Britain Feared a German Invasion - So It Began Sending Prisoners Thousands of Miles Away

Britain Feared a German Invasion - So It Began Sending Prisoners Thousands of Miles Away

In my last post, we looked at the first German prisoners of war arriving in Britain during September 1939, when the conflict was barely three weeks old. At that stage, the numbers were relatively small, and the authorities were using places such as Grizedale Hall and Glen Mill to accommodate them. But less than a year later, Britain's situation had changed dramatically, and the government was becoming increasingly concerned about keeping enemy prisoners in the country.

By June 1940, German forces had swept through much of western Europe, British troops had been evacuated from Dunkirk, and France was facing defeat. With the possibility of invasion becoming a very real concern, the authorities feared that captured German servicemen might escape or be freed if enemy forces landed. Sending prisoners overseas seemed a sensible precaution, and Canada agreed to help.

In June 1940, Britain asked Canada to accommodate 3,000 German prisoners of war and 4,000 civilian internees. However, there was an important difference between these two groups, because not everyone selected for transportation had actually fought against Britain. Alongside captured German servicemen were civilians who had been living in Britain, some for many years.

These included German, Austrian and Italian residents who had been detained as potential security risks. Some were refugees who had originally sought safety in Britain after escaping persecution in Europe, while others had established businesses, jobs and families here. In the anxious atmosphere of 1940, people who had previously been considered harmless could suddenly find themselves detained because of their nationality.

Ships began carrying prisoners and internees across the Atlantic, but these voyages presented dangers of their own. German submarines were already attacking shipping, and on the 2nd of July 1940, the Arandora Star was torpedoed by U-47 while sailing towards Canada. The vessel was carrying more than 1,200 internees, predominantly Italian and German civilians, together with military guards and crew members. More than 800 people lost their lives when she sank.

The disaster raised serious questions about Britain's policy of deporting civilian internees and how those selected for transportation had been treated. An official inquiry later uncovered serious problems with the selection procedures, including cases where men appeared to have been sent overseas in error. Nevertheless, further transfers took place, and thousands of prisoners and internees eventually reached Canadian camps.

By October 1944, nearly 34,000 military prisoners were being held in Canada, while Britain was also receiving German prisoners in large numbers following the Allied landings in Normandy. But the events of 1940 reveal a very different side of the story, when fear of invasion led Britain to send captured servicemen and detained civilians thousands of miles across the sea.

Had you heard about these early wartime transfers to Canada, or the tragic sinking of the Arandora Star? I would be interested to know whether anyone in your family ever mentioned them.

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Image info:

Royal Navy, 1940 - SS Arandora Star. Public Domain (expired UK Crown copyright). Via Wikimedia Commons.

The Spanish Armada Had Turned Away - So Why Was Elizabeth I Still Preparing for Invasion?

The Spanish Armada Had Turned Away - So Why Was Elizabeth I Still Preparing for Invasion?

In my last Tudor post, I looked at the Spanish Armada of 1588 and how England faced the threat of invasion from one of Europe’s most powerful kingdoms.

But one of the most famous moments of Elizabeth I’s reign actually happened after the Armada had sailed away.

In August 1588, Elizabeth travelled to Tilbury in Essex, where English soldiers had gathered to defend the country against a possible Spanish invasion.

By then, the Armada had already been driven from the English Channel. But that did not mean England was completely safe.

The Spanish army stationed in the Netherlands, commanded by the Duke of Parma, had been preparing to cross to England. With the Armada driven away, that plan had suffered a serious setback, but English forces remained on alert.

Thousands of soldiers were still waiting, uncertain whether they would soon be called upon to fight.

At Tilbury, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, had been placed in command of the English land forces. He was one of Elizabeth’s oldest and most trusted favourites, and it was under his command that the men had assembled.

Elizabeth was 54 years old when she visited the camp.

She rode among her soldiers and addressed the men who had gathered to defend her kingdom.

England was ruled by a woman at a time when military leadership was overwhelmingly associated with men. Yet rather than remaining safely away from the threatened coast, Elizabeth had chosen to appear before her army herself.

In the best-known surviving account of her speech, Elizabeth is said to have declared:

“I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too.”

She also expressed her willingness to live and die alongside her people if England were invaded.

Those words would become some of the most famous associated with her reign.

But how certain can we be that she actually said them?

The version of the speech most familiar to us today was preserved by Dr Leonel Sharp, who claimed to have witnessed the occasion. He recorded his account years later, in 1623, so we cannot be completely certain that every word was spoken exactly as written.

The visit itself, however, is well documented.

Although the immediate threat from the Armada had passed, the wider war with Spain was far from over. Fighting between the two kingdoms would continue until 1604, more than a year after Elizabeth’s death.

Elizabeth never had to lead those soldiers into battle.

But her appearance at Tilbury would be remembered for centuries, and her words became part of the story of how England faced the threat of invasion in 1588.

I think that is what makes this moment so interesting. Elizabeth’s greatest display of courage may not have been on a battlefield at all, but in the decision to stand before her soldiers when the future of her kingdom had seemed so uncertain.

Did you know that Elizabeth’s famous speech at Tilbury took place after the Spanish Armada had already left the English Channel?

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#TudorHistory #ElizabethI #SpanishArmada #TudorEngland #BritishHistory #HistoryLovers #HistoryFacts

Elizabeth I addressing her troops at Tilbury, 1588. Later historical engraving, artist unknown. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The War Was Barely Three Weeks Old When German Prisoners Began Arriving in Britain

The War Was Barely Three Weeks Old When German Prisoners Began Arriving in Britain

By the 21st of September 1939, less than three weeks after Britain declared war on Germany, newspapers were already reporting the arrival of German prisoners of war.

Most of the country was still waiting to discover what this new war would bring, but some German servicemen had already been captured and brought to Britain.

Among the earliest prisoners were sailors captured at sea.

On the 14th of September 1939, the German submarine U-39 attempted to attack the British aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal in the Atlantic.

Its torpedoes exploded prematurely, failing to strike the carrier. Three British destroyers, HMS Faulknor, HMS Foxhound and HMS Firedrake, responded with depth charges.

U-39 was forced to surface and subsequently sank, but the entire crew survived and were taken prisoner.

For these sailors, the war had barely begun, but their fighting was already over.

During those first months, many of the German military prisoners held in Britain were sailors, particularly submarine crews. As the war continued, captured German airmen would join them.

Britain had not yet established the hundreds of prisoner-of-war camps that would appear later. Instead, the authorities initially relied on a small number of places adapted for holding captured servicemen.

Two of the earliest were Grizedale Hall in the Lake District and Glen Mill in Oldham, Lancashire.

Grizedale Hall was a large country house surrounded by woodland and hills. It was used to accommodate German officers, including men captured from submarines, and eventually became known as the 'U-boat Hotel'.

Glen Mill was rather different. A former cotton mill, it was converted to hold prisoners of lower rank.

Their arrival caused considerable curiosity in some communities.

A newspaper report from the 25th of September 1939 described hundreds of people gathering on the slopes overlooking Glen Mill, hoping to catch a glimpse of approximately 40 German prisoners being held there.

For many watching, it may have been their first opportunity to see the German servicemen they had heard so much about since war was declared.

Some accounts described curious exchanges between the prisoners and local people. These early encounters attracted attention, although newspaper reports cannot tell us how everyone felt about having enemy servicemen so close to home.

At this stage, the numbers were still relatively small. A government memorandum dated the 18th of December 1939 recorded that 250 German prisoners of war were being held in Britain.

But the situation changed dramatically in 1940.

Following the German advance through western Europe and the evacuation from Dunkirk, Britain faced the possibility of invasion.

The government became increasingly concerned about the security risks of holding enemy prisoners in Britain, particularly if German forces managed to land.

As a result, many prisoners were transferred overseas, including to Canada and other parts of the British Empire, where they could be held farther away from the fighting.

For the next few years, the number of German prisoners remaining in Britain was relatively small.

That would change following the Allied landings in Normandy on the 6th of June 1944, when German soldiers began arriving across the Channel in far greater numbers.

Eventually, hundreds of thousands would be held in Britain, many working on farms and helping to meet the country's labour shortages.

Long before those mass arrivals of 1944, however, German prisoners were already being held behind barbed wire in Britain, in places as different as a country house in the Lake District and an old cotton mill in Lancashire.

And for the men who arrived in September 1939, nobody could have known just how many years might pass before they saw their homes and families again.

Did your family ever mention a prisoner-of-war camp in your area, or remember German prisoners arriving during the war? I'd love to hear their stories.

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Image info:

German prisoners working on the camp's barbed-wire fence on Christmas Eve 1940.

Credit: Lt W. T. Lockeyear, War Office official photographer. Imperial War Museums, H 6292. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

William Was Crowned King - Then Panic Broke Out at Westminster Abbey

William Was Crowned King - Then Panic Broke Out at Westminster Abbey

By Christmas Day 1066, William of Normandy had won at Hastings, received the submission of leading English figures at Berkhamsted and entered London.

On the 25th of December 1066, he was crowned king at Westminster Abbey.

The ceremony was performed by Ealdred, Archbishop of York. Ealdred presented William to the English-speaking congregation, while Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances, addressed the Normans in French. Both groups loudly expressed their approval.

Outside the abbey, some of William’s Norman guards misunderstood the noise and apparently believed that trouble had broken out inside.

They reacted by setting fire to buildings nearby.

Smoke began to rise around Westminster. People rushed from the abbey and panic spread through the crowd.

Inside, however, the coronation continued.

According to a later account, William himself was left trembling as the ceremony was hurriedly completed.

It was hardly the calm beginning to a reign that William might have hoped for.

Only a little over two months earlier, Harold Godwinson had been killed at Hastings. William had then spent weeks strengthening his position in southern England and forcing leading figures to submit.

The coronation gave him the crown, but it did not mean that the whole country had accepted Norman rule.

Resistance remained in several parts of England, and major uprisings would follow as William tried to secure his new kingdom.

Hastings had given William a decisive victory and, by Christmas Day, he had the crown.

But the struggle to control England was far from over.

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Coronation of William I, 13th-century illustration from Flores Historiarum, attributed to Matthew Paris. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Fighting Had Stopped for Them - But Captivity Brought a Different Kind of War

The Fighting Had Stopped for Them - But Captivity Brought a Different Kind of War

When we talk about servicemen being captured during the Second World War, it can sometimes sound as though that was the end of their story.

In reality, for many men it was the beginning of another long and uncertain experience.

British and Commonwealth servicemen became prisoners across Europe, North Africa and the Far East. Some were captured during the fighting of 1940, others during later campaigns, while aircrew could find themselves prisoners after being shot down over enemy-held territory.

For those taken prisoner in German-controlled Europe, different types of camps were used. Stalags generally held other ranks and NCOs, while Oflags were intended for officers. Stalag Luft camps were administered by the Luftwaffe and mainly held captured Allied air personnel.

The journey into captivity could be difficult in itself.

After capture, prisoners could face searches, questioning and long journeys by train or on foot before reaching a more permanent camp. Once there, daily life often revolved around roll calls, food shortages, cold, boredom and the uncertainty of not knowing how long the war would last.

For many Allied prisoners held in Europe, letters from home and Red Cross parcels became enormously important. Men also found ways to occupy themselves with lectures, concerts, sport and other activities, helping to break up the monotony of camp life.

Some prisoners also turned their attention to escape.

Inside the camps, men produced maps, altered or made clothing, forged documents and dug tunnels. Britain’s MI9 also worked to help prisoners and escaping servicemen by providing information and specially concealed escape aids.

But there was no single POW experience.

Conditions depended on where a man was held, when he had been captured and which power was holding him. The experiences of prisoners in German-controlled Europe could be very different from those of men held by Japanese forces in the Far East, where conditions were often far harsher and death rates much higher.

And captivity was not something happening only abroad.

Britain eventually held German and Italian prisoners on an enormous scale. At the wartime peak, their numbers exceeded 500,000, spread among hundreds of sites around the country.

Over the next few posts, I want to look beyond the most famous escape stories and find out what everyday captivity was actually like - from the moment a man was captured to the routines of camp life, escape attempts, reprisals and, eventually, the journey home.

I also want to look at the other side of the story: German prisoners living behind barbed wire here in Britain.

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Image: British Prisoners of War in Germany, 1940–1945. Imperial War Museums, HU 9261. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Victorian Britain Became a Nation of Readers - And It Changed Everything

Victorian Britain Became a Nation of Readers - And It Changed Everything

When we think of Victorian literature, the names that usually come to mind are Charles Dickens, the Brontë sisters, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy.

But during Queen Victoria’s reign, something else was happening too. Reading was becoming part of everyday life for far more people than it had been before.

At the beginning of the Victorian period, books could still be expensive and education was far from universal. As the century went on, however, improvements in printing, growing literacy and new ways of publishing helped stories reach a much wider audience.

One of the most popular ways of doing this was to publish novels in instalments. Rather than paying for a complete novel all at once, readers could follow a story piece by piece in magazines or monthly parts.

Charles Dickens became particularly associated with this. Nicholas Nickleby, for example, was published in monthly parts between 1838 and 1839.

Imagine getting to the end of an instalment at an exciting moment and then having to wait for the next one. In some ways, it was not so different from waiting for the next episode of a television series today.

Borrowing books also became increasingly important. Commercial circulating libraries such as Mudie’s Select Library allowed subscribers to borrow books instead of buying every title they wanted to read. As the century went on, a gradually expanding network of public libraries gave more people access to books.

Education was changing as well. In England and Wales, the 1870 Education Act allowed school boards to be established in areas where there were not enough elementary school places. In 1880, school attendance became compulsory for children aged five to ten.

By the later Victorian period, literacy had risen considerably compared with earlier generations.

And there was no shortage of material waiting for them.

Victorian novels explored poverty, industrialisation, marriage, crime, class, childhood and many of the enormous social changes happening around them. Newspapers and magazines became increasingly important too, while cheaper fiction brought adventure, mystery and sensational stories to an ever wider audience.

What I find especially interesting is that the Victorians did not simply produce some of the most famous writers in British history.

They also helped create a culture in which reading became part of life.

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If you had lived in Victorian Britain, which author would you have wanted to read as their stories were first being published?

Image: Reading Room of the British Museum, London, 1859. Wood engraving. Library of Congress. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. 

The Occupation Was Over - And the Occupiers Became Prisoners

The Occupation Was Over - And the Occupiers Became Prisoners

For nearly five years, German troops had controlled the Channel Islands.

By May 1945, that was finally coming to an end.

On the 8th of May 1945, Islanders gathered around radios and in public places to hear Winston Churchill announce the end of the war in Europe, including the news that the Channel Islands were to be freed.

On the 9th of May, the formal surrender of Jersey took place aboard HMS Beagle. British forces began arriving, Union flags appeared again and crowds filled the streets.

For the Islanders, liberation had finally arrived.

For the German servicemen who surrendered, their situation had changed completely.

They were now prisoners of war.

By the 12th of May, photographs show German prisoners being taken from Jersey to vessels that would carry them to captivity in England. Others remained temporarily in the islands under British supervision.

There was still a huge amount of work to be done.

Years of occupation had left fortifications, weapons, ammunition, beach defences and extensive minefields that now had to be made safe or cleared.

German prisoners were among those put to work dealing with what the occupation had left behind.

In Guernsey, photographs taken shortly after liberation show German prisoners involved in mine-clearance work.

Their presence did not disappear within a few weeks either.

Records from Jersey show German POW labour was still being organised during 1946 as the island continued its post-war recovery. One particularly unusual record from June 1946 shows German prisoners being retained for work connected with controlling the Colorado beetle.

It is one of those small details that makes the end of the occupation feel much more complicated than simply saying the war was over.

Crowds welcome British forces in St Peter Port, Guernsey, 10th May 1945.

Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

For years, these men had belonged to the occupying forces.

Now they were disarmed, guarded and waiting to find out what would happen to them next.

I think this is a good place to finish my Channel Islands series for now, because what happened to those surrendered soldiers leads directly into something I want to look at next.

Prisoners of war.

British servicemen held abroad. German prisoners brought to Britain. The camps they lived in, the work they carried out, the rules they lived under and what happened when the fighting finally stopped.

☕ Have a cuppa and let’s discover history together.

German representatives meet British officers aboard HMS Bulldog during the surrender of the Channel Islands, May 1945.

Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.