The March on London

by Charles Whiting (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1992

  $3.36

  By December 1944, Britain was denuded of fighting troops. Every man capable of handling a rifle was needed at the front on the Continent. Behind them they had left the lame, middle-aged soldiers or unfit men, many of them engaged in guarding the 250,000 very fit young Germans who were now scattered throughout the British Isles in their POW cages. Even the most determined Nazis among them knew there was no escape - so why try? But since September 1944, when the first German paratroops had started arriving at the cages in large numbers, the mood of these tame POWs had begun to change. They had become more truculent and had set up networks of hard-core Nazis and fighting men ( the blacks , as they were called by their British guards), who really ruled the camps behind the backs of the British. For the German High Command in Berlin had infiltrated their agents into all the most important camps in the UK, and it was their task to plan a mass breakout which would coincide with the start of Hitler's last great offensive in the West - the Battle of the Bulge. But this would be no ordinary escape - it was one with a strategic purpose, for the plotters planned no less than a march on London in a determined attempt to capture the capital of the British Empire. This account of the episode is a tale of double-dealing and treachery, which caused intense alarm at that last Christmas of World War II, and which ended in murder and retribution.

• Used

  Paperback
  1996

  $3.36

  By the autumn of 1944 it was clear to all who wished to see that Germany was facing inevitable defeat. Many there were, however, who did not wish to see. One of these was Adolf Hitler himself, who decided that the tide of war could be turned by one massive thrust through the Ardennes to retake the channel ports on which the Allied supply line depended. Others equally blind to reality were to be found in prisoner-of-war camps scattered throughout the British Isles. These hardcore fanatics, or 'blacks' as they were labelled in the current jargon, dismissed the truth as crude allied propaganda and chose rather to believe Hitler's boast that the Ardennes offensive would indeed drive the allies out of Europe once more. What could they, pent up as they were, do to help their comrades fighting to the death in the snow-clad forests above Bastogne? To start with they could stage a mass escape and create thereby a security scare of unprecedented magnitude. If enough escaped they would then march on London, with who knows what results. Naturally enough there are few written records of this extraordinary story and Charles Whiting has pieced it together largely through interviews with the few survivors from those dramatic days. It is indeed a most remarkable tale, but one which, as the author himself admits, leaves quite a number of intriguing questions unanswered.