Black Book: the Nazis’ most wanted

Introduction

Following the release of another fascinating set of records this week, I am delighted to bring the followers of Ancestry Hour this fabulous historic feature from the team at Forces War Records, which, as we commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain in 1940, explains just how crucial this victory was to the allies, and the events that may have unfolded had Hitler's plans been realised!  

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As the summer of 1940 approached, Britain was preparing to fight for its freedom. Less than a year after all pretence that Hitler’s actions in moving into the Rhineland, joining with Austria and occupying the Sudetanland were efforts to reunite the German people had been dropped following his invasions of Czechoslovakia, then Poland, the Fuhrer turned his eyes towards our tiny island. If he had achieved his aim of subjugating the British people, some more than others would have had a great deal to fear. They were the 2,820 people mentioned on the ‘Sonderfahndungsliste GB’, or ‘Especially Wanted List Great Britain’.

The Black Book front cover (translation: ‘Top Secret!’) Photo credit: ©IWM (041820) Die Sonderfahndungsliste

The people of the list were a mixture of leading politicians, entertainers, writers, academics, heads of religion, European exiles and racial minorities, such as Romany gypsies. Some 400 organisations, including trade unions, political parties and groups such as the Freemasons, the Boy Scouts and the Rotary Club of Great Britain, were also mentioned. That the Jewish people on the list would have been in real, mortal danger is evidenced by the fact that Professor Franz Six was set to become the Chief of the Gestapo, Hitler’s much-feared police force, in Britain. As Leo McKinstry explains in his ‘Operation Sealion’, this fanatic Nazi, who was instead made an S.S. Commander on the Eastern Front, was later found to have been responsible for the liquidation of potentially thousands of ‘enemies of the state’, including 38 Jewish intellectuals. It was Professor Six who would have been responsible for rounding up all persons on the list immediately after the invasion.

There is, of course, no evidence that any harm was intended to the non-Jewish people included on the list; indeed, the many mistakes (the list named some people like Sigmund Freud who were dead, others who had already left the country, and even one or two who were known to have pro-Nazi leanings) seem to indicate that the ‘Black List’ was compiled of every person whose name had in any way come to the attention of the Nazis, making it more a list of prominent citizens who had influence, and who the Germans thought it might be worth taking in for questioning to see where their loyalties lay and if they might be of use to the occupation forces, than a hit list. However, if other countries in Europe that were invaded are anything to go by, the people on the list would have done well to expect the worst.

German Troops enter Poland, September 1939. Photo from Forces War Records Archive

Take Poland, for example. According to Norman Ferguson’s ‘The Second World War: a Miscellany’, the war crimes began as soon as the Nazis seized the country. A shocking 531 towns and villages were burned, many women were raped, and Jewish members of the population were mocked and tormented before being sent to Jewish ghettos, then concentration camps. There were incidences of random groups of citizens being rounded up and shot, just to put the fear in the rest of the population, and over 16,000 prominent citizens, including not only Jewish notables but union officials, aristocrats and religious leaders, were also executed. These were the equivalents of those of the Great Britain wanted list.

Of course, Hitler regarded Eastern Europeans as animals (the viciousness of his army’s behaviour generally on the Eastern Front testifies to this fact), and he actually liked and respected Britain and its people. By Hitler’s standards, he actually showed great restraint in his dealings with the UK. He first waited for what he considered the ‘inevitable’ surrender, and, according to ‘Invasion’ by Kenneth Macksey, refused to respond when Admiral Raeder prompted him to name a date for invasion back in May 1940. He even told the Reichstag on 19th July that, “It was never my intention to destroy or even harm (Britain)… I can see no reason why this war must go on… I appeal once more to reason and common sense in Britain as much as elsewhere.” Perhaps he had in mind something akin to the Anschluss, if only the British would cooperate. 

Marshal Petain, PM of Vichy France meets Adolf Hitler. Photo: Forces War Records Archives

For a more reliable comparison of how things might have been on invasion, therefore, we must look to Vichy France and the Channel Islands. Vichy France, unlike occupied France, was allowed its own government. Marshal Philippe Petain, a war hero from the Great War, took charge of the region, and most people found themselves relatively well-off under this system… provided that they made no trouble. Every Jewish person in the region was arrested, deported and sent to concentration camps. Collaborators were rewarded, but every opponent or troublemaker could count on being arrested, and often executed. As soon as Vichy France was seen to have collaborated with the Allies in North Africa in 1942, the rest of France was invaded. So, the region was basically at the mercy of a dictator who could be violent when crossed, and was held in obedience by the fear of extreme retribution. 

The Channel Islands were occupied in June 1940, and again, the axe fell firmly on the necks of the Jewish citizens. In Norman Longmate’s ‘If Britain had Fallen: the Real Nazi Occupation Plans’, the author quotes Lord Coutanche, the Governor of Jersey, as saying: “The Jews were, I think, called upon to declare themselves. Some did, some didn’t… Those that didn’t weren’t discovered, I’ve never heard they suffered in any way.” He added that, looking back, he felt the orders about Jews were “one of many hundreds of things that happened”, and that their significance could not have been known. However, the fact remains that Jews were arrested, synagogues shut, and then the people of that faith disappeared from the islands, presumably to concentration camps, never to be seen again. That the German occupiers and camp guards would carry out their orders with regards to the ‘final solution’, no matter what, is confirmed by comments made by Generalmajor Westhoff, a central figure in Germany’s POW administration who disapproved of treatment of prisoners that defied the Geneva Convention. According to David Rolf’s ‘Prisoners of the Reich’, he told Allied officers after his capture, “They (the Gestapo) could do as they pleased. None of us had any say in matters, and fear of the concentration camp was always at the back of our minds, as they’d put us in their black books.”

But how did the others placed on the ‘Black List’ fare? The Black Book directed Professor Six to “Combat, with the requisite means, all anti-German organisations, instructions and opposition groups which can be seized.” The ‘suspect’ organisation of the Boy Scouts was to be targeted and dissolved, as Hitler believed the movement “represent(ed) a camouflaged but powerful instrument of British cultural propaganda and an excellent source of information for the British intelligence service”; similarly, the Freemasons were to be crushed and the Public School system vilified as being set up to breed men that would “know human nature and how to dominate other men in the most unscrupulous fashion”. The Salvation Army was objected to on grounds of suspect international connections, as was the Rotary Club, it being felt that a ‘secret society’ might help people to unite with other countries against the occupation forces. However, although the ordinary Channel Islander faced years of fear, hunger and hardship, the occupiers were actually under orders to be ‘model soldiers’ on the islands, to put the minds of the rest of Britain at rest as to how they would be treated when Germany invaded. 

Union flag marched through Guernsey, Channel Islands at liberation 9th May 1945. Photo: Forces War Records Archives

That the invasion never came is thanks to a mixture of Hitler’s own poor judgement, the omnipotence of the Royal Navy, and the great and heroic deeds of our airmen in both Fighter Command and Bomber Command. Norman Longmate explains in his ‘If Britain had Fallen’ that Hitler only began to seriously plan his invasion 2 days before his speech to the Reichstag in mid-July. This demonstrates not only his emotional attachment to Britain, but also his arrogance. Britain’s best generals spent 2 years planning their amphibious invasion plan for D-Day, crafting and perfecting the arrangements. Having swept through Europe more rapidly than he could ever have imagined, Hitler plainly expected to be able to mount a similar invasion quickly, since bad weather would make it unfeasible to invade from mid-September onwards. His speech to the Reichstag confirms that he was sure of his own superiority, as he added to his talk about surrender the assertion that “I consider myself in a position to make this appeal since I am not the vanquished begging favours, but the victor speaking in the name of reason.” His assurance that Britain must realise that resistance was futile made him delay the invasion again and again. 

His respect for the awesome powers of the Royal Navy is evidenced by the fact that he insisted on gaining complete control of the skies before making his advance, as he knew, without this extra advantage, his own navy would struggle to fight its way across the Channel. Therefore, winning the Battle of Britain became absolutely critical for both sides. The success or failure of Operation Sealion lay on the airmen’s shoulders. Luckily, all of Hitler’s dawdling had given the RAF time to recover, recruit and reorganise after the crushing defeat at Dunkirk, so that by the time he was ready to move, so were they.

RAF Fighter Pilots scramble to Spitfires - Battle of Britain 1940. Photo: Forces War Records Archives

Britain was able to win the famous aerial battle for several reasons. First, thanks to the efforts of Lord Beaverbrook and the aircraft designers and factories of Britain, our output of planes far outstripped that of Germany. Norman Ferguson attests in his ‘The Second World War: a Miscellany’ that in June 1940 we produced 446 new aircraft to Germany’s 220. Second, Britain had by far the better early warning and control system, the brand new RADAR (RAdio Detection And Ranging), invented by Robert Watson-Watt. The chain of RADAR stations along the coastline gave Fighter Command early warning of oncoming invaders from the moment they left France, so that the pilots could not only be sure that their aircraft were in the air when the Luftwaffe arrived, preventing them from being caught and destroyed on the ground the way Poland’s had been, but have a much better chance of finding and challenging the invaders. Because of this improved hit rate, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, naturally a better tactician than Hermann Goering, was able to preserve aircraft and save lives while the RAF was on its back foot by sending the minimum possible number of planes out during each raid.

As for the ground crew and pilots, their dedication and courage counted for a lot. The British airmen, having seen the rest of Europe fall before the might of Germany like Dominos, firmly believed that the liberty and welfare of the nation depended on them; the Czechoslovakian and Polish airmen, meanwhile, knew it for sure. Again and again the airmen responded to calls to action, despite being hungry and often beyond exhaustion. Since they had lost so many experienced pilots and aircraft at Dunkirk, and by August 1940 (despite the impressive rate of production) still had just 715 aircraft to the Luftwaffe’s 1,198, their backs were against the wall and they knew it.

RAF Bomber Command, Boston 111 bomber pilots briefed before a daylight raid. Photo: Forces War Records Archives

This is where the heroics of Bomber Command came in; after the bombing of central London on August 24th, now thought to have been an accident, the work of a sole pilot jettisoning his load of bombs in an effort to get home speedily, Bomber Command began targeting Berlin on the 25th. In a rage, incensed that anyone would dare to target his capital city, Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to stop bombing airfields and RADAR stations and start bombing London in return. The Blitz, while deeply unpleasant for the citizens of the capital, may well have saved the beleaguered RAF, which had been harried to near breaking point. The sacrifice of Bomber Command, knowingly flying into danger, saved Fighter Command.

So, Hitler’s efforts to crush the RAF ultimately failed, and after a series of increasingly ferocious aerial battles, culminating in a fight on 15th September 1940 that saw 60 German aeroplanes shot out of the sky, so did his hopes of invading Britain that year. Winning the Battle of Britain saved many lives… including, most likely, those of many of the individuals on the ‘Black List’. Leo McKinsty asserts in his book that the British publisher and humanitarian Sir Victor Gollancz and the National Labour MP and writer Harold Wilson, to name just two, fully intended to commit suicide immediately if Germany landed in Britain, to preserve themselves from a humiliating death and ensure that they could not betray the United Kingdom by giving away sensitive information during torture. Every Jewish name on the list would have been snuffed out, and the rest would have either disappeared or faced head-on the chance of extermination. The whole of Europe rejoiced when the invasion failed, but none more fervently than those on the ‘Sonderfahndungsliste GB’ and the families of those who, thanks to being included on the ‘Black Lists’ for other nations, did not live to see Hitler’s first failure.

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Many thanks to Nicki Giles and the team at Forces War Records for this spine tingling and thought provoking account.  Please remember that as followers of AncestryHour you can try Forces War Records for yourself with a generous discount of 40% off your first month's subscription when you sign up using the code AH40.  In addition to their huge database you will also receive a monthly newsletter packed with interesting articles and tips for your research.  

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