The Last Ditch

Reveals the real Nazi plans to occupy Great Britain Uncovers the secrets of Britain's Resistance organisation Classic, ground-breaking text now back in print Novelists, playwrights and theorists have often toyed with the question of what would have happened if the Germans had occupied Britain in 1940. This compelling study reveals exactly what was intended by both sides. The Last Ditch investigates the German plans and the countermeasures undertaken through the specially formed British Resistance Organisation. German draft decrees reveal the occupation would have been extraordinarily harsh. Few would have escaped oppression. There would have been mass deportation, wholesale appropriations of the country's agricultural, mineral and industrial produce, and widespread arrests, as revealed in the notorious Gestapo Arrest List - reprinted here in full. What would the British have done? During the darkest days after Dunkirk, a clandestine resistance movement, innocuously named the Auxiliary Units, sprang into being. Its function would have been to carry out guerrilla warfare against the Germans.
British civilians were trained to spy, sabotage and kill; hide-outs were established; caches of arms and explosives were hidden; and a resistance wireless network was created. Although they never went into action, the resistance was ready and waiting: the last ditch of Britain's defence. So successful was their organisation that they became the model for underground movements all over occupied Europe. In telling this story, Lampe relates one of World War II's best-kept secrets and offers insight into what might have been. After serving with the US Army in Europe during World War II, David Lampe returned to Great Britain as a USAF reservist. Gary Sheffield is Professor of War Studies at the University of Birmingham. He is author of The Somme and the forthcoming Citizen Army.