The Black Book - people in UK targeted on a Nazi list in 1940

The Sonderfahndungsliste GB/Special Search List was known under the popular name of the Black Book. This was the Nazis’ potential arrest list, drawn up for the period immediately after their inevitably successful invasion of Britain in 1940! Similar lists were drawn up for, and actually used in the USSR, France and Poland, but the only place in the British Isles that experienc­ed these round­ups was in the Channel islands.

SS General Wal­t­er Schellenberg

Wiki

The 2820 names in the list included politicians, writers, in­telligence agents, scientists, artists and refugees, drawn up by SS General Wal­t­er Schellenberg’s office. Schellenberg was to become the Police Chief responsible for Britain after the invasion, and the main Ges­t­apo off­ices would be based in Birmingham. The book would have been issued to the Einsatzgruppen of SS men who followed the reg­ular Nazi forces into Britain. The planned invasion never happened, largely be­cause of the Battle of Britain cul­min­at­ing in Sept 1940 with air sup­remacy retained by the British RAF, and the nation’s powerful navy.

It seemed normal for all invading forces to warn their own soldiers of potentially dangerous people eg spies, scientists making bombs. But the secretive and very thorough Black List was bizarre, because it included politicians, actors, journalists, trade unions, poets and educat­ion­alists. These prominent Britons would be promptly rounded up, had the Germans successfully invaded the UK.

The political entries were described thus: Attlee; Clemens, leader Labour Party; Lord Beaverbrook; Conservative Min­ister Dun­can Sandys; Lady Astor, enemy of Germany; George Lansbury, rules German emigrant political circles; Richard Acland, anti-Fascist Liberal MP; Robert Vansittart, leader of British Intelligence Ser­vice & Chief Dip­lom­at­ic Adviser to the Foreign Office; Neville Chamb­erlain, ex-Prime Minister.

A sample page from The Black Book

press to expand.

The list also included all responsible officials of the exiled Govern­ments or the National Committees of occupied France, Holland, Belgium, Norway, Pol­and, Czech­­oslovakia and Austria. Other prominent Europeans living in UK included Charles De Gaulle, former French General; Jan Paderewski, Polish composer; Eduard Benes, Czech politician; Jan Mas­aryk, Czech minister; Stefan Zweig novelist; and Dr Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychiatrist.

The list noted the crimes that each included Briton was suspected of having carr­ied out, and which German Department(s) would investigate. Based on what was learned about the Holocaust and concentration camps in 1942, some Britons would obviously have had more to fear than others eg Jews, Communists and ex Nazi defectors. Also in 1940 there were 450,000 people born Jewish in the UK, all of whom would have been seen as enemies to the Nazis.

How did the Germans get the names? Although there were some glaring errors (eg people who had died) on the list, most information seemed to have been gathered from newspaper reports, telephone directories and pub­lished works of the 1930s period. [Note that on his capture in 1945, Gen Schellenberg alleged that a leading British intelligence agent had given the Nazis much of this information].

The Black List was contained in a booklet discovered in the Berlin headquarters of the Reich Security Police in Sept 1945, after the war ended. As well as the individuals named above, a special section listed 35 British publicat­ions whose offices were to be seized immediately, records con­fiscated and executives arrested. They included Daily Mirror, Daily Express, Daily Herald, Daily Telegraph, News Chronicle, Observer, Spec­tator, Yorkshire Post, Sunday Post, Sun­day Chronicle, Sunday Pic­torial and Picture Post. This work was originally compiled after the fall of France in May-June 1940 and from then on, appeared to have been annually revised.

The Black Book by Sybil Oldfield

The Britons on the Nazi Hitlist.

The Black Book by MJ Trow

A chilling glimpse into the Nazi plans for Great Britain

Now The Black Book: The Britons on the Nazi Hitlist (Profile Books, 2020) has been very well written by Sybil Oldfield. Historian Oldfield’s pub­lish­ers said: In 1939, the Gestapo created a list of names: the Britons whose re­moval would be the Nazis' first priority in the event of a success­ful invasion. Who were they? What had they done to provoke Germany? 

Oldfield was inspired to write the book when accidentally finding Virginia and Leonard Woolf listed, during an art exhibition. Not surprisingly, more than half of the listed names were natural­is­ed Jewish and other refugees, many of Britain's most gifted, humane inhabitants. Note the writers EM Forster and Virginial Woolf, humanit­ar­ians and religious leaders, scientists, social reform­ers Marg­ery Fry and Eleanor Rathbone MP, and artists Jacob Epstein and Oscar Kokoschka. By examining these targets of Nazi hatred, Old­field revealed why the Nazis feared their influence, shed light on the Gestapo worldview and revealed a network of truly exemplary Britons: visionaries and unsung heroes. 

Thousands of the booklets were printed but their warehouse was bombed; only 2 originals were found in Berlin in 1945 and displayed in Imperial War Museum London and Hoover Institution Library-Archives, Stanford Uni.