[gjbarclay]

Whenever anyone posts a reference to the Daily Express article (23 March 2013) that claims that ‘Scotland would have abandoned to the Germans’ in 1940 (Jimi 23/4/2014) I post a response to try to reclaim my book from people who use what it is SUPPOSED to say to further their own agenda.

The Daily Express article misrepresented both what was in the book and what happened in 1940. What the documents show is that if the Germans mounted a diversionary attack on Scotland to draw British forces off from the main invasion site in south-eastern England, General Ironside was not going to be fooled into weakening his main force. Scotland was by no means left defenceless, but like any other part of the UK it was going to have to manage with the military garrison it had. Few units of the British Army were, in the summer of 1940, after Dunkirk, equipped or trained to fight off a very well-trained and mobile invader and Ironside could not afford to spend his mobile reserves in penny packets. Scotland was certainly not going to 'have been abandoned to the Germans' - beach and inland defences were built from May 1940 onwards, the numbers of British troops in Scotland grew throughout the summer and in October 1940 the highly professional Polish Army (18,000+) was added to the garrison.

Gordon Barclay, author of 'If Hitler comes. Preparing for Invasion: Scotland 1940' (Birlinn 2013)