The internment of 27,000 “enemy aliens”, principally German, Austrian and Italian, occurred mostly at the height of the fifth column scare that followed the fall of France (Hodge recalls harrowing tale of how grandfather was interned by British, 9 August). Most were refugees, around two-thirds of them Jewish, but they also included German, Austrian and Italian nationals who were resident in Britain. When reviewing government papers while researching our book on the subject, we found no evidence that the policy was driven by antisemitism. The predominant fear was that this group might contain spies or saboteurs; and when one internment camp officer discovered that most of his charges were Jewish, he exclaimed: “Dammit – I knew we’d got the wrong lot.” The British government soon began vetting the internees and releases started within three months; 10,000 had been freed by the end of 1940, although a further 6,000 had been deported to Canada and Australia, where many of them decided to stay. Your report cites Churchill as giving the order “Collar the lot!” to start the arrests. It is not clear whether he said this or whether it was attributed to him as a paraphrase. However, we did adopt the phrase as the title of our book, first published in 1980.
Peter and Leni Gillman
London
