Hitler’s British Isles: The Real Story of the Occupied Channel Islands, Duncan Barrett, Simon and Schuster, 2018, 413p, £20-00.  ISBN 978-1-4711-6637-2

Having just read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Bloomsbury 2008), this very interesting book has now extended considerably my understanding of the nature of the experiences of Channel Islanders under the German Occupation.

What Duncan Barrett has done is to interview over one hundred people who directly had experience of the German Occupation. He introduces us to the rather dramatic and unexpected withdrawal of British armed forces in 1940, explaining that this was against the instincts of Winston Churchill but a pragmatic decision forced on him by the advice that adequately to defend the five named Channel Islands would require personnel and resources on such a scale as to render the South and East coast of England extraordinarily vulnerable.

From the moment that decisions were made as to who would be evacuated and who would stay, we are guided through the process by which the German presence developed from almost a position of co-operation with the civilian leadership to a much more sinister approach later on, sometimes exacerbated by the independence of the Islanders as they tried to support and help the wholly enslaved imported workforce, brought in to create the enormous defences on Guernsey, Jersey and Alderney that we can still observe today.

In effect this is a primary source based on the expressed views of the Islanders who had direct experience of enduring this intrusion into their traditional way of life. The personal testimonies and case studies make this an extremely valuable resource because the focus of the book is on the experience of individuals. This means that he does encompass what happened to Islanders who were transported to a variety of concentration camps and other forms of detention in Europe, including the treatment of the Jewish population. At the same time, he provides a compassionate perspective on how a young woman from Sark fell in love with a German medic and how, after the war was over, they were re-united and settled together for a long life back on Sark.