Operation Shaker
Operation Shaker was a planned secret terrorist war against the forces of Nazi Germany by the United Kingdom and their Shaker allies during World War II, had Britain been occupied. (PROSE: Losing the Audience)
Background[[edit] | [edit source]]
After conquering Western Europe by the summer of 1940, Germany began planning Operation Sealion, the cross-Channel invasion of England. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus)
With the British people fearing that invasion was imminent, the extra-dimensional Shakers approached the British government and offered them aid in exchange for Lebensraum. In order to agree upon alliance terms, the government offered the Shakers the landmass of India, but secretly had no intention of keeping this offer. Scientists began studying the Shakers for a weakness (PROSE: Losing the Audience)
Preparing for occupation[[edit] | [edit source]]
The Shakers had the ability to covertly kill people through an embrace which caused extreme trauma to internal organs, ultimately resulting in death. The Germans would be unaware of the Shakers' presence and the victims would appear to have died of natural causes. This was the form of warfare planned in the event of invasion.
British Army units were also attached to the initiative in some capacity. The South Mendip Auxiliary Unit had received training in guerilla warfare and were equipped with spiked knuckledusters and cyanide pills. They practiced sabotage attacks, learned how to speak German, and were given a list of "unsound" locals who, as Sergeant Max Wheeler later recalled, would have to be murdered once the invasion began.
However, the Mendips were not told about the Shakers or the wider operation, and simply heard word that they should expect clusters of occupying Germans to die, of apparently natural causes. The soldiers of the unit, mostly "rebels and mavericks" with socialist sympathies, were concerned that this meant the use of some type of gas and raised their concerns with their superiors, whom they scarcely trusted, about the use of germ warfare. Because of this, they were told little more on the subject. They only heard about Operation Shaker later on through rumours. (PROSE: Losing the Audience)
Cancellation[[edit] | [edit source]]
In June 1941, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. By December, the Russian winter had halted the Wehrmacht's advance and the United States had entered the war. In response to these setbacks, the Germans shelved Operation Sealion. (PROSE: Just War) With the imminent threat of invasion lifted, Operation Shaker became redundant. The faction of the government which had been dealing with the Shakers contacted their allies at the BBC and had the Shakers trapped in the fabric of Broadcasting House by the scientists who had been studying them. (PROSE: Losing the Audience)
Continuation by the Shakers[[edit] | [edit source]]
After the war, during the 1950s, the recording sessions of Max and Maxine's radio comedy show, Anyway, As I Say, in Paris Studio produced the right conditions for the Shakers to escape the fabric of Broadcasting House. They were unaware that they had been betrayed and that years had passed, and still believed that the war was ongoing. They assumed that the laughing audience members were German occupiers and enemy collaborators. Continuing to follow outdated orders, they began killing the regular audience members. In 1955, they were discovered by the First Doctor and Susan Foreman. Upon learning they had been betrayed, the Shakers resolved to declare war on the British Empire, but the Doctor destroyed them by removing their ability to exist in the same dimension. (PROSE: Losing the Audience)
Footnotes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- ↑ The date of Operation Shaker was subject to the date of a German invasion of Britain, which was abandoned at the end of 1941. The Shakers themselves continued to follow their orders until 1955.
