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As part of the Atlantic Wall, between 1940 and 1945 the occupying German forces and the Organisation Todt constructed fortifications round the coasts of the Channel Islands such as this observation tower at Les Landes, Jersey

The Occupation of the Channel Islands refers to the Military occupation of the Channel Islands by Nazi Germany forces during World War II. It lasted from 30 June 1940 until the Liberation on 9 May 1945. The Channel Islands, which are crown dependencies, were the only portions of the British Isles to be invaded and occupied by German forces during the war.

On 15 June 1940, the British Government decided that the Channel Islands were of no strategic importance and would not be defended. They decided to keep this a secret from the German forces. London had decided that the Channel Islands would be little more than a drain of resources for the Germans. The tens of thousands of German soldiers that Hitler had sent to defend the Islands meant that they could not be sent to defend more strategically important sites, such as the West coast of Europe. The Channel Islands served no purpose to the Germans other than to cite occupied parts of British territory in German propaganda.

The British Government consulted the Islands' elected government representatives, in order to formulate a policy regarding evacuation. Opinion was divided, and without a policy being imposed on the Islands, chaos ensued and different policies were adopted by the different islands. The British Government concluded their best policy was to make available as many ships as possible so that Islanders had the option to leave if they wanted to. Alderney recommended that all its Islanders evacuate; the Dame of Sark encouraged everyone to stay. Guernsey evacuated all children of school age, giving the parents the option of keeping their children with them, or evacuating with their school. In Jersey, the majority of Islanders chose to stay.

Since the Germans were ignorant of the fact that the Islands had been demilitarised, they approached the islands with some caution. Reconnaissance flights were inconclusive. On 28 June 1940, they then sent a squadron of bombers on a mission over the Islands, and bombed the harbours of Guernsey and Jersey. In St Peter Port, what the reconnaissance mistook for troop carriers were actually lines of lorries queued up to load tomatoes for export to England. 44 islanders were killed in the raids.

While the German Army was preparing to land an assault force of two battalions to capture the Islands, a reconnaissance pilot landed in Guernsey on 30 June to whom the Island officially surrendered. Jersey surrendered on 1 July. Alderney, where no one remained, was occupied on 2 July, and a small detachment travelled from Guernsey to Sark which officially surrendered on 4 July.

The German forces quickly consolidated their positions. They brought in infantry troops, established communications and anti-aircraft defences, established an air service with mainland France and rounded up British servicemen on leave.

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In Guernsey, the Bailiff, Sir Victor Carey and the States of Guernsey handed overall control to the German authorities. Day-to-day running of Island affairs became the responsibility of a Controlling Committee, chaired by Ambrose Sherwill.

Plaque: During the period of the German occupation of Jersey, from 1st July 1940 to 9th May 1945, many inhabitants were imprisoned for acts of protest and defiance against the Occupation Forces in H.M. Prison, Gloucester Street which stood on this site. Others were deported and held in camps in Germany and elsewhere from which some did not return.

Plaque on war memorial, Saint Ouen, Jersey, to Louisa Mary Gould, victim of Nazi concentration camp Ravensbrück: Louisa Mary Gould, née Le Druillenec, mise à mort en 1945 au camp de concentration de Ravensbrück en Allemagne.
Louisa Gould hid a wireless set and sheltered an escaped Russian prisoner. Betrayed by an informer at the end of 1943, she was arrested and sentenced 22 June 1944. In August 1944 she was transported to Ravensbrück and murdered in the gas chambers there 13 February 1945.^[1]

There was no resistance movement in the Channel Islands on the scale of that in mainland France. This has been ascribed to a range of factors including the physical separation of the Islands, the density of troops (up to one German for every two Islanders), the small size of the Islands precluding any hiding places for resistance groups, and the absence of the Gestapo from the occupying forces. Moreover, much of the population of military age had joined the British Army already.

Resistance involved passive resistance, acts of minor sabotage, and sheltering and aiding escaped slave workers (see, for example, Albert Bedane). The islanders also joined in the Churchill's V sign campaign by daubing the letter 'V' (for Victory) over German signs.

A number of Islanders escaped (including Peter Crill), the pace of which increased following D-Day, when conditions in the Islands worsened as supply routes to the continent were cut off, and the desire to join in the liberation of Europe increased.

The policy of the Island governments, acting under instructions from the British government communicated before the occupation, was one of passive co-operation, although this has been criticised (see Bunting), particularly in the treatment of Jews in the islands.

Some island women fraternised with the occupying forces, although this was frowned upon by the majority of Islanders, who gave them the derogatory nickname Jerry-bag.

Scrip (occupation money) was issued in Guernsey to keep the economy going. German military forces used their own scrip for payment of goods and services.

Stamps designed by Blampied issued in 1943 for use in Jersey during the German Occupation

The lack of currency in Jersey led to a request to artist Edmund Blampied to design scrip for the States of Jersey in denominations of 6 pence, 1 shilling, 2 shillings, 10 shillings and 1 pound, which were issued in 1942. A year later he was asked to design six new postage stamps for the island of ½ d to 3 d, and as a sign of resistance he cleverly incorporated the initials GR in the three penny stamp to display loyalty to King George VI.^[2]

Examples of currency used during the occupation by civilians (top two) and occupation troops (bottom one)

The British Government's reaction to the German invasion was muted, with the Ministry of Information issuing a press release shortly after the Germans landed.

On 6 July 1940 2nd Lieutenant Hubert Nicolle, a Guernseyman serving with British Army, was dispatched on a fact-finding mission to Guernsey. He was dropped off the south coast of Guernsey by a submarine, and rowed ashore in a canoe under cover of night. This was the first of two visits which Nicolle made to the island. Following the second he missed his rendezvous and was trapped in the island. After months in hiding, he gave himself up to the German authorities, and was sent to a German prison-of-war camp.

In October 1942 there was a British Commando raid on Sark, named Operation Basalt.

In 1943 Vice Admiral Lord Mountbatten proposed a plan to retake the islands named Operation Constellation. The proposed attack was never mounted.

Bunker in St Ouen's Bay, Jersey

As part of the Atlantic Wall, between 1940 and 1945 the occupying German forces and the Organisation Todt constructed fortifications round the coasts of the Channel Islands.

The majority of the workforce was slave labour composed of prisoners of war from Eastern Europe, as well as Spanish republicans.

In Alderney, a concentration camp, Lager Sylt was established to provide slave labour for the fortifications.

The Channel Islands were amongst the most heavily fortified, particularly the island of Alderney which is the closest to France. Hitler had decreed that 10% of the steel and concrete used in the Atlantic Wall go to the Channel Islands, because of the propaganda value of controlling British territory.

Plaque: From the rear of this building 1,186 English born residents were deported to Germany in September 1942. In February 1943 a further 89 were deported from another location in St. Helier.

In 1942, the German authorities announced that all residents of the Channel Islands who were not born in the Islands, as well as those men who served as officers in World War I, were to be deported. The majority of them were transported to the southwest of Germany, notably to Ilag VB at Biberach an der Riss and Ilag VII at Laufen.

As self-governing Crown Dependencies, the Channel Islands had no elected representatives in the British Parliament. In order to ensure that the Islanders were not forgotten, it fell to evacuees and other Islanders living in the United Kingdom prior to the occupation. The Jersey Society in London, formed in the 1920s, provided a focal point for exiled Jerseymen. In 1943, a number of influential Guernseymen living in London formed the Guernsey Society to provide a similar focal point and network for Guernsey exiles. Besides relief work, these groups also undertook studies to plan for economic reconstruction and political reform after the end of the war. The pamphlet Notre Île published in London by a committee of Jersey people was influential in the 1948 reform of the constitution of the Bailiwick.

Bertram Falle, a Jerseyman, was elected M.P. for Portsmouth in 1910. Eight times elected to the House of Commons, in 1934 he was raised to the House of Lords with the title of Lord Portsea. During the occupation he represented the interests of Islanders and pressed the British government to relieve their plight, especially after the Islands were cut off after D-Day.

Committees of émigré Channel Islanders elsewhere in the British Empire also banded together to provide relief for evacuees. For example, Philippe William Luce (writer and journalist, 1882 - 1966) founded the Vancouver Channel Islands Society in 1940 to raise money for evacuees.

During June 1944, the Allied Forces launched the D-Day landings and the liberation of Normandy. They decided to bypass the Channel Islands due to the heavy fortifications constructed by German Forces (see above). However, the consequence of this was that German supply lines for food and other supplies through France were completely severed. The islanders' food supplies were already dwindling, and this made matters considerably worse, and the islanders and German forces alike were on the point of starvation.

Churchill's reaction to the plight of the German garrison was to "let 'em rot", even though this meant that the islanders had to rot with them. It took months of protracted negotiations before the SS Vega was permitted to bring Red Cross parcels of food and other essentials to rescue the starving islanders. The SS Vega was an International Red Cross ship. It first came to the Channel Islands in December 1944, bringing food parcels, salt and soap, as well as medical and surgical supplies. The Vega made five further trips to the Islands before Liberation in May 1945.

Although plans had been drawn up and proposed by Vice Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, in 1943, for Operation Constellation, a military reconquest of the islands, it was not to be. The Channel Islands were liberated after the German surrender.

On the 8 May 1945 at 10am, the islanders were informed by the German authorities that the war was over. Churchill made a radio broadcast at 3pm during which he announced that:

Hostilities will end officially at one minute after midnight to-night, but in the interests of saving lives the "Cease fire" began yesterday to be sounded all along the front, and our dear Channel Islands are also to be freed to-day. [1]

The following morning, 9 May 1945, the HMS Bulldog arrived in St Peter Port, Guernsey and the German forces surrendered unconditionally aboard it at dawn. British forces landed in St Peter Port shortly afterwards, greeted by crowds of joyous but malnourished islanders.

The HMS Beagle, which had set out at the same time from Plymouth performed a similar role in liberating Jersey.

It appears that the first place liberated on Jersey might have been the British General Post Office Jersey repeater station. Mr Warder, a GPO linesman had been stranded on the island during the occupation. He did not wait for the island to be liberated and went to the repeater station where he informed the German officer in charge that he was taking over the building on behalf of the British Post Office. ^[3]

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An inscription, reading "Liberated" in Jèrriais, was installed at La Pièche dé l'Av'nîn in St. Helier to mark the 60th anniversary of the Liberation in 2005

• Since the end of the occupation, the anniversary of Liberation Day (9 May) has been celebrated as a National holiday.
• Many islanders and evacuees have published their memoirs and diaries of this period.
• The Channel Islands Occupation Society was formed in order to study and preserve the history of this period.
• There have been a number of TV and film dramas set in the occupied Islands:
  • ITV's Enemy at the Door, set in Guernsey and shown between 1978 and 1980
  • ITV's Island at War (2004), a drama set in the fictional Channel Island of St Gregory. It was shown by US TV network PBS as part of their Masterpiece Theatre series in 2005.
  • The 2001 film, The Others starring Nicole Kidman was set in Jersey in 1945 just after the end of the occupation.
• A stage play, Dame of Sark by William Douglas-Home is set in the island of Sark during the German Occupation, and is based on the Dame's diaries of this period.
• The following novels have been set in the German-occupied islands:
  • Appointment with Venus by Jerrard Tickell
  • Kramer's War by Derek Robinson, published in 1977
  • The Doctor Who novel, Just War by Lance Parkin published 1999
  • Island Madness by Tim Binding, published 1999
  • Die Rosenzüchterin (German:The Rose Breeder) by Charlotte Link published 2000
  • The Occupation by Guy Walters, published 2004

The statue in Liberation Square

• The Blockhouse, a film starring Peter Sellers and Charles Aznavour, set in occupied France, was filmed in a German bunker in Guernsey in 1973 [2].
• A number of German fortifications have been preserved as museums, including the Underground Hospitals built in Jersey (Höhlgangsanlage 8) and Guernsey [3].
• Liberation Square in St. Helier, Jersey, is now a focal point of the town, and has a sculpture which celebrates the liberation of the island.

1. ^ Occupation Memorial http://www.thisisjersey.com/hmd/index.html
2. ^ Cruickshank, Charles, The German Occupation of the Channel Islands - the official history of the occupation years, Guernsey Press, 1975.
3. ^ Pether, John (1998). The Post Office at War. Bletchley Park Trust, 7. 

• Bunting, Madelaine, The Model Occupation, Harper Collins, 1995.
• Cruickshank, Charles, The German Occupation of the Channel Islands - the official history of the occupation years, Guernsey Press, 1975.
• Read, Brian Ahier, No Cause for Panic - Channel Islands Refugees 1940-45, Seaflower Books, 1995.

• List of military occupations
• Occupation of Belarus by Nazi Germany
• Belarusian Central Rada
• Occupation of Czechoslovakia
• Occupation of Denmark
• Occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany
• Occupation of Greece by Nazi Germany
• Occupation of Estonia by Nazi Germany
• Military history of France during World War II
• Vichy France
• Jews outside Europe under Nazi occupation
• Reichskommissariat Kaukasus
• Occupation of Latvia by Nazi Germany
• Lokot Republic
• Military history of Luxembourg during World War II
• Reichskommissariat Moskau
• History of Poland (1939–1945)
• Reichskommissariat Ukraine

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Channel Islands World War II Fortifications

• Occupation Memorial (Jersey resources)
• Channel Islands Occupation Society (Guernsey branch)
• Channel Islands Occupation Society (Jersey branch)
• Guernsey Society
• BBC Guernsey History - Occupation
• Wartime Memories Project - The Channel Islands
• The Jersey Society In London