The Black Book: What if Germany had won World War II - A Chilling Glimpse into the Nazi Plans for Great Britain. Mei Trow
society. Since, after the war, Wheatley became Britain’s best-known occult novelist, this is not perhaps surprising. In 1940, he had a few highly successful thrillers under his belt and had offered his services as a writer to the MOI. He was mortified not even to get a reply but, since his wife worked as a driver for MI5, his potential reached the secret service. Out of this almost chance contact emerged Wheatley’s first paper on the prospects of beating an invasion. The fact that he had no military experience was precisely the point. A sharp mind not hidebound by the services nor wedged into a cupboard somewhere along Whitehall was needed. It was a maverick time – Churchill’s idea of the creation of the Special Operations Executive on 22 July to ‘set all Europe ablaze’ was yet another manifestation of it.
Wheatley worked like a demon, smoking over 200 cigarettes and downing three magnums of champagne over a 48-hour period. His resistance to invasion is fascinating, involving fishing nets, fire-ships, broken glass, flaming oil, ‘tiger pits’, tank traps, camouflage, armoured trains and gliders. It was Boys Own stuff but it was exactly the sort of thing that Churchill’s commandoes of the SOE would use in the months ahead, taking the war into the Reich. It was also the sort of tactic planned by the Auxiliary Units who were currently under training as ‘Churchill’s Secret Army’. Most fascinatingly, Wheatley had the idea of undermining enemy morale by dropping leaflets over Germany. They would read:
‘Come to England this summer for your holiday and sample the fun we have prepared for you. Try bathing in our barbed-wire bathing enclosures. Try rowing in our boats which will blow up as you touch the tiller. Try running up our beaches covered in broken glass. Try picnicking in our lovely woods along the coast and get a two-inch nail through your foot. Try jumping into our ditches and get burnt alive. Come by air and meet our new death ray (this sort of lie is good tactics at a time like this). Every Nazi visitor guaranteed death or an ugly wound. England or Hell – it’s going to be just the same for you in either.’32
The meeting at the Dorchester went further. Wing Commander Darvall asked Wheatley to prepare a plan for the invasion of England as though he were a member of the Nazi High Command. It ran to 15,000 words and was delivered to ‘Mr Rance’s room at the Office of Works’ (actually the Joint Planning Staff’s HQ at the War Department).
With a novelist’s verve, Wheatley put himself in the position of every villain he had created or was to create. ‘It is British hypocrisy, duplicity and greed,’ he wrote as devil’s advocate, ‘which has consistently barred the path of German advancement… There is no room in the world for a great and prosperous Germany and a still powerful Britain.’ He was wrong there. Repeatedly during these months and even as late as the flight of Rudolf Hess to Scotland in May 1941, the modus vivendi which Hitler described was that Britain should be left alone to run her overseas empire, giving Germany a free hand in Europe. The British government never seriously considered that and neither, for his 1940 black propaganda purposes, did Wheatley. The novelist, posing as an OKW adviser, advocated the use of bacterial warfare and poison gas. He pushed the idea of landing in Ireland with its huge anti-British sentiment. He demanded the first wave of troops ashore be 600,000 strong with a further million in the second wave. Nothing was too costly to achieve the German objective, so the loss of thousands of men, most of the air force and a considerable number of ships was a small price worth paying.
Infiltration should already have happened. Apart from those interned under Defence Regulation 18B (who would of course be released once the Wehrmacht rescued them), there were thousands of refugees in Britain who may already be secret Nazis or could be easily ‘turned’ in that direction. New signposts would be erected quickly by these Fifth Columnists, who would poison water supplies, dig tunnels, provide lights for landing strips, break out prisoners and those in asylums, cut through telegraph wires and spread as much doom, gloom and panic as possible. Fake orders would be issued by men in fake uniforms. Trains would be sabotaged. Gas mains would be blown up by men in overalls. Drugged cigarettes would be given out and women would be placed in front of advancing troops as human shields. Assassination, though difficult, must be attempted. Government ministers, senior soldiers and airmen, must be targeted in their homes. Open grounds like golf courses, cricket pitches and race tracks must be commandeered to allow parachutists to land. Booby bombs with delayed detonators would be essential.33
Wheatley’s 15,000 words detail the progress that must be made by the Wehrmacht on successive days, together with the objectives of the Northern, Midland and Southern Forces.
Taking off his OKW braided hat with its eagle insignia at the end of this section in his paper, Wheatley turns on the stuffed shirts whose job it is to prevent the invasion he has just described:
‘These men have proved themselves lacking in vision, tortoise-like in adjusting… to new conditions, incompetent and gutless. [They are] unworthy to serve under our lion-hearted Prime Minister… The public is asking that a full inquiry should be instituted into the men responsible for this cowardly policy which has cost the nation so dear at such a vital time and that those who have shown themselves incapable of leadership should forthwith be relieved of their responsibilities.’
Rather cutely, he added later in an editorial note, ‘Dear, dear; I had got myself into a tizzie, hadn’t I?’
***
In one chilling respect, Dennis Wheatley had got inside the heads, not only of the OKW, but the SS too. In the section marked ‘Assassination’, he says that the ‘directing brains of British defence’ should be put out of action quickly ‘and this policy will be pursued after the conquest to prevent any leaders of public thought forming an unauthorised government or even leading local riots.’34 He advocates the shooting of every officer above captain in the army, lieutenant in the navy and flight-lieutenant in the air force. That would include all politicians, past and present of the Commons and Lords, all industrialists, editors and journalists, leading barristers, prominent churchmen, magistrates and well-known sportsmen.
Nearly seven hundred miles away, in Berlin, Reichssicherheirshaupstant Walter Schellenberg had creepily similar ideas. And he was preparing such a list of personalities. Unlike the amateur Dennis Wheatley, Schellenberg was a professional. And he intended to put his theories into practice.
Notes
27 The Blenheims, then used as night fighters, did not impress.
28 Richards, Denis, The Royal Air Force 1939-45 Vol 1, quoted in Fleming, op.cit. p. 283.
29 Calder, Angus, The People’s War, Pimlico, London, 1969, p. 164.
30 All quotations here are from If the Invader Comes, published by the Ministry of Information, June 1940.
31 Fleming, op.cit. p. 85.
32 Wheatley, Dennis, Stranger Than Fiction, Hutchinson, London, 1959.
33 As I write, an unexploded Second World War torpedo has been found in Portsmouth Harbour and safely detonated. So Wheatley’s idea nearly worked!
34 Wheatley, op.cit. p. 53.
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