British Free Corps

British Free Corps
A reproduction British Free Corps tunic; rank of Untersturmführer
Active	1944–1945
Disbanded	1945
Country	Nazi Germany
Branch	Waffen SS
Type	Infantry
Size	27 (greatest size)

The British Free Corps (German language: Britisches Freikorps) was a unit of the Waffen SS during World War II consisting of British and Dominion prisoners of war who had been recruited by the Nazis. The unit was originally known as the Legion of St. George. Research by a British journalist, Adrian Weale, has identified about 59 men who belonged to this unit at one time or another, some for only a few days. At no time did it reach more than 27 men in strength – smaller than a contemporary German platoon.

Recruiting

Two early recruits to the BFC:SS-Mann Kenneth Berry and SS-Sturmmann Alfred Minchin, with German officers, April 1944

Recruiting for the Free Corps was done in German POW camps. In 1944, leaflets were distributed to the POWs, and the unit was mentioned in Camp, the official POW newspaper published in Berlin. The unit was promoted "as a thoroughly volunteer unit, conceived and created by British subjects from all parts of the empire who have taken up arms and pledged their lives in the common European struggle against Soviet Russia". The attempted recruitment of POWs was done amid German fear of the Soviets; the Germans were "victims of their own propaganda" and thought that their enemies were as worried about the Soviets as they were. In one camp in Holland, the POWs were lavished with cigarettes, fruit and other such items and made to listen to Nazi propaganda officers who described the good the Germans were doing in Europe and asked the men to join them in fighting the real enemy, the Soviets.

One such individual who attempted to recruit soldiers was John Amery, son of the serving British Secretary of State for India, Leopold Amery. He was sentenced to death and hanged after he pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to high-treason.

Commanders

The BFC did not have a 'commander' per se as it was the intention of the SS to appoint a British commander when a suitable British officer came forward. However three German Waffen-SS officers acted as the verbindungsoffizier ("liaison officer") between the SS-Hauptamt Amtsgruppe D/3 which was responsible for the unit and the British volunteers, and in practice they acted as the unit commander for disciplinary purposes at least. These were:

• SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Werner Roepke: September 1943 – November 1944
• SS-Obersturmführer Dr Walter Kühlich: November 1944 – April 45
• SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr Alexander Dolezalek: April 1945

A number of sources mention the involvement of Brigadier Leonard Parrington, a British Army officer captured by the Germans in Greece in 1941. This was based on a misunderstanding by some of the British volunteers after Parrington in the summer of 1943 had visited the POW 'holiday camp' at Genshagen, in the southern suburbs of Berlin, as representative of the Senior British POW, Major General Victor Fortune. Parrington had told the assembled prisoners that he 'knew the purpose of the camp' and the BFC volunteers who were there took this to mean that he approved of the unit. In reality, Parrington had accepted Genshagen at face value as a rest centre for POWs.

Courts martial of those involved

Newspapers of the period give details of the court-martial of several Commonwealth soldiers involved in the corps. One Canadian captive, Private Edwin Barnard Martin, said he joined the corps "to wreck it". He designed the flag and banner used by the corps, and admitted to being one of the original six or seven members of the Corps during his trial. He was given a travel warrant and a railway pass which allowed him to move around Germany without a guard. He was found guilty of two charges of aiding the enemy while a prisoner of war.

Another New Zealand soldier claimed at his court-martial that he joined the corps for similar reasons, to gather intelligence on the Germans to foster rebellion among POWs, or to sabotage the unit if the revolution failed.

In popular culture

Many readers' first acquaintance with the British Free Corps (BFC) came in Jack Higgins' World War II novel The Eagle Has Landed. In the novel, a BFC officer named Harvey Preston, who is patterned on Douglas Berneville-Claye, is attached to the fallschirmjäger unit which attempts to kidnap Winston Churchill. A convinced Nazi and petty criminal, Preston is viewed with disgust by all members of the German unit.

The 2006 film Joy Division portrays a member of the BFC, Sergeant Harry Stone, among the German troops and refugees fleeing the Red Army advance into Germany. In the film it is the aggressive Stone who appears to be the only convinced Nazi remaining among the Hitler Youth with whom he is grouped. He is seen attempting to recruit British POWs before the column is attacked by Soviet aircraft.

The British Free Corps was a subject for the final episode of season 6 of the British TV series Foyle's War, in which a British POW who had joined the BFC was tried for treason in Great Britain once he returned home after he survived the fire bombing of Dresden.

Sources of confusion

Over the years, reliable information about the British Free Corps has been remarkably difficult to obtain. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, prior to the 1990s, British Public Records law allowed British government departments to impose long periods of closure on official documents which prevented them from being released into the archives. Secondly, the private publication, in 1970 of a book entitled Yeomen of Valhalla by a Jersey-born author using the pseudonym "The Marquis de Slade". Yeomen of Valhalla is a broadly accurate account of the formation and activities of the British Free Corps and its membership; however, the author chose to apply pseudonyms to almost everyone mentioned in the book. "De Slade"'s book was subsequently effectively re-written by the British spy writer Ronald Seth as The Jackals of the Reich (New English Library, 1974). He also chose to use the same pseudonyms. Neither of these books included references or a bibliography; as a result, some subsequent writers have taken the pseudonyms to be real names.

Gallery

SS-Oberscharführer Thomas Haller Cooper (British mugshot, 1945)

Frank McLardy.jpg

SS-Unterscharführer Frank McLardy, 1944

SS-Unterscharführer Roy Courlander, 1944

SS-Rottenführer William Brittain, February 1945

SS-Mann Eric Reginald Pleasants, 1944

SS-Mann Kenneth Berry and SS-Sturmmann Alfred Minchin, with German officers, April 1944

See also

• Blue Division
• Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism
• Indische Legion
• Russian Liberation Army
• Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts
• European non-Germans in the German armed forces during World War II
• Camp Friesack (Friesack Camp), attempt to raise an "Irish Brigade"
• Fusilier James Brady
• John Codd

References

Bibliography

• Adrian Weale. Renegades: Hitler's Englishmen. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994. ISBN 0-7126-6764-4
• Adrian Weale. Patriot Traitors: Roger Casement, John Amery and the Real Meaning of Treason. London: Viking, 2001. ISBN 0-6708-8498-7
• Sean Murphy. Letting the Side Down: British Traitors of the Second World War. London: The History Press Ltd, 2005. ISBN 0-7509-4176-6
• Richard Landwehr. Britisches Freikorps. Lulu, 2008. ISBN 0-5570-3362-4
• David Faber. Speaking for England. London: Pocket Books, 2007. ISBN 1-4165-2596-3
• Robert Best. The British Free Corps: The Story of the British Volunteers of the Waffen SS. London: Steven Books, 2010. ISBN 1-9049-1190-0
• Eric Meyer. SS Englander: The Amazing True Story of Hitler's British Nazis. London: SwordWorks, 2010. ISBN 1-9065-1244-2
• Ronald Seth. Jackals of the Reich. The Story of the British Free Corps. 1972.
• Colin D. Evans. The Auslander Brigade. London: The Book Guild, 1985. ISBN 978-0-86332-060-6
• Robert A. Best: The British Free Corps: The Story of the British Volunteers of the Waffen SS. Steven Books, 2010. ISBN 978-1904911906
• Marko Jelusić: "Das „British Free Corps“ in der SS-Schule „Haus Germanien“ in Hildesheim." In: H. Kemmerer (Hrsg.), St. Michaelis zu Hildesheim. Geschichte und Geschichten aus 1000 Jahren, Veröffentlichungen der Hildesheimer Volkshochschule zur Stadtgeschichte Hildesheims 15 (Hildesheim 2010) 197-206. ISBN 978-3-8067-8736-8 (Online in academia.edu)

External links

• Pipes, Jason. "Britisches Frei-Korps / British Free Corps"
• Pipes, Jason. "British Volunteers in the German Wehrmacht in World War II"
• BBC News {for reference only}
• Guy Walters' site - history of the BFC, complete with pictures
• Feldgrau.com - http://www.feldgrau.com/gb.html
• The Daily Mail - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1259632/Hitlers-British-SS-Chilling-pictures-traitors-joined-Fuhrers-evil-unit--Union-Flag-sleeve.html
• SS veterans in Britain hold secret reunions