http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTy8yHXt7Q0 A chilling "Whatif?" to where Hitler conquers Britain. Interesting that the flick gives total credit to the British Army for the Balkan diversion of 1941 and leaves out the Serbs and Greeks-chalk another one up to European ethnocentricism! No matter... The best part of the flick is the exploration of the British Guerrilla units set up by Irish War veteran Maj. Gubbins, to place saboteurs and spies behind German lines in the event of a NAZI invasion. The flick interviews actual members of these secret units and explores possible scenarios as to likely events should have they ever have had to have become active. It was from these efforts that SOE was born (and.....the Brits should really acknowledge the lessons Michael Collins gave them in the art of guerrilla warfare, and the tremendous leg up they had over the Germans in this particular science as a result). In all a pretty watchable flick-which surprised me as I have been ignoring it on my HULU list for months now; "Whatifs? BAAAH!" But this one is drawn from actual NAZI plans, as well as secret British documents; and has a level of reality that most fictionalizations lack. JeffinMNUSA
Gubbins has a long covert history...The Auxilleries are what you talk of...we have lots of threads on them here. They are being honoured for the first time at the Cenotaph on Rememberance Sunday this year and included in the march past for the first time. Gubbins, also has a history with SIS, and Enigma smuggling of kit and personel out of Poland. Even going back to rescue and escort folk out. His history of SOE is well known, but his machinations withing the Intelligence community is or was of grave importance to firstly the survival of Britain in the early days and then the leap forward years later. He retired under a cloud, not of his making...seems he took a directorship in Axeminster carpets...a household name over here, with a small pension. His peers did not treat him kindly, but as with his personality he seems not to have taken it personally and was the typical Brit that folk abroad like to revere of our nation...If it were not for him and men like him, even in political fields like Vanistart then I shudder to think what may have happened to this nation in 1940.
Quite a Bio on this Colin Gubbins! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Gubbins Served in the Russian incursion and the Irish Revolution and founder of the SOE programs in WWII that did end up "setting the continent on fire". This guy was a titan! The part that was most significant was "smuggled the ULTRA secrets out of Poland" and for that he should be accounted the most effective covert operator in history. I will have to pick up a book; http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=colin+gubbins JeffinMNUSA
He does sound like an interesting character. That Russian campaign has been lost to popular history, but is a fascinating event, or series of events.
Jeff, don't ever over-estimate what the Aux Units would do or become in the event of invasion...something the makers of that programme and many others have done They had a life expectancy of only 2-3 weeks...and thus were only supplied for that amount of time - both demolition ordnance and ammunition - AND rations! Their very first action is supposed to have been the assasination of their OWN "liaison officers"...so that would immediately have broken one upwards chain of command and communication for them - let alone removing the link that KNEW their identities. If any Aux Units' personnel had survived....noone was able to come looking for them! Their only other communications path was the "Robin" reporting network - a parallel watching and reporting network that would acquire the targeting and German movement information essential to the Aux Units and then cascade it back down to them; but this ws expected to have as short a lifespan as the Aux Units....AND was only "one way" at the pointy end - TO the Aux Units! Then there was the terrible issue of how vulnerable any survivors would have been; these guys officially rostered as member of the local Home Guard platoon...but what happens when any survivors crawl out of their "ops base" after three weeks and try to return home??? Their sudden reappearance would make them the talk of the neighbourhood....PARTICULARLY if the rest of their supposed Home Guard platoon were dead or in a POW cage somewhere! They were going to be informed on and policed up in short order... It's very likely that they would have been of quite considerable use in what they were intended for - follow-on attacks behind enemy lines as the actual post-landings land battle was ongoing...when the German Army would have been trying to carry on their campaign on a shoestring of supplies coming across the Channel "sea bridge" and already vulnerable to what was left of the RAF and RN. A few petrol bowsers here...and arms dump there - would have been VITAL to the survival of Great Britain in those first 2-3 weeks... But as the core of any longterm British "Resistance" if necessary? No...
No they were never supposed to be a Maquis. More a delay and assasinate. Cause havoc and hit and run...But as to their use after their primary mission was conducted...They were independant cells, bit like a few terrorist groups we could name. The Mercian Maquis and with Britain in Mortal Danger are two excellent books on the subject. As well as the AUX web site.
This may be of interest Jeff...Bit about my local area...I've researched most of these places personally. The Archaeology of World War II Malcolm Atkin Worcestershire Historic Environment and Archaeology Service matkin@worcestershire.gov.uk Introduction From 1995 - 2002, a national project - the Defence of Britain Project - ran to record the surviving monuments of World War II on the home front, building on a long tradition of work by special interest groups such as the Fortress Study Group and individuals (see http://www.britarch.ac.uk/projects/dob/). The spur to the project was the realisation that time was fast running out to assess priorities for long-term preservation of monuments that were never expected to last even 60 years. Nonetheless, they represent the physical inheritance of a critical time in the country’s history. Future generations may expect to be able to inspect the physical record as they do with monuments of prehistoric, Roman or medieval periods. Parallel to the Defence of Britain project, English Heritage commissioned a series of documentary surveys of monument types. The Defence of Britain project was conceived as being based around the work of local, amateur researchers but the national response has been patchy. One factor in its success was the support provided by local archaeological services. Worcestershire is acknowledged as one of the success stories, with a dedicated team of volunteers based in the SMR of the Archaeology Service. Indeed, the efforts of Worcestershire to build up as complete a record as possible of all known defence sites has somewhat distorted the national distribution map of the DoB. Since the closure of the national project, the local team have continued as the ‘Defence of Worcestershire’ project and extended their remit back into the Napoleonic period. The paper will be mainly illustrated from Worcestershire examples, but they do fairly represent activity of what exists – but in an increasingly parlous state – throughout the Midlands. If the upstanding monuments built of concrete or brick are fragile, already we are seeing earthworks being absorbed into the archaeological landscape. Shallow earthworks may represent the firebreak trench for a Q decoy site, designed to confuse enemy bombers into attacking empty fields rather than airfields or towns. Somewhere nearby such features will be their control bunker. As a lesson for the unwary, from an aerial photograph the ploughed out remains of a searchlight battery (such as from Cradley, Herefordshire) may suggest the presence of prehistoric barrows. The short paper presented to the seminar focused on anti-invasion but wider coverage will be provided in the paper that will follow. Suffice to say here that there is a wide variety of surviving features that illustrate and inform the events of the period, and the planning of the military and government strategy. Many can only properly be interpreted with the help of surviving documentary evidence and, crucially, by the testimony of those who took part. The latter is in itself a diminishing asset. Who would think that a very ordinary hut at Guarlford, just outside Malvern, once played a historic part in the war effort. It was from here that a RAF identified the movement of specialist German units to the Baltic in 1944. As a result the RAF were able to identify and bomb the V bomb development site at Peenemunde – putting back the deployment of the weapon for several months. I must also make a special mention of airfield sites. They have an importance in their own right with distinctive layouts and buildings – hangars, air raid shelters, huts, control towers, battle headquarters (to control defence against parachute or glider landings). But work at Throckmorton airfield in Worcestershire has also emphasised their potential in preserving large areas of underlying earlier archaeology. Anti-Invasion Sites We can identify a range of features that give a physical, and at times chilling, expression to Churchill’s famous declaration in 1940 that ‘We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills’. The surviving documentary evidence provides information on the military strategy and logistics – but the physical evidence brings home actually what was intended. The original anti-invasion plan was to hold the beaches. The next, from June 1940, was for static lines of defence in depth across the country using ‘stop lines’. Although the emphasis was shifted to more mobile defence from August 1940, the development of strong points, based on strategic locations on the stop lines still continued until August 1942 when the construction of pillboxes was abandoned. Despite the modern impression of the Home Guard from ‘Dad’s Army’ and all the inadequacies that the series fairly accurately portrayed, they were intended to be the cannon fodder whose sacrifice would buy the regular army time to regroup. Most of the features described below were manned by the Home Guard. Perhaps even more unsettling is the fact that whole towns were designed to be ‘anti-tank islands’ – strongpoints to threaten the flank of an enemy but also to act as ‘honeypots’ to draw them in and allow the regular army to then attack in force. This was to be the fate of Worcester and Kidderminster. The main features that we should be seeking to identify and record are: Anti-tank cylinders Loop holed walls Spigot mortar pedestals Pillboxes Heavier anti-tank positions Their context will be to defend Airfields Factories Road/rail crossings linear stop lines which may incorporate rivers and canals. Anti-Tank obstacles Anti-tank defences are rarely in situ. As well as the common cylinders – originally designed to carry a metal spike and barbed wire entanglements, steel stakes might be set into sockets let into road surfaces. These can still survive. Loop-holed Walls The discrete cutting of a loophole in a property boundary wall, or in the wall of a building can easily be missed but they do represent an important indicator of how a strongpoint was intended to be defended, and the broader strategy of defence. Spigot Mortars The mountings for spigot mortars are not obvious but still quite common. They were introduced in 1941 (range of 100m, black powder – Blacker Bombard). The reinforced concrete central pedestal was originally surrounded by a weapons pit, now usually back-filled. The stainless steel pintle carried a remarkable mortar that had the unnerving characteristic of firing in a straight trajectory, which meant that it could ricochet back towards the weapons crew!!! Gun Emplacements Pillboxes are the most obvious survival of anti-invasion features in the landscape. After the war, farmers were paid £1 to try to demolish them – but most failed. They were made of concrete, or concrete poured between brick shutters. They fall into a number of well-defined types of which the following is merely a selection: Type 24 at Rotherwas munitions factory Type 22 (heightened) at Wormley rail crossing, Herefordshire Type 28 Double decker (anti-tank guns) Summerfield Ordnance factory, Worcs. Open topped at Blackpole aircraft factory, Worcester Pre-fabricated at Avon stop line, Eckington, worcs. Oakington type for 360 degree airfield defence at RAF Long Marston Today we see them usually in a bare form. In use, they would be camouflaged with netting, paint or sometimes more elaborate disguises. A larger type of emplacement was the 6lb gun emplacement. This carried a 6lb hotchkiss gun – originally mounted in 19th-century battleships, then in WWI tanks and finally given to the Home Guard. This, from Holt, Worcs., is one of the best surviving in the country. Group Value Features such as the above rarely appear in isolation. Usually they formed part of a group of defensive features. A survey should therefore be made of the surrounding landscape. At Bretforton, Worcs., there is what appears to be an unremarkable tin shed behind the spigot mortar emplacement – but this was the guard hut and ammunition store. Such features have an intrinsic interest but their main value is in establishing and illustrating the strategy that would have been deployed during invasion. The two spigot mortars at Bretforton were designed to cover the road junction and prevent any break-out from any enemy landing at Honeybourne airfield. Stop Lines Although many anti-invasion features are designed to protect individual sites (factories, airfields, etc.), others form part of an organised network of General Ironsides’ ‘stop lines’. These might be artificial defence lines or based on natural or pre-existing features (rivers or canals). One stop line was formed by the River Avon. A postcard of 1944 got past the censor and shows two Type 26 (square) pillboxes on Pershore Bridge over the Avon. A combination of field survey and interviews with surviving Home Guard members has revealed a remarkable concentration of defensive positions here. The main position – a 6lb gun emplacement was designed to cover both an attack from east and west, supported by the two pill boxes, spigot mortars and a trench system. The Shropshire Union canal was also to be employed as a convenient anti-tank ditch, protected by pillboxes such as this Type 24 (hexagonal). Auxiliary Hides If the enemy did break through the stoplines, and the fighting moved to defending isolated pockets of resistance, then the government had one last hand to play. Military Intelligence had put in place a system of resistance cells – the ‘Auxiliary units’, nominally part of the Home Guard but better equipped than most regular units and highly trained. Their task was to harry the rear of German troops, disrupt communications and engage in sabotage against pre-planned targets (typically airfields and railways). There was an organised system of operational and signals units, supported by couriers and intelligence officers. The physical survival of the system is represented by the remaining ‘hides’ of the operational and signals teams. These are rare, and now usually derelict and unsafe - but are a high priority for preservation. The members of these units were told never to reveal their existence and most have now taken their secrets to the grave. The recovery of the history of these units in Worcestershire and Herefordshire has been one of the most surprising aspects of the DoB project – now published as The Mercian Maquis (Logaston 2002). The work of the authors, Bernard Lowry and Mick Wilks, amply illustrates the importance of combining oral history, documentary research and archaeological survey. The Future The known distribution of sites in the Midlands clearly indicates that the first priority has to be a greater degree of systematic recording. Without this it is difficult to make informed judgements about priorities for preservation and the scope for additional research/presentation. The work in Worcestershire may provide a model for this work to be achieved through volunteers attached to SMRs/HERs. Archaeological recording of such sites has largely been confined to basic survey. A detailed programme of survey of pillboxes is now underway in Worcestershire. This has revealed local variations, with just three pre-cast concrete examples now surviving in the country. Details of construction have identified some as having been made by Dorset labourers. The most complete excavation of a WWII site in Worcestershire has been of a Bofors anti-aircraft gun site in Brockhill, Redditch (BUFAU 1994). Sadly, it was recorded in the early stages of the DoB project and if discovered today would, I believe, warrant preservation in situ. Only 3% of such sites now survive nationally. But what is to be done with all of these features. Overall, the priority, as stated in the English Heritage booklet Twentieth Century Military Sites (English Heritage, 2000) must be to improve our overall understanding of the resource as it survives, principally through documentary research and field survey. Only then can we provide informed guidance for protection and management of key structures. Many are derelict and overgrown. Others are blocked up to prevent vandalism. On occasion, imaginative uses can be found for them – as in the case of this 6lb gun emplacement converted into a TIC in Stourport. Unfortunately this has since been demolished, as it had no formal protection. The features are part of a national phenomenon – but also have considerable local interest. It is regrettable that English Heritage in 2003 would not list the Drill Hall in Stourport (with an intact rifle range inside) before its partial demolition on the grounds that ‘others of this type exist elsewhere in the country’. It will probably be possible to actively protect a minority but this will be immeasurably assisted if we can improve public awareness of them and increase the sense of community ownership. Interpretation panels have now been erected at Pershore Bridge and the Parish Council have placed their own commemorative plaque of the spigot mortar bases at Bretforton.
Problem is - even a "cell structure" needs to be networked, have some overall control mechanism in place...and the Aux units were to destroy theirs in effect and work independently once the invasion began. There were (are) also severl more REALLY insurmountable issues... 1/ no modern terrorist group/insurgency/guerilla war has EVER prospered really without external networking, arming and resupply. How was any British government-in-exile to manage THAT from somewhere offshore...like Canada??? 2/ most of the WWII-era insurgencies had a mechanism for temporary (at least) withdrawal from the theatre; aeriel recovery for liaison officers and possible major casualties from France by the "moon squadrons", evacuation of exhausted liaison officers and Andartes from Crete by Brain Cole's Fairmile MGBs or by submarine to rest up in the Delta, BLOs in Yugoslavia could be withdrawn offshore to the island of Vis, etc... And here's the real "killer"... 3/ the problem of the German plans to round up and send every male between 17 and 50 to the Continent! Within a few months any Resistance force would have to take to the bush rather than be embedded in the civilian population...as they'd stick out like a sore thumb! They'd be the ONLY men of fighting age in the community! Taking to the hills brings on its OWN issues; the "real" Maquis for example was by 1943-44 a starving bad of ragtag French forces living on mountain tops, in threadbare uniforms and no winter clothing, and dropping like flies for lack of medical care and major illnesses. As with the Nazis' own "left behind" forces behind the Iron Curtain for a few years - their war declined rapidly into mere banditry I.E. raiding the occupying forces for what they needed to survive, always on the move...I.E. no real capacity for action to further the cause of "Resistance", only really to survive themselves Yes, it ties down enemy troops and constabularies; but it doesn't actually DO anything on the plus side of the equation. So unless the British can maintain a toehold SOMEWHERE in the UK or Ireland...there is little or no chance of a successful Resistance. Not if they have to be kept resupplied from across the Atlantic by 1940 technology!
Hi all; THe movie makes it pretty clear that should Britain have gone down effective resistance in Western Europe would have been over. Which makes Churchill's RAF statement-Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few-all the more poinant. 2-3 weeks was the projected lifespan of the English guerrillas because by then the issue would have been settled for good or ill. Now resistance in the USSR would have lasted indefinitely but this was not the focus of this "Whatif?" JeffinMNUSA
Per Ardua Ad Astra....naturally.... Phylo...I concur...My cell comment, was in the context of a independant group. With no outside involvement. Once they were operational or activated..they were indeed on their own. They were never meant to be a resistance rather a timebomb. The closest I can come to anything resembling them are the cold war Brixmis guys, who after completing their peacetime mission..were to go to war mission and stay behind in Soviet areas of advance and orginisation.behind enemy lines..Even with this though..a modicum of communications would have been filtering backwards if necessary. But once they had fulfilled their Brixmis peace time role which was dangerous enough...they would basically be doing their own thing. With their mission already being decided years before...and needing no direction. Aux units were not war winning units nor were they basis for any future resistance. Although I would hazard a guess that any survivors would in future be doing useful int gathering if ever a relief of UK was ever warranted in future. This obviously could only happen if the infamous adult male population orders were never carried out and the population not disturbed on mass.. I often quote that infamous paper order to export all males...It hopefully now is only a what if...as my own view is that the Germans would have met with more resistance than the exporting of all males would warrant. I cannot imagine, no matter even is we see the movement of Jewish and other folk to camps in Europe..I cannot imagine for one minute that the male population of Britain would go into the darkness peacefully...The effort by the Germans to do so may cause them too many problems to conternance. But who knows.
Into the equation however is the question of exactly who is left to resist deportation..once the British Army AND the Home Guard have been defeated in the field and their remnants policed up! Or what they'd resist with...a goodly part of the male population of the UK would already have gone into the darkness less than peacefully! Also, unlike most of Europe, Britain is a country that would have fielded a very large body of francs-tireurs in the form of the Home Guard - I hate to think what the invaders would have already inflicted on the civilian population for that...let alone exactly how heavyhanded they'd be in enforcing the labour transfer! Everything is at their disposal in the aftermath of a successful invasion with no prospect of any more enemies on the immediate horizon EXCEPT the USSR - mass punitive starvation. massacres, selective terror bombing...everything.
Then the question is...And I don't do what if's..I keep finding myself saying that...so maybe I do...what if you or I were there at that time..Would we go quietly or would we be shot down there and then...and hopefully others feeling same way. If enough made the decision to take one with them then even if only a percentage did, the Germans would'nt have enough men to police this order. Wishfull thinking? I'd hope we would not go quietly.
Historically that sort of operations usually achieved little at a terrible cost to the civilians, the occupation forces have all the military advantages but for the limitations they impose on themselves, and those will go quickly after the first assasinations.
Qute a few were near airfields...so logistically they could have helped slow down an initial advance...Defford, and Pershore had their own aux units specifically with a mission to disrupt its useage..which they would most certainly have succeeded in doing...So in some cases..worth the price to pay command would have thought.
