What If Germany Had Won? 
Hitler’s Britain

^[1]1,459 words

Hitler’s Britain ^[2]
Echo Bridge Home Entertainment, 2008

Hitler’s Britain (AKA Hitler’s Victory) is a 2002 British television documentary created by London-based Lion Television, an independent production company, describing the consequences of a hypothetical German victory over Britain in World War II. It is narrated by actor Diego Matamoros and directed by television director-producer-writer Richard Bond. The original telecast was on five (now Channel 5) in Great Britain, History Television in Canada, and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States.

Hitler’s Britain is part of a large corpus of “alternative history” films, television specials, novels, and video games speculating about the outcome of a German victory. Using WWII newsreel footage, modern dramatizations, and interviews, the documentary details its producers’ vision of how a German takeover of Britain would likely have unfolded.

Through the Looking-Glass

The initial assumption is that Germany wins the Battle of Britain in 1940 and successfully executes Operation Sea Lion (Unternehmen Seelöwe), its real-life plan to invade and occupy Great Britain.

The royal family is evacuated to Canada while the English government, devoid of Winston Churchill who is killed in the initial bombing, retreats to Worcester. The Germans march into London.

The head of the invasion force is Army commander in chief General Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch (1881–1948).

The film postulates an initially “polite” occupation, using German behavior in the Channel Islands as a model, as it was the only English territory actually occupied during the war.

The filmmakers suggest that Germany would not have installed British fascist leader Oswald Mosley as head of the government, but instead worked with pragmatic mainstream politicians like ex-Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (even though he died in November 1940) and Lord Halifax.

As King, the Germans would have attempted to re-install the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII. They even discussed kidnapping him if he would not agree to serve voluntarily. Although Edward had abdicated the throne in 1937 to marry American socialite Wallis Simpson, the Germans believed the abdication really occurred under duress, forced by elite, behind-the-scenes elements because Edward had pro-German sympathies.

Under the Iron Heel

After occupation, the film says, the Germans would have tightened the screws.

The able-bodied male population between the ages of seventeen and forty-five, an estimated 2 million men, would have been deported to the Continent. As slave laborers and virtual hostages, their detention would render the remaining populace more tractable.

Two primary documents relied upon by the filmmakers for the depiction of German rule are the so-called Black Book (identified by other sources as Sonderfahndungsliste G.B. [English translation: Special Search List G.B]), a list of over 2,000 prominent individuals to be interned, and the Informationsheft G.B., described as a “blueprint” for the occupation. Both were compiled by SS official Walter Schellenberg.

The Black Book targeted leading Communists, Leftists, Freemasons, and Jews. Names included Noël Coward, E. M. Forster, H. G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Paul Robeson, Aldous Huxley, Sigmund Freud, and Bertrand Russell.

The rounding up of individuals on the list was to be carried out by Einsastzgruppen (SS task forces) led by Dr. Franz Six.

This roundup that never occurred might usefully be compared with one that did, though it is not mentioned in the film—the wartime internment, in camps and prisons, of citizens with right-wing views (Oswald Mosley, A. H. M. Ramsay, and others) under Defence Regulation 18B. This regulation suspended the right of habeas corpus. Citizens were imprisoned without charge, trial, or right of judicial appeal.

The actual number of detainees is hard to determine. Some sources indicate 1,000, others 1,769. It appears that the true number may not be known with certainty even today. After the war Jews published an article applauding this massive subversion of due process. (“The Story of Regulation 18B: Freedom’s Defence Against Subversion,” Wiener Library Bulletin, December 1955.)

Universities and libraries were to be tightly restricted. An academic interviewee claims there would have been bonfires of books outside the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Coming as this does from a proud member of a class of highly successful, enthusiastic censors of speech (including books), principled viewers will remain unmoved by such self-righteous grandstanding.

Masonic lodges would be shut down, as occurred in the Channel Islands (which is shown). The Freemasons have always been Leftist, anti-white, and anti-Christian—anti-Catholic in particular. So it is not surprising that the secret brotherhood was also intensely anti-German. (None of which is mentioned here.) Interestingly, despite the fact that Masonry was also suppressed by the Communists, and for a much longer period, Freemasons have never been anti-Communist.

Other organizations to be dismantled or tightly controlled were the trade unions, the Church of England, Communists, the Salvation Army, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), and the Boy Scouts. Art museums were to be “looted,” and the most valuable treasures shipped to the Continent, or to Germany proper.

The official figure for the number of Jews in Britain was 300,000, but Germany believed the actual Jewish population to be much larger.  A distinction was made between refugee Jews (those who had recently fled the Continent) and native Jews; the former were to be rounded up first. Ultimately, audiences are assured, all Jews would have been shipped to the Continent and killed en masse as part of the “Final Solution.”

The conquest of Britain would signal the vanquishment of anti-Germanism in Europe, inasmuch as Hitler’s invasion of Russia would also have been successful.

With the acquisition of nuclear know-how from Britain, Germany would have constructed nuclear weapons. In conjunction with new transatlantic bombers and battleships, nukes would comprise the “big technology” with which to “take America on”—the old propaganda trope of Germany’s “one all-embracing aim,” world conquest. It is allowed, however, that an American-German “cold war,” along the lines postulated by “Robert Harris’s wonderful book” (the bestselling novel Fatherland, 1992), was an alternative possibility.

With a German victory in Europe, rocket chief Wernher von Braun would never have gone to the United States. Therefore, Germany would have won the moon race. A photo of an American astronaut on the moon is shown, with the U.S. flag digitally replaced by the Nazi flag (Nationalflagge). Subliminally or not, the photo represents elites’ secret view of the moon landing by white Americans. It’s impossible to miss the psychological symbolism.

The Auxiliary Units

The final third of the film, a surprisingly large segment, is devoted to a discussion of Churchill’s secret homegrown terrorist force, the “auxiliaries.”

Although members of auxiliary units were brutal-minded middle-class automatons to be sure (several surviving oldsters are interviewed), one doubts that they would have proven much of a hindrance to the occupying forces. Indeed, the film itself states that they expected to be (and would in fact have been) wiped out within two weeks. Members were informed of this when they joined.

The auxiliaries consisted of about 5,000 people (men and women) scattered across the country and organized into cells. About 500 crude, concealed underground bunkers served as bases for the 4-5 man units. Although cells communicated by means of dead drops and concealed radio sets—i.e., there was a rudimentary infrastructure—no cell had knowledge of any other cell. Each cell operated within a 15-mile radius of its home area. The local Anglican vicar was head of the village resistance.

Interviews with surviving members reveal the auxiliaries to be a vicious lot. They were supplied with a variety of dangerous explosives, sniper rifles, and hand-held weapons with which to kill their enemies. They were taught to gut their victims—to spill their entrails onto the ground.

It was also explained to them that the Germans would retaliate by randomly killing large numbers of the auxiliaries’ neighbors (and, presumably, family members), and might even obliterate entire villages in retaliation for their terrorist acts. But this did not faze the volunteers.

Nor were their targets only Germans. They were instructed to murder English women—or anyone else—who “fraternized” with Germans. In an ironic twist, cell members were vetted by a senior local police official who, according to sealed orders given to the Operational Patrols to be opened only in case of invasion, would later be assassinated to prevent the membership from being revealed. Naturally, this hapless individual would also be a lifelong friend and neighbor.

My opinion of the auxiliaries after listening to surviving members’ cold-blooded tales is that their elimination by the Germans would have meant good riddance of bad rubbish.

Conclusion

Hitler’s Britain, despite a seemingly intriguing premise marginally differentiating it from the growing rubbish heap of anti-German propaganda, is ultimately pedestrian and uninvolving.

The continuous, triumphal reliving of WWII is a curious cultural phenomenon for which no other parallel exists. The simplistic glorification of the Allies and demonization of Germany serves an anti-white agenda. Such exercises are less about WWII than about today. They stoke the fire of racial fury and reinforce the cult-like status of the existing caste system.