Outpost of occupation

Once Britain had demilitarized the idyllic, unspoiled holiday islands of Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark in 1940 their fate was sealed—in July the Germans invaded. The following five years in their history offer an intriguing, and often uncomfortable, virtual history of how Britain might have looked under Nazi rule—and how British people, more to the point, might have responded to it, whether through submission, courageous resistance, or even collaboration. Extremely fair-minded account and rich in personal testimonies, this account shows the extreme privations suffered by the Channel Islanders, so utterly cut adrift by Britain—even if for defensible reasons of wartime expediency—and above all the huge moral and civic task required of their pre-war governing class, several of whom could hardly have been expected to rise to the occasion. It also draws on newly released documents to reveal the messy confusion of Britain’s postwar attitude to the Channel Islands, a source of enduring resentment there.