ISBN: 978-1-85367-730-4
Pages: xix + 219

Foreword; Preface; maps; photos; Acknowledgements; Index

Appendices: British Regional Commissioners, Regions, and HQs; Auxiliary Units Intelligence Officers; Auxiliary Units Operational State; Auxiliary Units Group Leaders; The Gestapo Arrest List

   Time marches on. When The Last Ditch was originally published in 1968, the war had been over less than twenty-five years, but at that time it seemed like Lampe was unveiling secrets from the distant past. Now, almost forty years since the book made its debut, the work seems almost quaint, and nearly a part of the era it describes. While researching and writing, Lampe managed to interview numbers of men and women who took part in the events being studied. Now they are long gone and the author himself has passed on, and they speak only through the pages of books such as this.
   Despite or because of that changing context, the book performs a splendid job of capturing the mood of the post-Dunkirk period, setting the tone and immersing the reader in the challenging physical and psychological environment of those critical weeks and months. Would the Germans cross the Channel? What could possibly stop them? How did the government and shattered Army prepare to defend the island? Lampe writes about plans to "set the beaches alight with barrels of pitch" and meet the invaders with poison gas, "...although even today nobody will say just how this was going to be accomplished." He also introduces readers to the Local Defence Volunteers (later the Home Guard) and their parade ground practice with farm tools, axe handles, and other weapons of less than mass destruction.

   Just how edgy were ordinary Britons that summer? A few popular newspapers and magazines published grisly articles revealing the secrets of unarmed combat, and many employers made plans for their assembly-line workers to man the factory ramparts in the event of an invasion, but the average person did not take such preparations very seriously.
   Nevertheless, when the Local Defence Volunteers refused to admit women into their ranks—despite the fact that in some places in the country women were to teach the men in the LDV how to fire rifles—fifty indignant female patriots, including Marjorie Foster, who had won the King's Prize on the rifle range at Bisley in 1930, met at 106 Great Russell Street in London to form the Amazon Defence Corps. The Amazons, who would each pay a shilling a year for membership, intended to campaign for their admission into the LDV, for women in the Services to receive the same training in the use of small arms as men, for general weapons instruction for all civilian women, and 'to encourage in all women the spirit to resist the invader by all means available'. Soon groups of Amazons were training all over the country, not only on back-yard rifle ranges but also on improvised grenade ranges—lobbing half bricks at bucket targets at twenty yards. In the summer of 1940 fifty Lambeth Amazons were reported in the Press to have 'armed themselves with broomsticks'.

   After reporting the business of the ladies and their broomsticks with a straight face, Lampe moves on to a considerably more serious evaluation of German occupation policies in the British Isles. Although many of the Wehrmacht principals remained alive in 1968, none of them appear to have been willing to go on record regarding Nazi plans. Consequently, the second chapter relies on captured documents which make it clear that life under control of Hitler's forces in the UK would have been no more pleasant than survival under German occupation elsewhere in Europe.
   Lampe also reviews the "Gestapo Handbook" for Britain, quotes some passages, notes many mistakes in the publication, and points out that some defensive steps had already been taken by the Brits in the pre-war years. For example, the BBC had arranged a series of low-powered local transmitters and mobile transmission vans in order that the primary high-power signals could be shut down to avoid providing homing beacons for Luftwaffe bombers while maintaining full broadcasts. Lampe also devotes much ink to the interrogation of Best and Stevens (captured in the Venlo Incident) and the manner in which the Gestapo attributed to them some important portions of the Handbook, when in fact the two agents knew little or nothing about the material and their captors simply invented it. Accurate or not, the military, the SS, and the Gestapo believed themselves fully armed with sufficient information not only to conquer the UK, but also to suppress resistance, rule the nation, and strip it bare.
   The famous Gestapo "arrest list" also receives attention. Lampe explains that is was indeed a list of individuals wanted for arrest, not necessarily execution. The list was arranged alphabetically (making it nonsense to claim, for example, that someone was the "most wanted" or "seventh most wanted"), included some people with incomplete identification, some foreigners, and a few already deceased. The book reproduces the list in its entirety in an appendix.
   Against that background, it's abundantly clear that a German occupation would not have been simply a change in government. In fact, the government took significant steps to prevent a successful occupation. One of the first, Section D, did not fare well.

   Some Army officers who came into contact with Section D's abortive resistance organization understood that its individual members were each given cyanide capsules—although no one was ever quite sure whether they were to use them themselves or try to get the Germans to swallow them.

   At the heart of the book is Lampe's revelation of the British Auxiliary Units formed as secret underground cells dedicated to waging deadly partisan warfare against German forces behind the lines.

   When Colin Gubbins returned to Britain with some of the forces withdrawn from Narvik he was told that his Independent Companies were to be formed into larger units which were to be called 'Commandos'—two Independent Companies to one Commando—but that he was not to take command of them himself. Instead he was to begin work at once on the creation of an underground army that would operate in the United Kingdom in the event of German invasion and occupation of all or of a part of the country.
   Colonel Gubbins knew that little direct material help could be given to him in this enterprise by MI(R), for although that organization had been expanding in size very rapidly since the outbreak of war, it had been widening its scope of activities even more rapidly; one new MI(R) section was devising gadgetry such as the R.A.F. trouser buttons that could be turned into compasses to help airmen escaping from prisoner-of-war camps; another was inventing codenames for military operations; yet another was dealing with specialized security problems; and so on. One section, 'Phantom Reconnaissance', had gone to war; during the retreat across France the men of Phantom Reconnaissance had travelled the other way, reporting the precise positions of German units to the commanders of the retreating British forces. MI(R) was too greatly extended to add British Resistance to its other activities.
   Since in any case his new organization would have to be created under the aegis of GHQ Home Forces, Gubbins went directly to the Commander-in-Chief, Field-Marshal Ironside, whom he had served as aide-de-camp in Archangel in 1919. 'Tiny' Ironside promised him whatever men and supplies he asked for, but told him that he wanted to see a private and confidential progress report each week. There was to be only one other copy of that report—for Winston Churchill, who had expressed a great personal interest in the setting up of a fighting last-ditch organization in Britain.

   Lampe proceeds to explain the creation, organization, recruiting, and training of the Auxiliary Units. He also covers weapons, individual members of the Auxiliary Units, hideouts, and so on. The chapter on hideouts is especially interesting, including the "rabbit hole" hidden beneath a water trough, unused cellars, remote mines, and even a tunnel under an airfield. Some of the facilities and their entrances sound more like farfetched cinematic inventions than real-world wartime hideouts, but the overall concept was deadly serious.
   By the end of 1940, with less likelihood of invasion, the Auxiliary Units continued to expand and evolve. In particular, planning began to focus on long-term survival and activities. While the original intent envisioned only days or weeks of resistance, subsequent preparations anticipated much longer periods of survival and active guerilla operations. Secret bases were expanded and improved. Greater quantities of weapons, ammunition, and supplies where stockpiled. A hidden communications network was established, and—in a move that would have made the "amazons" proud—specially recruited young women were sworn to secrecy and tasked with radio work.
   In May 1944 Auxiliary Unit patrols were transported to the Isle of Wight where, according to Lampe, they prepared for resistance operations in the event German forces attempted a "counter-invasion" of the island in the wake of the Normandy landings. That, of course, was nonsense, and it soon became apparent to all concerned that the need for the secret organization had waned. In November the commander-in-chief of Home Forces decided to thank the men and women of the AU and send them home. The secret hideouts were shut down and mostly destroyed, and the personnel gradually departed, still bound by the official secrets document each of them had signed. One of the most closely guarded secrets of Britain's defense, the clandestine resistance cells of the Auxiliary Units, slipped into history.

   Poised to invade and occupy Britain the Germans had no reason to believe that they would be met by a small but highly trained and well-equipped Resistance, for none of the other countries the Germans had invaded in Western Europe had been seeded with such Resistance cells. What effect would this have had on the occupation of Britain?
   Probably it would have made the Germans take reprisals and impose tighter and tighter restrictions until, as a number of former Auxiliary Units Intelligence Officers today admit, great numbers of ordinary, decent Britons would have begun to co-operate with the Germans in putting down the Resistance just to bring about a sort of peace. Yet such was the nature of the Resistance that in some parts of the country it might have hung on for months—and if necessary for years—until in the end it succeeded in making the German position untenable or was itself finally destroyed.
   Before the 'official' British Resistance had collapsed altogether it would almost certainly have sparked an idea. Ordinary men and women, hearing and seeing the results of the Auxiliary Units' sabotage and not knowing that this was the work of groups set up in the first place by the Regular forces, might well have decided to have a go themselves. In a number of the countries that were occupied the successes of Resistance groups formed by agents sent from London by SOE, and armed by SOE air drops flown out from Britain, inspired individual actions.
   In any case, the British Resistance itself had many positive qualities that would have increased its chances of survival. Having been formed along military lines by Regular soldiers, and not having been built around religious groups or political parties, it would probably not have suffered from the inner conflicts that so markedly reduced the overall efficiency of Resistance organizations in the countries that were occupied by the Germans. In all those countries the Resistance cells had to accept almost anyone who drifted into them, but from the beginning the Auxiliary Units organisation could pick and choose its men....
   A Resistance organization such as the one planned for Britain could also have had an adverse effect on the character of the country, and not merely because it might have caused reprisals to be taken against the innocent. To invite men into any armed underground movement is in a sense to invite them to place themselves above the law, especially when they must be trained to murder and must be armed with the weapons of assassins—weapons which, if they feel they must, they will turn on any of their neighbours whom they judge to be collaborators. There are no known instances of members of the British Resistance violating the trust put in them, but who can say what they might have done, perhaps with the most honourable of intentions, if they had had to function while their country was occupied? The officers who trained them still express unbounded confidence in them, but might not these men's controlled actions have nevertheless inspired others less controlled—leaving the British a people not even worth liberating?
   And in any case, would Britain have been liberated? Europe and North Africa would have been Axis-controlled. The Russian position in 1940 remains an enigma. Certainly British troops abroad at the time could not have achieved this feat, nor could those of the Empire, for their logistical support came mostly from Britain. Almost all the people who provided the information for this book admit that they felt in the first years of the war that had Britain been occupied then, America could not reasonably have been expected to help liberate her, not only because the emotional appeal to Americans of 'Britain standing alone' would have vanished with the occupation, but also because at that time America lacked the means to effect such a liberation. Before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor President Roosevelt had steered the American people very gently towards war, ever mindful that neutralist, anti-British and pro-German factions were strong in the United States and could easily become much stronger. America had not yet begun to see herself as the 'great democratic liberator', and the German occupation of Britain would certainly have strengthened the case of American isolationists. Once occupied Britain might have had to go on alone—for ever.

   Given the overwhelming tide of new books constantly washing over us, we can seldom find the time to review reprints of older titles, but The Last Ditch was well worth making an exception. Although his book occasionally seems a bit dated, Lampe writes a very engaging account of what—until the book's original appearance—had remained a strict military secret, and today seems nearly forgotten. This is not a book about the wider and more conventional means of fending off the anticipated German invasion, nor is it the only book available nowadays about the hush-hush Auxiliary Units. (See for example, the much more modern and detailed With Britain in Mortal Danger). For that particular topic, however, it's doubtful that a catchier, more readable work (and one that glimmers with more understated humor) will every appear, and most unlikely that anyone else will ever produce such a pitch-perfect amalgam of British desperation, optimism, and determination in the face of impending defeat.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Greenhill or its US distributor, MBI.
   Thanks to MBI for providing this review copy.