On Sun, 30 Apr 2006 20:55:25 +1000, "Roger & Jodie Morris" <rog.jod@bigpond.net.au> wrote: >I'm interested in finding out whether English history reveals what Churchill's 'Fall Back' position was if the Nazis had ever landed ground troops on British soil? > >In Australia during the darkest points of the War in 1942/43, the Australian Government drew a line through Brisbane in SE Queensland, known logically as the 'Brisbane Line' north of which would be evacuated and left to the Japanese had they ever made landfall in northern Australia. > >I assume the British Government had a similar plan when the Nazis held most of Europe across the Channel. In the summer of 1940, after the fall of France and when the invasion threat was most serious, General Edmund Ironside, who was Commander-in-Chief of the Home Forces, designed a fortified line which ran roughly parallel to the east and south coasts. It was called the General Headquarters Anti-Tank Line, or more simply the GHQ Line or Ironside's Line. It ran roughly from Bristol to Maidstone, and then to Cambridge, York and Edinburgh. Within a few months, nearly 250,000 tons of concrete had been poured and 100 miles of anti-tank ditches had been dug by civilians and soldiers just back from France. Nearly all the country's earth-moving machinery was utilised in the huge task. There were also plans to move the Government to a position near Worcester, 60 miles behind the line. The idea was short-lived, and was declared obsolete in Aug 1940 and abandoned in early 1941. However over 1000 pillboxes still survived in 1998, and details of the position of most surviving defensive works and of the line itself are in Colin Alexander's "Ironside's Line: A Definitive Guide to the General Headquarters Line planned for Great Britain in response to the threat of German invasion 1940-1942", 152 pages, 1999, ISBN 1901313042. See also the Defence of Britain Project at http://www.britarch.ac.uk/projects/dob/index.html Forrest -- Forrest Anderson, Edinburgh, Scotland. E-mail: forrest@military-researcher.com Website: www.military-researcher.com Forrestdale Research - Military Genealogical Researcher