HISTORY

The last Chase

Richard Plos

Liberation of The Channel Islands

In the late evening of June 30, 1940 the German soldiers set foot on the British soil. A statement resembling an alternative history tale is describing the real event. On that day, the Channel Islands became an occupied territory and remained as such until

the end of hostilities. When their liberation begun, pilots of two Canadian squadrons were participating in the operation.

Abandoned

Great Britain lacked resources to defend the

Islands so the Cabinet’s majority opinion was

to demilitarize them and leave them on their

own as so called „open islands“. This decided

the fate of some 45,000 citizens living on Jersey, the largest island of the achipelago and

another 40,000 people who inhabited the second largest island of Guernsey. Roughly 2,000

people lived on the smaller islands of Alderney and Sark while the smallest islettes of

Herm, Brecqhou and Jethou were more-less

uninhabited (one family lived on Herm). On

June 19 the British government informed the

representatives of the Islands about the situation. The uniforms, equipment and weapons of

the local armed forces were to be stored in the

deposits and all private weapons handed over

to the police. All this against the Prime Minister

Winston Churchill’s will. In the resulting chaos,

fueled by the islanders‘ worries about their future, the women and children’s evacuation was

INFO Eduard - May 2021

organized and afterwards the men aged 20 to

33 were allowed entry to the British Isles as

long as they committed to the British military service. The armed forces personnel which

were deployed on the Islands at that time

were also evacuated. The last one thousand

men left aboard SS Biarritz on June 20. In total roughly 30,000 inhabitants fled the Channel

Islands, leaving 41,101 on Jersey and 24,420 on

Guernsey. Nearly all 470 people living on Sark

decided to stay, while all but 18 citizens were

evacuated from Alderney on contrast. After

the evacuation 66,118 people remained on the

Channel Islands, joined by some 15,000 and later up to 30,000 German soldiers. Some 12,000

prisoners of war were kept on the islands as

well, forced to work on the fortifications and

military infrastructure. The

ratio of the local population

to the number of occupying

military units was unheard

of.

Unnecessary casualties

The information about the

Islands demilitarization did

not reach the Germans unfortunately and therefore

on June 26 Luftwaffe conducted several reconnaissance flights over the Islands. On June 23 Admiral

Eugen Lindau, Marinebefehlshaber

Bordfrankreich (Naval Commander for

Northern France) reported to Admiral Karlgeorg

Schuster that the reconnaissance flights

discovered long columns of trucks in both

Guernsey and Jersey ports which were “probably bringing the military reinforcements”.

On the contrary, the last soldiers had left the

Islands already and the trucks in the pictures were full of tomatoes (on Guernsey) and

potatoes (on Jersey). As a result, on June 28

several Heinkel He 111s took off from Cherbourg in the late afternoon. Their mission was

to bomb the Islands from the altitude of 3,300

to 8,200 ft (1,000 m up to 2,500 m). If this action

did not provoke any response, it meant that

the Islands military force was weak or even

non-existent.

At 18:55 the bombers appeared over La Roque

(Jersey) and dropped their loads on the port.

Photo: Imperial War Museum

Although the Channel Islands can be seen by

a naked eye off the French coast, they belong

to the United Kingdom and as similar to the

Isle of Man they are the property of the British

Crown. The local lifestyle before the Second

World War was laid back, besides agriculture

the local population made living off the tourism.

Still in the spring of 1940 the Islands were advertised as an attractive vacation destination!

But the German war plans incorporated their

occupation even before the attack on Poland.

And when on June 16, 1940 the German army

marched into the streets of Paris the British

government knew the Islands are doomed.

Wehrmacht invaded the Channel Islands at the end of the June 1940.

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