!

I'm afraid I am going to side with Trig as well, the per-war Luftwaffe 'Study Blue' of the RAF on which much of their BoB tactics was based was a farce. It woefully underestimated RAF strength and technical capabilities whereas the British far overrated the Luftwaffe. As for the contention that the airfields were being badly damaged yes buildings were knocked down and the runways were cratered but no Station except RAF Manston was out of commission for very long and there were, of course, many other airfields that could be used. For example Detling, Lympne, Hawkinge, Croydon, Westhampnett, Gatwick, West Malling and Redhill were all available if Sussex and Kent Sector Stations were bombed. Most importantly, and due to the terrible intelligence the Germans were using, they never effectively attacked the Sector Control Rooms. When by accident they did hit them (e.g. Kenley in August) the RAF then dispersed them away from the airfields thus making them almost impossible to hit.

I am NOT saying that airfields were not important targets but on the whole the Luftwaffe seemed happy to bomb them when 'no one was at home'. Very few airfields were hit by surprise due to radar and the Observer Corps. What the Germans should have done was to hit both radar stations and airfields repeatedly using low level attacks to hit Hurricanes and Spitfires where and when they were most vulnerable and also not able to strike back i.e. on the ground.

Some in the Luftwaffe were not upset when radar stations stopped being bombed as they wanted the RAF Fighter aircraft to find the raids so that Me 109 pilots could engage in exciting dogfights and shoot them down. The Knights of the Air attitude of much of the Luftwaffe (especially their fighter pilots) is cited in several testimonies in 'The Most Dangerous Enemy'. This was of course the worst thing the Luftwaffe could have done. An armed and flying enemy can do you harm, a burning wreck on the ground no harm at all.

It is interesting that the US 8th Army Air Force destroyed the Luftwaffe Fighter Arm in 1944/45 by a combination of air fighting and also ground strafing on the way back from the raids.

I am enjoying this thread, by the way!

 

[Triggaaar]

Trig,please learn your military history before you make statements like that....I lived through the war and I'm a military historian...take a look at radar stations 1940...link above...we had over 20 radar stations as well as spotters as well as concrete walls to reflect engine noise.

Seagull, please learn to read English before you make statements like that. Why would I need to look at the link to radar stations? I'm well aware of our radar. Maybe you misread my post

Very much this - we definitely had a network of radar masts along the south and east coasts

Who says otherwise?

 

[Seagull on the wing]

Seagull, please learn to read English before you make statements like that. Why would I need to look at the link to radar stations? I'm well aware of our radar. Maybe you misread my post

Who says otherwise?

Do apologise Trig,I did misread it....At first glance it looked like you had said that "We didn't have radar".Teach me to drink and write...
I still say that people didn't know how near we were to invasion...I have a video somewhere taken from a Spitfires camera of strafing the barges...see if I can find it.

 

[Seagull on the wing]

I still have my mothers original aircraft spotter book as well...later I'll scan a few pages.

 

[SULLY COULDNT SHOOT]

That's not my understanding of it. I don't think they were ever anywhere near being able to invade us.

If Hitler had invaded straight after Dunkirk and had not worried about the British fleets and then later had not relied so much on Goring the war wouldve been over by early 1942 at the latest. He had too much respect for us.

 

[Seagull on the wing]

I think you will find that the sound locators were an almost completely useless technology and had been ditched by the RAF for many years by 1940. As per your article CH was a very crude radar which for technical reasons could not track aircraft inland so yes we did rely on the Observer Corps who were excellent, unless it was cloudy of course and then they were guessing

Agree about the observer corp...a lot of the background boys were not appreciated. The curved wall sound reflector was not a great success but at the time anything to help was put into practice...there is still one in Kent.
The Merchant Navy boys who I have high regard for didn't always get the appreciation they should've. My uncle was in the MN and sometimes he got abuse when ashore for not being in uniform...probably helped to save Britain from starvation.
This coming weekend going to Flanders and the Somme on a war tour,my grandfather who lived in Brighton died on the last day of August 1918...so close to making it...

 

[User removed 4]

The stop line can still be traced in Sussex, it began at Newhaven followed the River Ouse to Isfield then the River Uck to Buxted before following the railway to Groombridge, then followed the course of the Medway to the Thames estuary. The area around Barcombe Mills still retains a large number of pillboxes as does Old Lodge Warren near Crowborough.

There is a pillbox in buxted park and one in isfield on the road just near the church.

 

[Brovion]

Something not mentioned here but towards the end of May 1940, during the events at Dunkirk, there was a large battle within the British cabinet itself between a group of politicians led by Lord Halifax who wished to sue for peace and Churchill and the rest who wished to continue fighting. Halifax had been part of Neville Chamberlain's immediate circle and was foreign minister at the Munich Conference of 1938, and for a time had been the preferred choice in some Conservative circles to replace Chamberlain after the Norwegian fiasco as many distrusted or disliked Churchill. The changing situation at Dunkirk and the unity of the coalition government defeated this attempt, Halifax was appointed soon after as Ambassador to the USA in order to distance him from any other elements within the British political establishment who opposed the view of Churchill.

Political unity was something Churchill instinctively knew a country needed when its back was up against the wall, in the immediate aftermath of Dunkirk you have to remember that though many soldiers had been evacuated the army had lost virtually all its equipment and Britain was defended by just two fully equipped Canadian divisions - we literally had to beg the Americans to send us a load of rifles that had been mothballed after the First World War. He was also aware of the divisions within the French political class that had undermined their will to fight and had encouraged Petain and Laval to sue for peace with Hitler, the British actually lost more equipment and soldiers in a last ditch effort to keep the French in the war after Dunkirk. Hitler, himself always preferred to work with local collaborators after invading a country and he was known to have been in contact through third parties with the ex-King Edward VIII, who was also known not to be averse to the idea. As such you'll find from June 1940 people like Oswald Mosley and other ex-members of the British Union of Fascists were interned indefinitely. I've always had a sneaking suspicion that if the Germans had successfully invaded they would have used the elderly Lloyd George.

There is a German handbook somewhere, I read it about 20 years ago, that had a huge list in the back of all well known British figures who were to be arrested after a successful invasion. The fact they never got across the Channel meant the country got off very lightly compared to a lot of other areas in Europe.

All true. Also don't forget in 1940 another fact that occupied Lord Halifax's mind that made him think that suing for peace was the best option was that the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression Pact was still holding and there was a real danger that the Soviet Union might join in with Hitler in attacking Britain - which is in fact what Hitler urged Stalin to do. He said they could then divide up the British Empire between them (Hitler said it would be 'a house without a master').

There was already a precedent for military co-operation between the two powers. A 'trick' question is: Who invaded Poland on the 17th September 1939? The answer is the Soviet Union - the Germans invaded on the 1st.

It's funny, people always go on about the Italians swapping sides ...

 

[Bevendean Hillbilly]

If you look on Bevendeans Bomb map you will see that the area round the station was a clear target and was badly damaged by bombing. There was also a notable attack on Preston with incendiaries.

German raiders actually made several deliberate attacks on Brighton whether by strafing or bombing. In fact the idea of Luftwaffe jettisoning bombs over Brighton as they evaded British fighters is not supported by the evidence.

The Odeon in Kemptown (opposite the county hospital ) was hit in a daytime raid whilst school kids watched the Saturday matinee. I think this stands as the highest casualty figure for the raids on Brighton.

They also went for the Gas Containers now behind the marina. Ended up clumping a fair chunk of Kemptown with incendiaries and HE.

The Marine gate flats above the Marina were very tempting to German raiders who used it for target practice on a regular basis.

I read an account years ago of a FW 190 pilot who talked about strafing Brighton in ( I think ) 1942. He shot up the Edburton Avenue and Hanover areas just for the hell of it.

Great fun. Machine gunning civilians on a warm afternoon.

 

[User removed 4]

All true. Also don't forget in 1940 another fact that occupied Lord Halifax's mind that made him think that suing for peace was the best option was that the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression Pact was still holding and there was a real danger that the Soviet Union might join in with Hitler in attacking Britain - which is in fact what Hitler urged Stalin to do. He said they could then divide up the British Empire between them (Hitler said it would be 'a house without a master').

There was already a precedent for military co-operation between the two powers. A 'trick' question is: Who invaded Poland on the 17th September 1939? The answer is the Soviet Union - the Germans invaded on the 1st.

It's funny, people always go on about the Italians swapping sides ...

I was incredulous when a ukrainian colleague started talking about the great sacrifices the old ussr made and how they had " taken all the heat" whilst the western powers took their time with the invasion, he didnt have a lot to say when I reminded him that they had ben pals with hitler until he attacked them , and that this was the only reason they entered the war, albeit I put it in stronger language

 

[Triggaaar]

Do apologise Trig,I did misread it....At first glance it looked like you had said that "We didn't have radar".

No worries, I thought that must have been what happened.

I still say that people didn't know how near we were to invasion...

What area of military history do you work in? Do you mostly cover other wars, and WWII is an interest, or is WWII your specialist area?

My opinion that Germany were nowhere near being capable of mounting a successful invasion is not a minority view.

 

[Seagull over Canaryland]

Ok they had refined the blitzkrieg tactics on land but I have always felt it would have very difficult for the Germans to mount a successful invasion given they were not really equipped for undertaking amphibious invasions on the scale required. Plus variables like the weather in the Channel.

It was still a heck of a challenge to mount D-Day nearly 4 years later with the combined might of the Allies even with the benefit of hard experience undertaking huge amphibious assaults around the Med. We had proper landing craft and support ships to shift men and equipment even so it still took several days/weeks and we had the benefit of air and naval superiority (although not total superiority) plus the ability to sustain the logistical effort in terms of fuel and munitions etc. The Germans did not have these advantages.

I think they would have got some footholds in the South East because of their Blitzkrieg tactics but maybe not quite enough to succeed, and that's in spite of the depleted forces we had after Dunkirk. Although they were generally superb at covering ground rapidly I think they would have struggled to fully support this from across the channel. I'm sure there have been table top simulations by military strategists that have resulted in defeat for the Germans.

There have also been simulations where the Germans did take the UK and interesting to see opinions on what would have happened thereafter. The US may not have come riding to the rescue with most of Europe under German control and especially if they had concentrated their forces in the west rather than divide them and attack Russia. Plus the Japanese would probably have been emboldened knowing Britain was out of the war on the other hand the US could have concentrated its whole might in the Pacific. Interesting.

 

[Triggaaar]

There have also been simulations where the Germans did take the UK and interesting to see opinions on what would have happened thereafter.

The problem with making conclusions on these simulations is that we need to know what scenarios the simulations used. For example, you could run a simulation based on the scenario that Germany achieved air superiority by September 1940, and assume that their landing craft were up to the job, and your conclusions could be that a successful invasion was possible. But it's my opinion that a) Germany were never close to achieving air superiority, and that b) they couldn't have invaded at that time even in they had.

Here's a quick snipet from wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain#Attrition_statistics)
"Throughout the battle, the Germans greatly underestimated the size of the RAF and the scale of British aircraft production. Across the Channel, the Air Intelligence division of the Air Ministry consistently overestimated the size of the German air enemy and the productive capacity of the German aviation industry. As the battle was fought, both sides exaggerated the losses inflicted on the other by an equally large margin. However, the intelligence picture formed before the battle encouraged the German Air Force to believe that such losses pushed Fighter Command to the very edge of defeat, while the exaggerated picture of German air strength persuaded the RAF that the threat it faced was larger and more dangerous than was the case.[ Overy 2001, p. 125] This led the British to the conclusion that another fortnight of attacks on airfields might force Fighter Command to withdraw their squadrons from the south of England. The German misconception, on the other hand, encouraged first complacency, then strategic misjudgement. The shift of targets from air bases to industry and communications was taken because it was assumed that Fighter Command was virtually eliminated.[ Overy 2001, p. 126]"

 

[Brovion]

Reading these stories about the success or otherwise of any German invasion reminds me of what my Dad used to say. Before he joined the Navy he was the 'Private Pike' in a Home Guard platoon. He used to say "There were about thirty of us, old men and young boys, each armed with an obsolete rifle and five rounds of ammunition. If Hitler had marched his stormtroopers up Thornton Heath High Street, backed up with machine guns, Panzer tanks, flame-throwers and Stuka divebombers ..... we'd have given 'em hell!

 

[Nibble]

A consultant on a film I was working on was telling me about the plans that would have been putin place if the German's had landed on mainland Britain. The plan apparently, was to let them take Sussex and Kent and while they were being kept busy all effort would go into getting defenses ready to defend London.

 

[cunning fergus]

They also went for the Gas Containers now behind the marina. Ended up clumping a fair chunk of Kemptown with incendiaries and HE.

The Marine gate flats above the Marina were very tempting to German raiders who used it for target practice on a regular basis.

I read an account years ago of a FW 190 pilot who talked about strafing Brighton in ( I think ) 1942. He shot up the Edburton Avenue and Hanover areas just for the hell of it.

Great fun. Machine gunning civilians on a warm afternoon.

My old man lived in Edward St (where the AMEX building is now) and was at school at St John the Baptist. He has mentioned this situation occurring more than once during his experience in the war both when he was at School and when out and about. Some interesting bits and pieces on this link if you have not seen it before.

http://www.mybrightonandhove.org.uk/page_id__6962.aspx

 

[Theatre of Trees]

All true. Also don't forget in 1940 another fact that occupied Lord Halifax's mind that made him think that suing for peace was the best option was that the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression Pact was still holding and there was a real danger that the Soviet Union might join in with Hitler in attacking Britain - which is in fact what Hitler urged Stalin to do. He said they could then divide up the British Empire between them (Hitler said it would be 'a house without a master').

There was already a precedent for military co-operation between the two powers. A 'trick' question is: Who invaded Poland on the 17th September 1939? The answer is the Soviet Union - the Germans invaded on the 1st.

It's funny, people always go on about the Italians swapping sides ...

I'm not sure Hitler wanted Stalin in Europe, from what I can gather he wanted him to move south and attack the British possessions in India from the outset so as to get the bulk of the Soviet forces out of the way when the Germans did decide to invade them. The Nazi-Soviet pact was a hugely cynical piece of diplomatic manoeuvring from both sides; for the Germans it covered their backs whilst they attacked the West; for the Soviets it gave them time and space to recover areas they'd lost in 1920 and pick over the carcass of Central and Western Europe once they had exhausted themselves fighting another long war. There was also the need for them to protect their eastern provinces should the Japanese dare to attack them again as they had done at Nomonhan in August 1939.

As a consequence Poland was invaded on 17 Sept 1939 which then shut off the Baltic states from outside help and who in turn were knocked off one by one. The only failure was Finland, which the Soviets thought they could invade using local troops and got an embarrassing bloody nose as a consequence. In fact that conflict was the closest the West got to fighting the Soviets as the British and French agreed to send an expeditionary force to help but were hamstrung by the fact that to get to Finland they had to march through neutral Norway and Sweden. This all became irrelevant when the Finns sued for peace in March 1940. However, the offshoot of this was the German invasion of Denmark and Norway the following month.

One of my favourite David Low war cartoons sums up the cynicism of the Pact perfectly

 

[Bevendean Hillbilly]

I was incredulous when a ukrainian colleague started talking about the great sacrifices the old ussr made and how they had " taken all the heat" whilst the western powers took their time with the invasion, he didnt have a lot to say when I reminded him that they had ben pals with hitler until he attacked them , and that this was the only reason they entered the war, albeit I put it in stronger language

It's worse than that for your misinformed Ukranian chum. Even when Hitler attacked the Soviets and the Wehrmacht rolled into the Ukraine they were welcomed with open arms by the locals who saw the Nazis as liberators. Ukrainian volunteers were happy to join the SS and they were punished harshly by Stalin in the post war years.

They would have been better off with the Hun.

 

[Bevendean Hillbilly]

Reading these stories about the success or otherwise of any German invasion reminds me of what my Dad used to say. Before he joined the Navy he was the 'Private Pike' in a Home Guard platoon. He used to say "There were about thirty of us, old men and young boys, each armed with an obsolete rifle and five rounds of ammunition. If Hitler had marched his stormtroopers up Thornton Heath High Street, backed up with machine guns, Panzer tanks, flame-throwers and Stuka divebombers ..... we'd have given 'em hell!

I think that was from ITMA (it's that man again) along with the classic dialogue

"Where've you been?"

" I've just joined up wiv the 'ome guard ain't I..I'm gonna be defending the town against the panzers and storm troopers and all them jerry bombers and Stukas"

"what...., just you?"

"don't be stupid woman,.... there's four of us!"