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The Model Occupation: The Channel Islands Under German Rule 1940-1945

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One of Hitler's aims in World War II is to invade Great Britain. Many people believe that the Royal Air Force's efforts in the Battle of Britain thwarted that aim. Not so. The Germans did invade and occupy a series of British islands off the French coast. Madeleine Bunting writes a fairly interesting account of the invasion and occupation. The book also covers the miniscule and not too succesful underground movement to defy German occupation. The book questions whether the Channel Islanders were guilty of collaboration with the Germans. Afterall, Bunting mentions that several of the local women married Germans and that the under- ground movement never took hold. Some of the stories about occupation life are quite interesting, but not everything Bunting brings up is satisfactorily answered. Case in point is the concentration camp on the island of Alderney. She mentions that it existed, but doesn't dig deep enough to discover the full extent of possible atrocities.

The five-year occupation of the Channel Islands by the Nazis during WWII (1940-1945) was "swept under the carpet" both during the war by the (mainland) British authorities and afterwards by the British and the Islanders themselves who were never sure what to make of their islands' behavior. The author has done a very good job putting together information that could not have been easy to uncover as well as interviewing islanders, Germans and former slave laborers (mostly Russian). The Channel Islands are a cluster of semi-independent islands, each with her own island government, situated about 20 miles off the coast of England and 7-12 miles from the coast of France. Guernsey, Jersey and Alderney are the best known. Despite their proximity to France, the islands have always thought of themselves as English and were almost totally dependent on England for food, fuel and manufactured goods. They were also a holiday destination for the English but otherwise not of strategic value in the war (so thought the British). For Hitler, however, occupying the Channel Islands was his first (and only as it turns out) foothold in England. This was to be a "model occupation", and for various reasons, as the book well explains, it was. Basically the British armed forces abandoned the islands when it became clear Hitler was approaching and left the islanders to cope on their own. They coped as best they could with dwindling supplies and under punishing restrictions (no cars, no radios), but after five years there was sometimes a fine line between captives and captor, the latter pretty much abandoned as Hitler started pulling back and ultimately losing the war. The camps and slave laborers were another side as well, and the author has done, I feel, a very good job presenting all the evidence she could find and coerce from both the locals and former slave laborers. This book was written in 1995. No doubt less of the individuals Madeline Bunting interviewed would be alive today. The Model Occupation is a fascinating study in war, politics and human nature.
My interest in the subject was sparked by a British drama series called "Island at War". I think the two together make for a very good insight.
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