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The British Isles have only been successfully invaded and occupied once since 1066: the German occupation of the Channel Islands from 1940-1945. This book commemorates a defining period in the history of the islands and an important aspect of contemporary British history.
‘A masterly work of profound research and reflection, objective and humane’ Hugh Trevor-Roper, Sunday Telegraph What would have happened if the Nazis had invaded Britain? How would the British people have responded – with resistance or collaboration? In Madeleine Bunting’s pioneering study, we begin to find the answers to this age-old question. Though rarely remembered today, the Nazis occupied the British Channel Islands for much of the Second World War. In piecing together the fragments left behind – from the love affairs between island women and German soldiers, the betrayals and black marketeering, to the individual acts of resistance – Madeleine Bunting has brought this uncomfortable episode of British history into full view with spellbinding clarity.
"This book shows that Islanders learned how to contend with Nazi regulations, how to survive and how to trust those Germans whose human side was often in contrast to the brutality of Hitler's regime." -- back cover.
The Channel Islands were the only part of Britain to be occupied by the Germans during World War II. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of their liberation, this is a record of life on the Channel islands under Nazi rule, and of the Liberation itself. It sets out to show the contrast between the peaceful, pre-war atmosphere of the sunny holiday islands and the shadow of fear, isolation and shortages under which islanders were forced to live for five years.
"This book was born of a series of documentay films about the German occupation of the Channel Islands from 1940 to 1945 entitled The Channel Islands at war. It is also the fulfilment of an ambition to tell in much more detail than was possible in those documentaries, the true story of those extraordinary years"--Back cover
Captured by German forces shortly after Dunkirk, and not relinquished until May of 1945, nearly a year after the Normandy invasion, the British Channel Islands (Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, Sark, and Herm) were characterized during their occupation by severe deprivation and powerlessness. The Islanders, with few resources to stage an armed resistance, constructed a rhetorical resistance based upon the manipulation of discourse, construction of new symbols, and defiance of German restrictions on information. Though much of modern history has focused on the possibility that Islanders may have collaborated with the Germans, this eye-opening history turns to secret war diaries kept in Guernsey. A close reading of these private accounts, written at great risk to the diarists, allows those who actually experienced the Occupation to reclaim their voice and reveals new understandings of Island resistance. What emerges is a stirring account of the unquenchable spirit and deft improvisation of otherwise ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Under the most dangerous of conditions, Guernsey civilians used imaginative methods in reacting to their position as a subjugated population, devising a covert resistance of nuance and sustainability. Violence, this book and the people of Guernsey demonstrate, is not at all the only means with which to confront evil.
One woman's daily record of life in Guernsey during the German occupation.
After the Dunkirk evacuation the Germans occupied a group of islands in the English Channel of which Guernsey and Jersey are the most famous. This new book goes far beyond all other writing on the Channel Islands during World War II, which have focused almost exclusively on the extensive fortifications built during the German occupation of 1940 to 1945. A controversy has risen in recent years about the degree to which the Islanders cooperated with the Germans, and the nature of the internment camps set up on the Islands. This detailed account is the first to make use of German records and recollections of the years of occupation, and to full depict the nature of day-to-day life for both occupied and occupier. The fascinating text is supplemented by 300 illustrations, which include in their coverage the remarkable fortifications built by the Germans in such a short time.