Originally Posted by Sixty

Hard to say what would have happened had our islands been invaded but I suspect we'd have seen the same blend of pragmatism, ferocious resistance and simmering resentment seen elsewhere.

Does anyone know of any good sources of information about the German occupation of the Channel Islands? I'll admit to knowing next to nothing except that they were occupied, and that's despite having had a wander through the museums on Jersey.

Also, didn't Britain have a sort of formalised resistance prepared in the form of the Auxilliary Units? Another fascinating bit of history I don't know anywhere near enough about.

Originally Posted by Sixty

Bingo! Hard to say what would have happened had our islands been invaded but I suspect we'd have seen the same blend of pragmatism, ferocious resistance and simmering resentment seen elsewhere.

Geography and a powerful Navy means we never had to find out but I suspect it would not have been that pretty.

The French have had a tendency to airbrush their history - most impartial accounts I have read suggest the bulk of the population spent most of the war sitting on the fence with maybe 5% - 10% involved in resistance and a similar percentage working for the Germans/the Vichy regime. After the war, the French naturally made the most of the resistance while down playing the role of the collaborators.

But there but for the grace of god go we. We did our own airbrushing about the German occupation of the Channel islands where much the same sort of percentages applied.

As to books to read, I'd recommend two books by M.R.D Foot:

1) SOE in France - the official history of SOE's operations in occupied France
2) Resistance - Foot's more accessible history of resistance operations world wide against the Axis.

The latter book is quite interesting on the techniques involved.

(Foot served in the SAS during the war - at one point he escaped from the German capture by legging it into some woods. He put his survival down to the fact that the Germans were armed with captured Sten guns - which were inaccurate at any sort of distance).

Wordsmith

Originally Posted by Pikeman

read this one a while back, it is one of Max Hastings. Das Reich: The March of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Through France, June 1944 (Pan Military Classics) it covers the actions of the resistance to delay/stop them and the repriasals.

Don't mention that one to Emsav......as stated previously 'Wendy' Hastings, as his fellow correspondents christened him on the way to the Falklands in 1982, is one of those who seem determined to portray the SS as two distinct groups:

Group A: murderous savages manning KZs (7,000 SS personnel worked at Auschwitz alone during it's period of operation ...<5% were tried post-war) and Einsatzgruppen, who routinely threw children into the fire for kicks.

Group B: Waffen SS - Top echelon ,if ruthless, skilled soldiers who fought the Red Army to a standstill.

Boll0cks....they were all bastards and we should have shot the lot when we had the chance......if only in revenge for the many of ours they killed out of hand:
> Royal Norfolks 1940
> captured Commandos ( Cockleshells and others)
>500 escapees from Stalag Luft III in Sagan, Poland - all those recaptured were murdered by Gestapo/SS
>SAS working with SOE etc etc

However.....WWII is now further away than the Boer War was for those of us growing up in the 60's ....so...hey ho, pass me the keys to my BMW ,my Aldi gloves and break out the Bitburger/Asbacher.... Prost Heini !

Dee Billybock

Coast - Series 5, episode 3 'Brittany' has a very moving interview with some veterans from the Ile de Sein.

It would be very remiss of me to get into the rights and wrongs of who did what and why other than to suggest some light reading and maybe a visit or two so that you may make your own decision as to the true facts:

The White Mouse: The Autobiography of the Woman the Gestapo called The White Mouse, Nancy Ware
Nancy Wake, A Biography of Our Greatest War Heroine, Peter FitzSimons
Nancy Wake: The Story of a Very Brave Woman, Russell Braddon

Musée de la Résistance Bretonne, Les Hardys Béhellec 56140 ST MARCEL
Enez Sun (’Île de Sein), an island off the western tip of Breizh - Granted the Ordre de la Libération by Charles de Gaulle and where the indigenous islanders are exempted from paying any taxes.

Citation: "In the face of an enemy invasion, this city refused to abandon the battlefield that was its own: the sea. It sent its sons to fight under the flag of a Free France, and thus became the example and the symbol for all of Brittany." Île de Sein, Companion of the Liberation by decree, on January 1st 1946)

The Sorrow and the Pity was a 4+ hour French-made documentary made in the 1960s that was banned from being screened in France until the 1980s.

quotes from two of the interviews sum up the issues:

Georges Bidault: Some people are resistants by nature. In other words, some people are naturally headstrong. Others on the contrary, try to adapt to the circumstances, and get what they can out of it. If you are a resistant over everything and nothing, you're exaggerating. But if you accept everything, you're lying.

---

Dr. Claude Levy: France is the only government in all Europe whose government collaborated. Others signed an armistice or surrendered, but France was the only country to have collaborated and voted laws which were even more racist than the Nuremberg laws, as the French racist criteria were even more demanding than the German racist criteria. It's not something to be proud of.

background, on this important documentary, from wiki
The Sorrow and the Pity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Also, worth reading is the dean of F-Section, M.R.D. Foot's, Resistance.
Resistance: An Analysis of European Resistance to Nazism, 1940-45: Amazon.co.uk: M. R. D. Foot: 9780586082775: Books

His other books on the subject are well worth reading as well.
M. R. D. Foot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Think i have watched Le chagrin et le pitié at some point. May watch again. Thanks.

In 1940, at vast cost in blood and ships, we rescued not only Percy Pongo but, at Churchill's insistence, thousands of Fr soldiers from Dunkirk. What proportion remained in England to carry on the fight? I have always understood that the majority went back to France.

Originally Posted by seaweed

In 1940, at vast cost in blood and ships, we rescued not only Percy Pongo but, at Churchill's insistence, thousands of Fr soldiers from Dunkirk. What proportion remained in England to carry on the fight? I have always understood that the majority went back to France.

Your question seems to imply that Dunkirk was the end of the campaign.

Dunkirk evacuation completed 3 June.

French surrender 22 June.

Point taken.