If Britain Had Fallen (26 page)

Apart from Jewish organisations and individuals, who featured prominently in all Gestapo documents, the Germans had assembled a strange list of bodies and private citizens whom they considered a particular threat. Under the heading ‘Opponents of Germany’, part of it read:

The Friends of the Basque Children Society [i.e. child refugees from the Spanish Civil War].

The National Joint Committee for Spanish Relict [i.e. Relief] Welsh Section.

The Society of Friends (Quakers) (degot [i.e. depot] Barclays Bank).

The Quakers finance Cadburys chocolate through Sir Walter Layton, influence on the
News Chronicle.

United Dominions Trust Ltd, City Bankers, published a memorandum last Summer directed against ‘The Link’.

The Salvation Army spread over 54 stateless countries.

Brigadier-General E. L. Spears, MP for Carlisle, a most bitter opponent of the Munich

Agreement, is chairman of the British Bata Shoe Company.

Sir Frederick Marquis, clothing director of Lewis Ltd, together with Lt Colonel S. S. G. Aham and R. A. Z. Cohan.

Sir Edward Spears, as he later became, was perhaps singled out for early arrest because he had been a key figure in Anglo-French liaison in both world wars, and enjoyed the particular confidence of the Prime Minister. Sir Frederick Marquis’s (the future Lord Woolton’s) appearance on the list was also predictable. He had attracted nation-wide attention, and what he called a ‘rocket’ from Neville Chamberlain, when in 1938 he had announced that, as a protest against German persecution of the Jews, his stores would no longer stock German goods.

The Germans were suspicious, for no obvious reason, of the ‘British Engineers Association’ and the British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association, apparently believing that their international affiliations had been used for anti-German propaganda, but the real centre of such activities, they were convinced, was the Royal Institute of International Affairs, ‘which’, it was said, ‘possesses comprehensive scientific and political material on Colonial affairs and also copious material on international historical and political matters. This Institute served the Foreign Office as a source of records for the production of political memoranda, White Papers and the like. Especially in the case of peace negotiations, it played a preparatory role. It also indicated the course to be followed in strategic matters … . Before making important political decisions, English politicians made use of the unofficial preparatory work of the
Institute. There is hardly one English politician who does not rely on the work of the Royal Institute. This Institute must therefore be particularly carefully secured.’

With the supposedly dangerous Institute safely under control, the Gestapo could turn their attention to other potential enemies. Second on the list for immediate closure came the ‘Academic Assistance Council’ or ‘Emergency Association of German Scientists Overseas’, which helped anti-Nazis to escape from German universities and found them work elsewhere. After these former victims had been recaptured, it would be the turn of all those British citizens connected with the ‘Central Committee of National Patriotic Associations’ which, according to the Gestapo, had laboured hard to discredit Germany both in England and overseas. ‘It is linked’, their researcher reported, ‘to many cultural societies and associations in all neutral countries and occasionally supplies them with material and speakers.’ Surprisingly, however, no more recent example of its activities was provided than that during the first world war ‘it distributed 850,000 leaflets to school children and 900,000 to workers in important industrial centres’.

Because learning had in their own country become a mere tool of the state, and the Security Service was itself full of former academics, the Germans were obsessed with the belief that the universities in Britain, and bodies linked to them, were actively working against Hitler. Little seems likely to have slipped through their net, for among the ‘tasks of SD Units in Great Britain’ was included the ‘seizure of the historical, biological, scientific, theosophical, philosophical, medical and colonial institutions, most of which were entrusted with tasks for the political government offices’, and ‘particular attention’, it was suggested, ‘should be paid to the colonial scientific institutes, with their scientific records on the founding of the British empire. These institutes … also hold documents for the study of non-British colonial possessions. The chemical institutes working for the British Army should also be dealt with rapidly, together with the bacteriological institutes … which are working for the Army’. Hardly less urgent was the paying off of some old scores by the ‘seizure of scientific societies and clubs’, since ‘they are the source of reports put out against Germany … that since 1933 German science has been visibly on the downward path … . In contrast to the university institutes which must be investigated by experts’, wrote the author of this document, perhaps smarting under the recollection of some personal insult, ‘the urgent matter here is the apprehension of the leading personalities.’ Finally the Security Service commanders were to take over ‘British academic foreign institutes’, such as ‘the Institut Français’ in Kensington, which ‘represent
focal points of British cultural propaganda, directed abroad’. The procedure in every case was to be the same. ‘First the institutes listed above will be closed, sealed and guarded without warning’, then ‘the Examination and Evaluation Commando will … start work, and will subject the records to preliminary sifting and evaluation, and sort it for transfer to the Reich’. The resulting work would have kept many Security Service officials happily occupied for months; whether they would have unearthed a single document remotely useful to the German war effort seems more doubtful.

As the encouragement given to its various departments to nominate people to serve in England had shown, the Gestapo was a body that looked after its own and it did not intend that its members should lack for any essentials while engaged in unmasking the undercover influences which had caused so many people to dislike the Germans. (That the Germans’ own recent behaviour might have had something to do with their unpopularity does not seem to have occurred to them.) An early step, one inter-office minute advised, should be to equip each Search Group with a ‘portable typewriter, car and driver’, these last being particularly important as ‘everything is very scattered in the country’. Another essential was a secretary and ‘those from Hamburg firms are recommended, as they can do English shorthand and typing’, particularly Fräulein F, who had formerly worked for one Munich official now recommended for employment in London. Nor were the first arrivals in London destined to be uncomfortable. ‘The take-over commandos’, advised the same document, should ‘find accommodation, not in hotels, but in the premises of the “Clubs” ‘, which ‘are concentrated in a few of the most fashionable streets in the West End of London, mainly in Pall Mall and near the German Embassy… .In addition the club quarter is close to the government buildings (Foreign Office, Downing Street). They offer every facility for residential purposes and for SD type of work, reference works, lists of members, etc. Members are drawn from specific cultural and business circles (for example, leading members of the church frequent the Athenaeum Club). To a large extent the members live on the premises.’

Among the clubs singled out for urgent attention and the first to suffer ‘possible occupation’ was to be the Carlton in Pall Mall, described as ‘the most important Conservative Club’, which numbered among its members ‘Chamberlain, Eden, Halifax, the Earl of Derby, Samuel Hoare, Isidor Salmon, etc.’, the last-named being apparently included to show the unreliability of the membership committee on racial matters. Further down Pall Mall the Athenaeum was also to be taken over, its leading
figures including, it was said, ‘Chamberlain and Churchill’; while not far away, in Hamilton Place at the bottom of Park Lane, ‘the Bachelors, member, among others, Duff Cooper’, an old enemy of the Nazis, was also destined to be seized, as was Brooks’s, in St John Street, although it had been a hot-head of appeasement, its members including, according to the Gestapo, ‘Sir John Anderson, Lord Halifax and Lord Runciman (Czechoslovakia)’ – he had led the fruitless negotiations preceding the Munich agreement in 1938. Finally, a little out of place in such distinguished company, the Germans had marked down for closure the PEN Club, the leading literary society serving ‘poets, essayists and novelists’. Its premises were far less palatial than those of the other clubs mentioned but the Germans apparently considered that its members made up in influence what they lacked in wealth.

Just as the valets of the leading politicians were expected to act as informants on their employers, so in the clubs another source of tittle-tattle lay ready to hand. ‘The club porters’, the Gestapo Commandos were advised, ‘are often well informed on the private lives of the members.’ In this belief the Germans were no doubt right, though nobody seems to have told them that club servants also had a reputation for being the most discreet people in the world. Assuredly the arrival of armed Germans in the hallowed hallways of the Carlton or the Reform would have been ill-received, as a cartoon which had appeared in the
Daily Express
on 10 August 1940 had suggested. ‘Waiter’, an elderly gentleman, in dark jacket and striped trousers, seated in a club armchair, was saying, as two rather abashed-looking German soldiers waited by the doorway, ‘just go and ask those fellows if they’re members.’

West End clubmen, displaced from their usual haunts, would no doubt have found a refuge as temporary members in the quarters of clubs which had escaped the Gestapo’s attention, the German occupation of their own premises being treated as an extended form of the annual closure for cleaning, but less fortunate would have been some university staff and undergraduates. ‘The English universities and colleges’, recommended the same official who had urged the seizure of the clubs, ‘Oxford, Cambridge, Eton, Harrow, etc., are exceptionally suitable for accommodating SS troops, [offering] large sports grounds, dormitories and community rooms [and a] favourable location.’

The Germans had a particular score to settle with Oxford, which they regarded as a centre of British propaganda between 1914 and 1918 and which ‘before the present war started’, according to a Gestapo minute, ‘began in spring 1939 to work on a new series of Oxford pamphlets against Germany’. The titles of some which had given especial offence—
Mein
Kampf The Revision of Versailles, The Law of Force in International Relations
—followed with the names of their respective authors, who were clearly marked down for early attention. But Oxford was not the only academic institution on the Nazi black list. Cambridge, despite an excellent record in taking in refugee scientists and even, if the famous Leslie Howard film,
Pimpernel Smith,
were to be believed, in snatching them from under the Nazis’ noses, was not mentioned, but the vigilant watchers in Berlin had noted that London University also worked ‘closely with the Ministry of Information’ (the Ministry had in fact taken over its buildings when the University was evacuated) and that ‘Bristol University, of which Churchill is the patron, was also increasingly involved in political activities and drawn into cooperation for propaganda purposes’.

Almost the only place in Great Britain to earn a good mark was Birmingham. ‘Good propaganda material in German is published there’, the Commando earmarked for the Midlands was told, and it was advised on no account to fail to turn for help (like many more welcome visitors in the past) to ‘the Information Bureau of the City of Birmingham in the Council House, a very valuable institute of which little public notice is taken’, although it possessed ‘vast quantities of statistics’ on all matters concerning the city.

Although the immediate aim of the Gestapo swoops was to identify, and appropriately reward, former friends and past enemies of Germany, they had, too, a long-term political aim, to turn up evidence which would embarrass the recent British government and its allies. ‘The most pressing task’, read one set of instructions prepared within Section III on 26 August, ‘is to take possession of the files of the English government and to evaluate them quickly in the light of German foreign policy. The relevant individual tasks in order of importance are:

(a) Clarification of Anglo-American relations with a view to exposing Roosevelt. This group should make every effort to find documentary evidence of Roosevelt’s interventionalist policy towards the European war. Question: How has Roosevelt, by giving assurances, etc., contributed to England’s stubborn attitude towards the Reich? This material would have to be evaluated immediately for press and propaganda purposes, and possibly fed into the hands of the isolationists. This Group could be based on the Foreign Office.

(b) The obtaining of material on English and American intentions vis-à-vis South America with a view to wrecking Roosevelt’s plans for the South American countries.

(c) The obtaining of material for inciting Arabs, Egyptians and Indians.

(d) The clarification of Anglo-Russian relations. Main question: Is Stalin out to swindle us? In this connection, particular importance when making arrests should be attached to those Englishmen who conducted the Treaty negotiations in Moscow at the time. (Strang, etc.
¹
)

(e) Clarification of the negotiations of the Balkan countries with England.