MI5 file reveals German WWII plan to invade Britain

LONDON - Newly released MI5 files have shown that had the Luftwaffe won the Battle of Britain, German shock troops would have landed at Dover, dressed in British uniforms.

The MI5 file, which was made public at the National Archives, showed details of the plan to invade Britain emerged from a post-war debrief of a German soldier.pl Werner Janowski was interrogated about his wartime work for the German Intelligence Service, the Abwehr, and he revealed that the plan was abandoned because invading troops would have faced RAF attack.

Dover was to be the focal point of the invasion, but troops would have landed elsewhere along the south coast, as well as in Scotland and the south of Ireland.

“The idea of shock troops wearing enemy uniforms, as they had in the Low Countries, is fascinating. It’s really The Eagle Has Landed stuff,” the BBC quoted Dr Ed Hampshire, principal records specialist at the National Archives, as saying.

“It gives an indication of what might have happened if the Battle of Britain had gone the other way,” he stated.fter the shock troops had captured the docks at Dover, the plan was for the main contingent of German troops to be brought over in barges and disembark at the docks.

Cpl Janowski described how his unit trained extensively in invasion techniques on the beaches of France during September and early October 1940.

But at the end of October some units were transferred elsewhere and they realised the invasion - Operation Sea Lion - had been called off.

Hitler cancelled the invasion because Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe had been unable to destroy the RAF and without air superiority the German troops would have been too vulnerable.

Cpl Janowski said the RAF destroyed most of the invasion barges at Dunkirk in bombing raids in December 1940.

The plan involved a huge aerial bombardment of the Dover area prior to the shock troops’ landing, he explained.

Cpl Janowski then went into great detail about the route they would have taken to try to and secure the town.

“Having effected a landing they would proceed along the cliffs to a point outside Dover where there were steps leading down to the beach and from this point they were to continue along the beach,” he had said.

“They would regain the cliff head by means of some steps near Dover station and then pass alongside the railway station and take possession of three docks on which were gun emplacements.

“They would then signal to Luftwaffe that the docks were in their possession,” he stated. (ANI)