Myths & Legends of the Second World War

by James Hayward

  Although the sacrifice of Coventry was quickly accepted by many as a harsh but necessary reality of war, in fact the story is pure myth. The official history of British Intelligence in the Second World War by F.H. Hinsley, published in 1979, clearly states that no decrypts on 14 November alerted Bletchley Park, Downing Street or the Air Intelligence branch to the possibility of an imminent raid, let alone identified Coventry as a target. Instead, as the scientist R.V. Jones disclosed in 1977, the destruction of Coventry was the result of a technical error. In the summer of 1940 British scientists discovered that the Luftwaffe had developed a system of radio beam guidance to enable aircraft to bomb targets ‘blind’, in particular at night. Based on the pre-war Lorenz blind-landing apparatus, the new system was code-named Knickebein (Crooked Leg). The pilot listened for a continuous signal from the transmitter in France to check that his course was correct. If he veered to the left, the signal broke into morse dots, and dashes if he veered to the right. A second beam intersected over the target, and told the bomb-aimer when to release the payload. A later development, X-Gerät, provided even greater accuracy, and was also operational by November 1940. The weakness of both systems was their simplicity, and by September a unit designated 80 Wing RAF had developed a method of jamming and deflecting the beams by means of customised medical electro-diathermy sets, as well as existing Lorenz equipment.

  In the meantime, intelligence gleaned from downed enemy flyers had indicated that a massive raid on Coventry and Birmingham was scheduled between 15 and 20 November. In addition, an Ultra decrypt from Bletchley indicated a major night raid was scheduled for 15 November, code-named Moonlight Sonata, but with no specified target. On the morning of 14 November the Air Staff informed Churchill that the target was probably in the Greater London area, with the caveat that ‘if further information indicates Coventry, Birmingham or elsewhere, we hope to get instructions out in time’. When German test transmissions began just after 1 pm on the same day the target was confirmed as Coventry, and by 3 pm the RAF jammers were ready to deploy electronic counter-measures, code-named Cold Water. It was then that disaster struck. Due to what R.V. Jones described as a ‘lack of attention to a seemingly trivial detail’, 80 Wing set their transmitters to the wrong frequency, and thus had no impact on the German beams. Jones went further in his condemnation of the error:

  Whoever had determined the modulation note had either been tone deaf or completely careless, and no-one had ever thought of checking his measurements. I was so indignant that I said that whoever had made such an error ought to have been shot.

  It is therefore nonsense to suggest that Winston Churchill knowingly permitted the destruction of Coventry. No evacuation was ordered simply because those in the know had good reason to believe that effective counter-measures were in place, which would result in German bombs falling in empty fields. Furthermore no Ultra decrypt had mentioned Coventry by name, and instead the information passed to Churchill by Winterbotham at 3 pm on the afternoon of 14 November was the product of (correct) calculations by the RAF interception unit at Kingsdown, identifying Coventry as the target. It can only be assumed that after a gap of 34 years, and with no official papers to hand, Winterbotham was simply mistaken about the source of the information he passed to Churchill at 3 pm, and unaware of Cold Water.

  In the event, the decision to allow the bombing of civilians in known areas was postponed for four years, until the arrival of V1 flying bombs over London in June 1944. In order to minimise damage to the centre of the city, the Chiefs of Staff proposed to allow Double Cross agents to exaggerate the number of rockets falling on the north and west of London, thus encouraging the Germans to shorten their range and hit less important districts to the south, such as Croydon and Wandsworth. Initially the Cabinet rejected the idea, on the premise that:

  It would be a serious matter to assume any direct degree of responsibility for action which would affect the areas against which flying bombs were aimed.

  By mid-August, however, the plan stood approved, and would soon be applied to V2 rockets as well. The result was that in addition to the havoc wrought along ‘Bomb Alley’ in Kent, Sussex and Surrey, the London suburb of Croydon went on to receive a total of 142 doodlebugs, while Wandsworth trailed only slightly with 124. In these districts, at least, the legend that for each V1 fired the Germans lost six men killed by engine blast must have given little comfort.

  6

  The Invasion That Never Was

  In the middle of August 1940 an invasion alarm was triggered in the North of England following the arrival of almost 100 ‘phantom parachutists’, whose canopies and equipment were dropped by the Luftwaffe as part of a baffling ruse. Another feverish rumour held that the Isle of Wight had been occupied by enemy troops. By the middle of September it was widely reported that a German landing attempt had been repulsed with devastating losses, and that the Channel was white with corpses, hundreds of which had been washed ashore along the southern and eastern coasts of Britain.

  By December, American reports pegged the German losses at no less than 80,000, all of whom had perished in the course of two attempts to cross the Channel. Hospitals in occupied France were said to be filled to overflowing with invasion troops, all suffering from severe burns, and the whole army set to mutiny if a third attempt were ordered. So widespread were these rumours in Britain that the chief press censor, Rear-Admiral George Thomson, was forced to admit:

  In the whole course of the war there was no story which gave me so much trouble as this one of the attempted German invasion, flaming oil on the water and 30,000 burned Germans.

  It is established historical fact that Operation Sealion, the planned German invasion of the British Isles, never weighed anchor, and by October had been postponed until the following spring. What, then, was the truth behind the rumours of countless bodies washed ashore that autumn, and the invasion that failed?

  Following the fall of France in June, the first serious invasion alert came on the night of 31 August, when an RAF reconnaissance patrol sighted a large German convoy off the Dutch coast. At a time when many defence planners were fearful of a landing on the east coast, this intelligence caused considerable alarm in London, as Churchill’s private secretary, John Colville, recalled in his diary:

  After dinner the First Lord rang up from Brighton to say that enemy ships were steering westwards from Terschelling. The invasion may be pending (though I’ll lay 10–1 against!) and all HM Forces are taking up their positions. If these German ships came on they would reach the coast of Norfolk tomorrow morning.

  Thus alarmed, the Admiralty hurriedly ordered a unit already at sea, the Immingham-based 20th Destroyer Flotilla, to investigate. The result was a disaster. On making to intercept the enemy force with instructions ‘not to lack daring’, the five lightly armed fast minelaying destroyers ran into an uncharted minefield 40 miles north-west of the Texel. Both the Esk and Ivanhoe were sunk, the Express seriously damaged, and the Flotilla commander, Lieutenant-Commander Crouch, fatally injured. Almost 300 men were killed, and the total casualty figure (including wounded and missing) closer to 400. Only during the Dunkirk evacuation had the Nore Command suffered worse casualties in a single day.

  Over the course of the next few days the survivors were landed at several east coast ports, including Great Yarmouth, from where some were transported inland to Norwich. In September 1940 Pat Barnes was a schoolgirl living on a poultry farm in Spixworth, north-east of the town, and recalls of that month:

  For two days a convoy of army ambulances occupied Crostwick Lane, travelling slowly, the drivers very grim-faced. We used to get lots of army traffic through the lane but nothing like this. Occasionally an army lorry would stop for eggs or apples, and so the next time my mother asked what was going on two weeks before. She was told that they contained the dead bodies of Germans washed up on the beach, as an invasion had been attempted. But that was all we were told.

  Instead of revealing to inquisitive civilians that a s
ubstantial number of their own side had become casualties of a false alarm, it was judged far better to spread word that the mysterious convoy carried the remnants of a thwarted German invasion force. It is significant that this explanation was given two weeks afterwards, for rumours of a Channel battle and bodies on beaches first surfaced in strength in the wake of the Cromwell alarm on the evening of 7 September, a Saturday, although at this stage none spoke of charred bodies or burning seas.

  According to Admiral Thomson, the rumour first began to circulate on the south coast. One such told of a landing in Sandwich Bay, where the inshore waters were said to be ‘black’ with German dead, later buried secretly in the sand dunes. A diarist named John Allpress in the Suffolk town of Bury St Edmunds recorded the corpse rumour as early as 12 September:

  Tales begin to come through about an attempted invasion last Saturday evening. All LDVs called out. Tales of how the enemy got to within six miles of our coast and were then sunk. Dead bodies on the beaches reported.

  Similarly, Ipswich air raid warden Richard Brown noted the following day:

  What is the secret of last Saturday’s affair? New York now has rumours that Jerry corpses were being washed up on the Yarmouth beaches in quantities. Green says 30,000 of them, but I should have thought they’d be too weighty with equipment to do anything but sink.

  Indeed the rumour seems to have been particularly strong in Suffolk. On 14 September the diary of London schoolboy Colin Perry, later published as Boy in the Blitz, recorded:

  I hear from Lancaster in the flats, who has just been to Wickham Market in Suffolk, that on Saturday night and again on Tuesday invasion was attempted. Not one Nazi returned. Their bodies are still being washed up along our shores. That is the end of all Nazis who seek to molest our freedom – death.

  On 15 September warden Richard Brown also recorded rumours of attacks on the west coast of England, and in Scotland too. In Kent and Sussex there were even rumours of a thwarted parachute landing, as recorded in Chapter Eleven. The regular military also noted reports of bodies on beaches. An 11 Corps summary of ‘rumours and indiscreet talk’ dated 25 September revealed:

  15 Division report the currency in their area of a rumour that the bodies of thousands of German soldiers have been washed up on the beach at Clacton. The source of this cannot at present be traced.

  In the same sector of north Essex, an intelligence summary from the 45th Infantry Brigade reported:

  Rumours of a spectacular nature have been very widespread. The following were the principal ones noted:

  (i) nearly all troops in the Sub Area have heard the rumour that thousands of bodies of German troops were washed up on the south coast of England in the early part of the month.

  (ii) another rumour, not so widespread, is that an invasion by sea was started but was destroyed before reaching this country.

  In his account of ‘authentic conversations’ heard in Kent at the end of September, diarist James Hodson recorded the supposed remarks of an infantry officer:

  I suppose you’ve heard the tale about all the dead Germans washed up on the beach after their invasion which failed? The latest addition is they were tied up in bundles of three – they refused to go on board and were shot and disposed of in this way. Lots of funny stories go about.

  Another diarist, Naomi Royde Smith, recorded of the rumour in September:

  It began with a reported tocsin in Cornwall, spreading to Hampshire, heard by many … The Germans had landed somewhere in Dorset; in Kent; in Lincolnshire. This was officially denied. Then a whisper started that the corpses of German soldiers, in full battle dress, had been washed up all round the coast. Presently the horrid detail that each corpse had its hands tied behind its back was added … Then the tale grew into patent absurdity. The whole of the Channel from Weymouth to Devonport was covered with the corpses of stricken armies … The entire population of the Reich must have perished.

  At Southend, it was whispered, the enemy remains were collected in corporation dustcarts, while in Southampton the wreckage from the barges was said to have solved the local fuel shortage. One man told a reporter:

  The fact is that the whole coastline is in the occupation of the military authorities. If they thought it was necessary to conceal the dead bodies of Germans they would have no difficulty. For myself, it is enough that closed lorries going to and from the beach at one point and mysterious ambulances at another, are indications that out of the ordinary things have been happening.

  If the great invasion rumour was soft-pedalled and censored at home, British deception agencies were enthusiastic in spreading the story abroad, as is clear from the numerous foreign newspaper reports played back by the British press. At first glance, it might seem curious that the rumour was not exploited more fully as propaganda on the Home Front. According to Thomson, this was because it might spread ‘alarm and despondency’ in ‘ticklish circumstances’, but in fact the opposite held true. Throughout this period Churchill was keen to keep both the military and the civilian population at a high state of alert to repel invasion. In addition there was a difficult balance to strike. Although in 1914, a similar end had been achieved by the spreading of false reports of the shooting of army sentries by spies, the LDV had already shot and wounded too many motorists for this to be a sensible option in the summer of 1940. The rumours of bodies on beaches provided a more subtle hint of the ongoing enemy threat, while at the same time painting a macabre but pleasing picture which boosted morale. It also played well in America, giving the impression that Britain was by no means a lost cause, yet still imperilled and deserving of military aid.

  The failed invasion myth can thus be seen to have been a valuable export during Britain’s hour of need. Precisely which agency originated the rumour is difficult to establish with certainly, given the paucity of available documents on intelligence and deception operations, but the channels through which it passed are easier to identify. In The Big Lie, published in 1955, a former major named John Baker White claimed some credit, having served in a small sub-section of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) charged with the delivery of propaganda and disinformation to enemy troops. Although White did not say so, his post evidently involved liaison with similar departments in other organisations such as MI5, MI6 and SOE, as well as the Ministry of Information and the BBC:

  Our task was to create in the minds of the German High Command, and of Hitler himself, a completely fictitious picture of what they would have to face if they launched an invasion attempt. A picture of a powerfully armed Britain, and above all armed with new weapons of terrible destructive power. We had to put over the Big Lie.

  By methods that must remain forever secret, Britain supplied many of the rumours … I cannot say today, any more than I could have said at the time, how the thought and the wish became a rumour that was to go around the world … Before the rumour was fed into the pipeline that ran to the bar of the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, the Avenida in Lisbon, the Ritz in Madrid, and other places in Cairo, Istanbul, Ankara and elsewhere, not forgetting New York, it had to get over certain hurdles, including the committee that had to study all rumours before they were launched.

  In addition to the DMI, those in the know must have included Department EH, an MI6 sub-section charged with the creation of propaganda for consumption by the enemy, and later absorbed into SOE, and also British Security Co-ordination (BSC), the MI6 station in New York code-named Intrepid. Later refinements of the great invasion rumour involving burning seas required input from the eccentric Petroleum Warfare Department (PWD), created in July 1940, and from Lord Maurice Hankey, secret service doyen and roving Minister Without Portfolio, who had conducted his own experiments with fuel on water during the First World War.

  Prior to November 1940, the rumours fed into the pipeline concerned bodies alone. The following selection, from the BSC-friendly New York Times, and doubtless devised with no little merriment, are typical of those floated abroad, only to be repeated by Brit
ish editors starved of more reliable sources closer to home.

  NAZI DEAD SAID TO HALT FISHING: A Scottish family received a letter today from a relative in Sweden reporting that fishermen were forced to abandon herring fisheries because the bodies of many German soldiers were floating in the waters off the southern coast of Sweden. The letter said that the German authorities had offered a reward of about 75 cents for each body recovered with the uniform intact.

  NAZI LOSSES SEEN IN INVASION DRILLS: The Germans have suffered severe losses in exercises and manoeuvres in the English Channel preparatory to an invasion attempt, according to passengers who arrived [from Lisbon] on the Exeter. One estimate was that 10,000 men had been lost. ‘The German soldiers,’ said one passenger, who refused to give his name because he has relatives living in Holland, ‘were heavily armed and weighted down with full equipment. They were taken a mile or so to sea off the Netherlands coast aboard flat-bottomed boats. The boats would come toward shore and the men were forced to leap out and swim. We people living near the sea saw thousands of floating bodies in the water. Many soldiers rebelled and were chained and taken back to the interior of Germany to be punished for their insubordination.’

  LETTER TO THE EDITOR FROM NORWAY: In Oslo truckloads of German soldiers – tied and bound – pass in the streets on their way to Fort Akershus, where they would rather be shot than drowned. The reason being that they refuse to invade England in the little boats much too small to cross the North Sea … They have received a severe handling by the RAF. German losses in Cherbourg are estimated at between 40,000 and 50,000 killed and wounded. Almost every civil and military hospital from the Belgian to the Spanish frontier has been requisitioned.