By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent

Published: 5:56PM BST 25 Aug 2010

The invasion plans are revealed in a report by a member of a German intelligence unit called Sonderstab (Special Force) Hollmann.

It was led by Wilhelm Hollmann, described as 45 years old “but looks at least 50…a trifle stooped” with a “gold right incisor” tooth and “very little hair.”

“What hair he has is clear blond,” a US intelligence report added. “Has long arms, very thin legs, blue eyes.”

Hollmann had begun as a former secretary to the Jahnke Buro, a freelance intelligence unit run during the 1930s by Kurt Jahnke for Rudolph Hess.

According to the report, members of the Hollmann group spent March 1940 training on embarking and disembarking from barges that had been constructed on the rivers and canals of Germany and the Low Countries and then towed down the Channel coast and concentrated on the beaches opposite Dover.

The informant says that landings were planned along the English coast and in Scotland and Southern Ireland but the attack would be centred around Dover.

The invasion would begin with a “heavy aerial attack” followed by “specially trained shock troops” who were to “attempt to make landings with a view to seizing and holding strategic positions until the main body of German troops could be brought across the channel in barges.”

The informant, Werner Janowski, said his unit was to arrive under cover of darkness, wearing Allied uniforms, as others had during the invasions of France and the Low Countries.

The report, released to the National Archives, says they were “to proceed along the cliffs to a point outside Dover where there were steps leading down to the beach and from this point they were to continue along the beach and regain the cliff head by means of some steps near the station in Dover.”

The unit was then meant to secure the docks and railway station and signal to the Luftwaffe that they were ready for the main invasion body to follow by barge into the port.

Training for the invasion continued through September and October 1940, with the unit under orders to “prepare for embarkation at a moment’s notice.”

The orders were never cancelled but by October the rank and file realised that the invasion would not take place that year and when the barges were moved to Dunkirk, most were apparently destroyed in raids by the RAF during December.

The soldiers were right, Hitler had cancelled “Operation Sea Lion” on 17 September 1940 after hearing that his forces lacked Naval support after losses in the Norwegian campaign and air support as a result of the Battle of Britain

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The Abwehr’s famed “Brandenburg” unit was well known for their numerous “ruse de guerre” ops in Poland in 1939, and the West in 1940, especially the Dutch-uniformed group of German “Brandenburgers” who took vital bridges which allowed the German 18th Army to roll unmolested into the Dutch interior on 10 May, 1940. Franz Kurowski’s book on the shadowy Abwehr unit known as the “Baulehr Rgt. 800 zBV” (Brandenburg), details the plans and operations of this unit, and even includes this bit concerning the run- up to the proposed invasion of the British Isles:

“On 2 July 1940, I. Battalion of the “Brandenburgers” commanded by Maj.von Hippel and the Rudloff Battalion were placed on alert. Consequently the “Brandenburg” Regiment, which was still in the formation stage, was able to report both battalions ready for action in their assigned assembly areas on the Channel coast. The von Hippel battalion moved into the area of the 16th Army. The battalion command post was set up in Nieuwport, east of Dunkirk. III. Battalion under Hptm. Rudloff assembled in the 6th Army’s sector. Its command post was located in Caen at the mouth of the Seine. I. Battalion was supposed to destroy the locks at Folkestone in an airborne operation. A second part of the battalion was was to make a sea landing on Dungeness Peninsula and knock out the locks and power plants, but especially a battery of railway guns that had been spotted there. III. Battalion was to occupy the city and port of Weymouth; it would attack some time before the main body in order to divert attention from the latter’s objectives – Plymouth and Portsmouth. The 100-man-strong detachment of “Brandenburgers” which had been formed from English speaking foreign Germans, was to land in the first wave and strike out on light motorcycles deep into the enemy rear to carry out special missions and strike confusion. All seemed ready when on Oct. 12th, 1940, the navy received an OKW directive which stated that “the landing in England is to be kept up solely as a means of exerting pressure.” This marked the death of Operation “See Lion.” The ultimate cancellation of the landing in England followed on 10 Jan.,1941.  Although the landing in England failed to take place as planned, the Brandenburgers assigned to it enjoyed, as one of them put it, “a lovely swimming holiday by the sea.”  (Kurowski – pgs. 55-56.)

While Kurowski never mentions a proposed operation led by an officer named Wilhelm Hollmann as outlined in the newspaper account, the record indicates that there was an officer named [Major] Hollmann in the “Brandenburg” unit who led the I./4.”Brandenburg” Rgt. in the Balkans in anti-partisan ops in the 1943-44 period. Speculations as to if this is the same “Hollmann” in the MI5 transcripts are difficult to ascertain, but probably useless to pursue given the vague nature of the sensationalist newspaper report which mentioned his name in the first place.