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Hitler's chilling plans if he had conquered Britain

Discussion in 'General Chit Chat' started by Bootsonground, Feb 20, 2017.

  1. Bootsonground
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    Bootsonground Guest

    Real-life Nazi blueprints that inspired SS-GB show Hitler's chilling plans if he had conquered Britain.
    The sight of swastika flags hanging from a bomb-ravaged and broken Buckingham Palace sent shivers down spines tonight.

    The opening episode of BBC drama SS-GB offered a chilling vision of how Britain could have looked if Hitler ’s plans for a 1941 invasion had succeeded.

    But when Len Deighton wrote the novel the five-parter was based on, he had plenty of facts to stoke his imagination – because the Nazis drew up detailed blueprints for our post-conquest nation in a handbook circulated among top officers.

    They included Nazi officials taking over stately homes in the New Forest and Bridgnorth in Shropshire becoming a personal base for the Fuhrer.

    [​IMG]© Provided by Trinity Mirror Plc Credits: Roger Viollet/Getty ImagesAnd most bizarrely, Blackpool was to be a playground for stormtroopers to unwind in – so Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering was ordered not to blitz it.

    Deighton, 87, says: “My editor said to me, ‘No one knows what might have happened had we lost the Battle of Britain.’

    “‘I wouldn’t go as far as that,’ I told him, ‘a great deal of the planning for the German occupation has been found and published’.”

    [​IMG]© Provided by Trinity Mirror Plc Credits: MirrorpixThe dossier, effectively a Nazi A-Z of Great Britain, was produced for invasion plans codenamed Operation Sea Lion.

    Entitled Militargeographische Angaben uber England (Military/geographical information about England), a private collector kept a copy in an Austrian military library from 1945 until it was auctioned in 2014.

    [​IMG]© Provided by Trinity Mirror Plc Credits: PAPrinted in 1940 for senior officers, it included everything they needed to know about their new territory – from details of cities and landmarks earmarked for destruction to the best places for soldiers to enjoy downtime.

    The book, which included postcards and photos from calendars, also revealed that Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, was mooted as Hitler’s luxury palace. Eton and other top private schools were set aside as propaganda training grounds for officers’ children.

    Deighton pored over the booklet as source material for his 1978 alternative history bestseller SS-GB – in which he imagined Churchill executed by firing squad and King George VI held prisoner in the Tower of London.

    SS-GB is set in the capital, where favourite tourist spots are recognisable but hints of the tyrannical occupying regime are creeping in.

    [​IMG]© Provided by Trinity Mirror Plc Credits: BBCDeighton was meticulous in lifting details from the dossier to create a “bleak and cold” London that was stalked by heavily armed SS guards and Gestapo tanks.

    He says: “For the London scenes, I only used places I had known in the war, so in that respect there is an autobiographical element in the story.

    “I remembered London in wartime: the dimly lit streets, gas lights that hissed and spluttered, tin baths in front of the fire, rationing that made food a constant subject of thought and conversation, and bombed homes that spewed their intimate household contents on to the streets.”

    While London would have been brought to its knees, the documents suggest top Nazis would have moved into stately homes in the New Forest and features postcards showing scenes in the area.

    The guide had sections like Organisation Of The British Police, The Press, University And Enemy Cultural Institutions and Freemasonry. Britain’s climate also gets a mention, including the entry “The most humid region is the seaside district of Cumberland”, while our museums are described as some of the “largest in the world”.

    But Blackpool was a special place for Hitler and he had earmarked it as a rest and recreation centre for his troops.

    Experts say the Fuhrer’s love affair with the northern seaside town explains why it escaped most of the Luftwaffe’s attacks, as he did not want its iconic tower and three piers put at risk.

    However, other areas would not have been so lucky. Newcastle’s Tyne Bridge, Bristol’s Clifton Suspension Bridge and the Manchester Ship Canal were all marked for destruction.

    [​IMG]© Provided by Trinity Mirror Plc Credits: BBCAnother document, known as the Special Search List GB or the Black Book, contained the names of almost 3,000 prominent people to be arrested.

    They included Winston Churchill, Labour leader Clement Attlee, feminist author Vera Brittain and Jewish psychoanalysis pioneer Sigmund Freud.

    The Black Book was also written in 1940, when the Nazis had already overrun the Low Countries and France and were planning to destroy the RAF as part of Operation Sea Lion, which was the brainchild of SS General Walter Schellenberg.

    But despite the Channel Islands falling under Nazi rule until 1945, unfolding events in the conflict meant the ambitious scheme was never launched – and Deighton’s interpretation of its blueprint could thankfully never become reality.

    But the BBC’s new show is a reminder of what could have happened if we had lost the Battle of Britain and been subjected to the full force of the Luftwaffe, which had already pounded Norway, Poland, France, Denmark, Belgium and Holland into submission.

    In SS-GB’s version of occupied Britain, Scotland Yard officer Superintendent Douglas Archer, played by Sam Riley in the BBC adaptation, bumps into American journalist Kate Bosworth, of the New York Times, during a murder investigation that drags him into the resistance movement against the Germans.

    [​IMG]© Provided by Trinity Mirror Plc Credits: BBCThe police headquarters is a crucial centrepiece for the story, as viewers are forced to question how British authorities would have dealt with Nazi rulers. Deighton says: “The plot problems seemed insurmountable. Would I create a hero in the German occupation army? I wouldn’t want a Nazi as a hero.

    “The story had to be told from the centre of power. The police would be the people who connected the conquerors with the conquered but that sort of compromise was not attractive to me.

    “I went round and round on this until I thought of a Scotland Yard detective as a hero.

    “The Scotland Yard building had to be the stage upon which my story was played but the police were no longer using it. It had become an office building for members of parliament and was strictly guarded.

    “The Metropolitan Police were very co-operative about letting me into their new building and they let me use their fascinating library and their archives without restrictions of any kind.”

    [​IMG]© Provided by Trinity Mirror Plc Credits: BBCThe team behind the screen version of SS-GB, also starring James Cosmo as Archer’s partner Harry Woods, believes that the vision of Britain under Hitler that it offers could not be more timely.

    Executive producer Sally Woodward Gentle says: “It’s a thriller set against the backdrop of what might have happened. But it should also make us ponder.

    “When you see the rushes and step back, it’s really chilling. You realize we were incredibly lucky we weren’t occupied. It really chimes with today’s world. Recent politics has made it more pertinent than ever.

    http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world...britain/ar-AAn7NSd?li=AAadgLE&ocid=spartanntp
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  2. Anon04576
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    Anon04576 Well-Known Member

    A small part of this was on News NorthWest in relation to Blackpool being the playground for stormtroopers. Such an iconic symbol of Britishness, seems almost hard to imagine it any different than that. Thank god it never happened.
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  3. Timmers
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    Timmers Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    Chilling to think of the Nazis in the UK.

    It intrigues as to Hitler's thoughts on the UK, he appeared to have a lot of respect for the British, wishing Britain was on Germanys side by all accounts.
  4. Dave_E
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    Dave_E Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    I like the German people, their culture, their beer, their food, sausages, currywurst, their shweinshaxe... and their beautiful country.

    I feel a lot more at home in Germany than I do in France.

    But the Germans are an authoritarian race,
    Hitler was a German socialist dictator who showed no respect to the UK, a country he wanted to dominate as part of his "United Europe" plan.
  5. Scotschap16
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    Scotschap16 Well-Known Member

    WW2 has been a subject of great interest to me since I got my first box of Airfix miniature soldiers (Africa Corps) and read my first Commando comic.

    I meant to check this out - will need to see if still available on iPlayer.

    Robert Harris's book Fatherland is based on a similar premise - great read.

    I agree with Timmers - It's well known Hitler admired GB (primarily because of our colonial activities. His favourite movie - which he watched repeatedly at the Berghof was Lives of a Bengal Lancer.

    Hitler was dismayed at finding Germany at war with fellow Anglo Saxon country - a function of course of our pact with Poland. He halted his panzers and thus allowed the bulk of the BEF to escape from Dunkirk - to fight another day.

    As most will know I'm sure Hitler was more interested in establishing Lebensraum in the East....with Operation Barbarossa beginning in June 1941.

    I'm no fan of Churchill but it was his unwavering condemnation of Hitler that quite possibly stopped us being under the jackboot today. Let's not forget the support Lord Rothermere (Daily Mail / Daily Mirror proprietor) gave Hitler (and appeasement) in the 1930s.

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