During the German occupation of the Channel Islands, there was limited resistance. The islands had a very high number of German soldiers compared to the civilian population, one soldier for every 2-3 civilians, which reduced options; this linked to the severe penalties imposed by the occupiers meant that only forms of non-lethal resistance were used by the population. Even so, over twenty civilians died for resistance against the occupiers.
Background
From the British declaration of war on Germany in September 1939 until May 1940, a number of Channel Islanders had left to volunteer for the armed forces in Britain or to work in associated war industries, whilst British people came to the Channel Islands on holiday.
On 10 May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded France and the Low Countries. The Blitzkrieg (Lightning War) tactics took the Western powers by surprise. By the time of the resignation of the French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud on 16 June, it was obvious that Germany victory in the Battle of France was inevitable. In the Channel Islands, civilians worried about the consequences of remaining on the islands but, to avoid panic, were told by the authorities to stay put. Senior officials were ordered to stay to maintain order and to keep the Government functioning. On 15 June, the British government decided to demilitarise the islands, evacuating the British garrisons and leaving them undefended. The Germans were not informed, however, and on 28 June German Heinkel bombers from Cherbourg bombed and strafed the harbours of Saint Peter Port and Saint Helier killing 38 and wounding 45 civilians. Evacuation boats for civilians only became available on 20 June and again, to stop a panic, people were still told to remain where they were and that only women and children should be taken. Only when the Lieutenant Governors of the islands evacuated was the recommendation relaxed. The last official ships sailed on 23 June.
In total 17,000 from Guernsey, 6,600 from Jersey and all the 1,400 on Alderney travelled to England. The size of the evacuation inevitably reduced the pool of potential active resistors in the Islands once the Germans landed and began their occupation on 30 June 1940.
German occupation authorities
The German occupation administration in the Channel Islands reported to Paris, the headquarters of Army Group A where two branches, the Verwaltungsstab for civilian matters and the Kommandostab who dealt with military matters, controlled occupied France.
The German military Police, the Feldgendarmerie (Field Police) were in operation on both Islands. Their line of reporting was directly to the Field Commander in each Island and dealt with all crimes as well as routine traffic control and guarding installations. They formed working relationships with the civilian policemen as their scope of operations frequently overlapped. The Geheime Feldpolizei (Secret Field Police) were tasked with detecting sabotage and subversion and reported to the SS.
Aside from the various security forces, a large number of German troops were also garrisoned in the Islands. In October 1944, there were 12,000 soldiers in Jersey and 13,000 in Guernsey. This should be compared to the civilian populations of 39,000 in Jersey and 23,000 in Guernsey: ratios of 1:3 and 1:2. By comparison, there were a mere 100,000 Germans in the whole of the German-zone in France in December 1941, responsible for a population of over 25 million (a ratio of 1:250), although the ratio later reduced to around 1:80. Over 17,000 private houses were used for billeting German soldiers in 1942.
Growth of resistance
Demographics
In July 1940, the few military personnel trapped on the Islands were identified and sent to POW camps. A year later, all trained army officers in the Islands, many being retired British people who would be deported from the Islands to Germany in 1942, or were Islanders who had served in World War I, many of these holding positions of authority in the Island Governments were identified. What was left were elderly veterans and civilian men and women, with no weapons or communications with Britain to give guidance.
Scholar Louise Willmot said that the percentage of the population actively resisting German occupation in other European countries was 0.6 to 3 percent and that the percentage of the islander population participating in acts of active resistance was comparable. From a wartime population of 66,000 in the Channel IslandsWillmot, Louise, (May 2002) The Goodness of Strangers: Help to Escaped Russian Slave Labourers in Occupied Jersey, 1942-1945, Contemporary European History, Vol. 11, No. 2, p. 214. Downloaded from JSTOR. a total of around 4,000 islanders were sentenced for breaking laws (around 2,600 in Jersey and 1,400 in Guernsey), although many of these were for criminal acts rather than resistance; 570 prisoners were sent to continental prisons and camps, and at least 22 persons from Jersey and 9 from Guernsey did not return. Willmott estimated that over 200 people in Jersey provided material and moral support to escaped forced workers, including over 100 who were involved in the network of safe houses sheltering escapees.
Organisation
The British government had ordered the Islands leaders and crown officers to remain in the Islands and do their duties in the interest of the inhabitants. The British government had further demilitarised the Islands in late June 1940 and did little or nothing to foster or help any form of resistance in the Islands.
Resistance efforts were rarely organised; those that were, were organised through the traditional social networks of the Islands. The absence of political parties and the weakness of trade unions meant that political networks that facilitated resistance in other countries were lacking in the Channel Islands. Patriotic pride was bound up more in survival than in imagery of resistance. Some individuals who were later eligible for awards from the Soviet Union for their help towards Soviet prisoners were reluctant to participate in what they considered propaganda. Personal contacts between fugitive prisoners and the families that had helped them were in some cases maintained after the war despite the Cold War and the barriers to communication. Communists and conscientious objectors, groups regarded with disdain by many Islanders, were among those who identified with and sympathised with fugitive workers. Others sympathised on compassionate grounds; some offering help in the way they hoped members of their own family caught up in the war might be treated by others wherever they might be. Some saw helping fugitives as the only practical way of defying the Germans in the face of obstacles to more active forms of resistance. In other occupied countries, those who sheltered victims of Nazism were generally offering help to local deserters from forced service and Jews – mostly their friends, neighbours, family, or people from the same social milieu. With so few Jews in the community, and the forced labour situation being different, in the Channel Islands those who helped fugitives were generally harbouring strangers with whom they did not share a language.
Norman Le Brocq of the Jersey Communist Party (JCP) led a resistance group called Jersey Democratic Movement (JDM). The resistance helped many of the Soviet forced labourers that the Germans had brought to the island. JDM, the JCP and Transport and General Workers' Union distributed propaganda. With the aid of a German deserter, Paul Mulbach, they apparently had some success in turning the soldiers of the garrison against their masters, including most notably the highest military authority in the Islands, Huffmeier. There is some evidence to suggest that they had even set a date for this mutiny (1 May 1945) but that it was rendered pointless by the suicide of Adolf Hitler. Peter Tabb suggests that they were involved in the blowing up of the Palace Hotel and of separate ammo dumps; in fact it is more likely that their involvement was to set fire to the hotel, and the German efforts to put out the subsequent blaze by using dynamite to create a breach between the flames were misjudged and set off charges in a neighbouring ammo dump. Nevertheless, the JCP do seem to have made many plans for organised resistance.Tabb, A Peculiar Occupation, (Jersey 2005)
Escapees
A total of 225 islanders, such as Peter Crill, escaped from the islands to England or France: 150 from Jersey, and 75 from Guernsey. A high number of people drowned or failed to escape and were captured. Five boats left Guernsey the day after the occupation started. The number of escapes increased after D-Day, when conditions in the islands worsened as supply routes to the continent were cut off, the desire to join in the liberation of Europe increased and the route shortened.
In May 1942, three youngsters, Peter Hassall, Maurice Gould, and Denis Audrain, attempted to escape from Jersey in a boat (Audrain drowned, Hassall and Gould were imprisoned in Germany, where Gould died). Following this escape attempt, restrictions on small boats and watercraft were introduced and after each attempt, further temporary bans and restrictions and penalties were imposed.
Some escapees carried information on the Islands fortifications and the defending forces as well as messages. Successful escapees were debriefed to obtain as much information as possible on conditions in the Islands. One escapee was met by HM Customs and Excise who charged him 10/- import duty on his dinghy.
Once the Cherbourg peninsula was in allied control, an "easier" escape route became possible. Amongst those heading to France were two American officers, Captain Ed Clark and Lieutenant George Haas, who escaped from the prisoner of war camp at St. Helier on 8 January 1945. Assisted by several residents, including Deputy W.J. Bertram of BEM East Lynne, Fauvic, they crossed to the Cotentin Peninsula in a small boat on the night of 19 January 1945. The penalty for anyone caught helping them was death.
Forms of resistance
Resistance involved passive resistance, acts of minor sabotage, sheltering and aiding escaped slave workers, and publishing underground newspapers containing news from BBC Radio. Penalties if caught could be severe.
Resistance started very early in the occupation; a local newspaper published on 1 July 1940 the "Ordre of the Kommandant of the German Forthes in occupation of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, Alderney and Sarc", using the exact spelling they were given.
There were no radio transmitters available to civilians in the islands as transmitters required licences, so all owners were known to the authorities, nor was any attempt made by the British to deliver a radio to the islands. The islands stayed isolated and out of contact with Britain throughout the occupation.
Inherent resistance
The physical location of the Islands, the loyalty of the Islanders to the British Crown and the fact that it was the only part of "British" territory that was captured by the German forces, resulted in a strong desire, especially by Hitler himself, to defend and spend excessive amounts of time and energy on the Islands. The "Festung" books, hand created with coloured drawings for Hitler, showing in great detail the Islands defences are testament to his interest in the Islands.