Express & Star

If the Nazis had won, which Midlanders were on Hitler's death list?

The Luftwaffe have won the Battle of Britain, England is occupied and a nation adapts to life under the Führer.

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This was the chilling spectre, presented by the TV thriller SS-GB, of life in Britain if the Second World War had ended differently.

It was a future that some had more reason to fear than others.

Bleak vision – a war-torn Buckingham Palace has been taken over by the Nazis in this chilling digitally created picture
Sir Geoffrey Mander had spoken out against the Nazi threat

One of these was Sir Geoffrey Mander, the plain-speaking Liberal MP for Wolverhampton, who was on Hitler's hit list for his views on Nazi Germany. Over in Italy, Mussolini wasn't too keen on him either.

The five-part TV series, based on the novel by Len Deighton, launched last Sunday to critical acclaim. Set in 1941, it shows the country well and truly under the yoke of German occupation.

It was in this year that Sir Geoffrey published his book, We Were Not All Wrong, arguing that many foresaw how policy blunders in dealing with the Nazi menace in the 1930s would lead to disaster.

The following year, the MP, whose constituency home was the sumptuous Wightwick Manor, was appointed parliamentary private secretary to the Liberal leader Sir Archibald Sinclair in Churchill's coalition government.

John Wood, conservation manager at Wightwick Manor, said: "As a Liberal MP, he was very outspoken and regarded as a dissident. He was on Hitler's extermination list. Had the Germans won the war, Sir Geoffrey would have been rounded up.

"But he was very proud to have been on the list and to have been proved to have been on the right side. He'd also managed to annoy Mussolini."

The impassioned politician was in good company. Also on Hitler's wanted list was the MI6 spy Major Francis Foley who is known as the British Schindler for his part in helping 10,000 Jews to escape the Nazis.

Major Foley, who lived in Stourbridge after the war, worked as a passport control officer in Berlin as a cover for his MI6 work. The role enabled him to enter internment camps where he presented visas to the camp authorities so that Jews could be freed to travel. He also hid Jews in his home and obtained false papers, forged passports and visas for them.

MI6 spy Major Francis Foley lived in Stourbridge after the war

Meanwhile, back in England, Sir Geoffrey Mander turned his attention to saving artwork. As well as being a controversial MP and head of the family's paint and varnish empire, he was also a patron of the arts. The MP and his wife Rosalie had filled their Victorian manor home with paintings, furniture and art.

In the late 1930s, as war clouds gathered over Europe, he offered to bring an important art collection from London to Wightwick to protect it from German bombs.

The art collection comprised paintings and ceramics by pioneering female artist Evelyn De Morgan and her husband William De Morgan, said to be the most inventive studio ceramicist of the late 19th century arts and crafts movement.

Together they were considered the most creative couple of the Victorian era. The collection was set up by Anna Stirling, Evelyn's sister. As it turned out, a secure wartime location had already been found for the de Morgan collection, but the offer to save it had been appreciated and the two families became friends.

The Manders and Stirlings began writing to each other in 1937 when Sir Geoffrey and his wife were in the process of giving Wightwick to the National Trust and establishing the manor as a focus of Pre-Raphaelite art at a time when the movement was out of favour with the gallery-going public.

Mr Wood said: "No one wanted it. It was considered too chocolate-boxy, too Victorian, it had very little value. People weren't buying work even by the leading members of the movement like Rossetti, Hunt and Millais. It's thanks to the efforts of people like the Manders and Mrs Sterling that the paintings we have today got saved and their significance reassessed."

Now history has come full circle. After the De Morgan collection was once again in need of a new home, Wightwick Manor stepped forward and its offer was accepted.

It's a chilling glimpse of how life could have been very different if the Nazis had won the Battle of Britain.

Set in 1941, the the vast majority of England and Wales are under Nazi occupation in the BBC's new Sunday night drama SS-GB, which continues tonight.

Douglas Archer is a British detective who is forced to work under the brutal SS in occupied London. But Archer, played by A-lister Sam Riley, is determined to continue to do his job in the service of his country despite tensions in the captial reaching fever pitch after a German pilot is murdered by a British resistance fighter.

It also stars Hollywood actress Kate Bosworth as the mysterious New York Times journalist Barbara Barga.

Writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, the Bafta winners behind Bond films Spectre, Skyfall and Casino Royale, adapted Len Deighton's 1978 alternate history book of the same name.

Wade said: "It constantly makes you think, 'What would I have done?' This example of alternate history is particularly interesting because it's so close to what might have happened.

"In SS-GB, the British are living through an occupation. The game is still not over. History is alive and that's what's particularly clever about this story.

"It's very important that we talk about this stuff. It's become part of our mythology that we stood alone. We did, but it was a very close-run thing."

Purvis found one moment particularly chilling on set, saying: "Seeing Lars Eidinger, who plays SS officer Standartenfuhrer Oskar Huth, coming into a church to arrest someone – that was proper scary.

"Watching a man in an SS outfit with that distinctive long leather coat really brings it home. Even though we know they're actors and are just pretending, just seeing a high-ranking SS officer inside a British church is really chilling."

Wade said: "We could have lost the Battle of Britain. In fact, it was miraculous that we won that battle.

"Britain was alone at that period. America wasn't involved. They were looking the other way. It was before Pearl Harbour.

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