If Britain Had Fallen (28 page)

¹
A British mission led by a relatively junior Foreign Office career diplomat (Sir) William Strang had visited Moscow from April to July 1939 to try to secure an Anglo-Russian treaty. Its failure was followed by the Russo-German treaty, the announcement of which on 21 August 1939 had been the prelude to the outbreak of war. Hitler decided in July 1940 to attack Russia and did so on 22 June 1941.

Chapter 11:
To laugh at the Führer is forbidden

All publications … of a nature to prejudice … the dignity of the troops of occupation are forbidden.

Ordinance
of the German Occupation Authorities, 1940

If there was one skill on which the Germans prided themselves besides the waging of war, it was the spreading of propaganda, and the first essential listed in a memorandum sent to Dr Six on 27 September on ‘Immediate steps to be taken in the cultural-political sector on the occupation of England’ was ‘The closure of the Ministry of Information and its dependent organisations’. This was to be followed by ‘the closure of the press agencies and information offices (Reuter, Associated Press, Exchange, Central News, etc.) … closure of the press archives and libraries of the Ministry and of Parliament’ and of the ‘newspapers and editorial offices’ themselves. Once life was beginning to get back to normal the Germans would surely have reopened at least some of the newspapers, as they did in other countries, since the press was necessary for pro-Nazi propaganda and to inform the population of their lords and masters’ latest demands. As they possessed far too few people with an adequate understanding of Great Britain, or even of the English language, to have replaced even the senior editorial staff of the 900 national, regional and local newspapers, what would probably have happened is that only one or two newspapers with a particularly ‘bad’, i.e. anti-Nazi, record, such as the
News Chronicle,
would have been shut down. The rest would have been allowed to reappear under strict censorship, and on the understanding they would be closed down the instant they failed to toe the Goebbels line. For some papers this would not have meant too drastic a change in policy—
The Times,
for example, when Nazism might still have been crushed, had consistently played down news of German atrocities against the Jews. Most journalists were resigned to having at some time to write against their own convictions, and even against the national interest, when their proprietors required. No doubt they would have resisted the Germans as far as they could but, like everyone else, reporters and feature-writers had their livings to earn and their liberty, such as it was, to preserve.

What seems likely to have happened is that all newspapers would, as far as they were able, have published German orders and communiqués ‘straight’, without comment, filling the rest of the paper with news of a non-political kind. The quality papers could still have carried ‘society’ news, including reports of official receptions given by prominent Germans, the popular press could still have filled its columns with gossip about actors and actresses, ‘human interest’ stories about children and pets, cookery and domestic hints, letters to the editor (strictly avoiding criticism of the Germans) and competitions. Much of the feature material already appearing in British papers, on how to rear your own rabbits or chickens, or to make clothes last longer, would, as the Germans stripped the country bare, have become even more necessary than before. The citizen would soon have needed to know how to repair his own shoes or service his own bicycle merely to survive, and suggestions for games to play, or books to read, in the black-out would have been even more welcome in the Occupied Winter of 1940 than in the Phoney War of 1939. Much space, too, would no doubt have been filled with advertising of the type with which the British public was already beginning to become familiar: ‘Go easy with the … ’ or ‘If you’re lucky enough to find a tin make it last’, though companies would have to tone down the promises, common by 1943 and 1944, that ample supplies would again be available on a day not too far ahead. Campaigns like ‘Dig for Victory’ or ‘Watch your fuel target’ could have continued, though sometimes under different slogans, and as the newspapers, already much smaller than prewar, would have shrunk even further, space would still have been at a premium. In the Channel Islands, late in the war, the daily newspapers had shrunk to a single four-page sheet, published on alternate days, despite the arrival of reels of Finnish newsprint, addressed to a Bristol newspaper, which the Germans had somehow acquired. The British Isles, like Jersey and Guernsey, would during an Occupation have had access again to Scandinavian supplies, if the Germans were willing to make shipping available, though cut off from the other main source, Canada.

For the local press the adjustment to Occupation would have been even easier. Most local newspapers had rarely referred to national events and the activities which provided their staple raw material—local court cases, obituaries, weddings, school prize-givings—would have continued, while, if Channel Islands’ experience is any guide, one major space-filler would have expanded, in the ‘For Sale’ and ‘Exchange’ columns of small advertisements. So long as an editor was discreet he could probably have survived, perhaps soothing his conscience by producing for private circulation an underground newspaper of the type which landed at least one
Channel Islands journalist in gaol. No doubt, too, there would have been minor gestures of defiance, like that of the
Guernsey Star,
which printed German-inspired news in its fifth column, and in the bars where journalists foregathered many stories would have been exchanged about the Germans’ ignorance, as when they insisted on a headline in the same newspaper marking the start of the cricket season, ‘King Willow returns’, being deleted as an illegal, if veiled, reference to the monarchy.

Experience on Jersey provides similar examples of how the Germans exercised control over the local press. When the Jersey
Evening Post
carried a household hint about tightening up a loose hammerhead, the chief censor, a German major, demanded that it be taken out. The item appeared, he pointed out, alongside the words ‘Be prepared’, in an advertisement advising customers to stock up with ‘winter woollies’ at a local store, and the two together were clearly an incitement to the population to arm themselves to attack the Occupation forces during the dark nights. The editor had his revenge, however, when the same officer suggested that they might be photographed together. Overcoming his reluctance to be shown in the company of a German, the editor eventually agreed, carrying the photograph next day over the caption ‘
The Evening Post
is now subject to strict censorship’. This particular censor was an archetypal German officer complete with monocle—the unfortunate editor had sometimes to wait to have his proofs passed while an underling was sent for this vital piece of equipment—and he could not read English, every word that appeared in the paper having to be translated for him.

About the most blatant German propaganda stories not much could be done and they were probably in any case self-defeating, but a far greater problem in the Channel Islands was presented by German attempts to enforce the publication of material reflecting on loyal local residents. On one occasion the Jersey
Evening Post
was ordered to print a report attacking a local doctor who, it was said, after giving first aid to a woman and children injured in a minefield, had refused to drive them to hospital, the German account describing him as ‘a disgrace to his profession’ who ‘ought to be struck off’. The true facts were that, having very little petrol and being on his way to visit other patients, he had suggested that a German doctor, who was also on the scene and had unlimited fuel, should transport the injured family instead. Although the editor was threatened with denunciation to the commandant of the island ‘for having refused to take the word of a German officer’, he stuck to his guns and was eventually allowed to publish a ‘straight’ account of the accident.

Despite the seriousness with which they took themselves, the Germans not infrequently provided local newspapers’ readers with light relief. One
local resident used to cut out particularly absurd items of German news and anti-British stories and paste them in a scrapbook, claiming that they made a good substitute for
Punch,
now unobtainable, though this was doing them more than justice. One such ‘joke’ declared that ‘if you take off an Englishman’s dinner jacket, you’ll find underneath the same barbarian on whose neck Caesar placed his foot 2000 years ago’, while in the same column appeared an extract from a speech promising that Victory will be German as sure as the sun revolves round the earth’, a claim which the delighted population pointed out the Germans had got the wrong way round.

The censors who in turn ruled over the destinies of the
Guernsey Star
and the Guernsey
Evening Press
were also ill-equipped for their demanding job. One of them, who arrived early in 1941, had formerly worked, though in a fairly low-grade post, in a German news agency in London, and spoke excellent English, but he was, in the eyes of one local journalist, a ‘cissy’ who ‘pomaded and powdered himself and after leaving Guernsey he was found guilty of Black Market offences and embezzlement and sent to gaol. His successor, who needed an interpreter, was far worse, a German Count who had been a founder-member of the Nazi Party and was a dedicated anti-Semite: he even banned the playing on the island of music by composers with Jewish grandparents. He had been badly wounded in North Africa but ignored medical orders not to drink, becoming when intoxicated ‘a raving maniac’, who wrecked his room and threatened to shoot anyone who came near him. He itched to be in action again, but could only demonstrate his loyalty to his beloved Führer by carrying out his duties as a censor with unintelligent ferocity.

Under these two men the press on Guernsey suffered a long series of acts of interference. Only months after the Germans’ arrival they insisted on the editor of the
Star
being replaced because he had run as a front-page lead an appeal to the public to cooperate with the Germans in catching troops who broke into private property, his defence, that he had been ordered to give prominence to official announcements, being rejected. A little later an excellent story, worthy of a place in any London newspaper, about motor vehicles in the shape of Germans’ cars and motor-cycles having appeared on Sark for the first time in history, was killed on German orders, and the paper was forbidden to mention that the German Civil Commandant on Sark had been blown up by one of his own land mines. The Germans prevented publication of letters of thanks from local children to a French charitable organisation which had sent them biscuits, an unheard-of luxury by 1942, and cut a whole page containing details of the island’s annual budget, since this revealed that six months of Occupation had already cost the citizens of Guernsey £100,000. All this, and the suppression of reports of crimes involving Germans, or the motor accidents in which they were constantly involved, was understandable, but what seemed monstrous to the journalist forced to endure it was the deliberate falsification of a 1941 Christmas message contributed by a local clergyman. The Nazi censor refused to let him either print it as it stood or drop it altogether, so that the parishioners of St Stephen’s church were surprised to read, over their vicar’s name, that ‘the recognition that Christ was born into the world to save the world, and bring peace on earth, is the need of Britain and her Jewish and Bolshevik allies’.

The regulations which the Germans had prepared for use in occupied Britain went even further than those actually enforced in the Channel Islands. One of the orders drafted for issue by the German Commander-in-Chief on arrival warned that ‘any insult to the German armed forces or their commanders’ was punishable by court-martial, and the Occupation
Ordinances
were even more specific, warning that ‘no person shall by word, act, or gesture, conduct himself in a manner insulting to the troops of occupation or to the military colours or insignia’. It was also laid down that ‘persons of the occupied country, wearing uniform or belonging to the police, fire brigade, customs and forestry service, shall salute the German colours and officers’. Since British firemen and customs officials were not accustomed to saluting British officers, or the Union Jack, let alone the Swastika, it seems likely that the Germans would either not have enforced the demand or have had to submit to some distinctly unorthodox greetings.

Similarly rigid rules applied to the press, where ‘malicious and insulting utterances’ ranked with the publication of ‘information which may be detrimental to the German Reich’, and the
Ordinances
were even more far-reaching:

All newspapers, publications, printed matters … writings, pictures, with or without words, music with words or explanation and cinematographic films which are intended for public distribution and are of a nature to prejudice public order or endanger the security or the dignity of the troops of occupation are forbidden and may be seized by order of the Military Commander by the representative of the county. In the case of a daily publication, the representative of the county may order its exclusion from his area for a period of three days. If such publication is published in that area, he may order its suspension for the same period. The action taken will be reported to the Military Commander who … may order that any periodical publication which shall offend against this article shall be suspended or excluded from the occupied territory for a period not exceeding three months … [and it] may, in the event of a subsequent offence, be suspended or excluded … for an indefinite period.

A three-day suspension would have cost a daily newspaper dear, a three-month one would have been sufficient to ruin any but the very richest, but this was only the start, for the military authorities could also order the closing for up to three months of any shop which, however innocently, had offered the paper for sale, or any library which had put it on display. The ordinary newsagent could hardly have been blamed had he played for safety and ceased stocking a newspaper with a reputation for sailing too close to the wind, while all those concerned in newspaper production had the greatest incentive of all not to fall foul of the law for, in addition to the paper being put out of business, not merely the author of an offending article but the ‘editors, publishers or printers’ who had handled it could ‘also be prosecuted and convicted for their participation in such a publication or for their negligence’.