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Sea Lion |
a novel by Steve Barrett | ||
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"...and if necessary the island will be occupied." |
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Although it is evident that there were no detailed plans made for
the occupation of the United Kingdom should Sea Lion have gone ahead and
succeeded, the paper by von Brauchtisch quoted in chapter 16 of the novel
did exist and was published on 9th September 1940. This paper, Orders
Concerning the Organisation and Function of Military Government in England,
did indeed contain a description of the measures referred to concerning
the internment and deportation of the able-bodied male population aged
between 17 and 45 - except where there were reasons for local
"exceptional" rulings.
The title of the paper above ignores the existence of parts of the United Kingdom other than England. This seems typical of many German documents of the period. It is not clear whether the intention was to establish "occupied" and "unoccupied" zones, as was done in France. For the purposes of the novel I have assumed this is the case. The penalties imposed under the occupation mentioned in chapter 30 are based on those enforced during the occupation of the Channel Islands. The "Special Search List" which features in chapter 30 was collated by the Gestapo but it contained rather a hotchpotch of names and was not necessarily intended as a "death list". Many members of the British Union of Fascists are on the list, for example. I have fictionally appointed Joachim von Ribbentrop as Commissioner for the occupied territory, The main biographical details given in chapters 27 and 29 for this somewhat larger than life character are factual. As to the choice of Lord Halifax as a replacement for Churchill, I think this seems reasonable - there is of course no intention to suggest that any British statesmen who found themselves part of a post-invasion Government would have been other than pragmatically obstructive to the new rulers. Click here to return to the "Inside Stories" main page. |
