Talk:German occupation of the Channel Islands

Occupation

The article reads in part "Alderney, where no-one remained, was occupied on 2 July,"

This is not entirely accurate. 19 or 20 islanders had adamently refused to be evacuated. They had told Judge French (President of the States) that they preferred to live under German rule than dersert their Island and derided the policy of evacuation and those who were leaving.

The remaining islanders tried to block the runway of the islands airfield but despite their efforts, a 'storch, aircraft managed to land and unload six German soldiers who removed the blockage and enabled larger aircraft to land with more troops.

They made their way from the airfield to town and were met half way by a small group of islanders to whom the Germans delivered a letter from the Attorney General (Ambrose Sherwill) of Guernsey advising those remaining to abide by the instructions of the Occupying Power in so far as they were legal.

Frank Osselton accepted the letter and through an islander (Daphne Pope) who spoke some German (none of the Germans present spoke English) agreed that the Germans now had control of Alderney. Frank was not a Member of the States - they had all gone to England - but in a sense conveyed to the Germans that Alderney was surrendered to them.

From memory, this occured on the afternoon of 2 July, 1940 and it can be properly said that this event marked the surrender of Alderney to the Germans.

Gestapo

The article reads in part "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."

The article is correct in all respects except one, namely reference to the absence of the Gestapo from the occupying forces.

It is true that the Gestapo did not arrive until well after the occupation, but they did arrive and in 1943 had an office in St Peter Port. In that year Gestapo Officers visited Alderney to investigate allegations that two islanders from Sark, members of a working party operating Manez Quarry, had been aided in their escape to England by civilians living on Alderney.

A number of people were interrogated by them but they were unable to discover the evidence they were seeking and returned to Guernsey suspecting much but knowing little.

In fact the Serkese had been assisted to escape in a sailing dinghy by Frank Osselton. He and George Pope made sure that they left with detailed information about the fortifications which then existed on Alderney, the size and nature of the German garrison, the plight of slave labour and its maltreatment, growing shortages faced by the civilian population and occupying military and the worsening state of repair of the breakwater.

Shortly after the Gestapo visit, the SS arrived on Alderney and took over the operation of Sylt and Nordeney.

German Occupation - Alderney

Initially, Alderney was occupied by the 83rd Division and elements of the Kriegmarine and Luftwaffe. In 1941, Members of the 83rd Division on Alderney were replaced by troops from the 319th Division and Members of the Kriegmarine on Alderney were doubled, so that by the end of that year the German Garrison comprised over 2,200 personnel.

It remained between 2,200 and 2,700 for the remainder of the war.

Starvation

The article notes that: "Churchill's reaction to the plight of the German garrison was to "let 'em rot". Churchill knew full well that the civilian population would rot with them. The plight of Islanders was a matter which apparently did not unduly perturb him until 8 May 1945, the day on which Germany unconditionally surrendered, when Churchill announced - more or less as a foot note - that 'our dear Channel Islands' would also be liberated.

In July, 1944 the German Officer Commanding the Channel Islands (Admiral Huffmeier) informed the British Government that he did not give a damn about the plight of the civilian population. His prime responsibility was to feed his military and maintain a fighting force and he was doing so by commandeering all available food produced on the islands. Caring for the civilian population was a matter for the British.

Initially the British response was to do nothing until escapees from the islands reported that the civil population was starving and that without relief before the on-set of winter, many people could be expected to die. Representations to this effect were also made to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Switzerland.

The Red Cross, in consultation with Britain and Germany, arranged for food parcels to be prepared in Portugal (a neutral country) and shipped to the Channel Islands on the SS 'Vega', a ship registered in Sweden - also a neutral country.

On Alderney, the small civilian population had been left to their own devices to gather such food as they could, while the produce of all arable land was consumed by the Germans. Even so, this was not sufficient to adequately feed the German garrison, which began to experience the pangs of slow starvation.

By late October, the plight of the civilian population had become one of chronic hunger.

It was not until shortly after Christmas 1944 that the 'Vega' arrived at the harbor on Alderney and unloaded a consignment of Red Cross food parcels, deemed sufficient for the civilian population for a month.

The civilian population on Alderney was by then in a desperate situation and had exhausted their meager supplies and eaten anything which wasn't human which moved. At the start of 1945, the only animals remaining on Alderney were undiscovered, uncatchable, or inedible.

Boiled sea birds are edible, as is stinging nettle soup – some times enriched with potato peelings - but neither tastes very nice. They appeared regularly on the table and saved us from the worst result of malnutrition. The origin of other dishes was not inquired into.

Despite the fact that the German garrison was by then starving, they delivered the food parcels to the civilian population, testifying to their discipline. Not one parcel 'went missing' or was pilfered and for once, the non-military found themselves in possession of more food than the Germans.

The Red Cross parcels provided tinned meat (spam’, a spiced meat which became a Sunday treat), tea, sugar - which few had seen for years - biscuits, flour, dried potato and other staples. The parcels were a welcome relief from chronic starvation but uncertainty on how long they would last or when more would arrive forced most people to carefully ration their consumption.

Further parcels arrived in March, 1945 by which time spring crops were beginning to make their appearance but these were consumed by the military. Had it not been for the Red Cross food parcels, the very real prospect for Alderney’s civilians was death from starvation.

Does Alderney need to be in the sidebox?

I think that ALderney shouldn't be in the sidebar, as it is part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey.

Tidy up article

Paragraphs moved to sub articles:

(1) In Jersey the Defence (Jersey) Regulations had been passed in 1939 in accordance with powers granted under the Emergency Powers (Jersey Defence) Order in Council of 1939 (although it later transpired that the Privy Council revoked that Order in 1941, unknown to the States of Jersey, thereby putting in doubt the legal basis of measures taken in accordance with the law as it was believed to have been). to Living with the enemy in the German-occupied Channel Islands

(2) The traditional consensus-based governments of the bailiwicks were unsuited to swift executive action, and therefore in the face of imminent occupation, smaller instruments of government were adopted.

In Guernsey, the States of Deliberation voted on 21 June 1940 to hand responsibility for running island affairs to a Controlling Committee, under the presidency of HM Attorney General Ambrose Sherwill. Sherwill was selected rather than the Bailiff, Sir Victor Carey, as he was a younger and more robust person. The Committee was given almost all the executive power of the States, and had a quorum of three persons under the president (who could nominate additional members). Membership of the Controlling Committee was initially eight members. Sherwill was imprisoned by the Germans as a result of his attempts to shelter the British servicemen in the fallout from Operation Ambassador in 1940. He was released but banned from office in January 1941. Jurat John Leale replaced him as president of the Controlling Committee.

The States of Jersey passed the Defence (Transfer of Powers) (Jersey) Regulation 1940 on 27 June 1940 to amalgamate the various executive committees into eight departments each under the presidency of a States Member. The presidents along with the Crown Officers made up the Superior Council under the presidency of the Bailiff.

Since the legislatures met in public session, the creation of smaller executive bodies that could meet behind closed doors enabled freer discussion of matters such as how far to comply with German orders. to Living with the enemy in the German-occupied Channel Islands

(3) On 8 August 1940, less than two months into the occupation, Ambrose Sherwill, President of the Controlling Committee of Guernsey, broadcast on German radio that, while the Channel Islanders remained the "intensely loyal subjects" of the British Sovereign, the behaviour of the German soldiers on Guernsey was "exemplary" and he was grateful for their "correct and kindly attitude." He affirmed that the leaders of the Guernsey government were being treated with courtesy by the German military. Life, he said, was going on just as it did before the occupation. Sherwill's objective was to ease the minds of relatives in Britain about the fate of the islanders. German authorities made propaganda usage of his broadcast. The British government was furious, but Sherwill's speech seems to have been greeted with approval by most of the islander population.

Sherwill's broadcast illustrated the difficulty for the islander government and citizens to cooperate—but stop short of collaborating—with their occupiers and to retain as much independence as possible from German rule. The issue of islander collaboration with the Germans remained quiescent for many years, but was ignited in the 1990s with the release of wartime archives and the subsequent publication of a book titled The Model Occupation: The Channel Islands under German Rule, 1940-1945 by Madeleine Bunting. Language such as the title of one chapter, "Resistance? What Resistance?" incited islander ire. The issue of collaboration was further inflamed by the fictional television program Island at War (2004) which featured a romance between a German soldier and an islander girl and portrayed favourably the German military commander of the occupation.

Bunting's point was that the Channel Islanders "did not fight on the beaches, in the fields or in the streets. They did not commit suicide, and they did not kill any Germans. Instead they settled down, with few overt signs of resistance, to a hard, dull but relatively peaceful five years of occupation, in which more than half the population was working for the Germans." Several books and journal articles have since been published describing incidents of resistance, active and passive, by islanders. Most recently, Protest, Defiance and Resistance by Gilly Carr, Paul Sanders and Louise Willmot listed ways in which islanders resisted German rule. to Living with the enemy in the German-occupied Channel Islands