PLAN FOR INVASION OF BRITAIN

New Zealand Herald, Volume 81, Issue 25054, 18 November 1944, Page 10

PLAN FOR INVASION OF BRITAIN

WHAT GERMAN DOSSIERS REVEAL"

From the Herald's London Representative

Close study of the complete collection of maps which the German Army had prepared for the invasion of Great Britain and Ireland x-eveals that a great army of spies—intelligence men, geologists and cartographers —must have been used by the Germans long before the outbreak of war to pry into the details of every town in Britain. These "invasion dossiers" were discovered in a big garage on the outskirts of Brussels. One or two items in the immense collection of maps, plans, photographs and explanatory notes had been found in various German billets in the city, but no complete sets had hitherto been discovered. Tin's documentation is an imposing sight. Each dossier, and there arc hundreds of thousands of them, is a big pile, at least 18in thick and foot square, of big green envelopes. _ These piles contain all the data relating to every district of the United Kingdom and Eire. Newspaper Pictures There are reproductions of the best British maps and street plans of all towns and villages on important traffic arteries, photographs of every conceivable part of the country, from the tin mines of Cornwall to reproduced picture postcards of the Lake District. There are maps of the entire coast, with sketches enabling any stretch of the const to be identified at once, and there are aerial photographs of the defences of the south coast which were hurriedly thrown up during the spring and summer of 1940. Newspaper pictures of the tours of inspection of these defences by the King, Mr Churchill, Mr Eden, then Secretary for War, and other prominent persons are included whenever they contain details of weapons or of defensive positions. Accompanying the maps is a kind of Invasion "Baedeker," giving details of

Britain and Ireland as a whole and discussing each area from the point of view of military operations. From this it is possible to make some general deductions as to the plan of the campaign which the German Army at one time at least proposed to adopt. The first phase of the actual invasion after the battle for air supremacy had been won apparently included attempts to sink blockships at the entrance to the principal east coast estuaries and harbours, with the intention of impeding the deployment of our naval forces. Then it would seem, as far as England was concerned, that there were to have been two main landings in the south, with airborno landings in the Midlands and behind the east coast. The first of the southern attacks was to have been in Kent and Sussex. Kentish Attack The object of the Kentish attack was to get into the Weald and thus turn the lino of the South Downs, but the general purpose of this whole landing was to attract what field army Britain possessed at the time to the defence of London against an attack coming from the south. Then it would appear that the second attack was to be put in—a landing in the neighbourhood of Portland and Weymouth—with the intention of getting the armour into the admirablo tank country which stretches from the borders of Devon up to Salisbury Plain and the Cotswolds. From this position the best way into London was, according to the German notes, south-eastward through Bicester, so that while the British field army was fighting on the North Downs facing south, London would be taken in the rear by armoured forces. Apparently, also, the Germans envisaged that the final stage of the invasion of England would be a last-ditch stand by the remnants of the British forces pushed back into North Wales. This guide-book, in addition to outlining the military potentialities, comments in general terms on England as

a whole, permitting itself to observe inter alia that the condition of the slums is due not only to "the lpdiistrial revolution, but also to the melfaeiency of the Englishwoman as a housekeeper." . Notes on Ireland include the judgment that the coast as a whole is almost always favourable to a landing, but adds a special warning on the existence of the stone walls which divide fields, apparently as being an obstacle to airborne landings. It comments: "The social and hygienic conditions of the very unsuitable for billeting troops." Probably the most striking thing about all these documents is the fact that the first of them were not ready until the middle of August, 1910, after the most favourable moment for the invasion was past. The dossiers, however, were alter that time kept up to date, and spine were revised oven in 1943. Channel Crossing /NTO the lumping, thumping seas we go, Two hundred stinking prisoners below, The hatches fastened, and the Master Race Still not contented with their livingspace. ! But here the Herrenvolk can raise no roar, And S.S. stands for "sea-sick" — nothing more. "There are no islands . . ." was the Fuehrer's vow. Poor brutes, they knoio that there are islands now. This boundless turbulence through xvhich they crawl, This is the Channel they believed so small: This heaving wilderness in which they toss They thought to conquer and were keen to cross. Maybe, when every other hope is done, This is the way to educate the llun — Send every Prussian for a lengthy trip, In heavy weather, in a little, ship. —A.P.H. In Punch, London