How would a British collaboration government have looked like?

[thezerech]

I think Germany is smart enough to realize, especially if they occupied at least part of Britain, that full on military occupation is going to be a nightmare. If they can find a Petain, I like the Lloyd George suggestion, then this makes the most sense. We're not discussing the military aspect, but it's safe to assume it's no cakewalk.

If Germany wants to focus on taking on the Soviet Union, they probably will not want to occupy Britain too much. I mean, they might have garrisons in major cities, but hope that they don't need a full occupation. They probably won't go all the way in applying too much ideology, I assume that Jews etc. will be eventual targets but if they're smart they'll wait until their power is entrenched or many can leave to avoid creating extra dissent. Although patience and forethought were never in the German's skill set.

 

[Garrison]

I think Germany is smart enough to realize, especially if they occupied at least part of Britain, that full on military occupation is going to be a nightmare. If they can find a Petain, I like the Lloyd George suggestion, then this makes the most sense. We're not discussing the military aspect, but it's safe to assume it's no cakewalk.

If Germany wants to focus on taking on the Soviet Union, they probably will not want to occupy Britain too much. I mean, they might have garrisons in major cities, but hope that they don't need a full occupation. They probably won't go all the way in applying too much ideology, I assume that Jews etc. will be eventual targets but if they're smart they'll wait until their power is entrenched or many can leave to avoid creating extra dissent. Although patience and forethought were never in the German's skill set.

If the Nazis were smart they would have tried to dial back the oppression in other places, expecting them to be sensible or reasonable is about as unlikely as a scenario in which they manage to occupy Britain. To be clear discussing the composition of a British collaborationist government is indulging in a fantasy scenario.

 

[thezerech]

If the Nazis were smart they would have tried to dial back the oppression in other places, expecting them to be sensible or reasonable is about as unlikely as a scenario in which they manage to occupy Britain. To be clear discussing the composition of a British collaborationist government is indulging in a fantasy scenario.

That's a good point. I do think, historically, the Germans saw the British much more positively than they did any other country they ended up occupying. I think, especially considering the British empire not being occupied, if there's one country they'd be softer on, it'd be Britain. That just a supposition on my end. I'm not saying for sure this what they would do, but my guess as this is, as you say, a fantastical exercise. A Britain at peace with Germany while retaining control of the Empire, is far more valuable to the Reich than an extra occupation zone and a hostile RN in-exile, which is why I think they'd go for a softer route. If they go hard they'd have a tough time finding willing collaborators with significant political influence before. Even those who ultimately might have wanted peace with Germany could fight back against occupation.

 

[Ambusher11]

It surprised me too and if anyone has alternate source that discusses a more 'lenient' plan I would be interested to hear it. Of course such plans might be subject to change because of circumstances on the ground, but its hard to say how that would workout, might depend on how high a toll the Wehrmacht took in alt-Sealion.

It's quite surprising too, especially since Hitler had stated in Mein Kampf and Zweites Buch that he wanted an Anglo-German alliance and thought that the Anglo-German Naval Agreement in 1935 was the first step towards achieving that alliance (though by late 1937, he appears to have started considering Britain as an enemy). Perhaps Hitler in 1940 thought that the British would be too much under the sway of "international finance Jewry" to even collaborate with Nazi Germany?

 

[GodoftheTranses]

I once read that Germany had desires for Britain to keep India had Japan not insisted on keeping it for themselves. So they probably did just want a collaborationist government tbh

 

[Finbarr the Fair]

The Nazis would certainly need some sort of British civil administration to run the country on their behalf.. Even if just a tool to execute orders from a military governor. And this might need a polite figurehead, as well as a "Sir Humphrey" to do the actual day to day running of the civil service and the local authorities. David Lloyd George does seem the likeliest high level politician to agree to the role after a British surrender to German occupation.

Is it worth discussing in a separate thread what sort of British government might agree a "White Peace" in late 1940 or early 1941?

 

[New Cleo Genesis]

You know, aside from the aforementioned Lloyd George (whom I have also mentioned in previous threads similar to this), I could point to the 7th Marquess of Londonderry as a possible leader figure among the collaborationists. The time of being able to be Prime Minister as a member of the House of Lords might have passed by the forties already, but who knows what curious arrangements could have arisen with the Germans doing things.

 

[Alexniko]

You know, aside from the aforementioned Lloyd George (whom I have also mentioned in previous threads similar to this), I could point to the 7th Marquess of Londonderry as a possible leader figure among the collaborationists. The time of being able to be Prime Minister as a member of the House of Lords might have passed by the forties already, but who knows what curious arrangements could have arisen with the Germans doing things.

I actually read that the name of Lloyd George, along with that of Lord Halifax, stood on the infamous German black list.

 

[New Cleo Genesis]

I actually read that the name of Lloyd George, along with that of Lord Halifax, stood on the infamous German black list.

You might be thinking of his daughter Megan Lloyd George. Wikipedia at least explicitly says he wasn't on it.

 

[Alexniko]

You might be thinking of his daughter Megan Lloyd George. Wikipedia at least explicitly says he wasn't on it.

Oh yeah, my fault.

 

[sarahz]

Suppose Britain is occupied by Nazi Germany during the fall of 1940. I know that this is highly implausible, but the military aspects of Operation Sealion are not the point of this thread.

My question is, how would a German collaboration government in Britain look like? Who might lead such a government? Which groups are potential collaborators? How would this government justify itself in terms of ideology and which policies would it pursue? Would the collaboration movements be openly fascist, or rather a big-tent "no more war with Germany" kind of thing? Would the Germans just put the BUF in power, as they did with similiar movements in the Netherlands and Norway? Or would they rather base their occupation on a British Petain that attempts to rally all of the right to the collaborationist banner?

What not how

 

[Dorknought]

This place is a bit like Glasgow, no one ponders 'why?' they demand 'HOW?'

 

[Tanaka did nothing wrong]

Well, the option of more direct German rule that has been brought up would indeed probably happen; but it wouldn't be like Poland or the East. In general, the agreement was that the West would be under more conventional military occupation; the Netherlands and Norway were exceptions, but these had a lot to do with the domestic situation at home, particularly the Party's ambitions to enter the state administration sphere and the fact that these two regions were generally planned to be integrated in some way to the Reich.

The establishment of such a system in Britain would most likely stem from the fact that there wouldn't be enough people willing/open to collaborate with the occupying forces. The fighing would have probably lasted long enough for the government to evacuate civil service personnel and information, as well as a good number of those interned under the Regulations. So the already short White Book of persons that could be approached would be even shorter after the end of the fighting, which would force the Germans to impose more direct rule, at least until a new bureaucratic machine was created and established enough. This wouldn't be a Reichskommissariat though; the Reichsommissariat was in this case a specific administrative structure imposed in areas which were marked for annexation/integration. Instead, the situation in Britain, at least at start, would probably be a military administration alongside a "Quisling" government and the situation somewhat between Greece and Belgium: Belgium in that the Germans would most likely pay more attention in organising the administration of the land, Greece in that any government that would be organised in these early stages would be severely lacking in credibility and consequently, power and reach, especially if economic conditions deteriorate quite rapidly (as the Empire economic and trading system would most likely unravel with most of the Dominions seeking closer ties with the US and the formal Empire disintegrating).

 

[Alexniko]

It surprised me too and if anyone has alternate source that discusses a more 'lenient' plan I would be interested to hear it. Of course such plans might be subject to change because of circumstances on the ground, but its hard to say how that would workout, might depend on how high a toll the Wehrmacht took in alt-Sealion.

Well, I did some research, and it seems that the Germans had some intentions to install a Vichy-type regime in Britain. To quote Norman Longmate's "If Britain had fallen":

"Both the Army Commander-in-Chief's 'Most Secret' orders, collectes together in German War Office File Number 3000/40 'Military Government (England) General', and the detailed collection of Ordinances to be enforced later, refer to the existence in Britain of both an 'occupied' and an 'unoccupied' zone, as in France. Willingness to leave a large part of the country in French hands had proved a powerfull bargaining factor in June 1940, though the agreement was torn up in 1942 and the whole country overrun. The Germans had perhaps some such intention in mind in the British Isles, but no map was ever prepared showing the proposed demarcation lines and, with no formal capitulation and no Vichy-type regime, it seems likely that they would have been forced to occupy the whole country, at least in the legal sense".

Though unlikely that the British government would've signed an armistice, thus making such a course of events hardly possible, it shows that the Germans were willing to install a pupet government in the British Isles. There is an old documentary called "Hitler's Britain" that went with the idea, and had Lord Halifax sign an armistice with the Germans and lead a collaborationist government afterwards.

Regarding the question of a potential Quisling-esque figure in Britain, the book states the following:

"Yet in the opinion of Sir Alexander Cadogan, at the time Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Office, who was himself on the German 'Black List', there was an obvious candidate for head of a pro-German government. On 20 of May 1940 Cadogan had a chance encounter with Sir Samuel Hoare, a former Foreign Secretary, who had been appointed British Ambassador in Madrid, where it was assumed, rightly, that his reputation as an arch-appeaser would make him highly acceptable to France. Sir Alexander deduced from a remark of Lady Hoare's that she was allready anticipating Britains defeat and later that day confided to his diary: 'The quicker we get them out of the country the better. But I'd sooner send them to a personal settlement. He'll be the Quisling of England when Germany conquers us and I'm dead.' Cadogan's opinions, despite his high position, were often erratic, but it seems at least possible that Hoare had been sent to Spain partly to get him out of the way. And it would certainly have been logical for the Germans to look towards him if Britain had been beaten, for he had been, with the French Foreign Minister, Laval, the architect of the Hoare-Laval pact in 1935, which had proposed to reward Mussolini's aggression in Abyssinia by giving him a large part of the country, a plan which caused such an outcry in Britain that Hoare was forced to resign. His old ally, Laval, was now deputy prime minister and the most powerfull member of a collaborationist government in France. That Hoare, if asked to fulfil the same role in England, would have agreed is, of course, uncertain, but that he would have been asked seems far from unlikely. Failing him, the Germans would have had to scrape a long way down the barrel to find a figure even remotely credible – some senile old general, perhaps, or a still-ambitious retired senior Civil-Servant – who allowed himself to be persuaded that it was his duty to his fellow countrymen to take over the government as a first step towards enabling life to return to normal."