Andrew Chatterton

Yeah.

So I thought I had a pretty good understanding about what Britain was like in 1940, like old men, pitchforks, about to take on some German tanks.

But then over the last 15 years or so, I've learnt, and I've written a book about it last year, about these secret layers of civilian defence that were there to

take on a German invasion.

And there are three distinct groups, all very, very different.

They all signed the Official Secrets Act.

And I'd say like 90% of them went to the grave without telling anyone, like without telling their wives, without telling their kids, without telling anyone what they're up to.

So they've had no official recognition at all.

So should I describe very quickly these three groups and then we'll go into it?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I'm already hanging off everywhere now.

So the first group is called the auxiliary units.

And these are made up of...

men in their kind of 30s 40s who were in reserved occupations so they couldn't be called up to the regular army because they were farmers or miners or gamekeepers something that was needed to be kept at home so they couldn't be called up to regular forces but they were young and they were fit and they knew how to kill stuff they knew how to handle explosives if there were miners and quarrymen and things like that so uh it all started from um

Two areas.

One was MI6.

They'd started something in mainland Europe.

They started talking to the countries surrounding Germany just before the war started about how to set up resistance groups and how to blow up factories so the Germans couldn't get hold of it.

But it all came a bit too late, because that was about 1938, 1939.

And by that time, the Germans were already kind of steamrolling through.