Between May 1940 and the summer of 1941 the British people expected a German invasion that, had it succeeded, would have enslaved them into the Nazis' racist war. This period saw an unparalleled effort to prepare the defence of the UK against invasion. Scotland's nationally important heavy industries, vital Royal Navy bases, and one of the UK's key ports, were very vulnerable to the sort of airborne attack that had devastated the defences of Belgium. Everyone was certain that a Fifth Column of Nazi sympathisers and agents was working actively to spread rumours and despair, and to aid the invasion forces, and in reality the country was far from united. Although the 1939 - 45 War is the most written-about war in history there is no account of the heroic efforts made in those months to prepare Scotland for the inevitable invasion, and how the defences were intended to be used. This book tells that story, against the wider history of the period and its people, and describes what was built, and what now survives.

Gordon Barclay graduated in archaeology from Edinburgh University (MA 1976, PhD 2001), and subsequently worked at Historic Scotland, firstly directing excavations and then as a Principal Inspector running the archaeology and scheduling programmes. He retired at the end of 2009 as Head of Policy. He has been editor of Scotland's premier archaeological journal, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and FORT, the journal of the Fortress Studies Group.