Churchill’s German Army

Churchill’s German Army tells the collective story of thousands of German and Austrian refugees who escaped Nazi rule and later served in the British armed forces. Many were Jewish, and their wartime position was unusually complicated: people classified at first as enemy aliens became volunteers in the army, intelligence services, commandos and other specialist units fighting the regime that had driven them from their homes.

Drawing on interviews and eyewitness testimony, Helen Fry follows these refugees from internment and the Pioneer Corps into combat, espionage, D-Day and the liberation of Europe. The book explains how language skills and first-hand knowledge of Germany made some recruits particularly valuable for special duties. It is nonfiction and treats the refugees’ service as a distinct strand of British wartime history.