3 days ago
- Politics
- Irish Independent
‘Britain Under the Nazis' review: Riveting documentary lifts the lid on the Nazis' overlooked occupation of the Channel Islands
Strangely, the factual story of Germany's five-year occupation of the Channel Islands has been, if not exactly ignored, notably under-exploited by fiction writers, historians and even documentarians.
The superb two-part documentary Britain Under the Nazis: The Forgotten Occupation (Channel 4, Thursday, May 29, 8pm) should go some way towards rectifying the imbalance.
Winston Churchill's famous 'we shall fight on the beaches' speech didn't extend to the beaches of Guernsey, Jersey or their neighbouring islands, despite his pledge to defend them.
Since the islands were of no strategic importance, he withdrew all military presence from them on June 14, 1940, leaving 94,000 islanders on Guernsey to fend for themselves.
Ships were laid on for those who wished to evacuate and 25,000 people left. But a breakdown in communication meant Germany didn't know the islands had been demilitarised. On June 30, the Luftwaffe struck, killing 44 people.
The occupation proper began on July 1. Director Jack Warrender's film uses the first-hand testimony of islanders, drawn from their personal diaries, to tell the story of life under occupation, while historians Prof Gilly Carr and Dr Louise Willmot provide context with a light touch.
Actors deliver the words straight to camera. Despite the irritating tic of occasionally showing the camera crew filming them, which takes us out of the story a little, it's a riveting account of a complex chapter in wartime history.
'I feel the tremor of bombs being dropped in the distance,' wrote Frank Falla, a reporter with the Guernsey Star. 'For the first time since the outbreak of the war, the full impact of what it means hits me. Despite the sunshine, I feel cold.'
With one German soldier for every three islanders and the Swastika raised over government buildings, it must have felt like the war had already been lost.
Falla and his colleagues had opted to remain at their desks, even if it meant being censored by the Nazis, rather than let the newspaper come completely under their control.
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He and others distributed their own underground newsletter featuring the news from the BBC. Hitler regarded seizing the Channel Islands as a valuable propaganda tool, even to the extent of drafting in slave labourers to build the Atlantic Wall.
A picture in a Wehrmacht newspaper showed some islanders seemingly giving the Nazi salute. In fact, they were raising their hands in response to being asked if they spoke French or German.
One Jersey islander who tried to spread the truth was artist and anti-fascist activist Claude Cahun, who shared a house with her 'stepsister' – in reality, her lifelong partner.
As a lesbian and a Jew, she was in double peril. Nonetheless, she tried to persuade German soldiers to rebel by distributing notes she described as her 'paper bullets'. Viewed as incitement to mutiny, this was punishable by death.
Women who had affairs, and even babies, with German soldiers were labelled 'Jerrybags' and ostracised after the war
In one startling diary extract, Jersey's bailiff Alexander Coutanche wrote of keeping relations with the German officer in charge cordial. 'We agree mutually that we are enemies, but at least we can behave like gentlemen.'
Things weren't quite so cordial later in the occupation when the mass deportation of Jews, as well as residents born elsewhere, began, and when concentration camps were built on Alderney. The tiny island is officially recognised as a Holocaust site.
The lone German voice here is that of German officer Hans Max von Aufsess, who appears to have treated his time on Jersey as a holiday. He wrote euphemistically about the 'good understanding between German soldiers and English girls'.
Women who had affairs, and even babies, with German soldiers were labelled 'Jerrybags' and ostracised after the war.
Eighty years on, the collaboration, whether sexual or otherwise, of some islanders with the Nazis has left scars that still hurt.
Both episodes of 'Britain Under the Nazis' are streaming on from today.
Rating: Five stars
