In Popular Culture
Many readers' first acquaintance with the British Free Corps (BFC) came in Jack Higgins' World War II novel The Eagle Has Landed. In the novel, a BFC officer named Harvey Preston, who is patterned on Douglas Berneville-Claye, is attached to the fallschirmjäger unit which attempts to kidnap Winston Churchill. A convinced Nazi and petty criminal, Preston is viewed with disgust by all members of the German unit.
The 1985 novel The Auslander Brigade by Colin D Evans, centres around the recruitment and deployment of the British Free Corps to fight on the Eastern Front.
In Terrance Dicks' novel Timewyrm: Exodus, the Seventh Doctor briefly finds himself in a timeline in which the Nazis won WW II. He meets two BFC soldiers, who harass him and Ace briefly. (When the timeline is restored, the same two men appear, but this time are common thugs who are not in the military.)
The 2006 film Joy Division portrays a member of the BFC, Sergeant Harry Stone, among the German troops and refugees fleeing the Red Army advance into Germany. In the film it is the aggressive Stone who appears to be the only convinced Nazi remaining among the Hitler Youth with whom he is grouped. He is seen attempting to recruit British POWs before the column is attacked by Soviet aircraft.
In 2009, the BFC also featured in the last episode of the ITV series Foyle's War, "The Hide" (Series 7, episode 3).
The 2010 novel SS Englander: The Amazing True Story of Hitler's British Nazis is a fantasy novel about an Englishman who fights in the Waffen SS, seeing limited action at Stalingrad as a special advisor, before joining the BFC during its formation.
Read more about this topic: British Free Corps
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