If Britain Had Fallen (34 page)

In the secret Orders for the Military Government of England which were drawn up by the General Staff between July and September 1940 the Commander-in-Chief, in whose name they were to be issued, made no bones about his true intentions. ‘The main task of military government’, stated his basic
Directive
bluntly, ‘is to make full use of the country’s resources for the needs of the fighting troops and the requirements of German war economy.’ Later sections of the
Directive
made clear enough that the rights of the conquered people, to whom the country actually belonged, came nowhere:

An essential condition for securing the labour of the country is that law and order should prevail. Law and order will therefore be established. Administrative measures will not violate international law unless the enemy has given cause for reprisals … Laws of the country operative prior to the occupation will be upheld unless they are contradictory to the purpose of the occupation … The welfare of the inhabitants of the country and the interests of the country’s national economy, the latter being the concern of the Defence Economic Staff and its headquarters, will be considered in so far as they contribute directly or indirectly towards the maintenance of law and order and the securing of the country’s labour for the requirements of the troops and German war economy.

The task of the Defence Economic Staff mentioned in the
Directive
was spelt out in more detail in another document. They would, it was explained, ‘be employed on the economic exploitation of the country’ and would be directly responsible to the German War Office, their only contact with the Army Commanders being to divert some part of the food and other supplies seized for the immediate use of the occupying forces. The central Staff, presumably remaining in Germany, would operate through Defence Economic Commands which, said Orders issued on 9 September, ‘will be stationed at first in the embarkation ports, then in the landing ports; later they will be permanently established in those particular
types of industrial centres for which they have been specially recruited … . Their task is to seize, secure and remove raw materials, semi-finished production and machinery of military importance.’ The Commands were to work through Economic Officers, who ‘are the forward representatives of the Defence Economic Commands and will be stationed at the principal ports. Their task is to assist the troops in economic matters, to arrange and effect the removal of goods, and to secure transport space.’

The Germans seem, at least in the initial stages, to have thought solely of stripping British industry of its stores and plant and of removing them to the Continent, a logical corollary of their plans, to be mentioned in the next chapter, for deporting most of the male working population, which might presumably have found itself back at its old work-bench, now set up in Düsseldorf or Mannheim instead of Derby or Macclesfield. The only reference to leaving machinery where it was related to ‘special instances’, where the Economic Commands could ‘examine and take over repair shops for unit purposes’. In fact it seems likely that wiser counsels, if the British Isles had been totally subjugated, would have prevailed. Why go to the immense trouble of moving a whole factory and its work-force to the Continent, with all the upheaval and interruption in output involved, when it might be left where it was, with an occasional visit from an Economic Officer—who would before long have become as familiar a figure as the Factory Inspector—to ensure that production was flowing smoothly? Certainly in France and other countries major industrial plants like the Renault factory were left alone, though now forced to work for the Germans, and this, on any common-sense assessment of the probabilities—though the Germans were sometimes impervious to common sense—seems what would have happened in Britain. No doubt some specially valuable items—machine-tools, automatic steel-handling equipment, patented processes on which some influential industrialist in Brunswick or Cologne had long cast envious eyes—would rapidly have been appropriated, but the general removal of Great Britain’s economic capacity across the Channel seems not so much impossible as unnecessary.

Some more portable items would certainly have vanished at once, for one of the orders prepared beforehand contained a shopping list of essential items. The text is of a brutal directness which well illustrates the Germans’ attitude, ninety per cent bullying, ten per cent reasonable, towards the now helpless British:

The following goods are hereby requisitioned:

Agricultural products, food and fodder of all kinds, ores, crude metals, semi-finished metal products of all kinds, including precious metals, asbestos and mica, cut or uncut precious or semi-precious stones, mineral oils and fuels of all kinds, industrial oils and fats, waxes, resins, glues, rubber in any form, all raw materials for textiles, leather, furs and hides, round timber, sawed timber, timber sleepers, and timber masts.

Requisitioned goods may not be alienated, altered or moved to another place. They must be handled with the greatest care and must be protected against deterioration.

All goods are excluded from requisitioning which are part of a normal household stock.

Farmers and tradesmen, including innkeepers, may retain such stocks of agricultural products, food and fodder, as are essential for supplying their clients with absolute necessities. To the same limited extent petty craftsmen and shops may supply goods to consumers.

Anyone contravening these regulations will be punished.

How the ‘normal household stock’ was to be replenished, or the ‘petty craftsmen and shops’ were to obtain more supplies to replace those they sold over the counter was not explained. Presumably, as under the quota system adopted by the Board of Trade from 1940 onwards, manufacturers after the first frenzy of requisitioning had passed, would have been allowed to sell some part of their output to wholesalers and retailers who would have been rationed according to their prewar demands. Since, as part of the Civil Authority, government departments would have continued to function under the Germans, the actual regulations drawn up would probably have differed little from those actually imposed in the later years of the war, though with a far smaller volume of goods to be shared out, and with little guarantee, owing to the danger of sudden new demands from the Germans, of each shopkeeper’s ration being honoured. If, of course, the Germans had carried out their threat of mass deportation, the civil population left behind would have been far smaller than in peacetime, while the demands of the armed forces, which took priority from 1940 to 1945, would have ceased altogether apart from the daily necessities of life. Appalling shortages there would no doubt have been but that anyone would actually have been reduced to rags, or frozen or starved to death, seems unlikely.

Despite their obviously high regard for Britain as an industrial nation, the Germans do not seem to have rated British agriculture very highly, for it is barely mentioned in their Occupation
Orders,
and occupies little space in the
Ordinances.
The invaders seem to have looked to the farms of England and Wales to feed the Occupation Armies rather than to provide wagon-loads of produce to be sent back to the Fatherland, and the exploitation of agriculture was left to a ‘Chief Supply Officer for England’, responsible to the main attacking formation, Army Group A, and not, like his countrymen how busily stripping British industry, to the Economic
Defence Staff and the German War Office. His first job was to ‘prepare on English territory a supply base’, and later he was to ‘be responsible for seizing such stocks of food, petrol, motor transport, horse-drawn vehicles, etc., in the country as all have already been taken over by the armies’, but whether they were then to be exported to Germany or to be held against the future needs of the Occupation forces, was not made clear.

The Chief Supply Officer’s terms of reference illustrate another facet of the German approach to their defeated enemies. They were not on the whole interested in piecemeal requisitioning and, though some items might well vanish during the initial burst of looting, German troops were better disciplined than most, and once it was over anyone indulging in further unauthorised ‘removals’ was liable to be severely punished. Readers of the
Guide on how troops are to behave in England,
which was ready for issue in September, were warned that ‘acts of violence against orderly members of the population and looting will incur the severest penalties under military law; the death sentence may be imposed’. The acquisition of booty by individual units was also sternly discouraged. Rather ironically in the light of the plans of the Economic Defence Staff which were to be implemented once victory was won, the Commander-in-Chief ordered that ‘unnecessary interference with the economic life of the country is to be avoided. Factories, workships and offices are not to be disturbed; except where operationally necessary such places may only be entered by soldiers executing orders. The use of stocks of petrol, oil, machinery, tools, etc., found in factories and works is forbidden … . Goods of all kinds and military booty, especially food and fodder, and articles of clothing are to be preserved and secured.’

In the Channel Islands this policy was faithfully carried out. The Town Clerk already quoted remembers how, when the Germans wanted eggs in Jersey, they did not apply to the owners direct but, once again, to the local council. ‘We had’, he recalls, ‘to collect two or three dozen eggs each week from the farmers. This again we did on a rota system, so that no one particular man was penalised more than any other.’ But although German lorries rarely drove up to individual farms or factories to load up with goods, everyone in the Channel Islands knew that when they reached the market or depot the Germans took their share, and though the goods were usually paid for, it was at prices they fixed themselves and in their own currency. This was widely expected to be worth little more than ‘inflation’ marks or Confederate dollars when they had lost the war, so that an English pound note rapidly became worth nearly £3 or even more in German money. The Germans themselves, despite their supposed
confidence in victory, showed a strong preference for sterling and on Guernsey were prepared to pay £15 to £22 for an English sovereign, and up to
£2
15s (£2.75) for a pound note. Silver and even copper coins, too, rapidly disappeared, being sent to Germany, the British authorities replacing the missing coins by printing notes at values of 6d, 1s 3d, 2s 6d and 5s, which are now collectors’ items.

But it was the seizure of stocks of goods already on the island, and of those being produced there, which had so serious an effect on its economic life, and a similar process would probably have occurred in Britain. Everyone from factory-owner to shopkeeper had less to sell and some occupations, like that of restaurant proprietor, ceased to provide an adequate living. One Guernsey farmer confided to his diary in April 1941, when the Occupation was not yet a year old and the worst shortages were still to come, that the Germans were already behaving ‘like fat and vulgar locusts … . My car, lorry and row of trees are now gone and coal is to follow. I wonder if they’ll want my wife?’ Happily they did not, but many families did lose their pets, which in the last desperate winter of the war were often stolen by the Germans or fellow residents for food.

The Germans officially discouraged in their soldiers’
Guide
for troops going to England the wholesale purchasing of goods already in the shops. ‘The soldier will be provided with all essentials by his unit’, he was reminded. ‘Unnecessary purchases are to be avoided.’ It would have been unreasonable, however, to expect that any serviceman, loose for the first time in a foreign country with money in his pocket, would not have set out on a shopping expedition and one of the earliest signs of the arrival of the Germans in the Channel Islands was the appearance of the ‘fieldgreys’, as the Germans nicknamed their own troops, or the ‘Jerries’, as the inhabitants called them, staring into shop windows or going inside to explain by pantomime, as few spoke English, what they wanted to buy. The tradesmen of Jersey and Guernsey were well accustomed to dealing with a flood of summer visitors and the shelves of most establishments were well filled, but before long stocks were running low as the new arrivals discovered with surprise that Goebbels’s stories of the starving, threadbare English were untrue. Ten days after the first troops had arrived on Jersey their commandant felt compelled to issue an order forbidding them to buy at a time more than ‘50 cigarettes or 25 cigars, 1 bottle of wine or two bottles of beer, three shirts, collars and ties, and one suit-length of cloth’, while the sale of all foodstuffs to any soldier, except for ‘fruit, biscuits and confectionery’ was forbidden. One islander observed later that same July how ‘new arrivals are to be seen standing in front of shop windows with their mouths open’, and already the same transports
which had brought them there were carrying away ‘potatoes, spirits and other goods’, while on this largely agricultural island the ration of cooking fats had already been halved, the first of many such reductions. Three days later an order was issued for two ‘meatless days’ a week, though it was soon forgotten and meat itself later became little more than a memory for most people.

The requisitioning of property, especially land or business premises on which one’s livelihood depended—as in the evacuated cities of Great Britain there was no shortage of empty dwelling houses—pressed even harder on individuals than the wholesale commandeering of agricultural produce. Two years later, on Guernsey, one man charged with various thefts defended himself on the grounds that his ‘premises had been taken over by the German troops and he had lost everything, including crops’, for which he had received no compensation; the Germans’ only reaction being to fine the acting editor of the local newspaper for including this evidence in its report of the trial.