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Today’s History Lesson comes from a note I jotted down months ago…”Germany occupies Channel Islands“. That phrase probably won’t have the seed-power comparable to “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit“, but it does give us something to talk about.
The Channel Islands are a small group of islands just a few miles off the coast of France. Where? Here. There are two large islands (Guernsey & Jersey), three small islands (Herm, Sark, & Alderney), and a handful of tiny islets. Despite their proximity to France, they were (and currently are) owned by the British.
With the fall of France in 1940 and the retreat of the British back to England, it doesn’t take a scientist to realize that the Channel Islands were badly exposed at a time when defending them was nearly impossible. So, during the final week of June 1940, the British government reluctantly ordered the Islands demilitarized and the troops recalled, essentially defaulting the territory to Germany.
The Germans carried out two bombing raids before occupying the Channel Islands on June 30, 1940. It would be the only British territory that the Germans would take in the War, so Adolf Hitler was pretty proud of it. And in what can only be explained as a fit of Hitlerian goofiness, he decided to create a huge fortress out of the islands. And so, for nearly three years, Germany wasted an exorbitant amount of money, man-hours, concrete, guns, and military personnel to built what, admittedly, was an impressive defense system…
…only to have it bypassed by the Allies when they invaded France in 1944. Furthermore, nearly 30,000 German soldiers occupied what amounted to a backwater fort…soldiers that probably would have been far more useful to the war effort had they been used anywhere else. In the end, the German occupation of the Channel Islands turned out to be a huge victory…for the Allies.
Recommended Reading: The Channel Islands 1941-45 – For a relatively small operation, there are a lot of resources available concerning the Channel Islands. This is the one in my collection, and I’m gaining an affinity for the Osprey books.
Joel,
Thank you for remembering the Channel Islands Occupation. There are many “comprehensive” WWII books that do not even mention it.
May I humbly call your attention to my own book, a novel about the occupation called “War on the Margins.” Most of the characters in it are real people, and I quote extensively from BBC transcripts and the Jersey Archive. It’s available on Amazon. You can read the first chapter by going to my website http://www.waronthemargins.com and clicking on the link.