The Black Book
The Black Book is the post–World War II name of the Sonderfahndungsliste G.B. ("Special Search List Great Britain"), the list of prominent British residents to be arrested upon the successful invasion of Britain by Nazi Germany in 1940. The Black Book was a product of the SS Einsatzgruppen, compiled by SS-Oberführer Walter Schellenberg, and contained the names of 2,820 people—British subjects and European exiles—living in Britain, who were to be immediately arrested upon the success of Unternehmen Seelöwe (Operation Sea Lion), the invasion, occupation, and annexation of Great Britain to the Third Reich.
The Special Search List G.B. was an appendix to the Informationsheft G.B., the Gestapo handbook for the invasion of Britain, which contained 144 pages of information about politically important aspects of British society, including institutions such as embassies, universities, newspaper offices, and Freemason lodges, which would facilitate the Nazi occupation and administration of Great Britain. It is alleged that British intelligence mole Dick Ellis provided much of the information, despite much of it being readily available in the public domain, such as newspapers.[1]
Background
The original handbook, Informationsheft GB covered British geography, economics, the political system, form of government, the legal system, civil administration, the military, the education system, important museums, the press and radio, religion, political parties, immigrants, Freemasons, Jews, the police apparatus, and the secret service. The Black Book later was an appendix, of 104 pages, of alphabetically ordered names.[2][3] Fahndungsliste translates into "wanted list", Sonderfahndungsliste into "especially wanted list" or "most wanted list".
Beside each name was the number of the RSHA (Reich Main Security Office) to which the person was to be handed over. Churchill was to be placed into the custody of Amt VI (Foreign Military Intelligence), but the vast majority of the people listed in the Black Book would be placed into the custody of Amt IV (Gestapo). The book had several notable mistakes, such as people who had already died (Lytton Strachey) or moved away (Paul Robeson), and omissions (such as George Bernard Shaw, one of the few English language writers whose works were published and performed in Nazi Germany).[4]
A print run produced 20,000 books but the warehouse in which they were stored was destroyed in a bombing raid[5] and only two originals are known to survive (one in the Imperial War Museum in London). On learning of the book, Rebecca West is said to have sent a telegram to Noël Coward saying "My dear—the people we should have been seen dead with."[6]
The list was similar to earlier lists prepared by SS, such as the Special Prosecution Book-Poland (German: Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen). It was a list of enemies of the Reich list prepared before the war by members of the German fifth column in cooperation with German Intelligence. The 61,000 Polish people on this list were targets of Einsatzgruppen during Operation Tannenberg and Intelligenzaktion, actions of elimination of Polish intelligentsia and the upper classes in occupied Poland between 1939 and 1941.
Notable people listed
- Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, Anglo-Canadian business tycoon[7][8]
- Sir Norman Angell, Labour MP awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1933[9]
- Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor, American-born English socialite[8]
- Clement Attlee, Labour Leader.
- Robert Baden-Powell, founder and leader of Scouting, which the Nazis regarded as a spy organisation.[10]
- Edvard Beneš, President of the Czechoslovak government in exile[11]
- Violet Bonham Carter, anti-fascist liberal politician. Referred to as "an Encirclement lady politician"[12]
- Vera Brittain, feminist writer and pacifist[13]
- "Harry Bullock", thought to be a mistake for Guy Henry Bullock, diplomat and Everest mountaineer[14]
- Neville Chamberlain, former prime minister[15]
- Sydney Chapman, economist and civil servant[15]
- Winston Churchill, Prime minister[15]
- Marthe Cnockaert, First World War spy[16]
- Claud Cockburn, journalist[16]
- Seymour Cocks, Labour politician[16]
- Lionel Leonard Cohen, lawyer[16]
- Robert Waley Cohen, industrialist[16]
- G. D. H. Cole, academic[16]
- Norman Collins, broadcasting executive[16]
- Edward Conze, Anglo-German scholar[16]
- Duff Cooper, Minister of Information[16]
- Margery Corbett Ashby, feminist[16]
- Noël Coward, high profile actor who opposed appeasement and was an armed forces entertainer, connections with MI5[15]
- Sefton Delmer, journalist[17]
- Anthony Eden, Secretary of State for War[18]
- Frank Foley, British spy who as MI6 Head of Station in pre-war Berlin rescued thousands of German Jews[19]
- E. M. Forster, author[19]
- Sigmund Freud, Jewish founder of psychoanalysis (died September 23, 1939)[20]
- Willie Gallacher, trade unionist[21]
- Charles de Gaulle, Free French leader and general[7]
- Sir Philip Gibbs, journalist and novelist[22]
- Victor Gollancz, publisher[23]
- J. B. S. Haldane, geneticist and evolutionary biologist and Communist[24]
- Ernst Hanfstaengl, German refugee. Once a financial backer of Hitler, he had fallen from favour and had fled Germany in 1937[24]
- Aldous Huxley, author (who had emigrated to the USA in 1936)[25]
- Alexander Korda, Hungarian-born British producer and film director[7]
- Harold Laski, political theorist, economist and author[26]
- Megan Lloyd George, politician, daughter of David Lloyd George, who was not on the list.[5]
- David Low, political cartoonist and caricaturist[27]
- F. L. Lucas, literary critic, writer and anti-fascist campaigner[27]
- Jan Masaryk, foreign minister of the Czechoslovak government in exile[28]
- Jimmy Maxton, pacifist politician[21]
- Naomi Mitchison, novelist[21]
- Gilbert Murray, classical scholar and activist for the League of Nations[29]
- Harold Nicolson, diplomat, author and diarist[7]
- Conrad O'Brien-ffrench, SIS/MI6 Agent ST36, Agent Z3 for Dansey's Z Organization[20]
- Vic Oliver, Jewish entertainer, originally from Austria. Married to Winston Churchill's daughter Sarah[30]
- Ignacy Jan Paderewski, pianist, former Prime Minister of Poland[31]
- Sylvia Pankhurst, suffragist, writer, journalist and anti-fascist[32]
- Nikolaus Pevsner, German-born architectural historian[33]
- J. B. Priestley, creator of anti-Nazi popular broadcasts and fiction[34]
- Eleanor Rathbone, Member of Parliament. Activist for assistance to refugees[35]
- Hermann Rauschning, German refugee and once personal friend of Hitler who had turned against him[36]
- Paul Robeson, African-American singer/actor with strong Communist affiliations[37]
- Bertrand Russell, philosopher, historian and pacifist[38]
- Robert Smallbones, British diplomat who granted visas to 48,000 Jews, British Hero of the Holocaust.[39]
- C. P. Snow, physicist and novelist[40]
- Stephen Spender, poet, novelist and essayist[41]
- Katharine Stewart-Murray, Duchess of Atholl[21]
- Lytton Strachey, died 1932, writer and critic[42]
- Sybil Thorndike, actress[43]
- Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus, politician, former German minister[44]
- Lord Vansittart, Robert Gilbert Vansittart, 1st Baron Vansittart GCB GCMG MVO PC.,senior British diplomat (anti-German views),[45]
- Beatrice Webb, socialist and economist[46]
- Chaim Weizmann, Zionist leader[47]
- H. G. Wells, author and socialist[47]
- Rebecca West, English suffragist and writer[47]
- Ted Willis, dramatist[48]
- Leonard Woolf, political theorist, author, publisher, and civil servant, husband of Virginia Woolf[49]
- Virginia Woolf, novelist and essayist, wife of Leonard Woolf[49]
- Gordon Young, Foreign Correspondent Daily Mail and Reuters[50]
- Alfred Zimmern, classical scholar, historian and political scientist.[51][52]
- Carl Zuckmayer, German writer and playwright.[53][54]
- Stefan Zweig, Austrian Jewish writer[55]
Bibliography
- Schellenberg, Walter (2001) Invasion, 1940: The Nazi Invasion Plan for Britain, Little Brown Book Group. ISBN 0-9536151-3-8. Accessed at the Imperial War Museum Amazon search inside
- Black Book: Sonderfahndungsliste GB (1989) (Facsimile reprint series) Imperial War Museum, Department of Printed Books. 1989, English, ISBN 0-901627-51-8 Amazon page with extract from Introduction
- Shirer, William (1960). The Rise and fall of the Third Reich, Chapter 22 – "If the invasion succeeded". ISBN 0-09-942176-3 Discusses the black book and its contents.
References
- ↑ York Membery. Nazis put Britain's Scouts on hit list, Sunday Times 30 May 1999
- ↑ Walter Schellenberg, The Schellenberg Memoirs, London 1956 (Deutsch: Aufzeichungen, München 1979)
- ↑ Invasion 1940. The Nazi Invasion Plan for Britain by SS General Walter Schellenberg, London 2000
- ↑ Schellenberg, Invasion, 1940, page 150
- 1 2 Dalrymple, James. Fatherland UK, The Independent, 3 March 2000
- ↑ Noël Coward, Future Indefinite. London; Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014 ISBN 1408191482 (p. 92).
- 1 2 3 4 Hudson, Christopher.Revealed: Hitler's little black guide..., Daily Mail 23 February 2000
- 1 2 http://ozebook.com/wordpress/archives/5583
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 160
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 162
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 165
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 168
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 170
- ↑ "If Britain had been conquered. 2,300 names on Nazi Black List". Evening Telegraph. British Newspaper Archive. 14 September 1945. p. 8. Retrieved 26 June 2014. (subscription required (help)).
- 1 2 3 4 Schellenberg, p. 173
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Schellenberg, p. 174
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 177
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 181
- 1 2 Schellenberg, p. 186
- 1 2 Schellenberg, p. 187
- 1 2 3 4 Ogilvy, Graham. Duchess of Atholl was on Nazi list for assassination Daily Mail 13 March 2000
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 191
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 192
- 1 2 Schellenberg, p. 195
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 201
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 213
- 1 2 Schellenberg, p. 217
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 221
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 225
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 228
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 230
- ↑ D. Mitchell, The fighting Pankhursts, Jonathan Cape Ltd, London 1967, p. 263
- ↑ Brian Harrison, ‘Pevsner, Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon (1902–1983)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 234
- ↑ http://www.geocities.ws/czechandslovakthings/WW2_wanted.htm
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 235
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 237
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 239
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 243
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 244
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 249
- ↑ Fearn, Nicholas. A travel guide for Nazis The Daily Telegraph 18 March 2000
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 253
- ↑ Lawrence D. Stokes: Secret Intelligence and Anti-Nazi Resistance. The Mysterious Exile of Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus, in: The International History Review, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Mar., 2006), p. 60.
- ↑ http://www.theguardian.com/century/1940-1949/Story/0,6051,127730,00.html
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 259
- 1 2 3 Schellenberg, p. 260
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 261
- 1 2 Schellenberg, p. 262
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 264
- ↑ Hitler's Black Book - information for Alfred Zimmern
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 265
- ↑ Hitler's Black Book - information for Karl Zuckermeyer
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 265
- ↑ Schellenberg, p. 265
See also
- Special Prosecution Book-Poland (German: Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen)
- Dr. Franz Six. SS official who was appointed by Reinhard Heydrich to direct state police operations in German-occupied Great Britain.
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