If Hitler Comes E-Book

Gordon Barclay

• Herausgeber: Birlinn
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 615

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Between May 1940 and the summer of 1941 the British people expected a German invasion that, had it succeeded, would have enslaved them into the Nazis' racist war. This period saw an unparalleled effort to prepare the defence of the UK against invasion. Scotland's nationally important heavy industries, vital Royal Navy bases, and one of the UK's key ports, were very vulnerable to the sort of airborne attack that had devastated the defences of Belgium. Everyone was certain that a Fifth Column of Nazi sympathisers and agents was working actively to spread rumours and despair, and to aid the invasion forces, and in reality the country was far from united. Although the 1939 - 45 War is the most written-about war in history there is no account of the heroic efforts made in those months to prepare Scotland for the inevitable invasion, and how the defences were intended to be used. This book tells that story, against the wider history of the period and its people, and describes what was built, and what now survives.

Leseprobe

IF HITLER COMES

“ It seems a pity discourage them too much—they mightn’t come.”

Cartoon by ‘Pont’ published in Punch on 23 October 1940.

This ebook edition published in 2013 by Birlinn Limited West Newington House Newington Road Edinburgh EH9 1QS

www.birlinn.co.uk

Copyright © Gordon J. Barclay, 2013

The moral right of Gordon J. Barclay to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

ebook ISBN: 978-0-85790-589-5 ISBN: 978-1-84341-062-1

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Dedicated

to the memory of

J. Colvin Greig

(21 October 1928 – 11 May 2006)

and

Ian A.G. Shepherd

The title ‘If Hitler comes’ was first used in the 1941 reprint of a novel, originally published in 1940 as Loss of Eden, by Douglas Brown and Chistopher Semple, which described all too believably the decline and fall of Britain after a weak government made an ‘accommodation’ with Nazi Germany in May 1940.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Prologue: May 1940

PART I: HISTORY

1 Introduction

2 Complacency: to May 1940

3 The May Panic

4 Crisis: June to October 1940

5 Consolidation and (Over-) Elaboration: October 1940 to July 1941

PART II: THE DEFENCES: 1939–41

6 Trains and Boats and Planes

7 Beaches and Stop-Lines

8 Barriers

9 Pillboxes

Conclusion to Part II

PART III: WHAT WAS BUILT

10 Orkney and Shetland

11 Sutherland Sub-area

12 Aberdeen Sub-area

13 Angus Sub-area

14 Fife Sub-area

15 The Scottish Command Line

16 Edinburgh Area

17 Conclusion

Notes

Index

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

0.1 The North Sea, May 1940

1.1 The late Ian Shepherd, county archaeologist of Aberdeenshire, at a pillbox

2.1 Generals Carrington and Thorne on manoeuvres in Aberdeenshire, 6 May 1941

2.2 The boundaries of Army Areas and Sub-areas established during 1940

3.1 The classic idea of the Fifth Columnist

3.2 Troop dispositions in May 1940

4.1 Troop dispositions in July 1940

5.1 Troop dispositions in December 1940

5.2 Troop dispositions in May 1941

6.1 Military and civilian aerodromes in Scotland, other than Orkney and Shetland, in mid-1940

6.2 ‘Major’ and ‘Minor Defended Ports’ and other ports in mid-1940

6.3 Torry Point Battery, Aberdeen

6.4 The harbour perimeter and a guarding pillbox at Aberdeen

6.5 Patrol launches on Loch Lomond, August 1940.

6.6 The forward waggon of one of the armoured trains

6.7 Map of the rail network in 1940

7.1 Vulnerable beaches, October 1941

7.2 Stop-lines and check-lines in mainland Scotland

8.1 Polish engineers erecting cubes near Lossiemouth

8.2 A single line of anti-tank cubes at Lossiemouth

8.3 A mixed line of cubes and concrete-filled sewer pipes

8.4 A Polish Army diagram of the wiring up of a line of anti-tank cubes

8.5 Polish troops constructing dragon’s teeth in front of pre-existing cubes at Carnoustie, 1941

8.6 Dragon’s teeth with massive foundations at Freswick Bay, Caithness

8.7 A textbook anti-tank ditch

8.8 The ‘double apron’ pattern of barbed wire obstruction and a ‘triple concertina’ of Dannert wire

8.9 Tests of beach scaffolding on 24 October 1940

8.10 Scaffolding being erected at Lunan Bay, 1941

8.11 Home Guard putting the rails into a roadblock in Wester Ross

8.12 Horizontal-rail block with ‘broken column’ block, East Lothian

8.13 Barrel flame barrage demonstration at Mid Calder, West Lothian

8.14 Tank failing to cross an obstacle made by a Canadian pipe mine

9.1 A pillbox cleverly painted to look like a pile of wood

9.2 Plans of some British octagonal, hexagonal and circular pillbox types

9.3 A company blueprint of the Norcon Type III ‘pillbox’

9.4 Plans of British rectangular pillbox and gun-house types

9.5 Plans of pillbox types certainly or probably constructed by the Polish Army, Angus and Fife, 1940–41

10.1 Shetland, showing defences and other sites operational or under construction in 1940 and the earlier part of 1941

10.2 The defences around Lerwick

10.3 The defences around Sumburgh

10.4 The central and southern part of Orkney

10.5 The defences in the central part of Mainland, around Kirkwall

10.6 A small Orkney Type 22 variant pillbox north of Stromness

10.7 A small Orkney Type 22 variant pillbox made of wetted bags of cement, on the flank of Wideford Hill at Blackhill

10.8 A Norcon pillbox on the Inganess Line

11.1 Caithness, the northern portion of Sutherland Sub-area

11.2 The area of Dunnet Bay, Murkle Bay and Castletown aerodrome

11.3 The defences of Murkle Bay and Dunnet Bay

11.4 Dragon’s teeth at the northern end of Murkle Bay

11.5 The defences of Freswick Bay

11.6 Cubes fronted by two lines of dragon’s teeth, at the north end of Freswick Bay

11.7 The defences of Sinclair’s Bay, Wick town and the aerodromes at Wick and Skitten

11.8 Pillbox north of Keiss

11.9 The defences in the southern part of Sutherland Sub-area

11.10 The Bonar Bridge defended locality

11.11 Type 28 pillbox at Bonar Bridge

12.1 Aberdeen Sub-area

12.2 Anti-glider poles on the salt marsh and lagoons between Nairn and Findhorn

12.3 The beach defences from Findhorn to Burghead and of RAF Kinloss

12.4 Pillboxes G and H, truncated hexagons, on Burghead Beach

12.5 A small machine gun pillbox of type CEScC 2894 on Burghead Beach

12.6 CEScC 2893 (Type 24 variant) pillbox P on Burghead Beach

12.7 The beaches west of Lossiemouth, and the aerodrome

12.8 CEScC 2893 (Type 24 variant) pillbox, with stone cladding to aid camouflage

12.9 The beach between Lossiemouth and Kingston on Spey

12.10 Road block and pillbox A closing the track between the Innes Canal and its north-easterly branch

12.11 Rectangular pillbox B of type CEScC 2894 with surviving wire netting to hold camouflage

12.12 Rectangular pillbox K of type CEScC 2894 for a medium machine gun

12.13 Pillbox I on the beach between Lossiemouth and Kingston

12.14 The two gun-houses of the 6-inch gun battery at Innes Links

12.15 Plan of the 6-inch battery complex at Innes Links

12.16 Gun-house 2 of the Innes Links 6-inch gun battery

12.17 The pillboxes at the eastern end of the double line of cubes blocking Sandend beach

12.18 The coast from Fraserburgh to the Loch of Strathbeg

12.19 Pillbox M viewed from the south

12.20 The defences from the Loch of Strathbeg to Peterhead

12.21 The view from pillbox B over the Loch of Strathbeg and the dunes

12.22 The adapted outbuilding at Seaton Farm

12.23 The defences of Cruden Bay

12.24 Complex block at the head of the ramp out of the outer harbour at Port Errol, Cruden Bay

12.25 Pillbox B at Port Errol, Cruden Bay

12.26 Beach defences from Sands of Forvie to Balmedie

12.27 Pillbox variant and scaffolding at Foveran Links, Newburgh

12.28 The fortified ‘pass’ in the sand-hill at Foveran Links

12.29 The walls of the north-western part of the fortified position

12.30 Louis Lawson’s work of ‘art’ on a cube at Newburgh

12.31 Beach defences from south of Balmedie to the mouth of the River Don

12.32 One of the pillboxes on the Ythan–Don coast

12.33 The defences of Aberdeen beach and harbour

12.34 Anti-tank cubes being destroyed on Aberdeen seafront, 1946

12.35 Nigg Bay’s defences looking towards Girdleness, 1945

12.36 Stonehaven and the Cowie Line

12.37 Anti-tank cubes block the only exit from Braidon Bay

12.38 The pillbox and cubes at the north end of the bay at Inverbervie

12.39 The Devil’s Elbow defences on the Cowie Line

12.40 Timber revetment of the south bank of the Cowie Line

13.1 Angus Sub-area

13.2 The Montrose Bay and Lunan Bay area

13.3 Montrose Bay south of the North Esk

13.4 Concrete defences at the mouth of the North Esk

13.5 One of the two Armco pillboxes at Scordie Ness

13.6 One of the two Polish artillery positions quarried into the cliff near Scordie Ness

13.7 The defences of Lunan Bay

13.8 Pillbox C on Lunan Bay

13.9 Angus Sub-area from Arbroath to Broughty Ferry

13.10 The beach defences from Arbroath to the Dowrie Burn

13.11 The Arbroath Summer Pavilion, decorated for war

13.12 Anti-tank cubes, with dragon’s teeth added, and a Y-shaped pillbox at the mouth of the Elliot Water, SW of Arbroath

13.13 Barry Links

13.14 Dragon’s teeth at the west end of Carnoustie Beach

13.15 The King and Queen at the defences of Barry with General Sikorski

13.16 Anti-tank cubes on the western coast of Barry

13.17 Dundee’s defences

14.1 Plan of Fife and part of Perthshire Sub-areas

14.2 The defences of the northern part of Tentsmuir

14.3 Tentsmuir pillbox B

14.4 Tentsmuir pillboxes C, D and E

14.5 Tentsmuir: 4-inch naval gun

14.6 Tentsmuir pillbox F

14.7 Tentsmuir pillbox H

14.8 Polish engineers’ drawing of the revetting work to be done at Tentsmuir pillbox H

14.9 The defences of the southern part of Tentsmuir Sands, the mouth of the River Eden, and the west beach of St Andrews

14.10 A single line of anti-tank cubes reinforced by two lines of dragon’s teeth

14.11 4-inch naval gun at Rusack’s Hotel in St Andrews

14.12 One of the two 6-inch naval guns on a First World War field carriage operated by the Polish Army near St Andrews

14.13 The defences of the East Neuk of Fife

14.14 Aerodrome defence pillbox at Crail

14.15 The defences of Largo Bay

14.16 One of the two Polish pillboxes (C) in the northern half of Largo Bay

14.17 Polish defence plan of Dunfermline street

15.1 The northern sector of the Command Line

15.2 Aerial photograph of the anti-tank ditch zigzagging north towards Murthly

15.3 The large embrasure in Command Line pillbox B to accommodate a 2-pdr anti-tank gun

15.4 Heavily-built timber and brick gun table for a Vickers medium machine gun in Command Line pillbox D

15.5 A surviving portion of the Command Line anti-tank ditch above Muirton Farm, near pillbox E

15.6 Pillbox G at Kinfauns

15.7 The southern sector of the Command Line

15.8 Dragon’s teeth on the Command Line, above the village of Collessie in Fife

15.9 Command Line pillbox L on the edge of Collessie in Fife

15.10 The remains of part of a Command Line railway block on the main line at Ladybank Junction in Fife

15.11 A horizontal-rail roadblock and a length of concrete anti-tank wall at Cowdenlaws

16.1 The central part of Edinburgh Area

16.2 The defences of the East Lothian sector of Edinburgh Area

16.3 The defended beaches from Seton Sands to Gullane Bay

16.4 The defended beaches from Scoughall to Dunbar

16.5 The two types of rectangular structure on the beaches from Scoughall to the mouth of the Tyne

16.6 The probable small Vickers post, pillbox E, positioned to fire onto Ravensheugh Sands

16.7 The cubes on the south side of the River Tyne

16.8 The double line of cubes on the east side of the mouth of the Tyne

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many people and organisations have helped in the writing of this book, directly and indirectly.

The book is dedicated to two friends, who were very influential in my life. First, Colvin Greig, who gave me my first chance to go on an archaeological excavation, at Cullykhan in 1968, and gave me a firm grounding in archaeological fieldwork. He and his wife Moira became like a second set of parents. Second, Ian Shepherd, Scotland’s first Regional Archaeologist, for Grampian, who died prematurely, as county archaeologist for Aberdeenshire. He and I worked together for many years and he started off my interest in Second World War defences; he was a kind, generous, knowledgeable man. Both Colvin and Ian were great fun, and I feel privileged to have known them.

Other workers in anti-invasion defences in Scotland have generously shared their knowledge with me: Mike Craib, for sites in eastern Scotland; David Easton, then of RCAHMS; Gavin Lindsay for sites in Orkney; Andrew Guttridge for sites in Caithness, and his plans of pillboxes in the area. Allan Carswell, Professor Peter Stachura and Robert Ostrycharz have kindly shared with me their great knowledge of the Polish forces in Scotland.

Forestry Commission Scotland, through their archaeologist Matthew Ritchie, provided invaluable information and support for my work on the defences on the forest estate in Fife and Moray. Matthew’s wife, Dr Monika Maleska-Ritchie kindly translated part of the ‘Kronika’ of the 1/11th Polish Engineer Company in Lossiemouth in the summer of 1940. Scottish Water kindly provided a plan of the gun-house at Carnoustie, which has been adapted to modern use as a pumping station. Stewart Angus of Scottish Natural Heritage facilitated access to original Aberdeen University beach survey photographs from the 1970s. Tom Cunningham, SNH’s reserve manager for Tentsmuir, has provided much useful information, and Colin R. McLeod, also of SNH, has shared with me his truly encyclopaedic knowledge of the Barry peninsula.

Adam Barclay, David Hogg, David Easton and Hugh Andrew have all helped with fieldwork; Gordon Corbet of Scottish Wildlife Trust not only facilitated access to one of the Trust’s pillboxes at Largo, but helped me clear out all the rubbish prior to my making a plan. My thanks for their company.

I am particularly grateful for the considerable help of Colonel W.H. Clements, Dr Jeremy Crang and John Graham in reading a draft text and providing very helpful comments. Dr Mike Osborne not only commented on the draft but also generously gave of his time and expertise to help me with pillbox and other defence-related questions. The remaining mistakes are of course my own.

A small number of organisations look after important documents, photographs and maps about the defence of Scotland in 1940–41, and their staff have been unfailingly helpful and kind over the years. These include the National Archives at Kew, Scotland’s National Records, Edinburgh, the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, and the Polish Institute & Sikorski Museum in London; the last operates without any public subsidy and I am particularly grateful to the staff of that archive for their assistance.

My thanks also to the staff of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, particularly Kevin McLaren of the National Collection of Aerial Photography (aerial.rcahms.gov.uk), the Imperial War Museum and Fife Council Museums, who provided a great deal of useful illustrative material.

The Environmental Programme of ESRI, publisher of the leading Geographical Information System software, ArcMap, provided an inexpensive copy of the program to aid my mapping of the anti-invasion defences of Scotland; without this the data collation would have been a nightmare.

Finally, my thanks to Hugh Andrew of Birlinn for his encouragement to write the book, and to my wife, Elizabeth Goring, and our son, Adam, for their forbearance in the face of the demands the project made on me and on them.

PROLOGUE: MAY 1940

Warning message from G1 9th (H[ighland]) Div[ision] re notice from Admiralty of concentration of flat bottomed ships in NORWAY.

(War Diary of 28th Infantry Brigade, 10 May 1940)1

Troop carrying aircraft assembling STAVANGER. Possible attack Orkney and Shetland.

(HQ of 26th Infantry Brigade: urgent message to 5th Battalion Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, Tain (the northernmost infantry unit on the British mainland), 17 May 1940)2

In that week in 1940 the long sandy beaches of Caithness lay open and undefended. The four military aerodromes, operational or under construction, within the county, had small, if any, garrisons. In Scotland north of the Tay there were fewer than 40 modern single-wing fighter aircraft: two squadrons of Hurricanes at Wick (a third had left on 13 May and its replacement did not arrive until the 22nd) and ten Spitfires 140km away at Dyce, Aberdeen, with a detachment further south at Montrose. The next possible reinforcements to the south were at Turnhouse and Drem, 280km away.3

Detachments of nine bomber squadrons were based at Lossiemouth and Kinloss, with elements of one also at Wick. A squadron of Blenheim bombers moved from Hatston in Orkney to Sumburgh in Shetland on 16 May.4 Radar cover in the far north was provided by the Chain Home stations at Thrumster in Caithness and Caitnip in Orkney and the Chain Home Low station at Nether Button. Wick lay only 10 minutes flying time away from the main base of the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow, and only 480km (2 hours flying time) from the aerodrome at Sola, south of Stavanger, already, by mid-May, securely in German hands.

The only front-line infantry north of Tain were in Orkney (7th Battalion Gordon Highlanders) and Shetland (7th Black Watch, supported by machine guns of 8th Gordon Highlanders). What if . . .?

. . . during the night of 17–18 May 1940, a force of long-range bombers, Ju 88 fighter-bombers and Ju 52 transport planes (each of the last capable of carrying 18 parachutists) are armed and fuelled at Stavanger Sola aerodrome, and far to the south, at the northernmost aerodrome in Germany, on the island of Sylt, a diversionary force of bombers and fighter-bombers is simultaneously prepared? Early in the morning of the 18th most of the fighters at Dyce and Wick are drawn off by the Sylt-based diversion towards Peterhead (threatening Invergordon or Dyce), and the main force from Stavanger flies below the Chain Home system’s operational minimum height to achieve surprise at first light over the Caithness aerodrome (as was really done by a German aircraft attacking Wick on 1 July 1940).5

Figure 0.1. The North Sea, May 1940. Aerodromes under construction or not relevant to the hypothetical attack on Caithness are not shown. The ranges of the Chain Home and Chain Home Low systems are approximate.

Out of the early morning sun the limited air defences of the operational aerodromes at Wick and Castletown are overwhelmed by the bombs and machine guns of the low-level attack. The majority of the reserve fighters are destroyed on the ground and the few Hurricanes in the air over Wick if not damaged or shot down, flee, their ammunition expended, to Hatston in Orkney, from where the only fighters in the islands, obsolete Gladiator biplanes, had already flown to their doom against the German force. Even before the bombing attack on Wick is over, the first of the 300+ parachutists carried in the first 20 Ju 52s land at Wick to suppress the anti-aircraft fire, destroy the remaining aircraft, and secure the aviation spirit tanks. Smaller teams seize the other aerodromes in Caithness. As the Hurricanes that had been attacking the diversionary force return to Wick, running low on fuel and out of ammunition, their base is already falling into German hands and further Ju 52s, carrying troops and light anti-aircraft and artillery, are preparing to land.

A second wave of bombers and escorts is approaching. The remaining Dyce Spitfires return to base and are refuelling and rearming, preparing to head north. All the Caithness aerodromes are now in German hands or severely damaged, and the next flight of German bombers diverts to bomb Hatston aerodrome in Orkney, while the escorts prepare to fight off the unescorted British bombers approaching from Lossiemouth and Kinloss. The aviation spirit on the Caithness aerodromes has been secured. The success of the first assault triggers the order for a force of Me 109 fighters to make the flight from Sola – which can only be one way as they do not carry enough fuel for a return trip – to form the defence of the new Luftwaffe base at Wick. Further Ju 52 aircraft, each towing two or three DFS 230 assault gliders, carrying Luftwaffe ground crew, bombs and ammunition leave from airfields in Denmark and north Germany. A shuttle of Ju 52s flies non-stop between Sola and Wick and by the end of 20May Caithness and the ports of Thurso and, most importantly, Wick are in German hands. The road bridge at Helmsdale has been blown to stop a British counter-attack from the south and a cycle of savage Luftwaffe bombing raids from Wick begins on Scapa Flow (only 10 minutes flight away); the Home Fleet has scattered into the teeth of waiting U-boats and is in retreat to its western bases and is no position to intercept a fast convoy from Norway to Wick, which has further reinforced the German garrison of Caithness, giving it self-sufficiency for a month. Orkney and Shetland will soon become untenable. Far to the south, two days later, on 20May, the German forces reach the sea at Abbeville, the evacuation of the BEF (British Expeditionary Force) from Dunkirk is about to begin, and on 26–28 May the British War Cabinet meets to decide whether to continue the fight.

Would that discussion have reached the same conclusion? Would the reality of the invasion of mainland Britain have galvanised British resistance, albeit weakened by the loss of Scapa Flow? Or with a portion of the British mainland in enemy hands and apparently secure for the foreseeable future from counter-attack by land, and British prestige irrevocably damaged, would a German approach for a peace settlement – preserving the Empire while leaving Germany a free hand in mainland Europe – have been accepted as the only prudent course of action? As Stephen Bungay has written: ‘If Britain had given up in 1940, the war could have had one of two possible outcomes: Nazi or Soviet domination of Europe’6 and the course of world history would have been changed.

ADMIRAL DRAX’S PAPER

Just such a German scheme was envisaged by Admiral Sir Reginald Plunket Ernle-Erle Drax, C-in-C at the Nore, in a paper put to the Chiefs of Staff Committee (CSC) on 25 July 1940.7 He suggested that the Germans could put 50,000 troops into northern Scotland and within a few days concentrate on the aerodromes near Wick such a force that Scapa Flow would become untenable. Once the Home Fleet had been driven off, Orkney and Shetland could have been taken and Scapa captured. The Joint Intelligence Committee’s (JIC) self-satisfied dismissal of the paper on the basis, first, that the aerodrome guards could be made strong enough to resist assaults by up to 500 parachutists and, second, that 17 aerodromes in Scotland north of the Tay would allow the diversion of sufficient bombers and fighters to operate against the invaders, does not convince. But even if true in July 1940, that view was not true in May and would not be true again once the Battle of Britain was in full swing. By August JIC had changed their view after representations by the Naval Commander in Shetland, Lord Cork and Orrery,8 and, fortunately, the Germans had been as surprised as anyone else by their success. And, contrary to universal belief at the time, they were not making long-term strategic plans and were not ready to use the opportunities their success in April and May 1940 had opened up. It is just as well.

PART 1: HISTORY

A bilingual notice prepared by the Germans for use after the occupation of Britain.

1. INTRODUCTION

Between May 1940 and the summer of 1941 the United Kingdom faced the threat of an invasion that, had it succeeded, would have meant the enslavement of Britain’s population and the redirection of its whole society to further the Nazis’ nightmare racist war. That period saw an unparalleled effort to prepare the defence of the UK against such an invasion. Although southern England was always likely to have been the main target, Scotland’s nationally important heavy industries, vital Royal Navy bases and key convoy ports were seen as very vulnerable to the sort of airborne attack that had devastated the defences of Belgium or, perhaps more worryingly, the combined operations that had overwhelmed Norway.

The threat of invasion did not really pass until it was clear that Germany and her allies were bogged down on the Eastern Front in 1941, but by then the anti-invasion preparations had developed a life of their own, and for a further two years or more absorbed matériel, energy and training time that could in most cases have been directed more productively.

It is debatable whether Hitler ever intended to invade, and it is widely believed that his preparations were intended only to put pressure on the British government to negotiate; but it seemed certain to the British people and most of their political and military leaders in the summer of 1940 that he could and would launch an invasion. Indeed, it was believed certain that plans for an invasion had long been prepared.1 And it seemed certain to most people that within Britain a Fifth Column of Nazi sympathisers and agents was working actively to spread rumours, confusion and despair, to sabotage military sites and civilian industry and installations, and to aid the invasion forces.2 While Churchill, the armed forces, the men who joined the Home Guard and much of the population believed that they should and could stand firm and worked hard to prepare, some – keen supporters of fascism and Germany during the 1930s – would have welcomed Hitler.3 Others could foresee only disaster in standing up to the apparently unstoppable German forces and believed that the British Empire could only be preserved by making peace from a position of weakness, effectively leaving Germany with a free hand in mainland Europe and Scandinavia.4 Yet others (with, it must be said, rather limited imagination) thought that the rationing of tea and the imposition of petty restrictions meant that they would be ‘as well off under Hitler’.5 The fate of the peoples of mainland Europe, especially vulnerable minorities, was a matter of indifference to many on both right and left of the British political spectrum. With the Germans and Russians allied, many Communists in politics and the trades union movement opposed the war effort and significant parts of the pacifist lobby were ‘strikingly equivocal’ about or apologists for Nazi Germany in the 1930s.6

In the last days of May 1940, facing the imminent fall of France, with Belgium suddenly capitulating on the 28th, and uncertain as to how many men could be saved by evacuation from Dunkirk and other French ports, the British Cabinet debated whether to fight on or to seek terms with Germany.7 In those days a bold stroke, of the kind described in the Prologue, could have changed the course of the war. This book is about what was done in the summer of 1940 and the first half of 1941 to ensure that such a bold stroke could not succeed.

WHY THIS BOOK?

My interest in anti-invasion defences grew out of a request by the late Ian Shepherd (local authority archaeologist for Grampian Regional Council and then Aberdeenshire Council) that I, as area Inspector of Ancient Monuments for Historic Scotland, consider for legal protection as scheduled monuments, a group of pillboxes in Kincardineshire (Fig. 1.1). Some of these had been noted by Wills in his pioneering 1985 book on pillboxes.8 Background research, with input from Ian and the local Forestry Commission manager, Graham Tuley, led to a fuller recognition of the extraordinarily well-preserved ‘Cowie Line’ – an anti-tank stop-line – running inland from Stonehaven, of which the pillboxes were only the most visible part.9

Many hundreds of Second World War structures have been recorded in Scotland and the rest of the UK in the last two decades. Historic Scotland funded a rapid survey of the whole country by John Guy in the 1990s, to provide a basic dataset of twentieth-century defences. The Defence of Britain Project, organised by the Council for British Archaeology (CBA) between 1995 and 2002, encouraged local volunteers throughout the UK to submit information; CBA then arranged for the collation of that information into a usable form and the database of the Project has been made available online.10 The CBA also co-ordinated, with funding by government heritage agencies, a series of surveys of War Office files to record references to defence-related structures built mainly during the Second World War. The database of Scotland’s national body of survey and record for the historic environment, the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), has not only incorporated most of this information, but has added hugely to it through the efforts of its own staff (notably David Easton), particularly in the examination of wartime and post-war aerial photographs.11 Individuals in Scotland with a particular interest in defensive sites, or who have perhaps simply photographed them in passing, have made knowledge about sites, both surviving and lost, available in a number of ways, either through traditional publishing (for example in pamphlets or books about particular areas or places) or through photographic or other websites. Much of the information on the web and in personal collections, has, unfortunately, not been lodged with RCAHMS, probably the only place where its long-term survival is reasonably certain.

Figure 1.1. The late Ian Shepherd, county archaeologist of Aberdeenshire, at the granite pillbox at Findlaystone Bridge on the Cowie anti-tank stop-line, inland from Stonehaven (Author).

While there is a huge amount of information available, little has been done to give it meaning or to describe groups of sites and structures as coherent parts of a wider pattern of construction and activity, or in a historical context. While historical sources have been used to locate sites, they have not been used to tell the story of how, why and by whom they were built, and how they were intended to be used. As a consequence, accounts of the defences can be rather generalised, both chronologically and geographically. The defences may be presented as a homogeneous mass that appeared ‘in 1940’ and as reflecting a single coherent purpose, rather than the accumulation of structures intended to meet changing perceptions of threat, often reflecting changing or even conflicting priorities. Individual sites or small groups of sites – perhaps surviving fragments of what was there, maybe reflecting a number of phases of work, and possibly surviving in a radically changed landscape – may be given an interpretation that seems to make sense to the observer, but which may bear little relation to what was built, why and when.

Simplistic views of the defences add to the accumulation of inaccurate popular narratives or even ‘myths’ that surround the Second World War (as discussed in the next section). The perception of the anti-invasion defences as ‘simple’ or as ‘much the same’ wherever one encounters them in Scotland or indeed throughout the UK, as they were supposed to be built to an identical pattern, also undermines efforts to protect this part of our built heritage. The protection of a sample, say of a complex of anti-tank cubes and pillboxes, in one part of Scotland will not actually preserve a representative cross-section of what was built in different parts of the country. It is now clearly understood that, at least in Scotland’s more distant past, study and preservation should take account of regional differences as well as changes over time.12 This book demonstrates, I hope, that regional variation and chronological depth are equally important concepts in the study and preservation for our wartime heritage.

Consideration of the defences built in Scotland has also to some extent been overshadowed by what we have found out since the war about German intentions and capabilities. We now know, for example, that no plans were made for an assault anywhere but on the south-eastern tip of this island; defences built elsewhere can, as a consequence, be retrospectively categorised, consciously or unconsciously, as ‘unnecessary’ or ‘wasteful’. The next step is to place what is thought of as unnecessary or wasteful in a lower category of value. I have tried in this book to look at the defences as they were considered when they were built, as (generally) reasonable precautions against possible actions by the enemy, although I have made it clear where I think that the response was out of proportion to the real risk, especially after the summer of 1941.

Considerable efforts have been made in other parts of the UK, especially in England, to provide consistent regional surveys (through Mike Osborne’s still-developing county-based 20th Century Defences series) and to convey variety and chronological depth (as in William Foot’s Beaches, Fields, Streets and Hills13). This volume, however, is the first attempt to provide a reasonably comprehensive account of the anti-invasion defences built in Scotland, in the context of contemporary military and political concerns and priorities. I hope that this book both provides an informative and readable account of what was built, and why, and provides a reasonably sound basis for decision-making in the conservation of this part of Britain’s past.

SOURCES

As an archaeologist I have a particular distrust of secondary sources. Calder,14 among others, has explored the reshaping of the contours of memory by wartime and post-war representations of the time – in other words, people end up remembering what is accepted as the collective memory, especially after 50 or 60 years have passed. Oral history tends to be unspecific as to times and even precise places, and contemporary or later accounts from the lower end of the chain of command tend to have limited awareness of the wider picture, and as a consequence seem to overemphasise apparent chaos at a local or detailed level and individual stupidity and inefficiency. The accounts of people higher in politics or military command are also unreliable; they cannot avoid (especially if prepared for publication) being at best centred on the self, at the worst, disingenuous and self-serving.

My intention has been to write a historical and archaeological account based as far as is possible on the evidence of sites and original documents. These include: British and Polish military files; minutes and papers of the War Cabinet and its subsidiary committees; Scottish Office and other government department files; modern and historical maps, both published and unpublished; and wartime, post-war and modern aerial photographs. Even these primary sources have their problems. Military files were kept for a variety of purposes unrelated to historical research, and different units and formations took strikingly different approaches to filling out the key record of what they did: their War Diaries. Work on Polish documents and maps, often much fuller than British equivalents, is made more difficult by their quirk of not consistently dating things, especially as the papers were not always filed in such a way as to maintain their original relationship. Military and government records also seem to reflect narrow and immediate concerns and, especially in 1940, the often hasty and incomplete collation of information.

One secondary source has, however, been very helpful in writing this book: David Newbold’s 1988 PhD thesis, ‘British Planning and Preparations to Resist Invasion on Land, September 1939 – September 1940’, is a readable and authoritative account of high-level military policy based on a detailed study of government records, published sources such as diaries, private papers and even interviews with senior commanders still living in 1981. It inevitably concentrates, where it covers the disposition of troops and the intentions of commanders, on the east and south of England, but it is an unrivalled account of the wider picture against which the defence of Scotland has to be seen. No book derived from the thesis seems to have been published, but it is accessible online and free of charge from the British Library.15 Redfern’s survey of War Office files at the National Archives at Kew is a further invaluable starting point for anyone interested in Scotland’s defences – he extracted every reference to defence structures he could find.16 The lists are, however, overwhelming in their quantity and detail, and compound the risk of seeing the defences as an aggregated mass.

MAPS AND DIMENSIONS

The maps in this book are based on out-of-copyright one-inch and quarter-inch Ordnance Survey maps, generally those overprinted in 1939–40 with the military grid for Army use, and show the coastline, boundaries of towns, roads and railways largely as they were at the time of the invasion scare. North lies at the top of all maps, except where indicated. On pillbox plans the seaward or ‘enemy’ side, where that can be identified, also lies at the top of the page.

All distances and dimensions in contemporary documents were given in imperial units. Where quoting or using distances from these documents, imperial measurement (still widely used as the standard measurement in the UK) are used; distances established by the author are given in kilometres. Smaller dimensions are given in imperial (if an original document is the source) with a metric conversion; measurements established by the author are given only in metric units.

APOLOGIA

Clausewitz, the Prussian philosopher of war, who himself was commissioned into the 34th Prussian Infantry Regiment at the age of 12,17 wrote that if one had never personally experienced war, one could not understand how difficult it was to organise or achieve anything, nor why a commander should need any brilliance and exceptional ability – ‘Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult’.18 His concept of ‘friction’ – the way in which the actions or omissions of individuals and events or circumstances conspire to make everything slower, less certain, less efficient – ‘is the force that makes the apparently easy so difficult’. I am conscious that I have no military experience but I have tried in this book to take account of the ‘friction’ faced by the soldiers defending Britain, having to catch up on decades of political penny-pinching and unimaginative military doctrine, using imperfect people and institutions, in the teeth of the German gale. I believe they achieved miracles and I hope that I have been fair to them.

No book of this kind can ever hope to be complete. Not only has much detail had to be omitted for reasons of space, but defence sites from the war are still coming to light. As noted above, many are also known of by local people but have not as yet been incorporated into national or local authority archaeological records. Inevitably, therefore, many people reading this book will be able to say, ‘but he’s missed out . . .’19 The most complete and easily accessible record of defence sites in Scotland is available online at www.pastmap.org.uk, which displays the contents of the national archaeological record, some local authority archaeology records and information on whether sites are scheduled monuments or listed buildings. New discoveries can be reported through Archaeology Scotland’s annual publication, Discovery and Excavation in Scotland.

The story of Scotland’s war is complex and as yet is only partly written. To maintain focus I have not ventured far from the planning and construction of the anti-invasion defences into related areas that are of equal interest: the legislative powers taken by government that included the powers to build defences on private land; the impact on the lives, livelihoods and civil liberties of civilians in towns and in the country; or the relationship between the War Office and other government departments, especially the Scottish Office. These are subjects worthy of books of their own.

2. COMPLACENCY: TO MAY 1940

HIGH COMMAND

In the summer of 1940 the key decisions about the war, and especially about the defence of the United Kingdom, were being taken in the Chiefs of Staff Committee (CSC), a subcommittee of the War Cabinet, comprising the professional heads of the three armed services (the First Sea Lord, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff). The Committee had two important subcommittees, which often provided the papers for discussion: the Joint Planning Staff and the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). At the height of the invasion crisis CSC was meeting twice a day, with meetings often into the night.

This book is largely concerned with the Army. During the period under review there were three Commanders-in-Chief, Home Forces, one after the other. The three men’s different approaches, methods and achievements will be examined as they appear in the story. They had to deal with very different circumstances, and had different powers to tackle the problems they faced. Some problems they had in common: competing priorities driven by the War Office and politicians; where were the Germans capable of landing? With what sort of force would they try to land? Could they reinforce and resupply their forces? Were British troops best placed close to the vulnerable places, or held back for strong counter-attacks? All three had to react to circumstances that sometimes changed rapidly, adapt to the new forms of warfare being developed by the enemy, and cope with the knee-jerk and, on occasion, panicky reactions of politicians and senior commanders in the three services to these changing circumstances and new forms of warfare.

Beneath C-in-C Home Forces was a varying number of Army Commands: Scottish Command concerns us most, but Scottish Command at one time included Northern Ireland, and excluded Orkney & Shetland; to the south was Northern Command, and beyond it Eastern and Western. The Commands were subdivided in different ways throughout the war, and these subdivisions had changing functions. Scotland’s subdivisions are dealt with below.

COMMAND STRUCTURE IN SCOTLAND

During the invasion crisis Scottish Command was led by Lt General Sir Robert Harold Carrington, KCB, DSO (1940 to May 1941) and Lt General Sir Andrew Thorne, KCB, CMG, DSO (May 1941 to 1945) (Fig. 2.1). Thorne in particular was an active soldier who, with better luck, might have expected to command a Corps or Army in the field.1

After a short-lived arrangement of ‘Sub-areas’ and ‘sectors’ in 1939–40,2 the Army Areas in Scotland were reorganised in July 1940 into North Highland, South Highland, Edinburgh and Glasgow.3 In the months after October 1940 the four Army Areas in mainland Scotland were split into Sub-areas, an arrangement that lasted through the period covered in this book: The four mainland Areas and their Sub-areas in 1940 are shown on Figure 2.2. The use of county names is at one’s first encounter, rather misleading, as ‘Sutherland’ included also Caithness, Ross & Cromarty, Inverness-shire and Nairn, while ‘Aberdeen’ included Kincardineshire, Banffshire and Moray.

Figure 2.1. Generals Carrington and Thorne on manoeuvres in Aberdeenshire, 6 May 1941, around the time of the handover of Scottish Command from the former to the latter (Imperial War Museum H9416).

Figure 2.2. The boundaries of Army Areas and Sub-areas established during 1940.

The command arrangements for Orkney and Shetland, where the local Army commander was subordinate to the Naval commander of ‘Orkneys and Shetlands Command’,4 varied during the period described – even moving outside Scottish Command at one time; and the county of Caithness was moved from the Sutherland Sub-area to Orkney and Shetland in 1941.

The establishment of the Sub-areas reflected a need to separate the roles of the Field Force, or ‘Field Army’ (higher quality units of infantry, artillery and engineers, better trained and equipped, and capable of movement to counter-attack across Scotland) and ‘static’ units (locally based units with limited mobility, for example, lower-grade infantry battalions, Pioneers, searchlight troops, anti-aircraft gunners, Home Defence and Young Soldier battalions), which could fight only close to their bases. The nature of the British Army in May 1940 is described in the next chapter.

The duties of the Sub-areas were formally: the command and training of all troops apart from Field Forces; the defence and ‘immobilisation’5 of open spaces and ports; the defence of aerodromes, ‘immobilisation’ of petrol, transport, public utilities, Post Office and food; administration as delegated by Area commanders; and all liaison with RAF, RN and civil powers as appropriate. During the period under study responsibility passed to the Areas and their Sub-areas for the construction and maintenance of defence works and the provision of ‘static’ defence (guarding Vulnerable Points (see Chapter 6), aerodromes and the beaches). In the face of a German attack their role was to delay it as much as possible while the Field Force manoeuvred to counter-attack. The Areas relied increasingly on Home Guard and non-front-line troops based in the areas to fulfil their varied roles. The Sub-areas could also count on the men based at and being trained in the depots (Infantry Training Centres) of the major Scottish regiments, in Inverness, Aberdeen, Perth, Edinburgh, Stirling, Glasgow, Hamilton, Ayr and at Fort George (and the King’s Own Scottish Borderers in Berwick-upon-Tweed), which could each contain over 1,000 or even 2,000 men at various stages of training, although very few might be considered fully effective.

Of course, the units and larger formations of the Field Force (brigades and divisions) were located within the boundaries of Areas, and Operation Instructions for Field Force formations and Areas made explicit who was responsible for commanding whom in a particular geographical area, in different circumstances, especially when action was imminent.

Although roles and boundaries changed over time, the 1940 Sub-area boundaries have been used to provide a structure within which to describe the defended beaches, the stop-lines and the important sites whose defence was a priority, such as ports and aerodromes.

THE ARMY IN SCOTLAND

At first sight it can be difficult to understand why the Army was worried about the possible arrival of 25,000 or more German troops in the summer of 1940. After all, at the height of the invasion threat in 1940, there were 181,000 British troops and 169,000Home Guard in Scottish Command,6 based on the quarterly Army returns for July–September 1940.7 The preceding quarterly return, for April–June 1940, showed the total Army personnel as 157,000, of whom about 66,000 were infantry, 43,000 Royal Artillery and 11,000 Royal Engineers.8

In contrast, during the same quarter, on 27 May 1940 (albeit when the Home Guard was only a few days old), Lt General Carrington, GOC Scotland, wrote a rather bad-tempered note to GHQ Home Forces about the overstretch Scottish Command was suffering. He noted that he had only one infantry division (9th (Highland) Division,9 a second-line Territorial Army formation) in the Command: the division had only nine battalions of infantry (7,813 officers and men)10 of which one was in Orkney, one was on its way to Shetland, three were in the Cromarty–Invergordon area guarding the fleet oiling base, one was split up guarding Vulnerable Points, and three were in Fife and Kinross protecting Rosyth naval base. In addition 8th Gordon Highlanders, the machine gun battalion of the division, had 710 officers and men (and 48 medium machine guns). The 9th Division also had three regiments of field artillery and an anti-tank gun regiment and at this point two instead of its normal three companies of Royal Engineers (another 500 or so men). As noted in Chapter 3, below, 9th Division was one of the ‘duplicate’ Territorial divisions formed in the summer of 1939 and its equipment and training was inevitably far behind the first-line Territorial divisions, which were either in France or ready to go there.

The April–June 1940 return actually showed the presence of 30 infantry battalions in Scotland, but some of these were clearly shattered remnants after Dunkirk (there were three battalions without any officers and one had about 50 officers and men) and/or units without equipment, and General Carrington noted, for example, that the re-forming remnants of 46th Division in the Scottish Borders could muster only the equivalent of two battalions of infantry. The contrast between the raw totals for the two quarters (157,000 or 181,000) and Carrington’s figure for his single division (fewer than 10,000) is in the difference in capabilities, equipment, training and mobility, in other words, effectiveness.

It is clear from what is written in the files that few units at this time had a reasonable level of equipment, enough transport and enough of the necessary training to act offensively in the field. Because of the almost complete lack of military vehicles, even key reserve formations had to hire a proportion of their transport when an invasion risk was believed to be imminent, and prolonged requisition of buses, delivery vans and so on had a very damaging effect on civilian life.11 As noted above, the rest of the troops were ‘static’ – with specific local responsibilities and limited capacity to act beyond a very limited distance. They might arguably be able to hit the enemy hard but only if the enemy came within reach. Thus, starting with the total of 66,000 infantry in the April–June return, we are left with effective numbers of 10,000 or so, and those very much scattered across the country – the difficulty faced by the defender is always that he must defend many places, while the enemy may choose to attack only one.

If we do the same with the Royal Artillery, and take off coast defence batteries and anti-aircraft artillery, there were, in June 1940, 19 field and anti-tank regiments in Scotland, with 10,326 officers and men. It is clear that some of these units were, like the infantry, in a poor state: one regiment had one officer and 57 men (field regiments usually had around 30 officers and over 500 men), and few units had anything like their full complement of modern guns.

A year later, however, at the end of May 1941, the ‘Field Force’ in Scotland had been transformed. In addition to the static battalions and other troops, 51st Division, in North Highland Area, had its full nine battalions of infantry, relieved of beach defence duties to allow them to train, three field regiments of Royal Artillery, an anti-tank regiment and four Royal Engineer companies. Attached to it were a machine gun battalion and a reinforced regiment of medium artillery, and three companies of the Reconnaissance Corps (and a mobile bath unit). The 52nd Division in Perthshire and south of the Forth had almost exactly the same complement. There was, in addition, the four-battalion 227th Independent Brigade in Caithness, an infantry battalion in Orkney and three first-line battalions in Shetland (plus a Home Defence battalion). And of course the Polish Army – the equivalent of over a division in strength (10–12 battalions), with artillery, field artillery, engineers and even a fledgling tank regiment – garrisoned Angus and Fife. And finally, the Norwegian contingent, organised as a brigade from March 1941, was positioned to defend the Invergordon area.12

PLANNING FOR HOME DEFENCE IN THE RUN-UP TO WAR

The resurgence of Germany as a military force had begun before the Nazis came to power,13 but from 1933 the rebuilding of the German armed forces accelerated rapidly. British reactions were in the main directed to countering the perceived threat from Germany’s air force, and the (exaggerated) impact of bombing. The Chiefs of Staff Committee reported in February 1937 that there was ‘no danger of invasion’ and that it was not necessary for land forces to be positioned with any regard to dealing with an invasion – the Navy and Air Force could deal with anything likely to happen, other than a limited raid in one or two ships, or sabotage parties landed from submarines. Airborne assault was then considered a negligible risk.14

In February 1939 it was still believed that the scale of mainland forces necessary in the UK was ‘to man the anti-aircraft defences and to maintain order . . . ’15 As the threat to peace increased in March, with the occupation of the rump of Czechoslovakia, and Britain joined in the French guarantee to Poland, defence measures included bringing the 12 Territorial divisions up to full strength, and the doubling of their number (as noted in Chapter 3 below), introducing conscription, and making preparations to arm and equip these men. The Regular divisions were to go to France if war broke out, to be followed by the Territorial divisions as they were ready for service.16 The Army in Britain was (apart from the fixed coast defences) to be reduced to a small force of partly-trained troops, whose main function was to provide trained men to the BEF, which was also given absolute priority for arms, transport and officers.17

The German Army

The real capabilities of the German army, against which the British Army was to be pitted, is scarcely relevant in our story; what is important is how it was perceived by the defending forces, as it was that ‘idea’, the picture painted by German propaganda, the shocking victories of 1939–40 and British prejudices, that Britain was preparing to defend itself against. The British managed to believe quite contradictory things about the German Army. First, they believed in a stereotype of unimaginative, unenterprising Germans, unable to act without orders. As a consequence, they believed that the Germans had to plan their battles to the last degree and, when, as was inevitable, such plans did not survive contact with the enemy, were incapable of improvisation.18 At the same time, the British recognised that the German Army was extraordinarily efficient and capable of rapid opportunistic shifts in forces, allowing the exploitation of opportunities. The British seemed, however, incapable of recognising how they achieved this; the study of foreign armies was not encouraged at the Staff College between the wars, and British exercises were conducted on the assumption that enemy forces would be organised and, crucially, would operate and react, in the same way as the British forces.19 The reality of the German Army was very different. The German command structure, perfected during the First World War, allowed the man on the spot to use his initiative as how to achieve general objectives set by his superiors, and allowed the German Army to reap the full benefit of mechanisation and mobility. The British Army, in contrast, remained committed to the sort of rigid command and control structure that impeded the fullest development of the necessary ‘mobility, activity and quickness’ and was ‘a recipe for delay and lethargy’.20 As Hutchison wrote perceptively in 1938, ‘Reference back for authority [as in the British system of command] is neither the easiest nor the most certain way of attaining [success]’.21

In the opening phase of the war the world had grown accustomed to German forces being boldly and ruthlessly handled, exploiting the capacities of new weapons and types of troops, finding ways of throwing their enemies off balance through the application of force and the undermining effects of a ‘Fifth Column’ of traitors. Hitler was widely believed to be ‘infallible’ and every German move was believed to be planned to the last detail, long in advance. For example, it was noted with considerable concern in the Ministry of Information reports on public opinion, on 15 June 1940, that, ‘Hitler’s “prophecies” are getting a wide currency and the tendency to discuss his phenomenal powers needs immediate discouragement. Such phrases as “He’s a genius”, “What’s the date for London?”, “He’s uncanny”, are frequent in overheard conversations.’22

Therefore, in the summer and autumn of 1940 Britain was expecting a bold assault or series of assaults, which had been long-prepared, possibly using unexpected types of attack, and accompanied by a devastating and perhaps irresistible air attack.

THE JULIUS CAESAR PLAN: SEPTEMBER 1939 TO MAY 1940

On the outbreak of war in September 1939, four of the five Regular Army divisions – the bulk of the trained men of the British Army in Britain – departed for France. The C-in-C Home Forces, General Kirke, was not expected to have to organise resistance to an invasion and had only a small staff and headquarters, and relatively limited powers. Kirke saw his main role as completing the training of units for early departure overseas and converting the large numbers of new recruits into soldiers as quickly as possible,23 both tasks that were aided by units being concentrated in one place. Any task that required the dispersal of units, such as guarding Vulnerable Points or undertaking an anti-invasion role near the east coast (away from the better training areas in the west), was an unwelcome obstacle. As the need for anti-invasion forces grew, Kirke’s plans were frequently derailed by the War Office, for example by taking trained units at short notice from his strategic reserve for posting overseas.

Before October 1939 the only German troops expected to land on British soil had been small parties of parachutists. However, fears were raised on 25 September 1939 about the possibility of ‘a large scale landing in England [sic]’,24 in a letter from the Air Ministry to Brigadier Kennedy of Home Forces, referring to a conversation the author had had with Goering ‘some time ago’.25 In October Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, raised the possibility of a combination of the weakness of the Navy in the North Sea and longer winter nights allowing a German seaborne landing on the east coast. A few days later, on 27 October 1939, this fear was given more substance by reports from the British embassy in Belgrade of intelligence from various sources that a large-scale invasion – 12,000 parachutists and 80,000 troops landed by sea and protected by a flotilla of submarines and motor launches, and by 5,200 aircraft (more planes than the Germans possessed) – was planned.26 General Kirke believed that news of this improbable venture was ‘obviously put about by the enemy’.27 Churchill, however, argued strongly in the War Cabinet that the risk was real, a task aided by the pessimism of Sir Dudley Pound (for the Navy) and Sir Cyril Newall (RAF).28 Kirke and Hore-Belisha (Secretary of State for War) both tried to keep things in perspective, pointing to the known unreliability of the sources, but Churchill would not be diverted and the outcome was that anti-invasion preparations were to be made, and it was even suggested that divisions be brought back from France. Newbold is sure that this particular invasion scare was a deliberate piece of misinformation by the Germans, and that others over the next few months were also German-inspired, intended to do what they did in fact achieve – create uncertainty and slow down the commitment of troops from the UK to France.29 By the end of the month the War Cabinet had calmed down somewhat, but decided that the preparations set in train should continue. The main consequence of the discussion was that Kirke was required to prepare plans to deal with a large-scale invasion: this was to appear as the Julius Caesar Plan (usually known as the ‘J.C. Plan’) on 15 November.30 It was inevitably a hastily put-together document that would be amended 18 times by the end of May 1940. The name came from the two code words, JULIUS (indicating that an attack was contemplated) and CAESAR (that an invasion was imminent).

Newbold notes that ‘the major weaknesses in the “Julius Caesar” Plan in November 1939 were not in General Kirke’s assumptions . . . nor . . . his general plan of operations’ but in the poor state of training (‘often in the basic rudiments of modern warfare’), equipment, weapons and of the troops he had available.31 Six first-line Territorial divisions had key roles in the J.C. Plan in England, with elements of two more in Scotland, and the GHQ reserve of three more. The second-line Territorial divisions (including the 9th in Scotland) were more widely scattered for training and had only local roles in the J.C. Plan. All formations were short of light machine guns, Vickers medium machine guns and 3-inch mortars.32 In Scotland, 15th Division had the lead role, with support if necessary from the 9th (in northern Scotland) and the 52nd (based near Glasgow). There was, however, only enough transport to equip one division, and there was not a single 2-pounder anti-tank gun in the Command.33 The situation was little better in the other UK Commands.34 Indeed, most transport throughout the UK still had to be provided by voluntary hiring from private companies as late as May 1940.35