SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Robert J. Maxwell It isn't one of those shabby, scratchy documentaries that wave the flag all over the place and terrify the viewers, the kind of product popular during the war.Actually, it's well researched and the material is presented systematically. Sure, it's a "What If" film. Another reviewer complained that it's not a documentary. Well, how could it be? Who has ever produced a documentary of things that never happened? Yet, the conjecture is kept to a minimum and existing Nazi documents are used in the construction of this awful scenario.One thing we're reminded of is that the Nazis did, in fact, occupy a part of Great Britain, namely the channel islands of Guernsey and Jersey, closer to France than to England. There was no resistance. The German troops simply walked in and took over. They were under strict orders to treat the population politely and fairly. (Violators would be executed.) They paid for their goods at the going exchange rates, until the goods more or less ran out.But if the Nazis had been able to invade and conquer England, the results would have been far different, according to plans laid out for the occupation. (The plans for the occupation were infinitely more thorough and logical than the plans for the invasion itself!)As in other conquered nations, the Germans would not simply have exterminated all those at the top and installed their own dictator. They didn't even plan to involve the English fascists. They had been courting the recently abdicated Edward VIII and would have installed him on the throne and had him urge national unity. You know, "Let's get the past behind us and work for the common good." The Royal Family itself would by this time have been evacuated to Canada.Once in power, the political situation would have followed a common channel. With German thoroughness, the occupation plan prepared by a general lists the names of individuals and groups that would, little by little, been quietly "removed" and sent away, never to be heard from again.Among the first to go would be those accused of homosexuality, like Noel Coward and Aldous Huxley. And good-bye avowed socialist Bertrand Russell, then at Oxford. The Freemasons and the Church of England were to be deprived of any political power -- or worse. The libraries would have had decadent books burned. The museums would have been looted and the work sent to the Fuhrermuseum in the Austrian city of Linz. Parallel to all of this, of course, would come the gradual identification, isolation, and extermination of the Jews.What difference would the Nazi conquest of Britain meant in the rest of the world? With Britain out of the way, there could have been no interference with the Axis occupation of the Balkans, which would mean that the invasion of the USSR could have begun in early spring as originally planned. The result would have been quick strikes in good weather and the likely collapse of the Soviet Union.There would have been no need for Hitler to declare war on the United States, which was busy with a war in the Pacific. But just in case his designers were working on a transatlatic bomber and a nuclear weapon. The making of an atomic bomb was in the hands of a physicist, Werner Heisenberg, who didn't proceed with it, for one reason or another, perhaps deliberately aborting the project. Still, Germany was far ahead of any other country in rocketry and the US could hardly have considered itself safe.The film spends too much time on the "auxiliaries," who were, in effect, trained as guerrilla fighters, but it observes accurately that they wouldn't have lasted long and that reprisals for their acts sabotage would have been terrible. The subject of collaboration is treated candidly. The film, as it now exists on DVD, is interrupted too often by the sign-on and sign-off logos -- an expanding circle of fire over a map of Britain with a swastika in the middle of it. And a few of the "reenactments" are overly extended.Those carps aside, it's not bad.

missismiggins There was no plan to invade England by the Nazis, a waste of film! Should be described as a work of complete fiction - a "What If" rather than a true documentary. The Germans were already busy on various fronts without having to even contemplate invading the British Isles.There is no "Concrete" evidence, documents or otherwise that suggested that Hitler even contemplated this other than as an excuse to get rid of his own Military advisers, and get them off his back.He paid no more than lip service to any of their crazy schemes.His Air Force were totally incapable of providing necessary air support over Germany at the time let alone supporting a 3rd Reich Invasion force.A wasted exercise for a rather phony documentary.

sddavis63 What if? That's the question raised by this documentary that considers the question of what life in Britain would have been like had Hitler's Germany won World War II and occupied the island. This has the advantage of being based on actual documents. The Germans expected to defeat Britain and had very detailed plans for what to do with the occupation, right down to which personalities would be arrested, which organizations would be destroyed and which museums would be plundered. The first half of this film deals with that German occupation, and it's a sobering look at what British life would have become, based on the documents and on the examples of how the Germans dealt with other nations under occupation. As this half comes to a close, I thought the film lost a bit of its bite as it became highly speculative, proposing either a nuclear war between Germany and the United States or a Cold War between the two powers, and suggesting that, with Werner von Braun not being captured by the Americans, Germany would have landed men on the moon first. Maybe, but that seemed to be becoming a bit too speculative and was going a bit beyond what the purpose of the film was. The second half of the movie shifts the focus from what the Germans would have done in the occupation to what the British would have done, and focuses on the plans for the "Auxiliary Units" set up on Churchill's orders - basically, small groups of men organized on a village by village basis who were to engage in guerilla warfare against the Germans. The depiction of the types of sabotage they would have engaged in was realistic, but in the end the film suggests that their operations would have been largely hopeless, and would have led to widespread reprisals against the civilian population.Certainly, this is a sobering and realistic documentary that makes one grateful for those who so long ago made sure that Nazi tyranny would be defeated.

Jmhl3 Hitler's Britain. This documentary sets out a Britain where we had been defeated and lay under the Nazi jackboot.Many of you military historians out there may have noticed that the idea for a successful German invasion, that the program puts forward, kinda falls down when it comes to crossing the channel and not mentioning the Royal Navy, which as the Sandhurst War Game proved, could have straddled the German's supply and reinforcement line via the Channel. It also mentions the successful German paratroop landings. Which would'nt have been possible. Even in October 1940 the German Airborne divisions were still re-equipping and training replacement recruits for their losses in France and the Low-Countrys. Even if the BEF had been cut off at Dunkirk the Royal Navy would have made a massacre of the invasion fleet which consisted mainly on Rhine River Barges. About a quarter would have capsized in the Channel anyway. So there's the history.Whilst the actual invasion itself was poorly thought out by the writers the content of the program was fascinating. The German's prepared a list of about 2,300 Britons to be "detained" if Britain was taken. With Einzatzgrupen sqauds (Death Sqauds) at London, Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham and Edinburgh. Also mentioned was the treatment of Freemasons and Jews but most of you pretty much know all about this so I wont go into it. How the Britsh police force was to be handled. And of course the big question, who was going to be the Prime Minister ? (The program killed Churchill off in an air raid). The first name that will pop into someones head is probably Oswald Mosley the interned leader of The British Union of Fascists. You might be screaming TRAITOR, TRAITOR at Mosley but it was not to be the case. The Nazi's rarely let local Fascist or Nazi party's run occupied country's governments and anyway Mosley announced he was supporting the British war effort and called on BUF men and women to resist the invaders. The program settles on Lord Halifax becoming leader and surrendering the country after the British counter attack is defeated due to lack of armour. (Which also doesn't stand up as we had an armoured division that was nearly fully equipped and also that Air Chief Marshall Dowding had a plan to withdraw what was left of the RAF to the Midlands, and don't forget there was also a considerable force in Scotland and the North of England at that time). So anyway the the writers have the Royal Family as we know it George VI, Queen Elisabeth (later Queen Mother), Princess Elisabeth (later Queen) and Princess Margret, fleeing to Canada. It has Edward VIII being instated as Prince Regent and Wallis Simpson, his Princess. They rule from Balmoral Castle in Scotland. I'm guessing they rule the North of England, Scotland, Nothern Ireland and a part of the British Empire (as the Dominions, the West Indies, the South Atlantic Islands and some African colonies would remain loyal to King George.) Others like India would stay loyal to the puppet government so that Germany could restrain Japan from trying to seize British colonys there.Anyhow it ends up with another program on the Auxiliury Units or "The British Resistance". The Auxiliury Units were set up in mid 1940 to act as a resistance movement in case the country was occupied. This is the most interesting program as it has interviews with former members and charts a fictional one in a what-if scenario.All in all it's a good documentary, if flawed on the historical side. Worth a watch though and much better than ITV's horrible attempt to put their view of it in "When Hitler Invaded Britain".