Occupation of Channel Islands during WWII...

[L. Kafka]

I was reminded of the Channel Islands being occupied while re-reading A Bridge Too Far last night while attempting to provide some real life color to my visit to Arnhem, Holland last month.

Did some of the Channel Islands remain occupied until the end of the war, and if not when were they retaken?

What type of numbers did the Germans maintain on islands? Did Jersey have the large German garrison?

Are there any stories about life on the islands during occupation?

[panzermahn]

During the occupation of the Channel Islands by the Germans, there was no resistance action and there were no reprisals by the Germans. It was very mild compare to the German occupation of Byelorussia. (The Germans had their own newspaper and they proclaim to the local population that the German would treat the British like how the Brits would treat them)

The local British administration work together with the German occupation authorities (British policemen were patrolling in the streets of Jersey islands) to maintain order (there were no epuration like those in Italy or France after the Channel Islands were liberated)

Hitler actually fortified heavily the channel islands in the presumption that the Allies were invade continental Europe and his fears were somewhat justified when British commandos launched raids at the islands of Sark in 1942 (after this raid, Hitler issued the infamous Nacht und Nebel Erlass because the perceived brutal treatment of captured Germans by the British commandos)

During 1944-1945, there were severe food shortages. The Germans were even worse in their condition compare to the local population but their discipline held and there were no reports (as I know) that the Germans plunder or robbed the local population.

Prostitutes from France were brought to the islands for the entertainment of the German troops and this initially brought shock to the conservative local population until the local German commander believed it was wise to be more discreet.

Regards
Panzermahn

[L. Kafka]

Not until VE Day?

Other than the commando raids in 1942 there were no other military actions by the Allies against the islands? Too irrelevant to the campaign on the continent?

[phylo_roadking]

Actually, I think about two or three days AFTER D-Day!

No stragetic worth. Though I'd need to check but I think there were a couple of very minor commando ops, just grabbing a coastwatching sentry now and again. But VERY infrequent compared to other locations, for fear of reprisals against the civilian British population.

[Marc Binazzi]

I have never heard of the prostitutes brought from France by the Germans, but I heard of the local girls bring quite friendly to the extent that the German authorities were worried about unwanted pregnancies and the like.

Still it should be mentioned that the Germans brought a large number of forced labor to the Channel Islands for the fortification and the digging of the underground hospital (which has been turned into a very interesting museum). It should also be mentioned that Alderney was turned into some kind of small-scale but active concentration and I remember a documentary a few years ago showing survivors visiting the island and trying to find some remnants of the camp.

Food became very rare after D-day and in one of the books you find on the islands about German occupation you can see a grim photograph showing two German soldiers holding a poor beheaded cat they probably intended to eat.

Something rather funny I noticed somewhere when I visited Jersey for the first time in 1982 is a comment in a local museum suggesting that Adolf Hitler had suggested that in his old days he would retire on the Channel Islands. Well, after all why not? He was a vegetarian...

[Marc Binazzi]

(there were no epuration like those in Italy or France after the Channel Islands were liberated)

Epuration would have been embarrassing for both the Islanders and the British as although independent politically the Channel Islands depend on the Brits on some specific areas like foreign affairs and defence and I believe in 1945 the British authorities preferred to "forget" about the relative lack of resistance of the population in fear the Islanders would ask them why they just did not do anything to prevent the Germans from landing on the islands in 1940.

[phylo_roadking]

that Alderney was turned into some kind of small-scale but active concentration and I remember a documentary a few years ago showing survivors visiting the island and trying to find some remnants of the camp

LOL that reads as if the WHOLE island was turned into a camp! Actually there was a concentration camp for forced labour rather than a death camp, in a quarry at the north end of the Island of Alderney.

[L. Kafka]

Do you guys mean "eruption"? I just looked in two dictionaries and could not find "epuration."

For a moment I thought it meant rotten dead bodies or some @#%.

[phylo_roadking]

epuration - tarring and featherings, head shavings, anti-nazi witch hunts, unpunished deaths of notable collaborators etc., as happened frequently on mainland France after D-Day and liberation etc.,

[phylo_roadking]

...if not with the permission of the "new" authorities, then certainly with a shoulder-shrugging, blind-eyed "Well, what do you expect US to do about it? WE'VE only just got here, we're not really in control yet" and fingers crossed behind their back...

[Marc Binazzi]

as happened frequently on mainland France after D-Day and liberation etc.,

France only among all German-occupied countries?????

[Paddy Keating]

It seems that the more a people as a whole collaborated with the German occupiers, the worse the treatment meted out to those of their women who slept with the occupiers.

PK

[5RANGLIAN]

(there were no epuration like those in Italy or France after the Channel Islands were liberated)

Epuration would have been embarrassing for both the Islanders and the British as although independent politically the Channel Islands depend on the Brits on some specific areas like foreign affairs and defence and I believe in 1945 the British authorities preferred to "forget" about the relative lack of resistance of the population in fear the Islanders would ask them why they just did not do anything to prevent the Germans from landing on the islands in 1940.

It's hard to see how anyone (British or otherwise) could have formed and run an effective resistance in the Channel Islands. Most of the people of military age left the islands before the Germans arrived, the Germans outnumbered the civil population, and where do you run to or hide, when the largest island is 45 square miles?

As to not fighting for the islands in 1940, well I guess you have to decide where it's worth throwing away a battalion of troops, and where it's not. I admit, I'd be a little ticked off if I were a Jerseyman.

[phylo_roadking]

True, if they'd thrown onto Jersey what they threw away into Calais.....

[L. Kafka]

....come 20 Jan 09.