The Black Book

The Sonderfahndungsliste G.B. ("Special Search List Great Britain") was a secret list of prominent British residents to be arrested, produced in 1940 by the SS as part of the preparation for the proposed invasion of Britain codenamed Unternehmen Seelöwe (Operation Sea Lion). After the war, the list became known as The Black Book.

The information was prepared by the Reich Main Security Office (RHSA) under Reinhard Heydrich. Later, SS-Oberführer Walter Schellenberg claimed in his memoirs that he had compiled the list, starting at the end of June 1940. It contained 2,820 names of people, including British nationals and European exiles, who were to be immediately arrested by SS Einsatzgruppen upon the invasion, occupation, and annexation of Great Britain to the Third Reich. Abbreviations after each name indicated whether the individual was to be detained by RHSA Amt IV (the Gestapo) or Amt VI (Ausland-SD, Foreign Intelligence).

The list was printed as a supplement or appendix to the secret Informationsheft G.B. handbook, which Schellenberg also claimed to have written. This handbook noted opportunities for looting, and named potentially dangerous anti-Nazi institutions including Masonic lodges, the Church of England and the Boy Scouts. On 17 September 1940, SS-Brigadeführer Dr. Franz Six was designated to a position in London where he would implement the post-invasion arrests and actions against institutions, but on the same day, Hitler postponed the invasion indefinitely. In September 1945, at the end of the war, the list was discovered in Berlin. Reporting included the reactions of some of the people listed.

The list was similar to earlier lists prepared by the SS, such as the Special Prosecution Book-Poland (German: Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen) prepared before the Second World War by members of the German fifth column in cooperation with German Intelligence, and used to target the 61,000 Polish people on this list during Operation Tannenberg and Intelligenzaktion in occupied Poland between 1939 and 1941.

...
Wikipedia