(Times of Israel) Robert Philpot - The Nazis prepared a secret list of 3,000 prominent Britons they intended to round up had they invaded the UK. In 1945, a copy of the list was found in the Gestapo's Berlin HQ. Academic Sybil Oldfield details the story in the recently published The Black Book: The Britons on the Nazi List. Armed with copies of the "most wanted" list, 20,000 SS troops were to sweep the country engaging in a deadly ideological and racial manhunt. SS Col. Franz Six was appointed to lead the task of eliminating any opposition to the Nazis in Britain. He was authorized to "set up Einsatzgruppen [paramilitary SS death squads]...as the situation dictates and the necessity arises." The Gestapo's foreign intelligence unit began compiling the "special search" list for Great Britain around 1937. It included an alphabetical list of suspects and their addresses, together with nearly 400 organizations which were to be raided and banned. The organizations to be shut down ranged from the Rotary Club to the Transport and General Workers Union, as well as the YMCA, the Quakers and the Boy Scout movement, suspected of being an arm of the "English Secret Service." The list included the entirety of Churchill's war cabinet, as well as a roll-call of prominent British Jews. Well over half of those on the list were refugees - at least 2/3 of them Jews - who had fled to the UK before the war. Oldfield says her principal aim was to discover why the Britons on the list were "suspected above all others of having the potential to obstruct the successful Nazification of Great Britain."
2021-03-18 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive