The Black Book (list)

[3] It contained 2,820 names of people, including British nationals and European exiles, who were to be immediately arrested by SS Einsatzgruppen upon the invasion, occupation, and annexation of Great Britain to Nazi Germany.

This handbook noted opportunities for looting, and named potentially dangerous anti-Nazi institutions including Masonic lodges, the Church of England and the Boy Scouts.

On 17 September 1940, SS-Brigadeführer Dr Franz Six was designated to a position in London where he would implement the post-invasion arrests and actions against institutions, but on the same day, Hitler postponed the invasion indefinitely.

Rapid German victories led quickly to the Fall of France, and British forces had to be withdrawn during the Dunkirk evacuation, with the Nazi spearhead reaching the coast on 21 May 1940.

It was only then that the prospect of invading Britain was raised with Hitler, and the German high command did not issue any orders for preparations until 2 July.

[8] Walter Schellenberg wrote in his memoirs that "at the end of June 1940 I was ordered to prepare a small handbook for the invading troops and the political and administrative units that would accompany them, describing briefly the most important political, administrative and economic institutions of Great Britain and the leading public figures.

was an appendix or supplement to the secret handbook Informationsheft Grossbritannien (Informationsheft GB), which provided information for German security services about institutions thought likely to resist the Nazis, including the private public schools, the Church of England, and the Boy Scouts.

The book had some significant errors, such as people who had died (Lytton Strachey, died in 1932) or were no longer based in the UK (Paul Robeson, moved back to the United States in 1939), and omissions (such as George Bernard Shaw, one of the few English language writers whose works were published and performed in Nazi Germany).

[13][14] A print run of the list produced around 20,000 booklets, but the warehouse in which they were stored was destroyed in a bombing raid,[15] and only two originals are known to survive.

[17] When told the previous day that they were on the Gestapo's list, Lady Astor ("enemy of Germany") said "It is the complete answer to the terrible lie that the so-called 'Cliveden Set' was pro-Fascist", while Lord Vansittart said "The German black-list might indicate to some of those who now find themselves on it that their views, divergent from mine, were somewhat misplaced.