Operation Sea Lion The failed Nazi invasion that turned the tide of the war

Also by Leo McKinstry Fit to Govern? (1996) Turning the Tide (1997) Boycs: The True Story (2000) Jack and Bobby: A Story of Brothers in Conflict (2002) Rosebery: Statesman in Turmoil (2005) Sir Alf: England's Greatest Manager (2006) Spitfire: Portrait of a Legend (2007) Lancaster: The Second World War's Greatest Bomber (2009) Hurricane: Victor of the Battle of Britain (2010) Jack Hobbs: England's Greatest Cricketer (2011) Copyright This book is dedicated to the fond memory of Katharine Kinney (1959-2013) adventurer and heroine Introduction 'He is coming!' THE ATMOSPHERE INSIDE the Berlin Sportpalast was electric that early September afternoon in 1940. The arena was packed to its 14,000 capacity. Amidst hysterical cheering, the Führer marched onto the stage, his impassive mien in graphic contrast to the frenzied enthusiasm that greeted his arrival. He started his speech in a low-key, almost conversational manner, with jibes at Winston Churchill and the British war effort. As his address continued, he grew more agitated, his passion whipping up the crowd to ever greater paroxysms of adoration. At one point he had to stop, so prolonged and delirious was the applause. Warming to his theme of an escalation in the Reich's aerial assault on Britain, he proclaimed, 'When they declare that they will increase their attacks on our cities, then we will raze their cities to the ground.'1 He went on: 'The hour will come when one of us will break and it will not be Nationalist Socialist Germany,' to which the crowd responded with ecstatic cries of 'Never! Never!'2 Finally, he turned to the issue that was gripping the imagination of the British public: the imminent threat of invasion. With his compelling mix of menace and sarcasm, the Führer said, 'In England, they're filled with curiosity and keep asking, "Why doesn't he come?" Be calm, be calm. He is coming! He is coming!'3 The Wehrmacht was certainly preparing with characteristic efficiency to invade Britain. As Hitler fulminated at the Berlin Sportpalast on 4 September, a huge build-up of German military forces was under way in north-western Europe, ready for the strike against England. Along the coasts of France, Holland and Belgium, the Kriegsmarine was gathering a mighty armada to transport the initial assault force of nine divisions across the Channel, which would be followed by heavy reinforcements once the bridgeheads were established. On the very day of Hitler's speech, the shipping section of the German naval staff reported that no fewer than 1,910 barges, 419 tugs, and 1,600 motorboats had been requisitioned for the invasion fleet.4 The plans for the operation, code-named Sea Lion by the German High Command, were ambitious in their scale and thorough in their details. Thirteen hospital ships had been commandeered for the wounded; there would be seventy-two guard dogs to protect the snipers. In the same spirit, the army had developed 250 amphibious tanks, complete with snorkels and waterproofed cannon. After the rapid conquest of France, the Low Countries, Denmark and Norway in 1940, the confidence of the German army could hardly have been higher. As Alexander Hoffer, a rifleman in a mountain regiment recalled, 'The operation was going to be simple, a mopping up detail. The enemy was as good as defeated anyway, weak in numbers and morale. The English, so we were told, were a badly armed army which had been shattered at Dunkirk. The Tommies would be in no position to interfere seriously with our landing.'5 On the other side of the Channel, as reconnaissance and intelligence revealed the extent of the German invasion preparations, the British sensed that Hitler's threats were all too real. The intensification of the air war was regarded as a prelude to a certain assault on England's southern coast. According to a report from the headquarters of the army's Home Forces, written the day after the Führer's Sportpalast speech, 'If Hitler thinks that he can achieve a fair measure of air superiority over the next few days, then a full scale invasion may be attempted on a wide front. The attack will be carried out ruthlessly with every means available.'6 The commanding officer of those Home Forces, General Alan Brooke, wrote in his private diary on 4 September, 'Indications of an impending attack before 15 September are accumulating,' while three days later he recorded, 'all reports look like the invasion is getting nearer.'7 Churchill himself, who had been highly sceptical throughout the summer of claims that the Germans would invade, grew more convinced of the likelihood of attack, as he warned in one of his celebrated speeches. 'No one should blind himself to the fact that a heavy, full-scale invasion of this island is being prepared with the usual German thoroughness and method and that it may be launched at any time now.'8 Yet Hitler never came. He ducked the challenge of conquest. His threats turned out to be bluster, his rhetoric hollow. All the preparations were in vain. The invasion fleet was gradually dispersed through the autumn of 1940; the troops returned to their German bases or were sent to forward positions on the eastern front. After the war it became fashionable, especially among surviving Reich commanders, to claim that Hitler never really intended to invade, that Operation Sea Lion was all a gigantic bluff to demoralise Britain. In one post-war interview, General Gerd von Rundstedt, who was to have led the German army across the Channel in 1940, dismissed the whole concept of invasion as a 'game' and described Sea Lion as 'rubbish',9 while the Luftwaffe commander Albert Kesselring wrote in 1957 that 'Hitler was only half-heartedly tied to the idea of an invasion of England.'10 This argument is undermined by the reality of the Reich's intensive planning for Sea Lion. Indeed, the Kriegsmarine's assembly of the huge invasion fleet in a short timescale was not only a phenomenal feat of logistics but also a direct contradiction of the idea that the Germans were never serious about crossing the Channel. Moreover, Hitler knew that failing to conquer Britain carried the risk of a long war, with Germany potentially forced to fight on two fronts once he invaded Russia in the summer of 1941. In his more bullish moments, Hitler told his military chiefs that talk about breaking Britain quickly through an economic blockade or an assault on her empire in North Africa was mere wishful thinking. 'A positive result can only be achieved by an attack on England,' he said at the end of July 1940,11 an outlook that he still maintained in September. As Admiral Erich Raeder, the head of the Kriegsmarine in 1940, recorded: 'A landing is, now as before, regarded by the Führer as the means by which, according to every prospect, an immediate crashing end can be made of the war.'12 Another common argument is that Hitler's failure to invade can be explained, not by his lack of seriousness, but by the RAF's victory in the Battle of Britain. According to this hypothesis, Britain owed its survival in the autumn of 1940 entirely to the heroic men of Fighter Command, who prevented the Luftwaffe gaining air superiority over the southern English coast and thereby made a Channel crossing too dangerous for the Germans. Bolstered by the grandeur of Churchill's eloquence, the triumph of the Few has become central to Britain's romantic wartime story. It is undoubtedly true that the Hurricane and Spitfire pilots played a vital role in thwarting the Reich's invasion plans, for mastery of the air was regarded as an essential prerequisite of any assault on the beaches. Thanks to the RAF, that goal was never achieved. But this is far from the whole story. The emphasis on the fighter crews unfairly downplays the crucial importance of the wider British resistance to Hitler in 1940, which permeated the armed forces and the home front. The whole nation was galvanised for the fight. When Hitler abandoned his plans for invasion, it was a victory for the many, not the few. Wartime legend has presented the heroics of the RAF as an exception to an otherwise desperate military performance by Britain in 1940. In this narrative, there is a chasm between the daring and efficiency of Fighter Command and the woeful inadequacy of most other parts of the British war effort. Defeat was inevitable if the RAF was overwhelmed, according to the traditional account, which portrays Britain as hopelessly ill equipped in the face of the Nazi war machine. It was a supposed weakness highlighted by the paralysis in the civil service, the chronic shortages of men and weaponry in the regular army, the lack of modern vessels in the navy and the country's feeble home defences. The might of Hitler's Reich, which had blitzed its way through Poland, Scandinavia and Western Europe, would hardly have been deterred by some hastily erected pillboxes, rolls of barbed wire and lightweight guns. The ultimate symbol of Britain's alleged vulnerability in 1940 was the Home Guard, that makeshift force of volunteers whose very nickname, 'Dad's Army', was so redolent of its antiquated nature in the savage new age of total war. Made famous for future generations by the television comedy series of the 1970s, the Home Guard appeared more likely to provoke laughter than fear in the invader. The image of Home Guardsmen, devoid of rifles or uniforms, performing their pointless drill routines with broomsticks and pitchforks, has long been held to characterise how badly prepared Britain was. This outlook is encapsulated in a remark made by a volunteer from Great Yarmouth when his unit was inspected in the summer of 1940 by a senior army officer, who asked: 'What steps would you take if you saw the Hun come down in parachutes?' 'Bloody long ones,' came the reply.13 But the commonly held belief in Britain's defencelessness in 1940 is hardly matched by the historical facts. The Few of Fighter Command were not an exception but part of a national pattern of resolute determination and thoroughness. In almost every aspect of the war effort in 1940, Britain was far better organised than the mythology suggests. The Royal Navy's Home Fleet, guarding every part of the southern and eastern coastlines, represented a formidable obstacle to German ambitions. Between Sheerness and Harwich alone, the navy had thirty destroyers. RAF Bomber Command relentlessly pounded the invasion fleet, weakening the morale of the German forces. Similarly, the British army had gained enormously in strength and equipment since the fall of France. In September 1940, when the invasion threat was at its height, there were no fewer than 1,760,000 regular troops in service, many of them led by tough-minded figures like Alan Brooke, Claude Auchinleck and Bernard Montgomery. The same is true of the Home Guard, whose broomsticks had by then largely vanished. Most of the volunteers were armed with highly effective American rifles, which were superior, in some respects, to those used by the regular soldiers. Outside the military sphere, the British home front was just as impressive. Aircraft production was much higher than that in Germany, factory hours longer. Major operations, like the evacuation of children from areas at risk of attack, the removal of gold from the Bank of England vaults, or the transfer of national art treasures to remote shelters in Wales, were carried out with superb efficiency. What is so striking about the British authorities at this time is their ruthlessness. Everything was geared towards the struggle against Germany. Sensitivities about civil liberties, personal privacy, international legal conventions and property rights were all ignored under pressure for survival. During his leadership of V Corps, in the front line of the army's southern command, Montgomery set out his creed to his officers. 'We had got to the stage where we must do as we like as regards upsetting private property. If a house was required as an HQ it must be taken. Any material required to improve the defences must be taken.'14 This ruthless attitude was applied far beyond the army. In the wake of Germany's western offensive, Churchill's government took unprecedented emergency powers over the life of the nation. The peacetime structure of democracy was swept aside. Mass internment of Germans, Austrians and Italians was introduced, the programme executed in such an uncompromising manner that many refugees from Nazism ended up in British camps. Home-grown political suspects were also detained without trial, while the government created a powerful security apparatus to root out the slightest signs of treachery or defeatism. Even more aggressively, Churchill's War Cabinet planned to use poisonous gas and chemical weapons extensively against the invader, in defiance of the Geneva Convention. Large stockpiles of gas bombs were developed, and rigorous training was given to the RAF pilots who dropped them during low-level missions over the coast. As Churchill put it in May, 'We should not hesitate to contaminate our beaches with gas if this would be to our advantage. We have the right to do what we like with our own territory.'15 Ruthlessness was backed up by the British gift for innovation, as displayed in the breaking of the Germans' Enigma code. The saga of Britain's resistance to invasion began with an act of cold resolution that became typical of Britain's stubborn attitude throughout those fateful months. 1 'Walking with destiny' THE NORWAY CAMPAIGN seemed like a military disaster for the Allies, but without it Britain might have been conquered in 1940. The Germans' triumph in the North had left the Kriegsmarine so badly damaged after its clashes with the Royal Navy in Scandinavian waters that its strength was drastically diminished for the remainder of the war. As a result, it could not hope to provide the naval protection required for a safe crossing of the Channel by invasion forces. More importantly, public fury in Britain over the ineptitude shown by the War Cabinet during the Norwegian campaign brought about the downfall of Neville Chamberlain's government and the arrival in Downing Street of Winston Churchill, the only politician with the vision, drive and will to halt the advance of the Reich. The German coup of seizing Denmark and invading Norway had been extremely risky, given that the Royal Navy was far stronger than the Kriegsmarine. During the Norwegian campaign, the Germans lost four cruisers, ten destroyers, three U-boats and one torpedo boat. The Royal Navy was also badly hit, losing the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious , two cruisers, nine destroyers and six submarines. But the British Navy's sheer size meant that these losses were sustainable; that was not the case with Kriegsmarine. As Admiral Raeder later admitted, 'The losses the Kriegsmarine suffered in doing its part weighed heavily upon us for the rest of the war.'1 Immediately after Norway, the Germans had just 10 operational destroyers, compared to the Royal Navy's 169. Yet even the comparative success of the Royal Navy could not distract from the catastrophe of the military campaign. The limited Allied forces, which had landed under heavy attack from both the ground and the air, were forced to evacuate central and southern Norway before the end of the month, and the isolated garrison at Narvik was also withdrawn at the end of May. It was ironic, however, that the Norwegian fiasco should have strengthened the political position of the man most directly responsible for the bungled campaign. Far from enduring the blame as First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill saw a surge in his popularity. For most of the public, the long-term wisdom of his warnings about the menace of Germany, the folly of appeasement and the failure to rearm prevailed over the immediate setbacks of Norway. Moreover, he was seen as the only senior figure in the government who had shown any willingness to fight, instead of indulging in endless procrastination while hiding behind the bureaucratic machinery of Whitehall. General Ironside, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, commented on 7 April, 'I cannot think that we have a War Cabinet fit to compete with Hitler. Its decisions are slow and cumbersome. We still refer the smallest thing to a Committee. The Prime Minister [Chamberlain] is hopelessly unmilitary.'2 Churchill, on the other hand, full of restless energy, was excited rather than depressed by war. In a letter written in February 1940 about the latter's plans for mining Norwegian waters, the First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound told a colleague, 'I have the greatest admiration for Winston and his good qualities are such and his desire to hit the enemy so overwhelming that I feel one must hesitate in turning down any of his proposals.'3 But to his enemies, Churchill's enthusiasm often degenerated into impetuosity. Within Whitehall, the Conservative Party and parts of the services, he was regarded by many as dangerously unreliable, well past his prime, and overly fond of drinking and adventurism. The military historian Sir Basil Liddell Hart, who had extensive contacts in the navy, recorded in his diary, 'Most of the naval staff are very critical of Churchill. They complain that he is slow and confused. It is suggested that the deterioration is due to too much old brandy. They say he alternates between recklessness and panic.'4 However, in the wake of the Norwegian debacle, concerns about Churchill's character were outweighed by despair over Chamberlain's leadership. On 10 May 1940, the political situation was suddenly transformed by the sensational news that in the early hours the Germans had invaded Holland and Belgium. After nine months of the Phoney War in the West, Hitler's long-awaited attack on the western front had begun. Immediately British and French forces moved towards Belgium in an attempt to confront the Wehrmacht's sweeping offensive, for which 135 divisions had been mobilised. The commander of II Corps of the British Expeditionary Force, Lieutenant General Alan Brooke, recognised the significance of what had happened, noting in his diary: 'It is hard to believe that on a most glorious spring day with all nature looking quite its best ... we are taking the first step towards what must become one of the greatest battles in all history!'5 Back at home, General Ironside found London far less ready for the titanic conflict. Summoned to a Chiefs of Staff meeting in the Admiralty at 7 a.m., he was forced to waste time just listening to rumours telephoned through from France for half an hour. Then, when he tried to leave the Admiralty building, he found he 'could not get out again. All the night watchmen away and the day's men not there. Door double and trebled locked. I walked up to one of the windows and opened it and climbed out. So much for security.'6 Having been politically mauled in the Norway debate in the House on 7 and 8 May, when even usually loyal Tories had rebelled against his government, Chamberlain had initially hoped that the start of the western blitzkrieg forty-eight hours later might save his premiership. The reverse was true. With all his closest allies deserting him, the prime minister knew he was finished and on 10 May he offered his resignation. That same evening Churchill was summoned to Buckingham Palace and asked by George VI to form a new government. After days of tumultuous activity, Churchill had finally gained the premiership. Only two years earlier, at the height of political consensus for appeasement, he had been a despised, marginalised figure, supported by only a handful of MPs. Now the nation's fate lay in his hands. As he came away from his audience with the King, Churchill spoke to his bodyguard Walter Thompson, who left a vivid account of their conversation. 'You know why I have been to Buckingham Palace, Thompson?' 'Yes, sir,' replied the detective, giving the new prime minister his congratulations before adding, 'I only wish that the position had come your way in better times, for you have an enormous task.' Tears then came into Churchill's eyes. 'God alone knows how great it is. I hope that it is not too late. I am very much afraid it is. We can only do our best.'7 But Churchill was not overwhelmed by the responsibility he had been given. As he recalled in his memoirs, when he finally retired to bed at three o'clock the following morning after lengthy discussions about the construction of his new government, 'I was conscious of a profound sense of relief. At last I had the authority to give directions over the whole scene. I felt as if I were walking with destiny, that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and this trial.'8 Churchill's arrival had an immediate impact on the machinery of Whitehall. The mood of vacillation evaporated, replaced by an invigorating new sense of purpose. Contrary to his image as a whisky-soaked bon viveur, he had a phenomenal work-rate, putting in over 120 hours a week and even dictating letters in the bathtub. His slogan 'Action This Day', which he attached to a deluge of instructions that emanated from Downing Street, became symbolic of his energetic style of governance. Of Churchill's arrival in power, Ironside wrote that 'it was as if an electric current had run through the war office, tightening up everyone's muscles. Answers were given to questions. Decisions were made.'9 This sentiment was echoed by one of Churchill's doctors, Sir Charles Wilson. 'The job was made for him. He revelled in it. The burden of a Prime Minister is formidable in peace; in war it may well crush a man in the prime of his life. Winston in reckless delight doubled the weight he had to carry by his approach to the duties of office. Now his appetite for work was voracious. He turned night into day.'10 Churchill's grasp of strategy was as strong as his fascination with detail, as was noted by the senior civil servant Sir Norman Brook. 'He was like the beam of a searchlight ceaselessly swinging round and penetrating into the remote recesses of his administration so that everyone, however humble his range or his function, felt that one day the beam might rest on him and light up what he was doing.'11 The overthrow of Chamberlain was the first act in a catalogue of ruthlessness that was to develop over the coming months, as the fight for national survival intensified. The swiftness and resolution of the step left much of the political class stunned. For some it appeared like a coup, utterly against British Parliamentary traditions, as voiced by the diplomat Sir Alexander Cadogan: 'How beastly the House of Commons is! With what delight they jump on a good man when he is down!'12 The wealthy American sophisticate and Tory MP Henry 'Chips' Channon wrote: 'Oh the cruelty of the pack in pursuit ... I am disgusted by politics and human nature.'13 Others were doubtful whether Churchill could fulfil the role. The prominent Tory Sir Cuthbert Headlam expressed the anxiety of many in his party about the new prime minister: 'So at last the man has gained his ambition. I never thought he would. Well, let us hope he makes good. I have never believed in him. I only hope my judgement of the man will be proved wrong.'14 2 'Last Desperate Venture' FOR CENTURIES THE idea of immunity from foreign invasion had been woven into the fabric of Britain's island story. In the romantic narrative, her insular maritime position and the rugged independence of her people combined to form an impregnable barrier against invaders. With the invention of manned flight, however, Britain's position as an island was no longer so unassailable. The Royal Navy, the stalwart protector of England's coast, could do nothing against the bombing of cities. 'The bomber will always get through,' declared the Tory leader Stanley Baldwin in 1934.1 Four years later, as the Luftwaffe mounted a series of deadly bombing raids during the Spanish civil war, experts at the Air Ministry warned that the first month of any forthcoming conflict with Germany could see 1 million casualties, 3 million refugees and the destruction of most of London. It was this understandable fixation with aerial attack that led the British government of the late 1930s to concentrate its rearmament drive on the RAF and its civil defence programme on air-raid precautions. The predictions of an apocalypse from the air proved wildly exaggerated once war broke out in September 1939. As months passed without any sign of German preparations for mass bombing, the more traditional fears about an invasion or coastal raids were reawakened, along with anxiety about the possible weakness of British defences. Within weeks of the declaration of war, Sir John Slessor, the head of planning at the RAF, warned of the dangers of 'a picked parachute regiment' landing on the coast. He told the Home Office: I do not want to be unduly alarmist and I hope we should succeed in defeating such an attempt by our fighters, but no one can say definitely that it might not succeed - for instance by crossing the sea at very low tide where the RDF [radio-direction finding: the technical name for radar] is not fully effective. Are you quite satisfied that if it were tried there would in fact be suitable reserves standing by at a 'fire brigade' readiness, with the necessary transport to take them quickly to the scene and with the necessary organisation and communications to tell them where to go?2 Just as uneasy was Winston Churchill, then the First Lord of the Admiralty, who wrote to the First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound, in late October 1939, soon after the sinking of the battleship the Royal Oak inside Scapa Flow and a Luftwaffe attack on Royal Navy vessels in the Firth of Forth: 'I should be the last to raise those invasion scares which I combatted so constantly during the early days of 1914-15. Still it might be well for the Chiefs of Staff to consider what would happen if, for instance, 20,000 men were run across and landed, say at Harwich or Webburn Hook [a village near Sheringham on the Norfolk coast], where there is deep water close to the shore. The long dark nights would help such designs.'3 With characteristic ambition, Churchill believed that the putative threat could be met by the formation of a new army of volunteers, along the lines of the Volunteer Training Corps in the First World War or Britain's defence force of Napoleonic times. Such a concept of a sturdy English yeomanry, uniting all classes to beat off an invader, appealed to his romanticised version of history. He wrote enthusiastically to a Cabinet colleague: 'Why do we not form a Home Guard of half-a-million men over forty (if they like to volunteer) and put all our elder stars at the head and in the structure of these new formations. Let these five hundred thousand men come along and push the young and active out of their home billets. If uniforms are lacking, a brassard will suffice.' However, he was badly mistaken in his view that there would be sufficient weapons for such a force, as would become apparent the following year.4 Churchill's appeal in 1939 for a new voluntary movement was ignored. Most senior army figures from General Ironside downwards believed that the threat of invasion was overblown, given the distance to England from German ports and aerodromes. As the Committee of Imperial Defence reported in late 1939, 'The likelihood of organised attack on a large scale on the shores of Britain is very small.'5 Sir Walter Kirke, the commander-in-chief of Home Forces, was particularly dismissive of the idea of invasion and believed that the most useful role for the army was in the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), fighting the Germans in France. As a paper from his headquarters argued at the end of 1939, 'We wish to avoid the mistake made in the last war of raising and maintaining units and formations designed only for home defence and with no overseas role. It is a reasonable assumption that if and when all Field Army divisions have left this country, the risk of invasion, if it exists at all, will have been seriously diminished.'6 Kirke, a tough, experienced officer who had served in the Indian empire and on the western front in the First World War, was described by the military historian Basil Liddell Hart as 'Energetic, shrewd and an exceptionally good speaker, though he tends to resist any ideas that he does not originate.'7 Nevertheless Kirke and the Chiefs of Staff were compelled by political pressure to draw up a defence plan that autumn to combat a possible invasion. This became known as the 'Julius Caesar plan', a rather unfortunate name, given that the Roman leader was one of the few foreign conquerors of England. The scheme was based on the assumption that the Germans might try to land 20,000 seaborne troops on the coast somewhere between the Humber and Harwich, conveyed in about twenty-five ships, along with 4,000 parachutists and another 15,000 airborne men, armed with light automatics and landed by air transports or gliders. To deal with this imagined scenario, Kirke deployed six Territorial divisions on the east coast, with three further Territorial divisions in reserve. In addition, 400 concrete pillboxes were erected in key defensive positions on the coast over the six months from October 1939, while arrangements were also made to commandeer commercial buses to transport the mobile reserves. Although the army units were short of field guns and transports, Kirke was still convinced that an invasion was unfeasible. According to one study by his GHQ in January 1940, 'Enemy troops landed either by air or sea or both could only achieve local successes and their position should rapidly become untenable.'8 Kirke stuck to his position throughout the Phoney War. He dismissed occasional intelligence reports about German planning for invasion as nothing more than black propaganda or dirty tricks designed to undermine morale at home and hinder efforts to reinforce the BEF. This confidence about the emptiness of most rumours was fully justified, as shown by an almost comedic incident in February 1940. An urgent naval message was sent from Devonport to the War Office that 'toy balloons are being strewn by the enemy. They contain gas that is highly dangerous and explodes on touch. Police and coastguards should be informed if any are found.' On investigation, the message turned out to be baseless. Kirke's HQ believed it had been 'deliberately circulated as a scare by an ill-disposed person or persons'.9 But others were not as sanguine as Kirke, fearing that the British defences were too weak to cope with an invasion. In February 1940, Sir Auckland Geddes, one of the twelve regional commissioners appointed to run the civil side of the home front, exploded with rage at the inadequacy of military preparations. 'This army business is worse than could have been believed. The rubbish we have got here is appalling and the officers, my God! But the really frightening thing is the way the conscripts are being rotted. No discipline, no training, apparently no equipment. I had no idea Walter Kirke was so bad and the CIGS [Ironside] doesn't seem to be much better.' Geddes, who was commissioner for the vital south-eastern region, concluded with some prescience, 'This phoney war stuff is likely to end with the spring and then look out for squalls.'10 The predicted squall turned into a storm when Hitler followed up his assault on Scandinavia with his offensive in the West. As the panzers swept through the forest of the Ardennes, the prospects for invasion were transformed. Not only did the Germans now occupy bases in Norway, within reach of Britain across the North Sea, but there was a real chance that they could soon hold aerodromes and ports on the north-eastern European coast. Furthermore the German method of blitzkrieg - where elite paratroopers were dropped in advance of an attack to capture vital points, with the Luftwaffe being used as a lethal form of flying artillery against ground positions - challenged all orthodox thinking about defensive warfare. A report by the British air staff painted a dispiriting picture of how this new German approach had been highly successful in the attack on Holland. 'Beaches, football grounds and aerodromes were seized and used. Bombing attacks were carried out around the aerodromes first and this was immediately succeeded by the landing of parachute troops ... Some one hundred troop carriers were employed over a period of a few hours each day, arriving in waves of 20 to 30 aircraft with fighter protection.' The report went on to warn of 'the tremendous hitting power and moral effect' of the Luftwaffe's striking force.11 To Henry Tizard, one of the government's chief scientists, the whole thrust of Hitler's two-pronged campaign in the West and in Scandinavia was ultimately aimed at Britain. He told Hastings 'Pug' Ismay on 16 May, 'What Hitler will try is to land a great force from the air, on service aerodromes, emergency landing grounds and any sufficiently large flat place, particularly country near aircraft factories. He will thus short-circuit the Navy, of which he is justifiably afraid, and deal only with our dispersed land forces in England, mostly only partly trained.' Tizard went on to add, 'Is it not possible that the prime object of the Norwegian adventure and perhaps also of the fighting now going on in France and Belgium is not merely to gain possession of aerodromes nearer our coast and of additional petrol supplies, but to draw off as many of our trained men and as much of our first-class equipment as possible?'12 The Julius Caesar plan was beginning to seem dangerously outdated, for it had been predicated on the theory that the Channel and the Scandinavian coasts would remain in friendly or neutral hands. In the new climate of bellicosity, the government was inundated with rumours and warnings about the possibility of German landings. At the end of April, for instance, the Foreign Office passed on a message from the Lithuanian legation in Paris, which had been told by the Italian military attaché that Hitler had given Mussolini an outline of his plans for an all-out air attack upon Great Britain, by which our key points would be bombed and our naval, air and military forces and internal communications would be thrown into such disorder that the way would be open for an invasion which would, in fact, take place. The British coast was so extensive that landings in force would be easily possible. Germany still had enough naval forces to convey the expedition and cover would be provided by the air force. The Italian military attaché also stated that the Germans had a network of agents in this country [who] would come into action at the crucial moment to assist the invaders.13 In the same vein, the British embassy in Helsinki reported that one of their military sources had revealed that 'the Germans plan to use parachutists against England by landing them in county Galway and Connemara where they would join forces with the IRA who are expecting them. Air bases would be established in Eire and aircraft conveying parachutists would carry British markings.'14 Soon after the attack in the west, an intelligence report reached the War Office from Norway that 'the Germans are moving troop-carrying planes to Stavanger. This may indicate intention of an airborne attack on the Shetlands or the Orkneys. Please warn garrisons to be on their toes.'15 A further picture of the nervous mood can be gleaned from a report of 14 May to the headquarters of the army's Southern Command, based in Salisbury, outlining 'suspicious incidents' the previous day: At 1835 hours three men in a blue saloon car seen acting suspiciously near military post near Claydon [a village near Banbury, Oxfordshire]. Two suspicious characters at Blounts Hotel, 27 Clifton Road, Folkestone, were asking questions about the locations of troops. At Gillingham a man was seen moving suspiciously in the vicinity of Gillingham tunnel. A shot was fired by the sentry and search made. Nobody was found, however, although the grass in the vicinity was much trampled. This report also contained several alleged sightings of enemy parachutists during the night, coming down over Ramsgate, Gerrards Cross, Broadstairs and the Medway, as well as 'unaccountable lights', flashes and coloured flares in various districts. There was also a disturbing case of interference on radio sets in north Essex, where a voice was heard to say '31 calling all detachments', followed by the slogan 'Heil Hitler'.16 Equally frantic was a message on 11 May to Kirke's GHQ: 'Admiralty considers attack on Southend Pier a possibility. Information had been received from an anonymous Nazi agent, who displayed strong anti-Nazi feelings.'17 As had happened the previous autumn, Churchill was also caught up in the invasion disquiet. Shortly before he became prime minister, he pushed for 'at least one highly trained division' to be brought home from France 'to meet a German landing'.18 The army chiefs, still certain of Britain's impregnability, refused, Sir Henry Pownall, the head of the BEF general staff, dismissing the demand as nothing more than 'a home defence flap started by Winston'.19 Churchill kept up the pressure once he gained the premiership in the wake of Hitler's western offensive. 'The scene has darkened swiftly,' he told President Franklin Roosevelt, with whom he had maintained a fruitful correspondence since his return to the Admiralty in 1939. 'We expect to be attacked here ourselves, both from the air and by parachute and airborne troops in the near future and we are getting ready for them.'20 On his very first day in Downing Street, 10 May, he set up a new Home Defence Executive, headed by Kirke and including representatives of the three services and the Ministry of Home Security, to coordinate local anti-invasion schemes and update the Julius Caesar plan. He again pressed for the Home Forces to be improved in both quality and strength, this time bringing in six regular battalions from India, with Territorials taking their place in the east. After some prevarication, the India Office agreed to this proposal, although the Secretary of State Leo Amery was dubious about the move, writing in his diary, 'Winston, I fear, is too chiefly concentrating on home defence.'21 But in the febrile atmosphere of early May, such a focus was both inevitable and necessary. The Chiefs of Staff, shaking off their earlier complacency, now embarked on a series of immediate measures to bolster the country's defences. New telephone lines were installed between the searchlight detachments of anti-aircraft command and the local headquarters of the army companies. The number of armed guards at aerodromes was increased. A programme of reconditioning 150,000 rifles for home battalions was started at the Woolwich arsenal. Wireless sets from the RAF were lent to the army in East Anglia and Kent. A massive reconnaissance effort was undertaken to survey all open spaces within 5 miles of eastern ports and inland power stations, airfields, and radar bases, with a view to creating obstructions that would prevent German landings. Work also began on plans to blow up bridges, dock gates, viaducts and harbour facilities in the event of invasion. More transport in eastern coastal areas was hired for the army's use in the event of an emergency, although this was often of a highly makeshift nature, comprising vehicles like butchers' vans, coal carriers and builders' lorries. Equally makeshift were some of the roadblocks that were quickly installed in early May, with material varying from derelict cars to tree trunks. Some of the impulse for this defence activity came from civilians keen to do what they could to defend their island. 'There is a mood of belligerency and resolve,' reported the Ministry of Information, which conducted comprehensive daily surveys of public opinion throughout the tense summer months of 1940. One pub landlord in Lambeth told the ministry surveyor, of his customers, that 'their tails are up. They say, "The Germans will never get here, but if they do, we'll show them".'22 Apart from improvised roadblocks and transport, popular determination to help the national cause was most clearly manifested in the clamour for the government to create a volunteer defence force, as had happened during previous conflicts. Indeed, ever since war had broken out in September 1939, there had been moves to set up local volunteer units. In Essex, Worcestershire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire, unofficial companies had been formed to keep a lookout for enemy parachutists and to guard vital sites, while the coasts of Dumfriesshire in Scotland were regularly patrolled by volunteers on bicycles. The formidable artist and equestrian enthusiast Lady Helen Gleichen established her own band of seventy guardsmen on her estate of Much Marcle in Herefordshire. Known as the Much Marcle Watchers, the men were armed with ancient pikes and flintlocks taken from the walls of her rambling family home, although Lady Helen also unsuccessfully asked the local Shropshire Light Infantry for the loan of some rifles and 'a couple of machine guns if you've got any'.23 The real impetus behind the public demand for a volunteer force arose from reports, often exaggerated, about the deadly effectiveness of the German paratrooopers in Holland. This new peril from the sky not only showed that the sea no longer offered sufficient protection for the British people, but was also held to epitomise the lethal, unchivalrous nature of German aggression; German parachutists were, falsely, said to have come down onto Dutch soil disguised as policemen, priests and peasants. In one Daily Express report, whose sensational quality was unmatched by its veracity, 'the steward of an English ship said that he and the crew had watched parachutists descend in women's clothing. They wore blouses and skirts and each carried a sub-machine gun.' Officialdom helped to fuel the alarm. On the day of the German invasion of Holland, the under-secretary at the War Office, Lord De La Warr, told Parliament that Germany could land 100,000 troops from the air. This prompted public agitation, exacerbated by the military authorities' unintentionally misleading advice about the tactics of the imaginary legions of German paratroopers. 'Information from Norway shows that German parachute troops, when descending, hold their arms above their heads as if surrendering. The parachutist, however, holds a grenade in each hand. To counter this strategy parachutists, if they exceed six in number, are to be treated as hostile and if possible shot in the air.'24 Concern about enemy parachute landings was central to the demand for a new volunteer army. Reflecting public feelings, the National Liberal MP for East Fife, Sir James Henderson-Stewart, asked the War Secretary Anthony Eden on 11 May 'if he would consider the immediate formation of a voluntary corps of older, responsible men to be armed with rifles and Bren Guns and trained for instant action in their own localities'.25 Eden responded that the matter was under urgent consideration. There was also political pressure from the some elements of the radical left, which saw a volunteer force as a vehicle for extending democracy and challenging the outdated, class-ridden establishment. The government, while eager to strengthen Britain's fighting capability, was firmly against the growth of a revolutionary or unauthorised militia, not least because of the scope for chaos if large numbers of citizens 'took the law into their own hands', to use Kirke's phrase.26 The War Office and the army therefore decided that they had to take the lead over the development of a voluntary army. Two separate plans were soon under urgent consideration by officials. One was the work of the adjutant general Sir Robert Gordon-Findlayson, who proposed that groups of volunteers, recruited by the British Legion, should be attached to the searchlight companies run by the RAF's anti-aircraft command. The other, more comprehensive and straightforward plan, drawn up by Kirke and his senior staff officer William Cardon Roe, was adopted. It provided for a force raised in villages, towns and cities for the defence of immediate localities, ultimately overseen by the army but under the control of the Lords Lieutenant at county level. Frenetic activity followed this decision, as the arrangements for a recruitment drive were put in place. One issue quickly settled was the name of the new force, to be known as the Local Defence Volunteers, although this title would raise violent objections from Winston Churchill later in the summer. Some senior government officials, still living with the leisurely routines of the Phoney War, were appalled at the rushed nature of the force's launch. At one stage Cardon Roe was summoned by Sir Frederick Bovenschen, the severe, bespectacled deputy under-secretary for war. According to Cardon Roe's account, Sir Frederick told him that 'the whole thing was a most irregular and thoroughly slapdash scheme. Was it realized that it had taken many years of planning and an Act of Parliament to form the Territorial Army? In addition to the financial side that required Treasury sanction, there was the legal status of the LDVs which would have to be carefully explored. Why all this precipitancy? I lost my temper and said, "In order to try and avoid losing the war." '27 Because of this sense of haste the government decided to announce the creation of the Local Defence Volunteers on 14 May 1940, despite the fact that Whitehall's arrangements were incomplete. In his BBC broadcast that day, Eden stressed that the primary role of the new force was to deal with the threat from German paratroopers. The response was remarkable. Within twenty-four hours, no fewer than 250,000 men had registered. By the end of May, the total had climbed to 400,000, reaching 1,456,000 by the end of July. The launch had been a huge popular success, capitalising on the enthusiasm and determination of the British public to stand up to Germany and indicative of their determination to fight. 'I rushed to join it. I would have got in if I'd only had one leg,' recalled Bill Scully, a volunteer from Bradford.28 William Kellaway, who ran a removals business in Devon and signed up for the LDV immediately, said that 'there was such a great response because people wanted to do their bit. They actually thought that the Germans were coming. In fact there were rumours that some had landed in Cornwall. People were arming themselves with pitchforks.'29 Pitchforks were one of the few types of weapons that the first volunteers possessed. Nearly all the operational rifles and guns held in Britain in May 1940 were in the hands of the regular army, which also received most of the output coming off the production lines. So the volunteers had to make do with a bewildering variety of weapons, including shotguns, muskets, blunderbusses, swords, axe handles, truncheons and even golf clubs. One Lancashire unit was armed with Snider rifles that had been held in Manchester Zoo and had last been used during the Indian Mutiny of 1857. Another unit, based in London, took pikes from the props department at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, while in the East End of the capital a platoon made improvised 'hand grenades' from potatoes filled with razor blades. In one Hertfordshire platoon, the only rifle was an elderly German one taken from an enemy officer by a British veteran during the East Africa campaign during the First World War. All this improvisation lingered in the public memory long after the volunteers were properly equipped, feeding the myth of Britain's hopeless desperation in 1940. But it would be wrong to exaggerate the depth of the arms famine. In keeping with the government's spirit of urgency, huge orders were placed with the USA to purchase reliable weapons for the volunteers, which would start to arrive in July, while as early as 5 June 94,000 rifles from Britain's own resources had been distributed. At first the LDVs were just as short of uniforms as they were of rifles. In fact, all each volunteer was given to signify his status was an armband, or brassard, imprinted with the black letters LDV. To resolve this difficulty quickly, the government ordered uniforms made of coarse denim, which began to be issued from the end of May but were of poor quality and often ill fitting. A volunteer in Plymouth was officially issued with a safety pin to hold up his trousers, which were 10 inches too wide round the waist. Joseph O'Keefe from Gateshead said of his jacket that 'you needed a neck like a horse to get a snug fit.'30 There was also a severe shortage of tin helmets in the early months of the LDV, and the field service caps provided by the War Office did not offer much protection. One volunteer was persuaded by his wife to turn up for patrol duties with an enamel pot on his head, held in place by a scarf. Again, this was not the whole story. From the late summer onwards, guardsmen were issued with smart, well-fitted battledress uniforms and helmets of the type used by the regular army. Given the volunteers' initial lack of equipment, the role of the LDV in those early weeks was necessarily limited. In the House of Commons on 22 May, Sir Edward Grigg set out the three primary tasks of the new force as: 'observation and information' in the event of an attack, providing details swiftly to the regular army; 'obstruction of movement' through roadblocks and denial of access to motor vehicles; and protection of vulnerable points through patrol and guard duties. The defensive, restricted nature of these functions led to the fashionable jibes in early 1940 that LDV really stood for 'Look, Duck, Vanish' or 'Last Desperate Venture'.31 Such mockery was reinforced by reports of the LDV's practice drills, which even to many recruits seemed exercises in pointlessness. Bill Hall from Dorset remembered that a Welsh NCO 'put us through our drill, saluting, marching, turning, halting, presenting arms, sloping arms but nothing with which to combat paratroopers who at that time were imminent. We didn't even have ammunition and were left to our own ideas as to what use we would put our bayonets.'32 George Beardmore, an engineer based at the BBC headquarters in London, became exasperated by drilling with broomsticks, feeling that the 'LDV were likely to serve no useful purpose whatever should the Germans appear in Upper Regent Street'.33 In some places, cynicism towards LDV training routines was further fuelled by the fact that their rhythms seemed to be linked to the local pub. 'It was a constant source of amazement to me,' said Edward Pearce, a volunteer in Derbyshire, 'that no matter what the training consisted of and no matter where we went to on a Sunday morning, the Old Soldier in charge never failed to dismiss us at precisely one minute to opening time outside the Nag's Head pub.'34 The disorderly conduct of some volunteers could provoke the ire of those who prided themselves on discipline, such as John Bevis, a student at Loughborough University where there was a particularly well-organised LDV unit under the command of ex-army officers. When he returned home to Norfolk and joined the local village platoon, he was shocked at the sight that greeted him on his first morning of drill with his new comrades. 'Most wore battledress, some wore great coats, some had tin hats, some had ammo pouches ... About twenty past ten we were asked to fall in. There was no inspection; the roll was not called. Some arrived even later and just joined the parade without a word.' Bevis said that he was 'disgusted with the whole outfit - the appalling quality of the instruction, the lack of discipline, the absence of effective leadership, the low morale. That pack of yokels could not have stood up to a patrol of German girl guides. Needless to say I didn't trouble to attend any more of their parades.'35 There was also some popular derision over the perceived elderly status of recruits, hence the nickname of 'Dad's Army', later immortalised by the television series, although in truth the average age of volunteers in 1940 was only thirty-five and many were far younger. Nevertheless, a significant proportion of the older recruits were military veterans, most of them from the First World War but some from even earlier conflicts. The oldest officially recorded volunteer accepted for service in May 1940, far beyond Eden's limit of sixty, was Alexander Taylor of Crieff in Perthshire, aged seventy-eight, a former sergeant major in the Black Watch who had taken part in the campaign to relieve General Gordon in 1885. As with Churchill's arrival in the premiership, the creation of the LDV had shown that Britain was resolved to fight. This burgeoning sense of confidence was epitomised by the experience of Don Evans, who was just sixteen when he joined the Salisbury LDV. Out on patrol one day in the early summer, he and his fellow volunteers came across a German airman who had been forced to bail out of his aircraft. 'He had landed in the midst of a thorn bush and was covered in scratches. He was crying and had messed himself. He was convinced he would be shot.' Having handed over the Luftwaffe crewman to the police, Evans felt invigorated: 'I must confess that I had always been afraid of the Germans. I had always imagined them to be 17-stone, six-and-a-half footers with a square head and an iron fist. Seeing this young lad in front of me snivelling and stinking did me good. I was no longer afraid of Germans.'36 3 'These persons should be behind barbed wire' THE LOCAL DEFENCE Volunteers were established largely to counter the external threat of German landings, but in the wake of Hitler's offensives in Scandinavia and the West there was just as much concern about the internal threat. During those anxious days, the British authorities and public grew increasingly worried about the enemy within. In this tense atmosphere, traitors and German agents were seen everywhere, ready to conspire in Britain's downfall. Developments on the continent helped to fuel these suspicions. The German invasion of Norway had led to an attempted coup by the pro-Nazi politician Vidkun Quisling, the leader of the Norwegian fascist party Nasjonal Samling. Some feared that a home-grown Quisling might be lurking within Britain, either in establishment circles or on the fascist right. The Foreign Office civil servant Sir Alexander Cadogan saw the Tory politician and arch-appeaser Sir Samuel Hoare, known as 'Slippery Sam', in this perfidious role, and was delighted when Churchill removed him from the Cabinet and sent him as the new British ambassador to Madrid, commenting: 'The rats are leaving the ship. The quicker we get them out of the country the better. But I'd sooner send them to a penal settlement. He'll be the Quisling of England when Germany conquers us.'1 Another prime suspect was Sir Horace Wilson, whose administrative gifts had made him the most powerful civil servant of the late 1930s but whose dogmatic pursuit of appeasement invoked the bitter hostility of Chamberlain's critics. Among them was Winston Churchill, who is reported to have said on 10 May, as he ordered Wilson's expulsion from Downing Street, 'Tell that man that if his room is not cleared by two o'clock, I will make him Minister for Iceland.'2 A more obvious candidate was the leader of the British Union of Fascists, Sir Oswald Mosley, a wealthy aristocrat of soaring ambition, oratorical brilliance and malevolent impatience. Certainly his hatred of democracy, rampant anti-Semitism and authoritarian instincts made him Hitler's ideological soulmate. Hitler's own view of Mosley, which he related to his army adjutant Gerhard Engel in mid-June 1940, was that he did 'not think much of him as a personality; on the other hand he is the only Englishman to understand the German-European idea'. Although Mosley could never become 'a real leader' like himself, the Führer said, 'his role was not yet over,' an ominous statement that justified British concerns about the activities of the fascist leader.3 Another feature of Hitler's military success that fed fears about the internal threat was the alleged German tactic of using a sophisticated network of spies and collaborators to undermine an enemy's defences from within. The members of these networks were known as 'Fifth Columnists', a term that was first coined during the Spanish civil war by the Nationalist leader General Emilio Mola. With his characteristic gift for spreading psychological terror, Hitler had played on this widespread foreboding about a German fifth column in an interview he gave in 1939: 'When I wage war in the midst of peace, troops will suddenly appear, let us say, in the streets of Paris. They will wear French uniforms. They will march through the streets in broad daylight. No one will stop them. Everything has been thought out to the last detail.'4 Reports coming back to London from the crumbling front lines in Europe seemed to confirm this sinister German approach. The Daily Express , then Britain's best-selling newspaper, gave this vivid account on 13 May: 'As machine guns came out of the sky like unnatural lightning peppering the streets below, the Fifth Column crept out of their homes in German uniforms, heavily armed. Holland had combed out the Fifth Column for weeks before but as the doors opened at 3am the men who had been proclaimed anti-Nazis and refugees from Germany held rifles.' The Reich propaganda machine was delighted at the mood of fear created by the fifth column threat, as was demonstrated in the infamous broadcasts of the Irish-American fascist William Joyce, whose sneering nasal drawl earned him the nickname Lord Haw-Haw. Having been the deputy leader of the BUF until Mosley sacked him in 1937, Joyce had remained on the extreme fringe of British politics until 1939, even starting his own tiny Nazi party called the National Socialist League. A violent alcoholic and fixated anti-Semite who opened his League meetings with a cry of 'Sieg Heil', Joyce had escaped to Germany just before the war after receiving a tip-off that he was about to be arrested under Defence Regulations. At the peak of his radio career in the summer of 1940, his Nazi broadcasts on English-language stations reached an estimated 6 million regular listeners in Britain and 18 million occasional ones. He would mention specific geographical details, such as a stopped church clock in a Norfolk village or the number of barrage balloons in Bristol, implying that in Britain a vast web of Nazi agents was feeding him information. These details were wholly bogus, but most listeners could not know that. His apparent omniscience and authenticity stoked the flames of the fifth column fire that swept through Britain from early May. The government added to the heat by urging extra vigilance. One leaflet from the Ministry of Information stated in unequivocal terms, 'There is a Fifth Column in Britain. Anyone who thinks there isn't, that "it can't happen here", has simply fallen into the trap laid by the Fifth Column itself. For the first job of the Fifth Column is to make people believe that it does not exist. In other countries, the most respectable and neighbourly citizens turned out to be Fifth Columnists.'5 Given such a context, it was inevitable that the country was soon awash with dark rumours and conspiratorial tales. One of the most common was that elite German soldiers had already landed and were moving through English society disguised as nuns, although they could be spotted by their hairy forearms. According to a report in the Daily Herald , a woman travelling by train from London to Aylesbury became highly suspicious about two nuns sitting opposite her, one of whom dropped her book and then went to pick it up. According to the newspaper, 'From the folds of her habit emerged a hairy, muscular indubitably masculine hand.' The Herald went on to relate that the woman had later reported the incident to the police, who gave her £10 as a reward.6 Some of those in authority doubted that the fifth column was really as big a menace as was feared. The Home Secretary Sir John Anderson - a Scottish-born Independent MP and former civil servant whose emotional coldness was matched by his intellectual and administrative rigour - was the last man to be swayed by the gusts of public opinion. Because of his judicial outlook, mixed with his innate Caledonian restraint, he was repulsed by the idea of taking punitive action against the entire German and Australian population within Britain, despite the growing threat from Nazism. Public hostility towards aliens appalled him, as did the growing demands for mass incarceration. He remarked at the height of the fifth column scare, 'There is a whispering campaign going on which puts the witch-hunts of the Middle Ages completely in the shade. Everyone now tends to looks askance at this neighbour - very unfortunate, I think.'7 Besides, he argued, ever since the outbreak of war sufficient steps had been taken to deal with dangerous aliens and home-grown extremists. In September 1939, there were 73,353 Germans and Austrians aged over sixteen living in Britain, roughly a third of the entire population of foreigners in the country. With his usual efficiency, Anderson had quickly set up 122 Home Office tribunals to examine all their cases, a process that resulted in each enemy alien being placed in one of three separate groups. Those deemed to be the greatest security risk, of whom there were 569, were classified as Category A and were interned within days of war being declared. Category B was for the borderline cases and recent arrivals. The 6,782 Germans and Austrians who fell into this class were allowed to retain their freedom on certain conditions: they were subject to a curfew; had restrictions imposed on their travel movements; and were banned from owning bicycles, maps, cameras and wirelesses. Category C, which involved no controls at all, covered the other 66,802 cases, with refugees from Nazi Germany making up the overwhelming majority. To Anderson, this outcome combined respect for individual liberty with a recognition of national security demands. An even more sparing approach was adopted towards British political hardliners. No action at all was taken against the Communist Party, despite the Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939 that gave Hitler a free hand in Eastern Europe. Nor was Mosley's British Union of Fascists, which had 20,000 members at the outbreak of war, banned outright, despite the concerns of MI5 and the security services. Just a handful of ultra pro-Nazis were imprisoned under Clause 18b of the 1939 Defence Regulations, which allowed the internment of suspects without trial. Among them was T. Victor Rowe, who ran not only a business importing kitchen equipment from Germany but also a fanatically racist outfit called the Nordic League, which was so extreme that Mosley himself refused to have anything to do with it. But, in another indicator of Anderson's liberal regime, Rowe was released after just three months. Throughout the Phoney War, even as the British Union of Fascists' attacks on the government became ever more brazen, Anderson resisted calls for more toughness, stating in April, 'It is extremely difficult to interfere with these actions without contravening the traditional principle of allowing free speech and free association for political objects.'8 However, after Hitler's offensive in Western Europe, such a stance was no longer tenable. Judicial niceties had to be sacrificed to the hard reality of war. Not only were the public and the press demanding a crackdown, so were Winston Churchill, the Chiefs of Staff and the security services. According to a Cabinet minute of 15 May, the prime minister believed that 'there should be a very large round-up of enemy aliens and suspect persons', since it was 'much better that these persons should be behind barbed wire'.9 As the calls for action became louder, Anderson was gradually forced to move away from his purist liberal position. On 11 May, he agreed to the detention of all male Germans and Austrians aged between sixteen and sixty who were living in coastal areas between Scotland and Hampshire, a total of around 2,000 enemy aliens. This limited step did nothing to quell the pressure, so on 17 May he ordered the internment of all Category B aliens, regardless of where they lived. He refused, however, to go any further, as he explained in a lengthy memorandum to the Cabinet that same day. Having pointed out that 'the great bulk' of Category C aliens were 'refugees from Nazi oppression who are bitterly opposed to the German regime', he argued that mass internment would soon backfire.10 Many in government thought the Home Secretary's policy of forbearance wholly inappropriate for the magnitude of the challenge facing Britain. The War Secretary Anthony Eden wrote in exasperation that he 'did not want a lecture from Sir John Anderson on the liberty of the subject',11 while even more scathing was the senior MI5 officer Guy Liddell, who met Anderson on 21 May to press for more detentions, especially of the fascists. As he had done with others, Anderson told Liddell that 'he needed to be reasonably convinced that the BUF would assist the enemy and unless he could get such evidence, he thought it would be a mistake to imprison Mosley and his supporters, who would be extremely bitter after the war when democracy would be going through its sternest trials.' That evening Liddell recorded in his diary, 'Either he is an extremely calm and cool-headed person or he has not the slightest idea of the present situation. The position of a serious invasion of this country would seem to be no more than a vague suggestion.'12 However, at that very moment Anderson's hand was forced by dramatic new twist in the saga: the discovery of a wide-ranging plot in the heart of London, with tentacles stretching across the globe to Berlin, Moscow and Washington. It was a genuine conspiracy that meant he could no longer dismiss talk of extremist treachery as nothing more than empty scaremongering. The outline of the plot, which aimed not only to give support to the Nazi enemy but also to bring about the downfall of President Franklin Roosevelt, was as audacious as its cast was outlandish. At its heart were three contrasting, unconventional figures: Anna Wolkoff, a vivacious White Russian who relished underground subversion and yearned for the triumph of the Third Reich; Tyler Kent, a louche US foreign service clerk with a fondness for high society, female company and anti-democratic politics; and Captain Maule 'Jock' Ramsay, a backbench Conservative MP, Eton-educated Scottish aristocrat and heroic war veteran whose patriotism had been eclipsed by his virulent anti-Semitism. United by their hostility to the British war effort, they aimed to change the course of history. Central to the activities of this eccentric trio was the Right Club, a shadowy organisation set up by Ramsay in May 1939 to spread his anti-Jewish dogma, its goal being to influence the political establishment from the inside. Like all political extremes throughout history, the British far right in the late 1930s was prone to endless splits and schisms, a reflection of their ideological differences as well as of the fanatical, unbalanced nature of their adherents. A myriad of different groups, each with a tiny membership, competed within this narrow orbit. Some were pro-German, like the Anglo-German Fellowship and the Link, founded by the distinguished but deranged ex-Royal Navy commander Sir Barry Domvile. Others were violent, quasi-mystical pro-Nazis, like the Militant Christian Patriots, Victor Rowe's Nordic League, and the White Knights of Britain led by E.H. Cole, among whose wild utterances was a description of Hitler as 'that Man of God across the sea, that great Crusader for whom one would be proud to die'.13 There were also, in addition to Mosley's BUF, several other fascist outfits, including William Joyce's National Socialist League, John Beckett's British People's Party and the Imperial Fascist League, founded in 1929 by the veterinary surgeon Arnold Leese, who deeply resented Mosley's fame, sarcastically calling him a 'kosher fascist'.14 As early as 1936, Leese openly advocated the mass extermination of Jews, an incendiary remark that led to a spell in jail. Throughout the 1930s, as the clouds of war began to loom, political extremists in Britain were kept under close surveillance by MI5 and the Metropolitan Police. The unit in MI5 that monitored subversion, known as B5b, was headed by the enigmatic former naval officer Captain Maxwell Knight, often said to be the model for 'M' in Ian Fleming's Bond novels. Keen to acquire more inside information, Knight penetrated the Right Club's membership which was heavily tilted towards the aristocracy and London society, with three undercover female agents posing as right-wing zealots. The three were: Marjorie Amor, a middle-aged secretary separated from her husband; Hélène de Munck, a Belgian mystic who shared with Knight an interest in the occult; and Joan Miller, the youngest and most glamorous of the trio. During the spring of 1940, these three women became trusted lieutenants of the Right Club. It was through their access to Ramsay's inner sanctum that MI5 began to grasp the full scale of the pro-Nazi scheming of Right Club member Anna Wolkoff. A naturalised British subject, she had little allegiance to her adopted country. Her prime political impulse was, as she admitted, her 'inborn hatred of Jews'.15 During the 1930s she had set up business as a dressmaker and for a time had enjoyed some success, even numbering Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, among her clients. But when that enterprise failed, she fell back on her favourite activity of indulging in far right subversion. She regularly boasted that among the friends of her family were the long-serving Director-General of MI5, Major General Sir Vernon Kell, and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Edmund Ironside, claims that were to cause lasting damage to both men in the summer of 1940. What eventually compelled the government to act against her was her friendship with the American embassy clerk Tyler Kent, who had long been plotting against western democracy. A rancorous anti-Semite, he had displayed his treachery in his first diplomatic posting, to Moscow in 1934. One CIA document, written a decade later, stated that he was 'actively engaged in espionage for the Russian Government'.16 Tellingly, when Kent was transferred from Moscow to London in October 1939, he strongly objected to the move, informing the State Department that he would rather go to Berlin, which he saw as the natural alternative to Moscow. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that Kent trumpeted anti-Communist views, he was quite open about his preference for Russia or Germany over Britain. 'I consider life in the totalitarian state more interesting than in a democracy,' he said in 1939, explaining why he preferred a posting to the Soviet or Reich capitals.17 Whatever side Kent was really supporting, it was certainly not the Allies'. At the time of his arrival in London, much of America was in a deeply isolationist mood, desperate to avoid any entanglement in a European conflict. That outlook was shared by the US ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, a self-made millionaire of Irish stock who had been given the London post by President Roosevelt as a reward for heavily backing the Democrats. However, by 1940 Kennedy's politics had diverged drastically from the president's. Where Roosevelt wanted to give Britain and France as much support as he legally could without breaching US neutrality, Kennedy was antagonistic to the Allies, not least because he regarded their cause as doomed. The atmosphere of anti-British feeling created by the ambassador was perfectly suited to Kent, who was criminally exploiting his position as a cipher clerk. Since his early days in Moscow, Kent had been in the habit of privately collecting copies of diplomatic correspondence. In London the material to which he had access was even more sensitive, particularly the telegrams between Roosevelt and Churchill that covered not only political developments but also military operations and ship movements. His plotting took on another dimension when he became embroiled with Anna Wolkoff and the Right Club. His introduction to her circle had arisen through his interest in the Soviet Union and his facility as a Russian speaker. Inevitably, Anna's admiration for Kent soon led to a meeting between him and Captain Ramsay, who was immediately taken with the American's personality and politics. Kent, Ramsay and Wolkoff were now swimming in deadly waters. The Right Club and its associates were shifting from disloyalty to outright treason. Keen to gather as much hard evidence as he could of Wolkoff's willingness to communicate with Germany, Maxwell Knight decided to set an elaborate trap for her. In early April 1940, he concocted a letter in code to William Joyce, otherwise known as Lord Haw-Haw. Full of defeatist gossip and advice on how to improve Nazi radio propaganda directed at England, this letter purported to come from close friends of Joyce. One piece of advice read: 'Churchill not popular, keep on at him ... as war-theatre-extender-sacrificer, Gallipoli etc. Stress his conceit and repeated failures with ex-proselites [sic] and prestige.' Another was: 'Butter ration doubled because poor can't buy admitted by Telegraph. Bacon same. Cost of living steeply mounting. Shopkeepers suffering.' Perhaps the most interesting passage was about the CIGS. 'Ironside believed very anti-Jewish, not so anti-German. Possible future British Franco if things reach that stage here,' words that reflected distrust of Ironside within intelligence circles.18 Having crafted this convincing fake, Knight passed it to James McGuirk Hughes, a professional double agent who did a lot of freelance work for Special Branch. Following Knight's instructions, on 9 April Hughes introduced himself to Wolkoff at the Russian tea rooms run by her White Russian parents and asked her whether she 'would be prepared to do something that would really help the cause of anti-semitism'.19 He then handed her the letter addressed to Joyce, telling her that it contained 'some good anti-Jewish stuff'.20 In her excitement at this development, Wolkoff immediately showed the envelope to her confidante Hélène de Munck in whom she now had complete trust. The deception had worked. British Intelligence were certain that the coded letter, which Knight sent through his underground network to Berlin, reached Joyce because in his subsequent broadcast to Britain on 27 April he used the word 'Carlyle' in reference to the great Victorian philosopher, which was a coded signal to the conspirators that the letter had arrived. Even after this cast-iron confirmation of Wolkoff's treachery, Knight refrained from action, believing that he needed more evidence against Ramsay and Kent. By early May the bonds of conspiracy between the two men were becoming tighter, with Kent accepted into full membership of the Right Club. Indeed, so impressed was Ramsay with Kent that, fearing his own London home might be raided by security services, he entrusted him with the club's membership book. In return for this gesture of confidence, Kent showed Ramsay a selection of the documents he had stolen from the embassy, including the Churchill-Roosevelt telegrams. Apart from the thrill of intrigue, Kent's motivation for revealing this material to Ramsay was his desire to spread the word about Roosevelt's supposed breach of neutrality. Kent's theory was that if these telegrams were mentioned in the Commons, the subsequent scandal could drive the president from office. By the third week of May 1940, the war was going badly for the Allies. French lines were collapsing. Holland was fully occupied by the Germans. The British Expeditionary Force was in near constant retreat. Belgium was on the verge of surrender. Faced with the prospect of Nazi hegemony on the continent, Churchill's correspondence with Roosevelt assumed a more urgent tone. On 15 May, the prime minister set out in stark and detailed terms the support that Britain needed from America. The list included 'several hundred of the latest types of aircraft', large quantities of steel, and 'anti-aircraft equipment and ammunition'. Above all, Churchill wanted the loan 'of 40 or 50 of your older destroyers to bridge the gap between what we have now and the large new construction we put in hand at the beginning of the war'.21 As always throughout 1940, Roosevelt had to strike a delicate balance between the requirements of American neutrality and his desire to support the fight against Nazi tyranny. So in his reply of 17 May, all he could offer were warm words and the vague promise to give 'the most favourable consideration' to the sale of steel, planes and other equipment. But he warned Churchill that there was little hope of lending the destroyers, not only because of America's own defence needs but also because 'a step of that kind could not be taken except with the specific authorisation of Congress and I am not certain that it would be wise for that suggestion to be made to Congress at this moment'.22 Churchill refused to be downcast at this response, telling Roosevelt on 18 May, 'We are determined to persevere to the very end whatever the result of the great battle raging in France may be.'23 Both Wolkoff and Ramsay were particularly interested in Churchill's telegram of 15 May about the request for destroyers and military equipment, which they saw as irrefutable evidence that America was being pulled into hidden support for the war. That week Wolkoff was seen dining with the Duke del Monte, the Italian military attaché, at which she passed him some photographed material from Kent. Later that month, British Intelligence intercepts of radio signals from Rome to Berlin indicated that some of the Churchill-Roosevelt telegrams had indeed reached the Italians. Her conspiracy to exploit Kent's material was further extended to include another Right Club member, Christabel Nicholson, a fanatical pro-Nazi who was a qualified medical doctor and the wife of former naval chief Admiral Wilmot Nicholson. In her outlook, she was an illustration of how unhinged and extreme the Right Club's membership really was. Such was her devotion to Hitler that she had even been invited to the Nuremberg rally of 1938, where she met the Führer. 'A cunning Austrian with beautiful manners,' she later recalled. Given Ramsay's status as a Member of Parliament and Kent's diplomatic immunity, the question of intervention was a highly sensitive one, but MI5 knew they could not delay any longer. At 3 p.m. on Saturday 18 May, Knight went to see Herschel Johnson, the US embassy's head of intelligence. Johnson was appalled as Knight recounted the details of Kent's subterfuge and his links with Wolkoff and Ramsay. According to Knight's note of their meeting, 'Mr Johnson was profoundly shocked' and told Knight that he 'felt his Government would regard the whole affair as extremely serious'.24 In response Knight explained that MI5 and the police were planning to arrest Wolkoff on the morning of 20 May, but they wanted to synchronise this step with a raid on Kent's flat, for which they needed the US government's permission. Johnson promised that he would urgently seek this from Ambassador Kennedy, who, much to the disgust of the British and in keeping with his defeatist image, had taken up residence in Windsor in anticipation of the Luftwaffe's bombing of the capital. It was a reflection of how badly the security of the US embassy had been compromised that Johnson did not dare phone Kennedy directly, fearing that the information might leak and reach Kent. Instead, he drove out to Windsor the next morning to give his report. Embarrassed and outraged by what he heard, Kennedy immediately agreed to the raid and even told Johnson that he was 'prepared to take the responsibility of waiving any diplomatic privilege which Tyler Kent may have'.25 That night, Sunday 19 May, Johnson told Knight of this decision. At the same time, MI5 obtained authority from the Home Secretary Sir John Anderson to detain Anna Wolkoff under Section 18b of the Defence Regulations. The conspiracy was about to be blown apart. The next morning, 20 May, a police car drew up outside the Russian tea room in Kensington. Four detectives got out, marched inside, arrested Wolkoff, bundled her into the car and took her to Rochester Row police station. In a fascinating twist of history, the arrest was witnessed by the eleven-year-old Len Deighton, later the author of a host of gripping spy novels, among them SS-GB about life in Britain under Nazi occupation after a successful German invasion. Meanwhile, in nearby Marylebone, a group that included Maxwell Knight, several men from Scotland Yard and a representative of the US embassy, strode into the fashionable mansion block at 47 Gloucester Place and knocked on Tyler Kent's door. The extent of his plotting was even wider than MI5 had feared. Having searched Kent's flat, Knight was astonished at the wealth of material taken from the US embassy, made up of files, telegrams, photographic negatives and written copies of documents. There was also a set of keys to the US embassy's file room and a 'leather-covered ledger with a brass fastener',26 which subsequently turned out to be the Right Club's membership book. Kent disclaimed any knowledge of what was in Ramsay's book, professed ignorance about Wolkoff's disloyalty to Britain, and said he had kept the embassy documents purely for his 'own interest'.27 The next day, however, his self-confidence was undermined when Washington cancelled his diplomatic immunity and sacked him from the embassy staff. Contrary to his hopes of bringing down the Roosevelt administration and rallying the isolationist cause, he had succeeded only in destroying his own career. The US government, incensed that Kent had exposed the woeful inadequacy of their own vetting and coding systems, were willing to show no tolerance towards him. Ambassador Kennedy himself told the Home Office that Kent 'ought not to be allowed at liberty for one moment. If it should turn out that you cannot prosecute him here, then we will prosecute him in America.'28 William Bullitt, by then the US ambassador to France and once Kent's employer in Moscow, went even further, telling a Foreign Office contact, 'I hope you will shoot him and shoot him soon. I mean it.'29 The round-up of the plotters continued. On 23 May the police, led by J.W. Pearson, turned up at Captain Ramsay's elegant town house in Onslow Square to arrest him. According to Pearson's account, having been shown the order signed by the Home Secretary, Ramsay launched into a tirade against the 'Jew-ridden and Jew-controlled Government', claiming that 'the war had been engineered by the Jews' and that he was only 'being removed to prison' because he had attacked government policy.30 Three days later, Dr Christabel Nicholson was taken into custody, after her maid, who had long been concerned about her mistress's fanatically pro-German outlook, went to the police with an envelope containing a pencil copy that Nicholson had made of the Churchill-Roosevelt telegram of 15 May. Thanks to MI5's coolness and judgement, the conspiracy had been broken. But the implications of the arrests went far beyond the Right Club, for this dark episode served as a catalyst for a much wider apprehension of extremists and aliens. The Tyler Kent case was like a breach in the dam of resistance to tough government action against the enemy within. In the subsequent flood, concerns about traditional civil liberties and peacetime justice were swept away. A War Cabinet meeting, held at 10.30 a.m. in Downing Street on 22 May, reflected the government's transformed mood. Even Sir John Anderson had been forced to abandon his liberal stance. Having outlined the Right Club plot, he then won the Cabinet's approval for an additional new clause to the Defence Regulations that gave him sweeping new powers to detain without trial any member of an organisation that was 'subject to foreign influence or control' or 'had sympathies with the system of government' of the enemy.31 That night, armed with this new authority, Anderson signed orders for the internment of Mosley and thirty-three other leading British Union of Fascists members. The arrests took place early the next morning, with all the fascists hauled off to Brixton prison. The British public was strongly in favour of the move, as recorded by the Ministry of Information: 'The arrest of Mosley and other fascists has overwhelming approval. Our observers report that they seldom found such a high degree of approval for any government action. The most frequent comment is that it should have been done long ago.'32 These arrests were just the start. The new climate of firmness resulted in a series of other steps. At the same meeting on 22 May the Cabinet also agreed to introduce new Emergency Powers legislation, which passed through Parliament in a single day. An extension of the 1939 Emergency Powers Act, this measure 'gave the government practically unlimited authority over British citizens and their property', to use the words of A.J.P. Taylor.33 Houses could be compulsorily seized by the army for defence purposes; men could be directed by the Ministry of Labour into certain industries; machinery and vehicles could be requisitioned. Just after the Act had been passed by Westminster, Churchill's private secretary John Colville wrote in his diary, 'Yesterday the Government obtained permission from the House to take over fuller powers than any British Government has ever possessed. The purpose is largely that if we are invaded or otherwise in extremis, the rights of individuals and institutions must not be allowed to stand in the way of the country's safety ... In a totalitarian war, even a democracy must surrender its liberties.'34 On 23 May, Parliament passed a new Treachery Act, which widened the definition of treason and enabled the government to proceed against foreigners 'who are not normally resident within the King's jurisdiction', a clause designed to catch non-British plotters like Kent.35 Furthermore Anderson ordered that all female enemy aliens in Category B should be interned. He also imposed much stricter controls on the aliens in Category C, most of whom were Jewish refugees and had been relatively free until then. One of their number, Klaus Ernst Hinrichsen, who had fled to Britain from Lübeck in 1939, later recalled the experience: We had a curfew at night and couldn't have a radio or a bicycle or a camera. We even had to hand in maps of England and we could not travel outside a certain radius. The difficulty was to convince the population that you were harmless. It was almost impossible to speak German in the tube because by this time some sort of neurosis had developed and every German was a Nazi. Some of the papers, particularly the Daily Express , had it in for aliens and really misrepresented the position. We were the enemy in the midst. Hinrichsen, who lived in Hampstead in north-west London, witnessed one incident that showed the anxious mood in May 1940. 'A family of refugees put out their eiderdowns in the garden to air on warmer days, as was the German habit. Their neighbours were convinced that this was a secret signalling system for the Luftwaffe. Denunciations could be serious, particularly because rumours were difficult to disprove.'36 Yet many in the government and the military wanted to go much further and lock up all enemy aliens, no matter what their status. They felt that Anderson, for all his new vigour, was still not being tough enough. The Home Secretary argued that 'the essence of a sound security policy is wise discrimination. A violent policy fitfully administered is not nearly as effective as a more moderate policy firmly and consistently applied.'37 Such theorising only invoked the anger of others involved in national defence, including Churchill, as the senior intelligence officer Guy Liddell noted in his diary for 25 May: 'It seems that the Prime Minister takes a strong view about the internment of all Fifth Columnists at the moment and has left the Home Secretary in no doubt about his views. What seems to have moved him more than anything was the Tyler Kent case.'38 Liddell himself was just as frustrated with the Home Secretary: 'The liberty of the subject, freedom of speech etc were all very well in peacetime but they were of no use fighting the Nazis. There seemed to be a complete failure to realize the power of the totalitarian state and the energy with which the Germans were fighting a total war.'39 The Chiefs of Staff, led by the head of the RAF Sir Cyril Newall, took the same robust line. In a paper of 25 May entitled 'British Strategy in a Certain Eventuality', the certain eventuality being the defeat of France and a German attack on Britain, the chiefs recommended that 'the most ruthless action should be taken to eliminate any chance of Fifth Column activities'. This should encompass the 'internment of all enemy aliens and all members of subversive organisations, which latter should be proscribed'. According to their paper, 'if we are to survive total war, it is essential to organise the country as a fortress on totalitarian lines.'40 The Cabinet was unable to settle the dispute between the chiefs and the Home Secretary, so, in an attempt to break the deadlock and strengthen the official machinery against subversion, Neville Chamberlain, now Lord President of the Council, established a new body, headed by Lord Swinton and called the Home Defence Security Executive, to deal with the problems of aliens and fifth columnists. Swinton already had a number of formidable achievements to his name, most notably the introduction of the Spitfire and Hurricane fighters into RAF service when he was the pre-war Secretary of State for Air. Now his executive got to work with alacrity. At its first meeting on 28 May, it agreed to recommend the internment of another 345 British Union of Fascist members, as well as the closure of Mosley's newspaper Action. In the same urgent spirit, the executive introduced stricter landing controls at British ports, required every British seaman to carry an identity card, imposed censorship of mail from Ireland and ordered the shutdown of the Communist paper the Daily Worker , believing it had been fomenting discontent and spreading defeatist propaganda. Swinton also met Ernest Bevin, the Minister of Labour, to discuss possible fifth column subversion in the munitions factories. According to a report sent to the prime minister, 'Mr Bevin has at once set about using the machinery of the trade unions and the shop stewards to watch and report on the activities of suspected persons. The trade union movement has agreed to this action generally, having already started something of the kind in several factories working for the Ministry of Supply.'41 On the vexed question of enemy aliens, the executive quickly took several steps, such as raising the age limit for internment from sixty to seventy, and ordering the removal of aliens from all vulnerable areas with vital factories. For the Right Club plotters, the war was over. Kent and Wolkoff were tried at the Old Bailey in October 1940 on charges of violating the Official Secrets Act and assisting the enemy. Both were found guilty. Kent was given a sentence of seven years, but was released at the end of the war and deported back to America. Anna Wolkoff, sentenced to nine years, was released in 1947. Captain Ramsay was never tried, but instead was held under the Section 18b of the Defence Regulations until September 1944. He officially remained an MP throughout his incarceration and even managed to put down some Parliamentary questions from his cell before returning to the Commons after his release, although he did not defend his seat in the 1945 General Election. Utterly unrepentant and more anti-Semitic than ever, in 1952 he published a characteristically irrational book titled The Nameless War , which not only attempted to justify his actions but also explain that the Jewish goal of world domination was a central thread of mankind's history. According to Ramsay, even that staunch Puritan, Oliver Cromwell, turned out to be a 'paid agent of the Jews'.42 4 'Facing up to the possibility of invasion' THE FURTHER THE Germans advanced through northern France towards the Channel coast, the deeper grew concerns in England about the prospects of invasion. In one of its summaries towards the end of the month, the Joint Intelligence Committee noted that 'press and broadcasting reports from 25 to 29 May, inspired by German sources, stressed the employment of fast MTBs [motor torpedo boats] for the invasion of the Thames estuary, Straits of Dover and the Channel', while the same document explained that a Zeppelin airship 'left on night of May 24th for north Germany. Rumoured it is to be used for landing troops in England.'1 On 28 May, Neville Chamberlain, the Lord President of the Council, gave an ominous warning to the War Cabinet that 'there had been reports of troop movements from east to west in southern Norway', which could indicate that 'the Germans might perhaps be intending a raid on Scotland.'2 So frequent were the reports about possible German operations that at the end of May the government decided to set up an 'Invasion Warning Sub-Committee' to filter the intelligence. Much of this information, particularly the allegations about fifth columnists, was unsubstantiated, merely reflecting the climate of anxiety that had descended on Britain. As General Edmund Ironside himself wrote later in the summer, 'It is extraordinary how we get circumstantial reports of a 5th Column and yet we have never been able to get anything worth having. One is persuaded that it hardly exists.'3 Indeed, for all the discussion about the German threat, throughout May many of the military chiefs remained sceptical about invasion, none more so than Sir Walter Kirke, the commander-in-chief of Home Forces, who was still strongly of the view that the most effective way to protect Britain from Germany was by supporting the BEF in France. Interestingly Winston Churchill, who is usually portrayed as the arch-Francophile, was uneasy about this policy. His belief in the need to bolster the Home Forces was reflected in his hesitations about sending the whole 1st Armoured Division to France, complete with 135 light tanks and 160 cruiser tanks, as he told Ismay on 18 May: 'I cannot feel that we have enough trustworthy troops in England, in view of the very large numbers that may be landed from air[craft] carriers preceded by parachutists ... The Chiefs of Staff might consider whether it would not be well to send only half of the so-called armoured division to France. One must always be prepared for the fact that the French may be offered very advantageous terms of peace, and the whole weight be thrown on us.'4 But the Chiefs of Staff were insistent that the whole of the brigade should go, for its arrival in France 'may have results of the utmost importance' for the immediate outcome of the war on the western front.5 The continuing dispatch of men and equipment was a severe drain on British Home Forces, especially as the LDV at this stage was still effectively unarmed. By the third week of May there were just fourteen divisions available for the Julius Caesar plan, and most of them had received only the most basic training. Moreover they were poorly equipped. Each division had only between twelve and eighteen field guns, when they should have had seventy-two, while across the entire fourteen divisions there were only thirty-three two-pounder anti-tank guns. Churchill's determination to galvanise the Chiefs of Staff into greater preparedness on the home front resulted in his instruction to embark on a study 'of possible German methods in an attack on this country. The technique employed in Norway had differed from that employed in Holland and there was no doubt that the Germans would attempt to spring new surprises. It would be advisable therefore to study all reports which had been received, however fantastic, so that we could adapt our defences to meet any method which the enemy might employ.'6 It was in response to Churchill's prodding that on 25 May the Chiefs of Staff produced their candid, rather gloomy paper entitled 'British Strategy in a Certain Eventuality', setting out 'the means whereby we would continue to fight single-handed if French resistance were to collapse completely'. The paper argued that three factors were crucial to Britain's survival in these circumstances: 'the capacity to resist invasion'; the continuation of food and material supplies; and the ability of the public 'to withstand the strain of aerial bombardment'. Much would depend on the success of fighter and anti-aircraft defences in dealing with the Luftwaffe's bombers. Should the Germans obtain 'a high degree of air superiority', then 'this would enormously increase our difficulties in maintaining the normal life of the country and in meeting invasion.' Nor were the chiefs confident that the navy could protect Britain against the mighty German war machine. 'Whether we shall be able to maintain effective naval forces in bases on the east and south coasts in the face of very heavy scale air attack is uncertain; if we cannot do so, the chance of intercepting enemy forces before they reach our shores will clearly be less.' There was even greater pessimism about the Home Forces. 'Germany would have ample troops (70 divisions or more) for the invasion of this country even after providing for the occupation of conquered territory,' the paper stated. 'Should the Germans succeed in establishing a force with its vehicles in this country, our army forces have not got the offensive power to drive it out.' Civil defence was seen as another serious weakness. 'As long as the present quasi-peacetime organisation continues there is no guarantee that this country could hold out. The present Home Security Organisation was constituted to deal with air attack only and the volume of such attack was estimated on the basis that the enemy aircraft would be operating from Germany.'7 After a lengthy discussion, this paper was accepted by the War Cabinet on 27 May, although Churchill felt that the Chiefs of Staff were being unduly negative about the forthcoming air battle and expressed his doubts about their claim that the Luftwaffe had four times as many operational planes as the RAF. Given the military disasters in France and the disturbing intelligence reports, the idea of a German assault could not be dismissed as mere fantasy. Nor could the position of figures like General Kirke, with his focus largely on propping up the BEF, be maintained in the face of the domestic threat. Home defences had to be strengthened, coastal areas fortified. The recognition of the challenge meant that a change was needed in the leadership of the Home Forces. Kirke was seen as too old and intractable to remain in charge, especially given his powerful scepticism about the likelihood of invasion and his fierce opposition to a defensive mentality. The first candidate that Churchill considered as Kirke's successor was Lord Trenchard, the founder of the RAF and former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. But Trenchard, always something of an autocrat, quickly fell from favour after setting extravagant conditions on his acceptance. 'He demanded enormous powers which would have rendered him virtually independent of my and the Cabinet's authority,' wrote Churchill later.8 After this explosive clash, Churchill's thoughts turned to General Ironside, whose perceived qualities of resolution and charisma had made him Britain's most famous soldier in the run-up to war. Ironside perfectly fulfilled the public's image of what a military hero should be like, with his distinguished record, bristling moustache and solid build. Indeed, thanks to his height, he was given the ironic nickname of 'Tiny' within the army. From September 1939, he had been the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, a role for which Churchill had thought him ideally equipped because of his experience and fine military brain, but he turned out to be a severe disappointment: often indiscreet and seized by bouts of glum introspection. His judgement proved as poor as his administration. His dwindling reputation was noted by Liddell Hart in his diary for 7 May: 'The younger members of the other service staffs who see him at committees describe him as gaga.'9 Ironside's standing as CIGS was further diminished by the failed campaigns in Norway and France, while there were also whispers about alleged links with right-wing extremism, mainly because of his friendship with the military strategist and British Union of Fascists member Major General John 'Boney' Fuller. By the last week in May the pressure on Ironside had become intense, and he was desperate for a move back to a command. Knowing that Kirke was finished, he told Churchill that he was willing to resign as CIGS and take charge of Home Forces, a proposal that immediately appealed to Churchill, as he later wrote: 'Considering the unpromising task that such a command was at the time thought to involve, this was indeed a spirited and selfless offer.'10 It might seem strange that the prime minister was keen to give the general such a vital post, in view of his failure on the general staff, but there were three powerful arguments for the move. First, it allowed Ironside's highly regarded deputy, the hard-headed, less moody Ulsterman Sir John Dill, to be promoted to CIGS, which was generally welcomed. Second, Ironside, like Kitchener in 1914, was a familiar face to the public and therefore could provide a boost to morale at a time of crisis. Third, Ironside was deeply engaged by the subject of home defence and, indeed, was already head of the Home Defence Executive, set up on 10 May. Elevated to the rank of field marshal and given greater powers than Kirke as Home Forces commander, Ironside believed that he would be helped in his role by the new national mood of urgency. 'Kirke was very sorry to go, poor chap. He has done a lot, but has been hampered by people not taking the defence of England seriously. Now they do, which will make it much easier for me.' He also felt home defence fitted his talents better than the general staff. 'I must confess that it is much more my line than the other. I am now in command and not hampered by a machine that was made for peace conditions and was not fit to function in war.'11 Ironside moved with his staff officers into the headquarters of Home Forces at Kneller Hall in Twickenham, a mock-Elizabethan building that had formerly been used as the Royal Military School of Music. His arrival led to an immediate galvanisation in home defence precautions. Given the limited size of his forces and their lack of equipment, particularly in tanks and guns, he urged the creation of a network of internal fortifications against the invader. Under his influence, the War Office embarked on a large-scale programme of works that transformed the landscape of Britain in 1940, as huge swathes of the country were studded with pillboxes, roadblocks, machine-gun nests, trenches, barricades, coastal batteries and tank traps. Fields were strewn with obstacles to prevent airborne landings; beaches were decked with barbed wire and scaffolding to ward off approaches from the sea. The detailed layout of these barriers continued to evolve over a number of weeks in June and July, developing into what became known as 'the Ironside plan' to replace the outdated 'Julius Caesar plan'. Work on the installations, however, started immediately. Pillbox construction was at the centre of this drive. Almost as much as the Home Guard, these concrete shelters, designed to protect defensive troops from enemy fire, became symbols of Britain's defiance in the summer of 1940, which was ironic, given that the pillbox was essentially a German idea first used on the western front in 1917. The War Office instructed Major General G.B.O. Taylor to oversee the design and building of hardened defences across Britain. Capturing the new spirit of urgency, Taylor's directorate quickly came up with a series of seven basic pillbox designs - ranging from Type 22 to Type 28 - of varying strength, shape and purpose. By far the most common was the Type 24, capable of accommodating eight men. Its walls formed an irregular hexagon, each with an embrasure, or opening, for a Bren gun, one of the British army's standard light machine guns used throughout the war. It also had a rifle loop on either side of its door, and an interior, centrally placed, Y-shaped wall to prevent bullets ricocheting. Two main variants were built: one to a bullet-proof standard with walls at least 12 inches thick; the other with walls at least 36 inches thick to withstand shells. Excerpted from Operation Sea Lion: The Failed Nazi Invasion That Turned the Tide of War by Leo McKinstry All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.