If Hitler Comes: Preparing for Invasion: Scotland 1940 - Softcover

Although the years between 1939 and 1945 are the most written-about war years in history, little has been printed about the heroic efforts made in those months to prepare Scotland for the inevitable invasion, and how the defenses were intended to be used; this account tells that story. Between May 1940 and the summer of 1941, the British people expected a German invasion that, had it succeeded, would have left them enslaved by the Nazis in the midst of their racist war. This period saw an unparalleled effort to prepare the UK against invasion. Scotland’s nationally important heavy industries, vital Royal Navy bases, and one of the UK’s key ports were very vulnerable to the sort of airborne attack that had devastated Belgium. Describing that era in Scotland against the wider history of the period and its people, this work also chronicle what was built and what now survives.

Gordon Barclay is a former principal inspector of ancient monuments with Historic Scotland and the former editor of FORT, the journal of the Fortress Studies Group, and Scotland’s premier archaeological journal, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.