Dan Snow's History Hit - The Nazi Occupation of Jersey

Episode Date: May 18, 2025

The only British territory ever occupied by the Nazis was the Channel Islands. From 1940 to the end of the war, the Germans turned Jersey, and some of the islands around it, into an impenetrable fortress. It became a key strategic part of Hitler’s defensive Atlantic Wall and a base from which he hoped to invade Britain. Under German occupation, islanders suffered under a repressive regime… Some were even sent to internment camps in Germany. In return, thousands of prisoners of war were brought over to work as slave labourers, building the Nazi’s extensive defence network across the island. On the 80th anniversary of its liberation, Dan explores the island and tells the story of Jersey’s suffering and resilience under enemy control. This episode was made in collaboration with Visit Jersey. You can find more information on all the places Dan visits in this episode here:Visit Jersey: https://www.jersey.com/Jersey Heritage: https://www.jerseyheritage.org/Jersey War Tours: https://www.jerseybunkertours.com/Jersey War Tunnels: https://www.jerseywartunnels.com/ArtHouse Jersey 'Structures & Memory' Exhibition: https://www.arthousejersey.je/our-work/structures-memory-a-place-called-wurzachWIth thanks to Lucy Layton, Lola Garvin & ArtHouse Jersey, Michael Billings, Chris Addy, Phil Marett, Jersey Heritage and BBC Jersey for the archive, Fishing Jersey and Aaron from Lakey Bikes. Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore. The production manager was Beth Donaldson and production support from Annie Woodman and Peta Stamper. 

This is the sound of Liberation Day in Jersey. I'm standing on a very very busy street right at the heart of St Helier, the biggest town. There is a parade of people marching past all around me from balconies and flagpoles. We've got Union flags and the flag of Jersey flying taut in the easterly breeze that's blowing today. The sun is out, there's not a cloud in the sky. It's perfect weather because thousands of people of Jersey have come out to mark to commemorate and celebrate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of this island from nazi occupation in may 1945 and there's an urgency to this commemoration because the people of jersey they understood what it was to live under the yoke

of tyranny to live live under Nazi military occupation. And it's the anniversary of their liberation, and clearly they intend to celebrate it. The only British territory in Europe ever occupied by the Nazis was here, in the Channel Islands. From 1940 to the very end of the war in Europe, Jersey was under Nazi domination. The Germans turned Jersey and the islands around it into an impregnable fortress. Jersey became both a base from which he one day hoped to invade Britain, but also a key part of Hitler's defensive Atlantic War.

Under German occupation, islanders suffered under a repressive regime. And so did the thousands of forced and enslaved labourers who were brought to construct the Nazis' extensive defensive network across the island. Today in Jersey, the history of its occupation is still very poignant. It feels very present. From the annual liberation commemorations in May to the vast number of historical sites that are now open to the public across this beautiful island. There's an arterial network of hidden Nazi tunnels. There are fortresses and museums. Jersey's landmarks, they give us the best insight we have

into what Britain under German occupation might have looked like. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. In this very special episode, I'm in Jersey to tell you its incredible story of occupation and liberation, of its suffering and resilience under enemy control. I've come down to one of Jersey's many beaches now, wide golden sand and as if on cue a Spitfire is doing low passes over our head. In the distance I can see France, I'm only about 14 miles away from the French coast which is a stone's throw in military terms,

or more accurately, a heavy shells trajectory. And yet, despite the fact that we're really, really close to France, Jersey and the rest of the Channel Islands are defined as being part of the British Isles, really, their British territory. So as German forces swept across France in the summer of 1940,

well, these islands were a tempting prize. They were very close to the French coast and they were British sovereign territory. It would be one in the eye for Winston Churchill. And it demonstrated that Britain was unable to defend all of its far-flung empire, even islands so close to its homelands. The Brits, for their part,

well, they made a controversial decision, I suppose. They decided not to try and defend Jersey. The Brits, for their part, well, they made a controversial decision, I suppose. They decided not to try and defend Jersey. They actually did the opposite. They withdrew ostentatiously all military from the island. All troops and weapons were evacuated. The belief in Whitehall, which was understandable, was that they wouldn't be able to defend Jersey anyway.

There would be a huge number of civilian casualties if some kind of heroic last stand were to take place on the island so instead the humane thing to do was just accept the inevitable just leave the island open to occupation the british did offer to evacuate people so in just a couple of days in that summer of 1940 islanders were forced to make a decision should they abandon their homes and evacuate to the mainland which for many people would have been an unknown territory a foreign land effectively or do they stay with their friends their community their family and just around 7 000 people left well something like 40 000 stayed in jersey it did not take long for the germans to arrive on june the 28th the german aircraft bombed the harbour in st helier

they thought a line of lorries carrying potatoes for export was in fact a military convoy. They killed 10 civilians which was a tragedy and an ominous sign of what was to follow. In the days to come more and more German aircraft flew over Jersey and this time they dropped something a little bit different. They dropped letters demanding the island surrender. They demanded that the inhabitants should fly white flags and paint white crosses on the ground. Knowing they didn't really have any choice, fearing what would happen if they refused, the islanders acquiesced.

So it was on the 1st of July, 1940, that German troops arrived in Jersey. At first only a couple of thousand, but over the years that would grow to well over 10,000 men. I'm going to turn myself away from this beautiful day on the beach with Spitfires flying overhead and little wavelets lapping against the jagged rocks at low tide because I'm very keen to go and check out the Jersey Museum that overlooks this bay and in the museum they've got an astonishing and well quite chilling collection of objects. They're going to tell me the next chapter of this story.

They've got cartloads of German helmets that were stuffed into abandoned tunnels. They've got diaries of local people punished by the Nazis. So I'm heading out and I'm going to meet curator Lucy Leighton from Jersey Heritage to pick up the story. Right, Lucy, thanks for having me here. Oh, pleasure. thank you for coming. How do you characterise Jersey before the Second World War? Would it have felt like a corner of, well to most people it felt like a corner of Britain?

I think it was different in character. It had a more French feel, particularly in the country parishes. The local language, Geriaire, would have been spoken quite widely. Not so much in St Helier, lots of tourists coming to visit the island, but also exports of particularly Jersey royal potatoes and outdoor grown tomatoes. They were really important to the island's economy. So lots of activity around the harbour. And Jersey had been fought over a lot in the past, the American Revolution War, but since then, in the First World War, it didn't come under threat.

Did people think the same would be true of the Second World War in 1939? What was their expectation? I think in 1939, yes, Jersey felt like a very safe place to be. In fact, in March 1940, the island's tourism committee was actually advertising wartime holidays to the island, so they didn't see Jersey as under threat. Little did they know, a few short months later, the island would be occupied. Obviously, the whole world reeled at the success of the German army in the Battle of France. It just took everyone by surprise. People will be familiar with the story of Dunkirk and the fall

of the French government. But on Jersey, people must have watched the news with increasing consternation because they knew it would affect them. Well, the war was creeping closer. There were British troops stationed here, but the British government decided to withdraw them. So the islands were declared a demilitarized zone. And then, of course, I think that really made islanders realize that they were on the front line. A lot of people decided to evacuate. But for some islanders, they may never have really left the island before. And to go to uproot

everything and go to what is essentially a foreign country, to go to England and throw yourself on the mercy of strangers would have been a really hard decision to make. And some people were running farms. They couldn't just abandon their animals and leave. So it was a very hard decision to make. And some people were running farms. They couldn't just abandon their animals and leave. So it was a very hard decision to make. And in the end, only about 6,600 people decided to evacuate. Was that evacuation sort of well managed or was it a bit of a panic to sort of get out before the Germans arrived? Yeah, I think it all happened very quickly. People were limited with the amount of luggage they could take. There are some photographs of families sitting at the harbour waiting for boats. I think initially it was probably fairly well organised. By the end, people were filling sort of potato boats and coal boats in any way they could find to get off the island.

And there were also stories about people who were queuing in the warm sun, planning to evacuate, and then actually in the end deciding perhaps we should stay. And so then people returned home. So it was a very confusing time. People had to make those decisions, what turned out to be really momentous decisions because they didn't know they'd be leaving their homes for five years, but they had to make those decisions very quickly. And when the Germans arrived, was there an orderly transition of power

or was there violence? I mean, the Germans used the local newspaper, the Evening Post. They were in control of that and censored it. They used it to deliver all their notices to inform people about the restrictions that were going to start being placed on daily life. And those did come about very quickly. I mean, they introduced things like German signage. People had to drive on the other side of the road. Gradually, there were orders banning cameras.

Later on, radios or wireless sets were confiscated. Curfews were introduced. Rationing was introduced. Being an island, they had to be very careful about managing supplies. So, yes, there was a gradual process of more and more restrictions being placed on daily life. process of more and more restrictions being placed on daily life. Over the past 80 years, Jersey Heritage has collected an astonishing archive of accounts from islanders that recall the occupation. This selection of memories, shared by BBC Jersey radio show, on how children noticed life changing, is particularly interesting. It humanises the first wave of German occupiers in

a striking way. How those on the ground, at least in the beginning, the regular German soldier, had some commonality with the islanders. You get a sense of how this occupation was just something they were all caught up in. No one knew then how hard things would get. During the first days of the occupation, the one thing that I noticed very much was the amount of chocolate all the Germans were buying. As we'd had plenty of chocolate in the shops, I didn't realise that perhaps there was none in Germany or wherever they came from. They, of course, had been deprived of consumer goods in Germany for some time, and this was a sort of holiday for them. We had been brought up under a barrage of propaganda, like everyone else, that these were terrible people.

Well, of course, when these ordinary people came here, these ordinary young soldiers who were interested, like all other young soldiers all over the world, in basically in entertainment, in girls, in food, and when they were going home on leave. And these young Germans were no different. and these young Germans were no different. But they did think, because of their lightning sweep through Europe, and they'd done so well as an army, that they thought the Channel Islands were a stepping stone to England, and they were all highly elated, all in very good mood, in very good frame of mind, and very happy. Did Hitler make a big deal of occupying Jersey?

Was it a propaganda coup, the fact that they're taking British territory? Absolutely. It was a huge coup for the Germans. There are some extraordinary photographs that they took of British policemen standing next to German guards outside the town hall. There's another one that springs to mind of a German soldier buying an ice cream from a Jersey ice cream seller. These were really powerful images and Hitler used this to, I suppose, what they wanted to do was give Britain a sense of, you know,

you might be next. The people of Jersey were used as pawns in Hitler's games with Britain in other ways too. What had happened is the Brits in Tehran had imprisoned some Germans who were in Tehran, which was a neutral country, and Hitler didn't forgive them. And he said, I want reprisals. And he thought he'd take hostage. So we'll take Channel Islanders. We were bargaining chips. This is Lola Garvin. She's a native Jersey woman who was taken with her family by the Nazis on Hitler's direct orders and sent to an internment camp on the continent. She was one of those 618 islanders

who was imprisoned at Wersack in southern Germany. She's now chairman of the St Helier and Bad Wersack Twinning Committee that connects the two communities through their shared history. On the 15th of September 1942, I was eight months old, a policeman came knocking on the door with a document, presented it to my dad. And we were given 24 hours to be down at the harbour with one suitcase per family, warm clothes and enough food for 48 hours. And that was it. So the panic situation, because one didn't know where one was going, how long it would be. It was the uncertainty.

Our poor dog had to be put down. All these personal things in such a short time. As a family, you had to go into the docks, 25 minutes. Yes. And get on a ship and you could have gone anywhere. Could have gone anywhere. It took two days to get from Jersey to Bad Wilsap because we went in this dirty old coal tender ship to St. Marlow. And from there, we went just about all over Western Europe in the train, only traveling at night. And they put us in a siding in the daytime because they wanted to

preserve us, of course. And then we got to Biberac to a camp, had a problem in Biberac with the Guernsey crowd who had arrived because of the rivalry between Jersey and Guernsey. They're the real enemy. Yes, that's right. Actually, you say that. And we just didn't get on. The families didn't get on with the Guernsey families. And so they had to move the Jersey crowd out. And so they moved us down south to this old, what they call a castle, but it was a sort of a run-down manor house. And it was in a parlour state, very dirty. There'd been some French prisoners of war there. The women were literally having to scrape the dirt off the floors and the furniture with shards of glass. It was so filthy. How many of you were there? There were about 650 of us, men, women and

children. And the men were put in men's dormitories and then the women and children put in these huge dormitories with like 30, 40 screaming kids and women who didn't know each other. And you were there like 24-7 with these people stuck in this room, except when you were allowed to go out for a breath of fresh air. So you're really saying to her, but you were imprisoned, really. We were. It was a prison. It was a prison behind barbed wire, only allowed to go out into the grounds for walks once every two weeks. But the food was horrendous.

Black bread and potatoes and sort of horrible liquid soupy stuff. But I hasten to add the German people in the villages were absolutely wonderful. They were so kind to the kids. So as we were sort of marched past the little houses in the village, they used to come and give us sweets. And also they'd made wooden toys. So I kept some of the toys and took them back to Jersey with me. And these are now some of your earliest memories because you sort of grew up there. Yes, that's right. Yes, first three years. There must have been such fear initially. I think so. It was the horror of everyday life, the stress of confinement, of being in such close proximity to all these

other people with all their problems and their states of mind. Back in Jersey, things were also pretty bleak. Food supplies dwindled as German occupiers ramped up their activity on the island. From 1941, the Germans set to work turning the island into an impregnable fortress to protect it from potential Allied invasion. It became a key part of Hitler's defensive Atlantic Wall. Today, you can find coffee shops housed in repurposed German bunkers, surfshacks operating out of old fortifications, and here you can find one of the best preserved feats of Nazi engineering left in Europe. Hewn into the rock, the Jersey War tunnels are an extraordinary burrow of tunnels stretching deep into the earth for over a kilometre. Built at first as an artillery garage,

it was later turned into an underground hospital in anticipation of a bloody Allied invasion. Its complex, winding galleries with rooms for medical wars, stores, operations and offshoot tunnels leading into darkness give astonishing insight into the building power and the sinister ambition of the German war machine. This is Captain Michael Billings, the operations manager at the tunnels, which now houses a multi-sensory museum

telling the story of Jersey's five years of German occupation. Michael, this is a vast site, isn't it? Yes, absolutely. What was the purpose originally? So this was built as part of the 1941 plan, as part of the Atlantic Wall. So when that was being put together by Hitler, it had to go all the way from North Norway,

right the way down to the Pyrenees, and the Channel Islands were included. Psychologically, they'd taken a piece of British territory. And they wanted to hold on to it. And they wanted to really put it to the British that we've got this. So they put a force on here. And Organisation Todd was put together. And that meant building a series of tunnels.

Now, there's many tunnels on Jersey. Some embryonic, some completely finished. This is partially finished. It was built as an artillery garage. This is part of the place where they would have looked after and serviced the guns. Right, so it's almost an industrial and sort of storage facility down here. Hence the size, the vast size, a kilometre of tunnels finished. Wow.

Huge ceilings. So they're just borrowing into the rock that is Jersey. And anything they can put underground, they're putting underground because they're expecting Allied bombing, naval bombardments. They've got to bury everything. Yes. The Atlantic Wall came into pain because of how successful the Sea Creed line was. So they said, right, let's build an Atlantic Wall and this will stop an Allied advance. They picked this location for one of two reasons. The ease of digging into the rocks and the location of proximity to the airport. So the anti-aircraft battery is in a position to defend the airport

and assault any planes that go ahead at vast heights. And it was converted to a hospital when the war was changing and they thought a land invasion was imminent. At the anti-aircraft battery, they put an infantry screen around it because that would repel a land force's attack. And they converted this to a hospital which involved sinking a well, which is behind me, adding central heating with two massive boilers to put central heating in, improving the drainage, making it airtight. So when you walk in here you go through a series of doors, there's two on the left and two on the right at both

entrances and exits and the idea is it's somewhere you can clean before you go into a clean and sterile environment. This tunnel is an absolute masterpiece in skill and design. So they turn a sort of industrial storage and repair site into really an underground town? Pretty much. You'd have 500 people here. That's minus the staff. When we walked down the first corridor, you went through a series of rooms there, which would have been the bedrooms for the staff. As we went to the corner and turned right, that would have been the kitchens. There was one escape shaft there, so the exhaust for the stove would have been there. As you walk further down, the escape shaft there would have been the exhaust for the two boilers that were there to heat the tunnels.

So really, the technology down here was state-of-the-art. If you were to build it today, it'd still be state-of-the-art. When you walk into the cavernous tunnels, immediately feel the cold. And I don't think that's just the underground humidity. These tunnels were built by hundreds of slave labourers, brought here to the islands by Germans, mostly from Eastern Europe, to build fortifications. It's as though somehow there's a residue of the suffering that took place here,

lingering like condensation on the walls. It's estimated that more than 5,000 forced and enslaved labourers were brought to Jersey in the war. They started to categorise slaves from different categories. The worst, the underdogs were the Russians. They brought them over in their droves, treated them appallingly, fed them virtually nothing. And then it ranged through different parts of Europe, North Africa,

and these people were tiered. How worthless were they in the eyes of society Russians sitting at the bottom of the rest in different rankings and to add insult to injury you got a different colored card So depending on where you sat in the system You've got a black card a red card yellow card So you get a different colored card and that would be issued to you and that would give you your status your rational allowance your allocation for water where you stayed and When you read some of the history books,

Jewels and Jackboots by John Nettles, I put that book down at the point when he graphically describes how they hot-tired the feet of the Russian workers and then basically put sand and bits of gravel on them to give them mock-up shoes. So at that point, it was that graphic and that emotive to me of how one person could treat another,

how a nation could treat another nation. Given all of that that went on, being marched through the street, marched into the sea and washed naked, because the concrete construction they'd used to pull the water on the island, it's such a resource-heavy production. So it's likely that people will work to death in these tunnels?

They've run a very, very fine line because they needed the tunnels built. If they killed their entire workforce through exhaustion, the tunnels wouldn't get built. So they ran them to the limits of human capability. There was a night shift and a day shift. They drilled, blasted during the night, ran ventilation equipment, scraped it all out, and then concrete shuttered and built in during the day. So it was a two-team operation.

And they pushed them to the point of annihilation as strength of the human body can handle this section that we're standing in now is is very evocative isn't it because it's the unfinished section there's a lot of spoil that's still in there there's some rusty old machinery just you can imagine people chipping away at the rock and blasting out yes absolutely as part of the tunnel guest experience, there's an audio-visual where it shows workers in an unfinished tunnel environment chipping away at the ceiling rock in the process of bringing the ceiling down. So you can now hear the rocks and the blasting going on.

The workers are going to come into view now. You can sense from what we can see and what we can imagine this would have been a very cold, dark and terrifying experience. You're always chancing with death. They had very limited equipment. You can see them there with poles and sticks, hammers and picks. They used to use things called dog irons and a dog iron is to hold a shale plate, sort of a u-shaped bracket that they'd use to try and hold shale seams in place and stop them falling down on them but it was a high risk and a dangerous job especially considering there was virtually no health and safety protocols

no hard hats or safety equipment it was just people in rags bare feet or tarred feet chipping away making this underground kingdom of tunnels. And a lot of these would be Soviet prisoners of war? Yes, a lot of Russians that would have been down here. There are 22 people still down here. There was a collapse in the tunnels. They couldn't get them out. They tried and tried and tried. They're in an unfinished part of the tunnel.

This is their tomb. This is where they're resting places. An absolutely terrible, terrifying, frightening ordeal. frightening ordeal. These prisoners were housed in 13 locations across the island. They were made up of men from across Europe and North Africa. Boys as young as 15 and some men too old for conscription. Locals knew about the camps and would head up to the fences to share what food they could spare.

There were stories of relationships developing between inmates and women on the island. Some marriages were even permitted, mostly for the Spanish and Belgian prisoners. And when the war ended, those men stayed on Jersey with their partners, and the descendants of those relationships still live here today. There's one particularly famous story about a woman, Louisa Gould, who defied the Germans and risked everything to harbour a young Russian fugitive who'd escaped. She helped him because he reminded her of her son, who'd died fighting in Europe. This is Chris Addy, Sites Curator at the Jersey Museum. Louisa Gould was a shopkeeper in a rural location in St. Juan, which is the western parish of the island. On one particular occasion in 1942,

a Russian by the name of Fyodor Buri arrived at her home, who had escaped from his camp in St. Juan's and was desperately trying to find shelter. He had tried to escape on a number of occasions prior to that. She felt like she wanted to do something for another mother's son was an expression that she used but she took Theodore in and they chose a different name for him just so there was less likelihood of him being discovered so he became known as Bill and he was there for around two years. The story goes that she altered his clothes to fit him better and took comfort in having a young man in the house who she could take care of as she grieved. Initially, Theodore hid away from the windows, but eventually the pair became more relaxed. They would take walks together. Apparently they'd go to church on Sunday together. Theodore disguised in Louisa's son's old clothes.

He took the name Bill. He learned English. They would read together and play cards. He became part of her family and was moved between their homes for protection. But after two years in hiding, Louisa's neighbour gave the Germans a tip-off and her house was searched. Fortunately, there was enough time for Bill to be relocated to another home, but nevertheless, evidence was found in the house of Bill's presence,

and also other forbidden material, I believe including a radio, was found, and a number of other people were implicated, including her brother Harold LaDrillilenak, a schoolteacher. Louisa was sent off to prison on the continent before being transferred to Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany. In unthinkable conditions, in her mid-fifties, she struggled to keep up with the workload. She was deemed expendable. She was sent to the gas chambers and died on the 13th of February 1945. She was sent to the gas chambers and died on the 13th of February 1945. Her brother passed through a number of concentration camps and eventually was liberated from Bergen-Belsen.

He's the only British man known to have survived that experience. He had written extensively and taken part in broadcasts about his experiences in the camps. But there's a quotation that we have here from Harold. He described the camp of Belsen as a place with no food, no water. Sleep was impossible. We had to rise at 3.30 a.m. All my time here was spent in heaving dead bodies into mass graves.

Jungle law reigned among the prisoners. At night you killed or were killed. Harold was actually liberated there along with all of the other captives in mid-April of 45. He had an extended convalescence but he was actually able to testify in the Belton trial at Lundberg in October of 1945. So the Channel Islands certainly didn't escape some of the unimaginable horrors that the rest of occupied Europe faced. Yeah. There were many victims and we know that there were between 800 and 850 people who were imprisoned locally in the Gloucester Street prison. So those people may have been found guilty of crimes, including listening to radio, circulating the news, stealing German supplies, engaging in sabotage or generally acts of defiance and disobedience, including daubing the letter V for victory. engaging in sabotage or generally sort of acts of defiance and disobedience,

including daubing the letter V for victory. Resistance in Jersey took a slightly different form because being a small island, there weren't sort of hills to disappear up into. So resistance did take part in very small groups or sometimes within sort of groups of family members and friends. And there were individuals who also put themselves at incredible risk to help other people. who was a Jersey woman living in a fairly small terraced house in St. Helier, who sheltered in her home a Jewish woman called Heidi Berku, who was on the run from the Germans. She was actually of Jewish heritage, so the Germans had introduced restrictions against the few Jewish people living in the island during the occupation. She had her registration card marked with a J. Despite this, she was actually working as a translator for the Germans and she was under

suspicion for having stolen petrol coupons to give to a local doctor so he could visit patients who were in need of medical care. Because of her Jewish status, she was very vulnerable and she actually faked her suicide. So she left a suicide note, left a pile of her clothes on the beach and hoped that the Germans would think that she had disappeared into the water and drowned herself. In fact, she'd gone into hiding at the home of Dorothea LeBrock. The Germans weren't convinced by her story, so they put a notice in the local paper with her photograph, all her details, calling for information and making it very clear that anyone who aided her would face the severest penalties. But Dorothy Le Broc, despite the threat to her personal well-being, the threat to her life, she hid Haydee in her home for 18 months.

As I say, it was a very narrow house in town. It's not like hiding someone in a barn and a farm yard out in the country. There were neighbours who might have informed on them. They were having to share their rations. It's an incredible story of bravery. It must have been very difficult to be cooped up together in this house for 18 months. But what's extraordinary is that after the liberation, Haiti Burke, who went to the Jersey authorities and reported herself as being alive and well, having sheltered in Dorothy LeBrock's home for the 18 months of the war. So we have this note in her immigration file where she tells her story. Amazing. And luckily, they were not undiscovered.

Yeah, they were undiscovered. I think they must have had help from people to keep them going through those 18 months just in terms of food and but they survived the occupation and lived to tell the tale and actually Heidi went on to marry a German soldier that she'd met in Jersey before she went into hiding, and I think probably helped her with rations and medicine when she needed it. So again, showing the complexities of these stories, even though she was a Jewish woman in hiding, there was a friendly German soldier who assisted her, and later on they left the island but were married. As the war continued on, things became increasingly desperate on Jersey.

As the war began, things became increasingly desperate on Jersey. The Channel Islands were completely cut off from the rest of the German Empire after D-Day. There was no opportunity to bring in any additional supply lines. Rations became very, very strict. There was a black market operating, so perhaps people were able to get a bit here and there, people exchanged things, but things got very dire, particularly in that winter of 1944. Islanders were really saved from starvation by the arrival of the Red Cross ship Vega right at the end of December 1944, and that brought desperately needed food supplies. Without that, I think the islands would have faced starvation.

Many women could be seen to be suffering from malnutrition because they had undoubtedly sacrificed their rations to implement those of their children. Feeding the baby was a problem, but the farmer across the road was very kind and used to bring us milk, extra milk, after curfew when it was dark. But unfortunately, this had to stop

because there was an informer next door to him. And if he'd been caught, he would have been had up by the Germans. But people remained hopeful. They tuned in to their secret radios, listening to the BBC, to the news of the advancing Allied armies closing in on Berlin. They knew freedom was coming. Then, on the 8th of May 1945, the designated head of the German state, signed the Act of Unconditional Surrender of all German lands.

Churchill's speech was broadcast in St Helier. For the first time since the occupation, the bailiff, chief official of Jersey, was able to address his people. But it was about managing expectations. While the mainland celebrated on the evening of the 8th of May, Jersey waited in anticipation for their turn. Well, folks, I'm sure you guessed by now, there was no chance that I was going to come to a beautiful island like this, set in the Sapphire sea, and not get out on the water. And the argument that I presented to my producer, Mariana,

is that to really see Jersey properly, get a sense of it, and understand its rich history, yeah, you've got to approach it by sea. And that's exactly what we're doing now, folks. A little locally brewed Liberation Ale in a little bucket of ice, waiting for the conclusion of this recording on the morning of the 9th of may 1945 three different ships approached these shores you've got hms bulldog hms beagle and hms brissenden they were royal navy ships and they were here to liberate jersey the day before the 8th of May, had been VE Day. There'd been

celebrations across Europe as Germany had surrendered to the Allies. But in Jersey the mood had been more cautious. The people had heard rumours that the war was over but the island was still under German control. There'd been no liberation here, no Allied landings. There were thousands of German troops on Jersey. They were still armed, still dug into their formidable fortifications. no liberation here no allied landings there were thousands of german troops on jersey they were still armed still dug into their formidable fortifications that all of the channel islands were completely isolated they had little food or fuel and there was no guarantee at this point the germans just would leave peacefully so the next day after ve day just before 8 a.m two royal navy

officers sub-lieutenant david mill and Surgeon Lieutenant Ronald MacDonald, they landed here in St. Hillya and they walked into town. At the Pond Door Hotel which was right on the seafront, that had been a German naval headquarters during the war, the German flag was taken down and the Union flag was hoisted. There were cheers and there were celebrations in the square below. Crowds had gathered, people climbed on lampposts, they waved flags that had been hidden for years. People wept, they embraced.

Children who'd never known anything but occupation saw British soldiers in British uniforms for the first time. After five long years, Jersey was finally free. So a Royal Navy ship came in on the 9th. Yes, and the Force 135 Liberating Soldiers were the first soldiers ashore. And of course, they were greeted ecstatically by islanders. People rushed down when they knew that the surrender had been signed. They rushed down to St Helier to be part of the celebrations.

Church bells were ringing, car horns were being sounded, bicycle bells were ringing, people were gathering in great excitement and exchanging news. We simply mobbed the soldiers as they came ashore and there was laughter, there was weeping, there was cheering, clapping, embracing, hugging, total strangers. I'm sorry if I get a little bit emotional about it now. I still feel emotional when I think of that day. Because it didn't just mean liberation, but also sort of reconnection with the rest of the world,

because they'd just been isolated in this bubble of joy and occupation. Yes, I mean, the day itself was a day of mixed emotions. Of course, there was great joy, but a lot of people, because of the isolation of the islands, they'd lost touch with family and friends. They were dependent on Red Cross messages. So there was a huge amount of exchange of information for individuals. And then the island authorities themselves,

there was an enormous task to be done to get the island back to any feeling of normality. I mean, Force 135, they actually commanded the island for the first 90 days. There was a period of military rule where they brought in supplies. There were lots of practical things they had to do, like rid the island of 65,000 mines, enormous quantities of guns. There were things like bringing in sterling. Islanders had been forced to use German Reichsmarks, so they brought in about half a million pounds worth of sterling in the first few days. There was a huge process of re-establishing supplies of food and medicines and clothing. People had had no new clothes for years.

Children were walking around in shoes that had been sold with rubber tyres. And, you know, there was a desperate shortage of lots of daily goods. And what about the former occupiers, now prisoners? What about the enormous number of Germans? Well, by the end of the war, there were about 13,000 German troops on the island. There's some extraordinary pictures of them waiting in queues on the beach in St. the Obens Bay, which is just in front of the town, waiting for ships to take them to the UK, where they were interred in prisoner of war camps. But a number were held back. About 1,300 German prisoners of war were retained in the island to help with the clear-up operation.

There were things like hundreds of miles of barbed wire which needed to be removed, and for the mine clearance, they were also involved in that. The beaches were full of anti-tank traps so that was a priority to clear the harbours, to clear the beaches, to give people access back to the slipways so they could carry on fishing and all the traditional ways of life. I've seen your German helmets here at the museum, there must have been so much stuff lying around. Yeah, a lot of the dangerous stuff like the guns, they were assembled and a lot of those were removed from the island and actually dumped at sea in the English Channel in the Herds Deep, the deepest part. But there were a lot of things like German helmets, kitchen equipment, all kinds of militaria that they just wanted to get rid of. There were a series of tunnels that

the Germans had built while they were here. So a lot of this equipment was put into these tunnels and they were sealed up just to get them out of sight and to give people a chance to sort of move on with their lives. What about people returning from the camps in Europe? There were people trying to make their way back here. What's interesting is how long it took people to return home. You kind of imagine after liberation people would be flooding back to the island but of course the island needed to get the infrastructure in place to manage the return of islanders. There were a whole series of people who had been deported during the war to internment camps. And the process of returning them to Jersey took a long time. It's fascinating looking at the diary of Joan Coles, who was one of the internees.

She was kept at a camp in Wersach in Germany. And the camp itself was liberated on the 28th of April. So we've got in the exhibition on display the manuscript, her original journal, and she's used some, which I'm sure were very precious, red and blue colour pencils to highlight the fact that they're free and to draw some British and French flags on that page. But then the journal continues and it's weeks and weeks of waiting to hear how they're going to be repatriated. And actually Lola, who we heard from earlier and was also interned at the same camp as a child,

remembers their liberation and the long wait to go home. On the 28th of April, 45, we knew that there was the retreat. So first of all, you got the sound of the trucks and the tanks, the German tanks, going over the paving stones in the village in one direction. And then close afterwards, like 48 hours afterwards, the French troops liberated us, the free French troops with their colonial forces. There was a French commander who opened the gates and said, vous êtes libre, you're free, which is the most wonderful words that people had heard.

And everyone rushed out in front of the castle. And it was it was amazing. But as a toddler, what I remember, so all the everyone was celebrating in front of the castle. And it was amazing. But as a toddler, what I remember, so everyone was celebrating in front. And we went up to these trucks, these army trucks, with the French boomers and the Senegalese and the Moroccans and everything. They were in these lorries and they'd hand us sweets

and a sandwich. I remember this sandwich. So it was real white bread with a chunk of cold meat in between. And they gave this to us and it was marvellous. And how did you get back to Jersey? Quite a while, because Jersey wasn't ready for us. Of course.

Jersey, there were mines, well, not mines, but there was a lot of artillery and it was in a state and our houses weren't ready for us because the Germans put people in our houses. So we were liberated on the 28th of April. We didn't kind of leave the camp till June, the first week of June. And then we were taken to what became an American military air force base. taken to what became an American military air force base and we were taken back in alphabetical order by family to the UK to London I think Hendon airport we were taken but Jersey still wasn't ready for us in June we never got back till September so we all had to go with family everywhere in the UK. And it was tough because the teenagers were put in schools

and then the rumour had it in the schools that they'd been in Germany. And of course, you imagine the other kids, there was a lot of bullying going on. You know, they come from Germany. So we had a lot. It was difficult. You can imagine the frustration of wanting to come home. But also it's not just a journey of joy because on that way they go to an airfield in Germany waiting for an aeroplane to bring them back to England and then on to Jersey. And their paths cross with some French Red Cross flights.

And the French Red Cross are bringing the emaciated victims of concentration camps to where they can be cared for in hospitals. The internees pass across with these flights, and so they see the true horrors of what people have experienced during the war. So again, mixed emotions, joy of coming home, but really seeing the horrors of what people had suffered under Nazi persecution. It's easy to think that once liberation came, everything went back to normal. Eventually, the economy got back to its feet. The slave labourers who were brought to the island were repatriated home. Daily life was more or less restored. But the emotional impact on people, the psychological damage that was done, was far more long-lasting.

The psychological damage that was done was far more long-lasting. We didn't talk about it. I never talked about it at school. It was almost something you had to be ashamed of, that you never mentioned that you'd been in the camp. Yeah. What effect did it have on your mum and dad's relationship, your relationship as a family? Did it sort of bind you? No, the family just broke up because my parents health was in a very parlor state my dad had been a musician he couldn't play he was a double

place play he couldn't play anymore he was physically a wreck and my mum was um psychologically had had problems which went on into my teenage years yeah confinement yes yeah a lot of families broke up because we couldn't get back to normality to what do you put down your own success in life and have robust mental health what do you think I don't know I think I've got the positivity that runs in my genes I can tell and the optimism and um I'm so lucky I can push bad memories aside and they don't resurface unless I call them back. So I like to think that, you know, everything is going to be all right in the end.

Is it painful to talk about this? Not now, but it was all those years. I was in the same class in secondary school as another girl and I only found out about five years ago she'd been in the camp and of course neither of us had spoken about it yeah it was something you you weren't proud of and my mum also as a teacher she because she went back to teaching she never talked about it at one point she lost her rag and one of her pupils told me and she threw a book at her and the class said oh well she's been in the camp as if that was an excuse no but it good that people received a bit of

latitude yes because they've been through such trauma yes that's right yeah speaking of mixed emotions what about those islanders who had found an accommodation with the germans perhaps the young women who'd formed relationships with german soldiers or local businesses who'd made money selling to German occupiers? Did those people exist? And if so, how were they treated after the war? So after the war, there were a few reports of perhaps women being chased down the street by an angry mob. I don't think we had this systematic denouncing of women and tarring and feathering that perhaps we see happen on the continent. But there definitely were those kind of cases. There was a notorious case of a collaborator called Alexandrine Boda and her son.

And they were well known for collaborating with the Germans, for denouncing neighbours. And they actually turned themselves in to the police for their own safety. And they actually turned themselves in to the police for their own safety. And they actually spent nine months in the local prison for their safety before they actually left the island in March 1946. In the end, it was very difficult to, there was lots of rumours and suspicions. It was hard to pin people down. And I think in the end, the island authorities thought actually we're a small island or a small community. the island authorities thought actually we're a small island or a small community having you know lots of trials or recrimination might not be the the healthiest way to return to a sense of normality and in the end they decided not to have those investigations just to sort of move on with

life but of course lots of families those stories are passed on and, you know, those grievances take a long time to diminish. What's the legacy, do you think, now looking back over after 80 years? It was obviously a chapter of great trauma, but now it's really part of your identity, part of the character of this island. It's interesting. Absolutely. I mean, occupation was the formative experience of islanders during the 20th century. Those stories have been passed down through generations. Every Jersey family will have stories that they were told by grandparents, great-grandparents. They will have Red Cross messages, possibly Red Cross parcels, identity cards at home.

Those objects are really powerful and have been passed down through the generations and shared more widely with the community. So even islanders today who don't have a long Jersey heritage will be really familiar with the stories because it is so much a part of our island identity. Well, Liberation Day is coming to an end, at least the formal aspect of it. I think people are going to be partying here. They're going to be hanging out in the squares

and in these pubs around here for a few hours to come. And you know what? I might join them. It's been thirsty work. I've been to so many events commemorating the Second World War. None of them have had the urgency that this event here in Jersey has had. This community, these people have an instinctive understanding of what it is like to have lived under tyranny. They know what it is to experience liberation, freedom. They know how to remember it, how to commemorate it. It's been such a fascinating few days to learn about the decisions people had to make here.

Whether to stay or to go. Whether to submit, collaborate, or even those brave people who actively resisted. I know I say this a lot, but I really do recommend coming here to see this place for yourself. These museums and bunkers, all the ones I've been to, are available to explore all year round. You can even stay at the Pondor Hotel, which as we mentioned was the German naval headquarters during the occupation and where the Union flag was raised at the moment of liberation. For more information you can go to the Visit Jersey website, jersey.com, and the Jersey Heritage website. A huge thanks to Visit Jersey, Jersey Heritage,

the Jersey War Tunnels, and if you want to see Jersey's historic sites, I really do recommend booking with Jersey War Tours. Their guides, particularly Phil, are excellent. You can also get out on the water around the island with Fishing Jersey. And a big final thank you to Aaron from Lakey Bikes for the tandem. If you follow me on Instagram,

at thehistoryguy, you'll know what I'm talking about. Honestly, the best way to travel around the island to make a podcast. See you next time folks