Dan Snow's History Hit - What if Hitler Had Invaded Britain?
Episode Date: January 17, 2024How prepared was Britain for a Nazi invasion? The common perception is of a country woefully unprepared for war; hastily assembled defences manned by characters from 'Dad's Army', and a government unf...it for the task at hand. But in reality, a top-secret training programme was underway to turn civilian volunteers into ruthless resistance fighters, saboteurs and assassins.Dan is joined by historian Andrew Chatterton, author of 'Britain's Secret Defences', to discuss how Hitler's invasion of Britain might have been countered.Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore.Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW sign up now for your 14-day free trial.We'd love to hear from you! You can email the podcast at ds.hh@historyhit.com.You can take part in our listener survey here.
Transcript
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Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit.
You may remember a few months ago, we did an episode about bunkers in the New Forest
on the south coast of England.
They're auxiliary bunkers, and since then, thanks to many of the messages that you folks
have all sent in, we've been looking for some more.
We've had hot tips.
We've been looking for some more.
So thank you for those, and watch this space, I can say.
But as we spent more time with Andy,
we just realised he had so many more stories about what post-war resistance would be like in Britain
if Hitler had launched a successful invasion.
And so he's back on the podcast, folks.
There's a really powerful perception that Britain was ill-prepared
and it was weak in 1940,
but that simply doesn't reflect the reality.
By the end of that year,
there were thousands of highly secret, highly trained civilian volunteers who would, in the event of an invasion,
create havoc. There were thousands of men ready to take their secret underground bunkers the
length of the country, who would then come out at night and attack invading troops from behind.
There were also thousands of men and women
who were trained in observing those enemy troops
and passing information quickly via runners
to other civilians operating wireless sets,
giving up-to-date critical information to those in command.
Even the much maligned Home Guard, known as Dad's Army,
had secret guerrilla sections that were ready to take on the enemy.
And then, if the worst happened and Britain was defeated militarily,
there were other groups of civilians operating at even higher levels of secrecy
that would form a post-occupation resistance.
Andy has come across new secret groups, one in particular called Section 7,
who are only just coming to light now as family members recall old stories told by parents,
which seemed strange at the time, but Andy now thinks pointed to clandestine operations.
We now know that there were people stationed around the UK, some hiding out in caves, others in the back of shops.
They were poised for a German invasion.
They were taught how to derail trains,
how to make Molotov cocktails and throw them into enemy tanks and other vehicles.
They were taught how to garrote
and how to engage in unarmed combat.
So to tell some of these stories,
I've got Andy Chatterton,
author of Britain's Secret Offences,
back on the podcast.
Enjoy.
T-minus 10. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the podcast. Enjoy.
It probably makes sense to start with Hitler's, well, ambition to invade Britain, and actually why it was doomed to fail from the beginning.
After the fall of France in June 1940, practically all of Western Europe was under Nazi occupation.
Only Britain remained defiant.
And after the stunning German military successes in Europe, Hitler was keen to keep up the
momentum, and he wanted to invade Russia to the east. His preference was definitely for an armistice with Britain,
rather than attempting to launch a full-scale invasion of the island. Britain would retain
its empire, it would remain a wealthy country in exchange for a suspension of hostilities.
And this, Hitler hoped, would allow the Germans to free up huge numbers of men and material
for redeployment to the Eastern Front.
Behind the scenes as well, German commanders doubted whether Germany could overcome the
challenges and successfully launch a cross-channel invasion.
But Winston Churchill, as you know well, was not exactly a fan of the truce plan.
Hitler might have assessed that the British situation was hopeless.
Churchill believed there was hope. He was determined that Britain would fight on and a truce,
an end of hostilities, would offer no better terms, Churchill felt, than sticking it out to the end.
Once it was clear that a negotiated peace was off the cards, Hitler doubled down on knocking
Britain out by force. A vast invasion by sea and air was planned for September of 1940,
given the codename Operation Sea Lion.
Its aim was nothing less than Hitler's complete domination of Western Europe.
The infamous Directive No. 16 that outlined Hitler's invasion plan
stated that the operation intended to, quote,
eliminate the English homeland as a base for the prosecution of the war against Germany, and if necessary, to occupy it
completely. So the wheels were put in motion. The Germans began assembling a vast ramshackle
armada at places like Calais and Rotterdam. By early August, the German navy had rounded up
something in the order of 1,900 barges,
168 merchant ships, nearly 400 tugs and trawlers, and 1,600 motorboats.
The plan was this motley fleet would ferry the first wave nine German divisions across the channel
to land along a stretch of coastline from Ramsgate to the Isle of Wight.
Now to put that into perspective, a typical German infantry division consisted of around 19,000 men, 1,600 cars and lorries, 1,000 motorbikes, accompanied by an
array of heavy weapons, artillery, and perhaps a few dozen tanks. Most surprisingly, those divisions
also relied on perhaps 4,000 horses, a reminder that the much vaunted German army, despite its
mechanized reputation, was heavily
reliant on old-fashioned horsepower throughout the war.
So this wasn't some small-scale amphibious assault like the British commander raid on
Saint-Nazaire.
The Germans were planning for a substantial invasion here.
They wanted to land tens of thousands of men on beaches like Pevensey, where William the
Conqueror had landed in 1066, and then push inland. They wanted to circumvent London initially, wipe out all elements of
resistance in southern England before besieging the capital from the west and north. But first,
they had to achieve a few key objectives. Admiral Eric Raeder was suddenly given responsibility for,
well, an unenviable job. He had to try and
find a way to preoccupy the Royal Navy in the North Sea or the Mediterranean that made it
unable to interfere with the crossing. This was no small task. The Royal Navy was still the most
powerful fleet in the world, and Germany's navy had been decimated by the fighting thus far in
the war. To help his navy out, Hitler had decreed that the Germans
needed to achieve total air superiority. This meant they had to incapacitate the RAF as an
effective fighting force, and then they could keep the British navy in check. The job of dealing with
the RAF fell to the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goering. Neither Raeder nor
Goering had any real enthusiasm for the invasion to start with,
and in truth, Germany was woefully unprepared for an operation like this.
Staff officers hadn't had time to draw up plans, troops hadn't been trained for crossing the
Channel or amphibious warfare. The whole invasion relied on converted civilian vessels that were
likely to flood and sink, frankly, before the men could get across the Channel and disembark on the British coast.
Telling Hitler where to stuff it, however, was not an option,
and so Goering and his Luftwaffe started a major air campaign over South East England in particular.
The Battle of Britain began.
Luftwaffe bombers hit everything from factories to airfields to communications outposts.
They were escorted by German fighter
planes that were supposed to hinder RAF attempts to intercept those bombers. And that onslaught did
stretch Britain's resources almost to breaking point. But this is where Hitler's invasion plans
really unraveled. Against stiff odds, the outnumbered pilots of RAF fighter command held
out against the Luftwaffe, thanks to a highly effective air defence network based on rapid intelligence collection, which was afforded by a chain of top secret radar stations, as well as a huge network of observers on the ground, anti-aircraft defences, and, of course, fighter aircraft like the Supermarine Spitfire and the Hawker Hurricane, which gave the British a key edge.
This complex defensive setup was known as the Dowding System.
You'll have heard me talk about it on numerous other podcasts.
Go and check them out.
And it was a huge reason for Britain's success in the Battle of Britain.
The Germans also failed to stick to a coherent strategy.
They couldn't decide on a hierarchy of targets, what to concentrate their force on.
Seemingly by accident, they dropped a few bombs on civilian areas in London at the end of August 1940.
The British responded by bombing Berlin.
Hitler was so outraged, he ordered Goering to focus his attacks on Britain's major cities, in particular London.
And so for months after that, the bombs rained out on Britain's capital, as well as Coventry, Liverpool and other urban areas.
These attempts to break Britain's fighting spirit, frankly, only relieved the pressure on RAF fighter command,
who used the time to rebuild, recover and launch stinging attacks on these armadas of German bombers.
By mid-autumn, it was clear that Germany had failed.
The RAF was undefeated.
Germany would not win air superiority.
And with defeat in the Battle of Britain, it seems that all enthusiasm for Operation
Sea Lion fizzled out.
Without that air superiority, the invasion would just be impossible.
Not even Hitler would send thousands of men across miles of open water to be strafed and
bombed by RAF pilots and shelled by British
naval ships at will. Throughout September, Hitler kept postponing Operation Sea Lion,
then by the time winter rolled around, he cancelled the invasion entirely. His focus
was now on the east. His campaign against Britain was now limited to blockade using his U-boat fleet.
In the years since, historians have debated fiercely about
Operation Sea Line. Did it ever stand even a chance of succeeding, even if the Le Fafard
won the Battle of Britain? Was it a faintly realistic prospect? We're in the realms of
conjecture. What we do know for sure is that the German failure to conquer Britain was their first
and one of the most important defeats. It enabled the UK to act as a forward operating base
for the later invasions of the European mainland.
And it was instrumental in bringing about the eventual victory
of the Allies over Nazi Germany.
Andy, great to have you back on the podcast, buddy.
Yeah, really happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Thanks for having me.
This time you're in the comfort of your own home rather than out on the hard hard yards in the new forest i
know good though wasn't it it was so fun it was so fun if you haven't listened to it folks go back
and check that podcast out right let's talk about 1940 we have the sudden and unexpected collapse
of the french army the british the belians, everyone on the continent, the Western allies
on the continent, Hitler and his Wehrmacht are in the Channel Ports, the thing that Britain has
fought so many wars to prevent, which is a powerful continental aggressor dominating the
Channel Ports with the coast of England close to them. What's Hitler's plan here? We don't know
how serious it was, but he did certainly start the
planning process for an invasion of Britain, didn't he? Oh yeah, he absolutely did. Barges were being
sent to the Channel ports, certainly training was happening, they were massing ships in all those
coastal areas. So, I mean, obviously Hitler's quite a difficult chap to judge as to how serious or not
he is, but certainly preparations are being made.
And from a British perspective, we didn't expect the sudden destruction of the French army,
the biggest army, the largest army in the world at that time.
And so anything from our perspective was possible.
So whether Hitler was preparing or not, certainly from a British perspective,
we needed to set up either anti-invasion or,
you know, in worst case, which we're talking about today, post-occupation resistance,
ready for that worst case scenario. Yeah, so it's interesting that our perception of this period
is of sort of scrambled, hastily concocted, amateurish defences. But you've made it very clear
to me that actually this planning process was incredibly thorough, incredibly
effective. And in fact, the British government opted for some very, very robust methods to defend
these islands. Yeah, absolutely. And it goes back as far as kind of 1937, 1938, and perhaps even
before that. But certainly from then, SIS or MI6 had set up Section D, which were going out to the countries surrounding Nazi
Germany, helping them understand what a resistance might look like. So for example, they're in
Czechoslovakia, as it was, talking to the Skoda works about how they can destroy their factories
in the event of a German invasion. They're talking to Poland, they're talking to the Nordics.
But all this came a bit too late, because by the time they were there and talking to these guys,
the Germans are kind of up and ready and already in those areas but the british government or the
british secret services and the british military through military intelligence research had already
started to think about what this stuff looked like had already started to prepare which kind of goes
against our whole perception of britain particularly in the late 30s which is all about appeasement
which is all about giving hitler what he wanted But actually, in terms of this, we were very much on the front foot. And this is where
the auxiliary units come from. This is where the special duties branch comes from. And it's also
where this Section 7, which we're going to talk about today, it all originates from this pre-thinking.
What do we know about Hitler's invasion plan, Operation Sea Lion? Well, I guess we know it
started because that's the bit that did happen. It started with the attempt by the Luftwaffe to gain air superiority, air supremacy over Britain,
if perhaps just even Southeast England, over the Channel, which would allow a kind of air umbrella
for his barges and his rather strange and eccentric looking fleet to carry his troops
across the Channel. So we're guessing they would have tried to land at the nearest point. Would
they go across the Straits of Dover? Yeah, I think Straits of Dover, I think some parts of East Anglia
and the southern coast particularly would have been in danger.
I think the whole nature of Operation Sea Lion was that he had the Air Force,
the Navy and the Army coming up with three separate plans
and each of them had obviously their own priorities and objectives.
So I think the Navy saw the Army's plan, they thought was far too wide and large, and they were trying to
narrow it down to a more or less the Straits of Dover and some of the Southern coast, and then
kind of push inland from there with supplies coming in, which is, you know, why from a perception that
we have now, the Battle of Britain was so key, because you needed to get rid of that air cover
that would allow them to keep the ships and the supplies coming in. And also the Royal Navy's role in all
of this as well. Operation Sea Lion was a big mess in terms of preparation because Hitler was doing
his usual splitting forces and getting three separate plans together and pinning people
against each other. But again, from our perspective, we didn't really have much insight into that.
And from what we'd seen in the low countries in France,
it seemed like Germany had pulled together
almost the perfect force of fast-moving tanks,
of planes working in association with the army,
all this stuff that we had just started to kind of learn about.
But it was a really scary prospect from Britain's perspective.
So we had to prepare for that worst-case scenario.
So Operation Sea Lion never happens. The German invasion is not attempted. The RAF win the Battle
of Britain. The cost of crossing the Channel and still the world's largest navy is up, the Royal
Navy's there waiting in Orkney ready to pounce. Just for many, many reasons, Operation Sea Lion
never happened. And indeed, Hitler was obsessed with the war in the East. But let's, today, let's imagine it did happen. You've done so much work
in this area. What if those German amphibious forces land on the beach, spearheads starting
to push inland? What could we expect from the British in terms of resistance?
So I think much more than the general perception is. For example, General Ironside, who was CNC
Home Forces, gets a terrible press at the moment with his pillboxes and stop lines.
I think he's been really hard done by. I think after Dunkirk, we were struggling for manpower,
we were struggling for arms, but particularly we were struggling for mobility. And so Ironside
placed his tanks, most of his mobile reserve in more central parts of the country. And so Ironside placed his tanks, the most of his mobile reserve in more central
parts of the country. And then he created these stop lines. It's almost like an Iron Age hillfort
where the defences push the attacker in the direction you want them to go. So the stop lines
were there to push the attacker in the direction he wanted to go. And then the mobile forces would
come down and attack them there. You've got a lot of regular troops still capable of fighting.
We've got a lot of support from the Empire. So lots of Canadians, Australians and Kiwis
in the country ready to fight. You've got the LDV, you've got the Home Guard, as they came to be
known, who actually were armed, particularly in those key southern and southeastern counties,
they were armed incredibly quickly. and that whole perception we have of
basically dad's army of really really old poorly armed men just isn't true of the home guard they
would have actually for their role been quite an effective force and then under that kind of very
front line forces you've got things like the auxiliary units which we discussed when we were
having our jaunt around the new forest these guys would have disappeared to their secret underground bunkers and come up and wreaked havoc for a two
week suicide mission and then you've got the special duties branch who were there on the streets
spying on the german army as they came through radioing this information through to ghq or local
commands to allow them to make informed decisions about counter-attacks so we were the fact that we
had the channel gave us this opportunity to prepare much greater defence despite the limited resources we had.
I think we'd have been really effective and certainly from the AUX units and Special Duties Branch for a limited time,
but they really would have made a difference to any attacking force.
So you've got 250,000, what we now call the Home Guard.
And then you've got these other networks we've talked about a lot in that previous pod,
the auxiliary units who stay behind
to carry out sabotage, assassination
behind German lines as the Germans are advancing.
And you've also got this network of intelligence.
So what the radio sets, which are hidden,
like the one we found evidence of,
those are radioing what troop movements,
all that kind of stuff back to the British high command.
Yeah, correct. Exactly. So we were, not only did we have the regular troops, the Home Guard,
who were taking on the German army face to face, as it were, in kind of set piece battles, but also
you've got this prepared and secret anti-invasion forces that were destroying the supply chains
coming up to meet the spearhead and allowing us, as I said, to make informed decisions about where we should counter-attack. Because unlike France and the low countries, we should
have some knowledge of where the Germans were going, which direction they're travelling, how
many there were, what regiment it was, what vehicles they had, what arms they had, all that
stuff that would allow us to then be much more effective in countering them, unlike the kind
of carnage that we saw in mainland Europe.
These units that are staying behind are trying to slow down the German advance,
trying to disrupt the German advance. Another thing they're doing is not just focusing on Germans, but they're trying to take out collaborators as well, aren't they?
Yeah, absolutely. If you think about the auxiliary units, their task was to,
in a two-week window, do as much as possible to slow down that advance. So anything
that would make
the Germans pause, they would get rid of. And that includes British collaborators. So that might
include former members of the British Union fascists, for example. There's an auxiliary
patrol near where I live in Devon, which is basically just a few miles away from the house
of a very high-profile family of British Union fascist members. The Cottons, they had von Ripptrop and over during
the late 30s when he was ambassador to Britain. They'd met Hitler personally in Germany. They'd
been arrested at the start of the war, but then released and they were still living in Branscombe
in the house. And this patrol's first task would have been to go and assassinate these
British Union fascists. And it's not just those, it's anyone that was providing, you know, food or
petrol or whatever it might have been.
As soon as they've got wind of it, they would have assassinated these people.
So that's going on behind the German advance. The regular army and the Home Guard are trying
to slow down that German advance, fighting conventionally on the battlefield and retreating
slowly via these so-called stop lines, these pre-prepared fortifications, you know, retreating
north. Was it like in the Soviet Union? Was there a plan to smash up factories or things that might be useful for
the Germans as they advanced? Was there a plan to kind of relocate that industrial production
or just destroy it? Yeah, absolutely. So the Home Guard, for example, factories often had their own
Home Guard units. So Austin Ruddy, for example, historians done some great research on this.
They seem to have had key holders, secret key holders they were called.
And their role as the Germans approached the factory was to take the key components of the factory,
either destroy them or bury them for when there was liberation.
So absolutely, they were taking that stuff away.
Really importantly, Home Guard commanders had lists of petrol stations in their area
that the Home Guard, again secretly, would go
and dismantle a petrol station, bury the stuff in a field somewhere, and then optimistically, as the
British came and counterattacked, they placed the equipment back in the petrol station to allow the
British to fill up. Because in France and Holland, as the Germans flew through, literally you got
Panzers parked at French petrol stations filling up,
which allowed them to carry on.
They didn't need to rely on their supply chain so much.
So Britain had already started thinking about this.
And it's often the much maligned Home Guard
that had these kind of more secret roles
to dismantle factories, to blow up factories,
to dismantle petrol stations,
to ensure that the Germans couldn't do
what they'd done in France.
We learned the lessons of the Blitzkrieg really quickly,
much more than we're given credit for.
So because this is all happening a mere matter of weeks after that Blitzkrieg had so shocked the British and French in particular, in France, the Low Countries, it shows a remarkable agility on behalf of planners.
Yeah, huge amounts of Dunkirk, and without arms, without, you know, looking fairly miserable and defeated.
But actually, we were hugely prepared from both a military, but also from a secret civilian perspective to counter any German invasion.
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So, the German invasion would have faced well-motivated troops defending their homeland.
It would have been sabotaged by these units, these auxiliary units and special units that we've been talking about. The British would have been better at destroying infrastructure
or at knocking over bridges and destroying factories and fuel dumps. And we should say also
the Royal Navy, which massively outnumbered and outclassed the German Navy, would have been
carrying out astonishingly effective attacks on that German logistical trail heading back across
the Channel. So the Germans may have found themselves cut off whilst fighting in Britain.
There were lots of reasons why that invasion might not have been a success.
Yeah, a huge amount. Yeah, and the Royal Navy undoubtedly. I think even if we'd lost the Battle
of Britain, for example, the Royal Navy, even under constant air attack, would have had a huge
impact on the Germans' ability to get
back and forth the Channel Whip supplies. They ran a war game in the 1970s where they
had German generals who were still alive and British commanders, and they ran it. And essentially,
the Germans got a bit of a foothold in the southeastern corner, but then the Royal Navy
came in and destroyed everything, and they made very little progress. So taking it from now,
taking it with hindsight in mind,
Operation Sea Lion was never likely to succeed if it was to be attempted at all. But of course,
in the summer of 1940, the British weren't to know that.
And you couldn't take that risk, of course, either.
No, absolutely. Hey, correct.
In the unlikely event that it had worked, Britain had been occupied. We'll come on to the British resistance in a second, which you've done a huge amount of work on. We can theorise about what it might have been like
for Britain. There would have been significant persecution and repression. British Jews,
in particular Roma, socialists, as we saw on the continent, it would have been an astonishing,
well, bordering on genocidal regime here in the UK.
The Gestapo had already compiled a list of key people in Britain that
were to be arrested immediately, including, you know, Churchill and the high profile members of
the Jewish community. So it would have been utterly brutal. And it would have been exactly
the same. And, you know, as we saw in the Channel Islands as well, that is a part of Britain that
was occupied. And actually, the pictures of British bobbies standing next to German officers
is quite galling, but something that you would have seen throughout the country.
And as in the Channel Islands, you would have had those people that would have assisted the Germans,
that would have just got on with their lives because, quite understandably,
you don't want to risk being shot or your family taken away or whatever.
So it would have been very similar to what we've seen in the continent and in the Channel Islands.
But equally, some people who were
willing to risk everything and resist. So let's now talk about, we talked about those who would
have resisted the invasion. Let's talk about people that would have resisted the occupation.
And this is where you blew my mind. There were actually plans, not only for forces to slow down
and try and defeat the Germans, but there were plans in the summer of 1940 to keep sort of an idea of Britain
alive, even in the event of occupation. Tell me about that. So I volunteer for a group called the
Coal Seal Auxiliary Research Team, which we talked about last time. So we researched the auxiliary
units, which we know were very much on the coastal counties, on the vulnerable counties to invasion.
But for years and years, we were getting information from all parts of the country saying,
oh, my granddad or my grandmother was definitely in New York's units. They were trained in unarmed combat.
They were trained in explosives. They had hideouts where they were to come out and blow up German
infrastructure. But this was coming from Leicestershire and Nottingham and Liverpool and
all over the country where we know absolutely there were no auxilary units, which was
confusing to say the least. And then in 2010, the official history of MI6 came out by a chap called Keith Jeffery.
And in that book, there are about three paragraphs unreferenced about Section 7.
Now, Section 7 is a MI6, a SIS group that was there purely as a post-occupation resistance.
So after Britain had been defeated militarily,
this group would have become active. And it's MI6, i.e. the Foreign Secret Service, rather than MI5,
because of what they were doing in mainland Europe. They were taking what they'd learned
in mainland Europe and implementing it in the UK. And it was so secret, this group,
that MI6 didn't tell MI5. They weren't very keen on the military knowing.
And so all the members that they recruited,
all signed official secrets acts,
and as we'll go into, we know less than 20,
but has the potential,
because this isn't just the coastal counties,
it is the coastal counties,
plus all of England, certainly Wales.
That's a huge amount of people potentially involved,
possibly tens of thousands of people
who signed official secrets acts and almost all of them went to the grave without telling
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Who are the ones that you have managed to talk to and have they been willing to um
to finally break their silence yeah so it's really interesting so from the keith jeffrey
official history thing we know that there were three guys in sis mi6 uh who were kind of leading
this is a chap called valentine vivian who was head of section five which was counter espionage
there was a chap called richard gambier parry who was part of Section 5, which was counter-espionage. There was a chap called Richard Gambier-Parry,
who was part of Section 8, which was the communications,
so the wireless part of SIS.
And also a really mysterious guy called David Boyle,
who was head of, or part of Section N,
which was something to do with diplomatic mail.
But these guys were in charge of the recruitment and training
and the establishment of this resistance group.
And they went around the
country. So they started in six counties in July 1940 in Norfolk, Suffolk, Sussex, Somerset,
Cornwall and Devon, where they did a trial of these wireless sets. And they proved to be really
successful. And then they recruited everywhere in the country. It's hard to imagine just how
wide this network was. For example, we've got a chap who came forward in the early 2000s called Peter Atwater.
Peter is a really good example of the type of people or children that SIS were recruiting for Section 7.
Peter was 14 when he was recruited for Section 7.
He was an ARP messenger and he was part of the Air Training Corps as well.
And he lived in Matlock in Derbyshire. His role had the Germans occupied Matlock was initially as an observer.
He was to walk around Matlock and gather information on the occupying forces.
He would then take this back to his cell leader, a chap called Mr. Toplis, who was a draper.
his cell leader, a chap called Mr. Topliss, who was a draper. At the back of Mr. Topliss's draper shop was a fake cupboard. You go through the fake cupboard and the back is a room with a wireless
set in. There are two female wireless operators called a Mrs. Key and a Miss Swan. He would then
pass this information on to them. They would then radio this information on to them they would then radio this information about the
occupying forces to either a unoccupied zone so they thought that britain would be like france
there'd be an occupied zone and an unoccupied zone with scotland's most likely to be the
unoccupied zone with some kind of petan vichy like government in charge there or the information
because richard gambier parry was Or the information, because Richard Gambier-Parry was
involved, the information from these wireless sets might have been powerful enough to eventually end
up in Canada with some kind of government in exile. So his role was to do this. Incidentally,
under the table where the wireless set was, was a grenade with the pin stapled to the table. So if
the Germans had somehow found out that this was a resistance cell, broken through
and found Miss Swan and Miss Keith in the back room, they could have pulled the grenade very
easily, thrown it over their shoulders, grabbed their wireless set and escaped to carry on. Because
this is about long-term resistance. So the auxiliary units in the Special Duties Branch
had that very set window to disrupt an invasion. This is much more like the French resistance,
where you can move, you have kind of portable wireless sets
and move quickly and keep going
for as long as possible.
Peter also was responsible
for finding a room or a building
in which people on the run
from the occupying forces
could be passed on.
So rather like the escape lines in France,
in occupied Europe, where an
Allied airman was shot down, if the resistance got hold of him, they would pass him on from house to
house to house, from safe house to safe house, to try and get him back to neutral territory from
where he can then make his way back to Britain. It looks like Section 7 were setting up an escape
line for enemies of the occupying forces to try and get them out to an unoccupied zone,
presumably Scotland or maybe Ireland. So that was being prepared. He had to meet other boys of his
same age in Birmingham, I think they met. Each of these chaps were part of the escape line,
so they knew who to pass them on to. So it looks like it was carrying up through the Midlands and
up through North. And when they met, they had to talk or include a word in their
conversation to ensure that they weren't being followed or that they weren't under duress.
So what better subject to talk about than the weather? So Peter had to include the word ice
in any conversation he had if he was meeting with one of these guys under occupation.
And another thing Peter said that a bit later on he was taught was how to be a sniper.
So a 15-year-old was being taught, and he used some very specific terminology here.
He was being taught, he said, by terrifying ex-First World War NCOs how to be a sniper.
Peter was 15.
But as a father, that is a terrifying prospect.
And his parents had no idea what he was up to. And it wasn't just young boys. It was girls. But as a father, that is a terrifying prospect. And his parents had no idea
what he was up to. And it wasn't just young boys, it was girls as well. Correct. Absolutely. And
a lot of what Peter said there, you can take with a pinch of salt because it's one guy telling you.
But then, as I wrote the book, families from Southampton and Leicestershire were telling me
exactly the same stories about their grandfathers, this case being taught by terrifying NCOs using very similar terminology and then just before I published a
family got in touch whose grandfather William Hughes was a sharpshooter during the First World
War and he said in Liverpool he was teaching resistors and he used the word teenagers in
unarmed combat and how to be snipers in the tunnels underneath the Mersey. So suddenly one man's story is then confirmed by multiple other independent stories across
the country. But you're right, it wasn't just men and boys being recruited. And this is a key
difference with Section 7 and SIS, that they were actively recruiting women in combat roles and
teaching them how to use explosives, how to create Molotov cocktails,
how to derail trains, and most importantly, how to become honey traps, how to use the garotte.
And I know that you've had podcasts here talking about some Dutch women who were famous or infamous
for their roles in dispatching German officers and German soldiers, exactly the same was being done here in preparation for an
occupation. So there's a fantastic example. A lady called Jennifer Lockley got in touch with us
saying that her mother was in the auxiliary units. We know that she was from near Leeds. So there's
two things there. There's no women in the auxiliary units and there was no auxiliary units in Leeds.
So we knew something was going on. So we talked to her about Section 7 and then it seems that on her deathbed, her mother,
Irene, called her in and said, I've got something to tell you. Jennifer thought she was going to be
told that she was adopted or something. But actually, her mother said that she was part of a
secret resistance cell in a village near Leeds. She was in a cell with her father, her uncle and her two
cousins, and they're based in a cave. And she was taught how to use, as I said, Molotov cocktails,
how to use the garotte, how to derail trains, how to make the occupying forces live, an absolute
nightmare. Now, her daughter, Jennifer, thought she might be losing it a bit in her final days.
But then when we started talking to her
about Section 7, some stories from her childhood started to make sense. So for example, she
remembers in the 50s, standing in her hallway as a pots and pans salesman had come to the door,
and her mother had opened the door and the salesman was quite aggressive in his sales patter
and put his foot in the door to stop Irene shutting it. The next thing that Jennifer
remembers is the pots and pans salesman sailing through the air, the pots and pans tumbling everywhere,
because now she can see that her mother had performed like an unarmed combat move on this guy.
And that is amazing. I know, I know. And Jennifer's saying it's so out of character
for her mother. This memory, it's just stuck with her because, you know, her mother was a,
wouldn't say boo to a goose type of lady. But suddenly this chap was flying through the air.
And the whole point of SIS recruiting women is basically the mistake that the pots and pans salesman had made,
that he does not suspect a shy, retiring housewife to be able to do that.
And that's exactly why they recruited people like Jennifer.
They also recruited a lady called Priscilla Ross from Horn Church.
Now, Priscilla said very similar things to Jennifer,
and obviously in a very separate part of the country, Horn Church in Essex.
She was taught how to make Molotov cocktails, how to garrot,
how to derail trains, how to assassinate German officers.
Her base was under a church in Horn Church with a tombstone
that if you moved the top,
kind of swiveled over and revealed an entrance underneath the church.
So I've been in touch with the church in Horn Church and had, from their perspective,
a weird conversation about whether they had any moving tombstones in their graveyard, which they did not. But they did say that they just found a space under the church which they had not known about and
they couldn't find an entrance so so something else for us maybe to go and look at buddy we're
going we're going to no question about that so what you're saying is here there was there is a
network people still living among us say because they were young they were boys and girls who are trained killers, saboteurs, and resistors.
And because the balloon never went up, they never got the call,
they just went and lived the rest of their lives and never told a soul.
Correct. Absolutely.
So, for example, Peter Atwater in Matlock knew of two other cells near him in Matlock.
So potentially this could be absolutely huge.
And they didn't really even know who they were working for. So at the end of the war,
Peter was part of the local history society and he told his story and had started to read about
the auxiliary units and presumed that's what he was in. And in fact, to the extent that there's
the blue plaque above what was the draper's shop saying this was a auxiliary unit's radio cell, but it
wasn't. So Peter didn't know what he was in at all. That's how secret is. The people who are in
it didn't even know what they're in. And most of them, because they weren't called upon, said
absolutely nothing. There's another example from Yorkshire of a mother who passed away fairly
recently who was high up in the WI in Yorkshire. She told her family that she was responsible for driving,
using the WI as a cover, for driving around Yorkshire. And she used very specific terminology,
delivering explosives and weapons to caves all around Yorkshire. So there's so much tantalising
information out there. We know relatively, well, very little, essentially, as to the size of this
group. And also what their objectives were what
does success look like for section 7 because the resistance in mainland europe had britain as a
island of hope of a platform from which liberation can come from if britain had fallen and we were
occupied is the us going to get involved in the war if so the atlantic ocean is a big old gap
between us and liberation what does success look like for a ongoing resistance? I'd say it's, and again,
very much suicidal, but just talks about the bravery of these people.
So obviously, one of the first things I want to say to listeners is, if any of this rings true,
you need to get in touch with Andy, because it must be very frustrating for you. We're in the
last months and years of being able to talk to these people if they were 14 or so in 1940 they're going to be mid to late 90s so just check just check that
your nan is not like irene and can actually throw a pots and pans salesman uh down the footpath
because the more you talk about this do you still get people coming forward oh all the time all the
time so we've just had some audio through
from a chap in Exeter near me.
He was talking about his time in a fleet air arm,
which he joined in 41, I think.
But before that, he was part of some resistance group
within Exeter itself, within the city,
so not an auxiliary unit,
talking about this sale he was in in Alfington,
where he was part of a sale with four other guys.
And that literally came through yesterday
of more information coming through.
Obviously, he's passed away, sadly, but just those tantalising shreds of evidence,
which then links up with other bits that we've heard from the country,
just starting to put together this picture of huge pre-prepared post-occupation resistance.
You know, if the auxiliary units in the Special duties branch change our perception of Britain this time, then this should blow it out of the water,
because this is utterly brutal. This is training 14, 15, 16 year old boys and girls how to be
assassins. This is teaching mothers how to derail track. This is a huge change in the perception of
Britain at this point, as actually probably more to reality of utterly brutal,
utterly ruthless in the execution of the defence of this country.
And what about the archives? Presumably this stuff has been, the government has
declassified this stuff now. Is there a paper trail here that you can exploit?
Nope. I don't know whether they've gone for a longer period of the Official Secrets Act,
just because the people they're recruiting were so young. there is as far as we can see there's nothing in the archives there's the piece by keith jeffrey
who obviously had access to official mi6 content that's in the official histories and actually
interesting section seven officially of mi6 is the accountancy arm so they've hidden this resistance
group under an accountancy arm. So
even if you're looking up Section 7 MI6, you're just going to get accounts rather than roofless
resistors. So we are very much looking for that paper trail because it has to be paid for.
There has to be some kind of paper trail somewhere, but we have yet to find it yet.
Are we confident that you think you will one day?
I hope so. Wouldn't that be amazing? I'm not sure when it will be released if it is, but we'll certainly keep searching because I'd just love to
get an idea of just the number of people involved in this. Because as I said, it's got the potential
to be thousands and thousands. I mean, the auxiliary units was, we think about six and a
half thousand and the special duties branch about four and a half thousand. But this is the potential
to be double that at least. So yeah, much more than that. So this is the potential to be double that, at least. So, yeah, much more than that. So this is huge potential to be an amazing story.
And wouldn't it be great to get the last survivors some recognition? Because there's
been zero acknowledgement, zero recognition, nothing at all so far.
Absolutely nothing. Yeah, no, no, exactly right. The only thing, as I said, is there's three
paragraphs in the official history of MI6 kind of hidden. Absolutely nothing from anyone. And
actually, you know, it took years and years for the auxiliary units to get recognised. It was only
in the mid 2000s that we managed to get them permission to walk past the cenotaph of Remembrance
Sunday, for example. So, and that's the auxiliary units, which has essentially been in the public
eye since David Lambert wrote that first book about it in 1968. And there's certainly no medal
for any of these groups. none of these groups were officially given
the defence medal unlike the home guard so yeah absolutely no recognition at all which is really
awful considering the sacrifice these guys were prepared to make in in this country's hour of need
well thank you so much for coming on talking about it uh our adventures hopefully will continue
tell people where they can get hold of all your books
and research and indeed get hold of you
if they have a relative who they think
might have been involved.
I'm at Chats1 on Twitter.
My book that's out at the moment
is called Britain's Secret Defences,
which talks about all these groups.
So go and grab that if you fancy learning a bit more.
But yeah, basically any story,
we have to rely on gossip and rumour and family stories. So anything that you thought at the time was a bit more. But yeah, basically any story, we have to rely on gossip and rumour and family
stories. So anything that you thought at the time was a bit strange, or you thought granddad or
grandma was going a bit Delali in their old age, get in touch because that is what we rely on.
And that kind of pieces it all together. Well, thank you very much for coming on the podcast.
People can go back and listen to that previous podcast we did where we searched for and indeed
found, strangely, a little bit of World War II history
in the New Forest. And there's going to be more adventures coming. So stay tuned, folks.
Andy, thanks for coming back on. Thanks, Dan. My pleasure. you