Chapter 1

It was a grim time in England after the Nazi invasion of 1940 following the disaster of Dunkirk, but by 1947 when everyone hoped life might be on the verge of returning to some sort of normality following the easing of the German military occupation, along came a terrible winter in late ‘46, dragging on until all into the new year and holding back the spring. The already meagre supply of food was rationed still further and reports—-when they emerged in the official news media—-of shortages hinted at a broader problem of starvation than was readily admitted by the authorities. The bitter winter slowed the rebuilding of large areas of damaged cities and made housing a priority for the Anglo-German government, hampered by the inability of British industry, still not fully recovered by the post-invasion fighting and bombing, to provide materials.

It had been a wretched few years under the Nazi flag, and the shame that Britain might have felt in the surrender, despite Churchill’s initially rousing speeches, cut deep. The people were broken by defeat and the suffering wasn’t easing. If anything, it was worse now seven years after the invasion than it had been before.

There was no point however in the likes of John Timson worrying about the past and how it all fell apart despite the national resolve. Some might ponder and argue in the few pubs still able to get a reasonable supply of beer, trying to assess how the assassination of Churchill in the spring of 1941 at his hideaway in the Welsh mountains and the subsequent collapse of the UKRF—-the once much--vaunted United Kingdom Resistance Force—had brought the end of the war in 1942. Timson’s concern was not what had happened but how to survive the present. After his release from the PoW camp in northern France in 1942 in order to join the fledgeling British German Brigade under turncoat general Whittaker and then surviving the all-out attack on Moscow in the summer of 1943, Timson had been invalided out with a leg wound (the irony was the bullet that took out part of his calf was a .303 from a Lee-Enfield rifle, once supplied by the British to Russia) and once back in the UK the man had spent the past few years trying to find reliable work—difficult for a man with less than full mobility when there were many others like himself. Now the former infantryman was struggling more than ever to find work to support his wife Connie and sixteen year-old daughter, Hilda.

That the family had a room which was moderately warm was something, but with food scarce even the confident tone of the Berlin Broadcasting Corporation was unable to lift spirits much. The winter in early 1947 seemed reluctant to lift its iron grip as the month of March crept up and prospects were grim all round. When John heard that there were factories in Glasgow looking for workers, he had caught a train north and promised to write to his wife as soon as he could, so she would know he was well. “I will hopefully send you some money too, soon,” he said, before kissing his wife and daughter goodbye.

In a way it seemed like the man was going to war again, fighting to get a job in a foreign land. Connie refused to weep, but privately felt that she would not see her husband again. Not this time. He had survived two big battles but a third might be too much. True, there might be no bullets flying on the banks of the Clyde, but her cousin Lily had heard a rumour that gangs of Scots were making war on the hated Sassenachs, coming to take their jobs.

Yet not everyone was on the lookout for work. Some people—the ones who collaborated swiftly or had German connections (it was funny how so many Brits were able to suddenly trace their heritage back to places like Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt)—were living well enough despite shortages. The Black Market too was alive and well and it was rumoured they even took American dollars if one somehow could acquire them. Given how any mail to the UK from north America was opened by the police and examined very carefully for hidden messages, it was a wonder how any dollars got into the country but evidently they did.

The penalties however of being caught in possession of US money were severe: ten years on a work gang on a Scottish island, in chains and breaking rocks—whether you were male or female. The Mark was the official currency and the new rulers of Britain had every intention of keeping it that way. The problem was, as everyone knew, that the cost of say a modest and no doubt battered tin of sardines on the Black Market was much cheaper in dollars than Marks. It was as if the people who knew someone who knew someone who could get a tin of sardines had little faith in the Deutschmark.

Maybe the rumour that the United States, now it had beaten Japan, was coming to save the UK was true though news of American success in the Pacific was scarce and even then tainted with horror stories of US military atrocities against the supposedly noble Japanese. There was no doubt the Yanks had won, even if how they won was never revealed. The fact that coastal defences on the Irish and British mainland were being built up suggested that Berlin thought of the possibility of invasion, too.

Ireland was supposed to be neutral, though many said at first it was just a route in for German spies and the Irish weren’t sympathetic to Britain. Once the UK fell, the Germans had handed Northern Ireland over to Dublin yet while the official BBC story went the Nazi empire was ‘developing Atlantic weather stations’ some claimed they were in fact coastal batteries and watch-towers along on the western coast. But then, the argument went, why would America come to rescue Britain? We might speak the same language—at least for a while before German became the official language of the British Isles—but they had more interest in developing their friendship with Australia because of its valuable bauxite deposits as well as vast reserves of zinc, lithium and uranium. That was where a common language worked, not in viewing a few semi-ruined castles.

For families like the Timsons, life was hard and not likely to get any better soon. There were shops open and to a degree well-stocked for those with the right papers and access to Deutschmarks, of course. While Connie Timson and her daughter Hilda could wander past the brightly-lit displays all they could do was look and dream of better times, taking care to avoid the patches of ice that obstinately clung to the edges of the pavements. The hospitals were overstretched as it was, dealing with people still suffering from long-time wounds as well as the usual outbreaks of ‘flu and careless working practices on damaged buildings without adding to deal with broken wrists from falls on ice.

There were whispered stories too of influxes of wounded troops from the still-raging war on the eastern front which kept the medical services on their toes, plus regular appeals for blankets and any warm clothing for the brave Axis forces trying to bring the Soviets down. By now though no one had anything left to give.

Most families tried to avoid shops with displays of food as it only seemed to increase hunger pangs, but the Timson women were made of sterner stuff. They looked, they talked about food and big meals and laughed it off. Most of all they liked looking at the fashion shops, discussing the style or colour or pattern on dresses they could never afford. That was when the pair went past a well-lit, well-stocked corset shop and both stared at the displays of corsets, girdles and bras—the Korset, Hufthalter and Bustenhalter fashioned in either German-occupied France or by the endlessly powerful industries of the Ruhr—that Hilda had an idea.

“Mother,” said the girl. “Those corsets—”

“Darling, we don’t have enough Marks for one of those,” sighed Connie. “Heaven knows I could do with some support,” and at that she patted her tummy. She was a slim woman but every woman wanted good foundation-wear. The movies produced in Germany and distributed in the UK would take pains to show the luxuries of everyday German life and that included scenes featuring well-dressed women and in many cases showing their lovely if constrictive underwear. It was almost as if every film out of Berlin had at least one woman in her Korset and Bustenhalter idly smoking a cigarette or sipping a drink, staring out on a balcony overlooking the modern, bustling capital of Germany. The Nazi propaganda machine knew that targeting women was the best plan now: the men had been defeated and now it was time to win the hearts of British females by showing them what peaceful co-existence with Germany could offer.