Stay-Behind Parties
M.R.D. Foot reveals the plans that were hatched fifty years ago to harry a would-be Nazi occupation of Britain by guerilla warfare.
Among this year's many fiftieth anniversaries, one of the most obscure is also one of the most interesting; though in l940 its origin attracted no attention at all. Nor should it have done, for it was deadly secret. Only its own participants, the prime minister, and a few very senior officers then knew of the scheme for militant stay-behind parties to raise hell by conducting guerilla warfare behind the Germans' lines if they invaded Great Britain.
Since the spring of 1938, two majors in the Royal Engineers had each headed a small staff that studied methods of irregular warfare: L.D. Grand in Section D of the inadmissible secret intelligence service, and J.C.F. Holland in a sub-branch of the war office, first called GS (R), then renamed MI R. They had been at Woolwich together in 1915, and got on badly: Grand thought Holland a plodder, Holland thought Grand slapdash.
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