Channel Islands' Occupation "Ultimate Home Front Story"

Wednesday 15 August 2018

The Channel Islands wartime Occupation represents the “ultimate home-front story”, according to the author of a new book on the subject.

Duncan Barrett spent three months in the Channel Islands in summer 2016 interviewing people who had lived through the German Occupation and said it offered a unique perspective of Britain’s wartime experience.

“I have always had an interest in the home front, and the occupation is the ultimate home front story," he said. "It is everything, from home - you put food on the table, make do and mend and you literally have the enemy on your doorstep. It, more generally, gives an insight into war.”

Mr Barrett interviewed around 100 people for the book, with some 65 in Guernsey, 12 in Sark and the rest in Jersey. What he found out helped challenge some of his conventions about what life was like.

“I did have preconceived ideas, but the story that surprised me the most was when I spoke to someone called Pearl and she spoke about how amateur dramatics became so important, because the cinema became so unappealing with the German propaganda films, amateur dramatics became one of the few forms of entertainment, people would join and Pearl was saying she put a lot of effort in, as they knew it was important to keep morale up.”

One of the aims behind the book, he said, was to increase the knowledge of the occupation in the UK, as despite the renewed interest in the Second World War, the plight of the Channel Islands between 1940 and 1945 remained relatively unknown. 

“I think it is ridiculous that people don’t know more about it [The Occupation]. In school we learnt a lot about the Second World War, but the Occupation was never mentioned. 

“It was never really mentioned on the mainland during the war because of the bad PR, it was a bit of a thorn in the side. After the war the [British] Home Secretary said he had enough white wash to cover the Channel Islands. In the 1990s it came back to people’s attention a lot more, but that tended to focus on negativity angles and potential collaboration.”

The release and subsequent success of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society movie has helped raise awareness, Mr Barrett added, and should continue to do so going forward. Although raw nerves remained about what happened, Mr Barrett said that for the most part people he interviewed were “willing to answer” the questions and did not find the subject too difficult to speak about.

“His generals spoke about “Hitler’s island madness”, I don’t know why he never came over. Churchill had a much more negative feeling about the island, and said in the speech on VE [Victory in Europe] Day our “dear Channel Islands” through gritted teeth. But, it was his advisors who told him they would have to withdraw military forces from the Channel Islands, and Churchill described demilitarising them as repugnant.

“From then on he seems to have formed this distorted impression, and thought the island was being run by quislings. After D-Day when the islands began to run out food and people were writing to him literally begging for food, he famously wrote in the margin “let them starve”, as he was obsessed with the idea that if you sent supplies the Germans would have them – so was he talking about letting the Germans starve, or the population?”

There was a divide in those he interviewed between those who were pro and anti-Churchill, he said.

"Pearl said to me, when she heard the VE broadcast and he mentioned our dear Channel Islands, that she turned to her sister and said, 'he couldn’t care less if we had all been shot'."

Hitler’s British Isles is on sale now. 

Follow the author  @barrettsbooks.