Free If Britain Had Fallen by Norman Longmate

occasions, and it was even suggested at one meeting that the ‘police should become part of the Armed Forces’ in the event of invasion, though it was then pointed out that some were over military age and that this essentially civilian body could not be transformed ‘as a whole and automatically into a combat force’. A good deal of anxiety existed within the Cabinet about the role of the police during an invasion if they were not to be combatants, and the Home Secretary tried to reassure his colleagues on 10 July by explaining that the police had been instructed that ‘ until the enemy had obtained effective control of an area it was their duty to fight and to treat the enemy as miscreants’, a phrase which conjures up a suggestion of some stalwart village bobby rounding up a German soldier who had strayed on to his ‘patch’ as though he were a Saturday-night drunk. But, Herbert Morrison added, ‘should the police … find themselves behind enemy lines, they had orders to give up their arms and to look after the interests of the civil population’.
    The thought of British policemen carrying out the orders of Nazi officers in some conquered corner of the country still troubled the government, and on 26 July the Cabinet was told that news of it had leaked out and ‘become known in very misleading forms. It was suggested that it would be preferable if the police were instructed in this contingency to act at their own discretion and not, in any event, to afford assistance to the invader.’ Some ministers felt that ‘in no circumstances should the police be responsible for keeping order in an area which had been overrun by the enemy; such a task should be performed by the enemy’. Finally, on 5 August, the existing instructions were confirmed, to the effect that ‘if anyelements of the civil population remained in an enemy-occupied area, the rearguard of the police should also remain behind, and the Senior Officer of the police should offer the assistance of the police in maintaining order, any arms not previously handed over to the military authorities being surrendered’. Once again ‘objection was raised to the idea that the police should put themselves under the enemy and give them any help whatsoever’, but by now these fine professions of principle were being tempered with realism. These rules, it was explained, ‘applied only to the rearguard, and … if steps were to be taken to ensure that civilians stayed put, and did not obstruct the roads, some police must stay behind until the enemy occupation became effective’.
    The original decision to arm the police was never formally rescinded, but the first weapons ordered for the purpose did not arrive from the United States until 19.41. A scattering of weapons still remained in police stations for use against criminals, but the overwhelming majority of policemen in 1940 were, and remained, unarmed. If any refugees had poured out of the coastal towns of Kent and Sussex that autumn, they would not have found their way barred by some grim-faced gendarme flourishing a gun, but by a familiar, blue-helmeted figure armed with nothing more lethal than persuasion, cajolery and, as a last resort, a truncheon, reciting that often heard litany, This way please.’
    The police, then, had their orders: To get out if they could, to keep order for the Germans if necessary, but not to collaborate. What of the ordinary civilian ? Some people admitted, even at the time, that once the Germans had arrived they would do what they were told without question. A few talked of killing themselves and their children rather than allow them to grow up in a Nazi country, though the temptation to postpone such an irrevocable act would probably have proved almost irresistible. A number did, however, plan to make the Germans’ arrival as disagreeable as possible. One wealthy woman in Buckinghamshire proposed to invite the officers in for champagne, privily dosed with weedkiller, and thus