All language subtitles for History.Hitlers.England.2017.720p.WEBRip.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX]

John Nettles is one of TV's

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best-known detectives.

Yet, apart from being an actor, Nettles is also a historian

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and he's long been intrigued by a little-known chapter

of World War II.

(intense upbeat music)

The British Channel Islands

had been a peaceful summer resort until, in 1940,

they came under the jackboot of Hitler's Wehrmacht.

For five years, the islanders had to endure

the rigors of occupation.

It's a unique story of British soil under German rule,

of war and of love,

of Hitler's England told by John Nettles.

(dramatic upbeat music)

The Channel Islands were the working home

of John Nettles for more than a decade.

(waves crashing)
(birds cawing)

In the 1980s, the British actor found fame

in the long-running TV series "Bergerac,"

playing the title character

of Jersey-based Detective Sergeant Jim Bergerac.

When the final episode was completed in 1991,

Nettles had spent 11 years on the Channel Islands.

(lively music)

Today, to audiences the world over,

he's Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby

of "Midsomer Murders."

I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name this morning.

This is DC Jones, by the way.

My name is Barnaby. Tom Barnaby.

And we'd like a little chat with you in private,

please, if you would?

(birds squawking)

Before becoming an actor,

Nettles had studied history

at the University of Southampton.

Born in 1943, the history of World War II,

and in particular,

the fate of the Channel Islands during those years,

hold a special fascination for him.

(birds squawking)

The most extraordinary experience

that's happened in the history of the Channel Islands

was, of course, the Second World War

and the occupation by the Germans,

and it gave them a special status

in the history of the United Kingdom.

And it was an experience which was, (sighs)

one can only say, pretty awful.

For years,

Nettles has been digging into the islands' archives

and collecting accounts from contemporary witnesses.

(upbeat music)

He finally published the results of his efforts

in a book titled "Jewels and Jackboots."

We follow him as he retraces his search

for the scars the war has left on the islands,

and on its inhabitants.

Before the war,

Jersey was famous for its potatoes.

(gentle music)

Whereas on Guernsey,

farmers were proud of their succulent tomatoes.

Another typical feature of the islands

were the Jersey and Guernsey cattle,

both small and hearty breeds.

(cows mooing)

(birds cawing)

Tourism was a more recent source of income.

Affluent visitors from Britain

flocked to the islands in summertime.

(waves lapping)

(water splashing)

(airplanes screaming)

May 1940, Hitler strikes in the west.

(tank engines whirring)

The German Army crushes France in a mere six weeks.

By mid-June, the remnants of the British Army,

sent to fight alongside the French,

has been driven from the Continent.

German units are patrolling the French Channel coastline.

The aggressor is at the doorstep

of the British Channel Islands.

(tense music)

Situated off the coasts of Brittany and Normandy,

the islands are separated from the mainland

by just 14 miles of open water.

There's Jersey, the largest island,

and seat of the capital, St. Helier.

Then slightly smaller, Guernsey.

And smaller still, Sark and Alderney.

Now they're in the sights of the fuhrer's soldiers,

eager to raise their flag on English soil.

At least, that's how the Germans view it.

(dramatic music)

We're not part of the United Kingdom.

We are the last possessions of the English Crown,

as apart from government, in Europe.

And we have been autonomous since 1204.

It's not something recent.

But the islanders are

loyal subjects of the Crown, and proud of it.

(pensive music)

They certainly, being part of the British Empire,

if you'd like, had a propaganda value,

and this value was very much appreciated by Hitler

and Goebbels, of course,

who saw that if they could get a foot

inside the door of the British Empire,

this will be one of the most tremendous

propaganda coos ever.

(tense music)

There's no way of defending the islands

by military means.

Even Britain's pugnacious prime minister, Winston Churchill,

must accept the strategic facts

and orders the withdrawal of the island garrison.

The British public are not informed about this move,

nor are the Germans.

To the islanders, the writing is on the wall.

Fear spreads through the streets.

Around 23,000 of the inhabitants seize the opportunity

and board the last ships to England,

1/4 of the islands' population.

19-year-old Bob Le Sueur

is one of those who decide to stay.

He's working as an office boy

for an insurance company on Jersey.

Since all his colleagues have left,

he's now alone to look after the office

on St. Helier's Hill Street.

He calls the main office in Southampton

and asks to be put through to the company's director.

And I was trying to tell him what was happening,

and he did not believe me.

And he said, "Are you trying..."

He had one of those very authoritative voices.

"Are you trying to tell me that the British government

"is abandoning British territory

"without a shot being fired?"

And I said, "Yes, sir. That is what is happening."

"Have you been drinking?"

He then demanded that I fetch the Jersey boss,

who we hadn't seen for days.

I tried to tell him that already.

He decided I think, that I was not drunk,

but clearly, I was deranged, out of my mind,

possibly dangerous,

and in any case, he was far too important

to listen to such rubbish, and he put down the phone.

(airplane engines whirring)

June the 28th, 1940.

Three German bombers are approaching the Channel Islands.

Their orders?

To attack the harbor installations of St. Helier on Jersey,

and those of St. Peter Port on Guernsey.

When they turn away,

44 islanders lie dead in the rubble, all of them civilians.

(flames roaring)

Molly Bihet witnessed the attack on Guernsey

as a 10-year-old schoolgirl.

There was a lot of fright after that.

The Guernsey people didn't know what was gonna happen.

They'd heard from refugees that had come from France,

and the refugees were so upset that their town...

They were saying Cherbourg had been flattened completely.

So, there was that fright,

"Are the Germans gonna come and bomb again?"

Three days later,

another flight of German aircraft approaches the islands.

(dramatic music)

They're Junkers 52 transport planes.

On July the 1st they touched down on the small airfields

of Guernsey and Jersey.

Five planes with about 30 Germans at the airport,

and just landed.

No firing.

There was nothing there to stop them.

Although I think some animals were put on the airport

to try and deter them, but that didn't.

(dramatic music)

An easy victory.

English-looking towns under the heal of German jackboots.

It's triumphant news for the Reich's propaganda machine.

(motorcycle engine whirring)

(upbeat marching music)

When the Germans arrived,

far from being the uncivilized hoard

of barbarians that were expected,

they turned out to be men,

as one person remarked in surprised fashion,

men "just like us," do you see?

And I remember a dancer telling me,

she was a young dancer in Guernsey,

and I said to her, "What was it like when you first saw

"the German soldiers marching through St. Peter Port?"

And she said, "They were so smart, so young, so handsome,

"and so sexy."

And indeed, indeed they were.

They were a victorious army.

They'd swept through France in a matter of weeks.

And the Germans

are already planning their next move,

the invasion of Great Britain.

Its code name, Operation Sea Lion.

(boat engine whirring)

Will London, after Warsaw and Paris,

be the next capital to come under Hitler's rule?

(dramatic music)

Meanwhile, German newsreels are busy painting

a friendly picture of life under German occupation.

It's supposed to be business as usual.

(tense music)

So, from being initially frightened

and scared out of their wits,

they gradually got around to talking to them,

and it was thought, "Well, this isn't too bad after all.

"Maybe we can get along, rub along quite nicely,

"being the circumstances, and it'll be a model occupation."

(upbeat music)

John Nettles did not confine his research

on everyday life under German occupation

to accounts of personal memories by the locals.

To get an insight into the inner workings of the occupation,

he frequently visited the Jersey Archive in St. Helier.

The German commanders who came over here,

they were good men,

and most of them were very clear

and very assiduous in their attempts to help the islanders.

And they stood between a lot of heat

between Berlin and St. Helier and St. Peter Port,

and tried to remove the sting

from many of the edicts and the regulations

that were handed down through Paris.

The most famous of them, of course, was Von Schmettow.

(tense music)

General Rudolf Von Schmettow

was appointed commander of the Channel Islands garrison

in August 1940.

His personal reputation, even today, is that of a gentleman.

But he's just the military commander.

All civil matters lie in the hands

of the so-called field headquarters on Jersey,

which is subordinate

to the occupational authority in France.

Still, its Jersey branch is given some leeway

in handling matters.

The German officials who work here

are uniform civil servants.

The local authorities have been advised

by the British government

to cooperate as much as needed

in the interest of the islanders.

It's walking a tightrope.

Resistance, however, seems no option.

On orders of the field headquarters,

a register is set up,

holding an identity card for every single inhabitant.

It's a classic example of German bureaucratic thoroughness.

It's also a means of filtering out those whom Nazi ideology

labels as unworthy of existence.

Regulations from Berlin on this matter are unequivocal.

This is their passport to death.

Potentially, yeah, for him.
To death.

The first restrictions against Jews

are imposed in October 1940,

affecting all those who couldn't get away.

Some of them were quite old men

and simple men.

So, grocer, for example,

his weekly income was 50 schillings, small-time man,

and he, of course, according to the orders against the Jews,

was deprived of his means of livelihood,

he wasn't allowed to go out between certain hours,

he wasn't allowed to work or consort with Aryans,

and he wasn't allowed to keep pets.

And under the great strain of all of that,

well, the effects were devastating.

(tense music)

There are 18 Jews

officially registered as residents of the Channel Islands.

Out of fear and desperation,

some of them take their own lives.

For most of the islanders, however, life goes on.

Farming has its demanding daily routines.

(cow mooing)

Encountering the visitors, as they call the Germans,

soon becomes a common experience.

And the ones that used to pass in the Canichers,

where we live, they got to, sort of, recognize us

and with a half a smile sometimes a "Good Morgen."

(footsteps marching)

It's the ordinary face of occupation.

♪ Heidi, heido, heida ♪

♪ Heidi, heido, heida ♪

♪ Heidi, heido, heida, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ♪

♪ Heidi, heido, heida ♪

The one we heard mostly was, "Heidi, heido, heida,"

and they did it with such gusto.

♪ Heidi, heido, heida ♪

♪ Heidi, heido, heida ♪

♪ Heidi, heido, heida, ha ha ha ha ♪

Whenever they marched past,

we small boys used to tail on behind,

and we used to sing, of course,

their famous marching song,

which was, "Heidi, heilo, heidi, heilo,

"heidi, heilo, heilo."

The German soldiers settled down.

The islands are far from the battlegrounds of the war.

(metal scraping)

(tense music)

(Werner speaks in foreign language)

We were sitting in the sun, as if on holiday.

It was great, marvelous.

We were being served, and we got everything we needed.

Simply gorgeous.

(birds cawing)

(Fritz speaks in foreign language)

We thought we were in paradise.

Everything was so beautiful, colorful, friendly.

Yes.

(tense music)
(birds cawing)

We used to say

that sending us to the Channel Islands

was the best thing that Herr Hitler could have done for us.

Not least, because there's time and occasion

for amorous adventures.

More conservative historians,

anxious to maintain the good names of the islands,

say that, of course, these are very rare occurrences,

and no such thing happened,

and the chastity and the virtue

of the local women remained intact throughout the war.

This is a gross lie.

There was a great deal of consorting

between the handsome German soldiers, of course,

and the young ladies.

They had a great time.

And they were called Jerrybags, they were called.

And they indulged in what was

laughingly called (speaks in foreign language).

(guns blasting)

June 1941, Germany drives east.

Hitler sends his armies into the Soviet Union

to conquer new living space

or Lebensraum for the German people.

(truck motors whirring)

Great Britain is no longer considered

as being the main enemy.

All plans for an invasion are shelved.

(ominous music)

In the west, all along the mainland coast,

the Reich goes on the defensive.

The Channel Islands, which Hitler sees

as his tiny bit of England, are to be kept at any price.

And he turned his face towards the east,

he wants to make sure that his bum wasn't bit in the west,

and so, he built a wonderful Atlantic Wall.

(Land Rover engine rumbling)

This huge, defensive wall

was going to stretch all the way from Denmark,

the coast of Denmark, the coast of Belgium,

down through France, to the northern frontier of Spain.

It was going to be a mighty enterprise,

and at the center of this enterprise

was going to be the Channel Islands.

These islands thought to be of no strategic importance,

by the Brits and by most of the general staff

on the German side,

nevertheless, Hitler was going to make them into fortresses.

(tense music)
(birds cawing)

It's the beginning of the Atlantic Wall,

a chain of gigantic bunkers.

Yet, the sheer size of the project

soon defeats the construction units of the army

and their semi-civil counterparts into Todt Organization.

Volunteers, lured by high wages,

as well as conscripted civilians

from all over Western Europe, are brought in.

However, the workforce is nowhere near big enough.

(roofing thuds)

Somebody had the bright idea

that if they were going to build this huge defensive wall

all the way down the west coast of Europe,

then they'd need labor to do it,

and the labor, they thought,

could be provided by Russian soldiers, POWs.

To the Nazi regime, Soviet POWs are sub-human.

At first, their captives just let them starve to death

by the hundreds of thousands,

but from 1942 onwards,

they're herded onto the Reich's building sites

as slave workers.

Soon, the first transports reach the Channel Islands, too.

(tense ambient music)

The islanders had never seen

people being treated like this.

They were unloaded from the boats, stinking, in rags,

and marched in full view of the civilian population,

very unpolitic for the German commanders to do,

march through the streets of the capitals of the islands,

St. Helier and Peter Port,

and the civilians,

the islanders, got their first view of true cruelty,

of true inhumanity.

The Atlantic Wall is to keep the Allies

from opening a second front in the west.

(ominous music)

1/12 of all the material used to build

that huge Atlantic Wall,

going all those hundreds of miles

down the western coast of Europe,

1/12 of the material used

was used here in the Channel Islands.

There was a time when the Channel Islands,

particularly Alderney,

were the most fortified places on Earth.

(intense thoughtful music)

John Nettles has found proof

that the Germans, protected by the Atlantic Wall,

rigorously implemented their racial goals

on the Channel Islands, too.

(Land Rover engine rumbling)

In this hospital on Guernsey,

Therese Steiner worked and lived as an auxiliary nurse.

Therese was a vivacious, lovely girl, by all accounts,

full of fun and joy.

She was a gifted pianist,

and she used to play to the patients, and the staff,

at Castel Hospital.

She was a much, much loved lady.

(downbeat music)

Therese was a Jewess from Vienna.

In 1942, her room is up there in the nurses' dormitory.

Therese, herself, came to England

and was employed as a nanny by the Potts family.

And she found herself in Guernsey

because she came over with the Potts family,

who were there to escape the war.

But when it became clear the war, in fact,

was going to come to the Channel Islands,

and when you could actually see and hear

the guns on the Cotentin Peninsula,

14 miles away from the Channel Islands,

then people started to get frightened

and the Potts family decided to go back

from Guernsey to London.

And they, of course, wanted to take Therese with them.

But war had been declared

and Therese had a Viennese, i.e. German, passport,

and therefore, she was classed as an enemy alien,

and as such was refused permission to travel

with the Potts family back to the safety,

relative safety, of London.

The registry in the field headquarters

lists Therese as a German.

(birds chirping)

While Jews with a British passport

are exempt from deportation,

Therese must leave Guernsey in April 1942.

This young 26-year-old Jewish lady,

who'd committed no crime apart from being Jewish,

was put on a list by the Guernsey authorities.

She was visited when her deportation order came through

by a Guernsey policeman

and taken by a Guernsey policeman

down to the docks to be transported.

There was a degree of collusion, collaboration,

call it what you will,

with the Germans there, by the Guernsey authorities,

which enabled this to happen.

(solemn music)

In July 1942, she arrives here,

in a vast complex of barracks called Auschwitz.

Being a healthy young woman without children,

she probably was selected for forced labor.

We don't know for how long she survived,

merely that her life, like that of so many,

ended in this factory of death.

On the Channel Islands,

like here in St. Peter Port on Guernsey,

all this seems far away.

But it's not only Jews who are threatened by deportation.

A notice appeared in the Guernsey paper,

saying in effect by order of higher authority,

all men up to the age of 70 of English birth

were to be evacuated with their families to Germany,

and further instructions would be given in due course.

This, of course, caused great alarm on the island.

The island authorities said to the Germans,

"Why are they being evacuated?

"Where are they going?

"Are they going to be put as protective shields

"in German cities against bombing?

"Are they going to be used for work?"

And there were no answers, basically.

In September 1942,

the Germans round up 2,000 civilians

from Guernsey and Jersey.

Whole families, men, women, children,

are deported into the Reich.

(boat engine whirring)

(movie reel rolling)

What awaits them is documented by this unique footage.

It shows the internment camp of Biberach

in southwestern Germany.

The guards are provided by the army,

until they're relieved by auxiliary policemen.

(bicycle bell chiming)

(sparse tense music)

And although there were Nazis amongst them,

there were some very, very good guards as well,

who we got on pretty well with.

All internees had been born

in the United Kingdom.

As such, they were classified

as enemy aliens by the Germans.

Hitler personally ordered the islanders' deportation

as a reprisal because German civilians had been deported

from Iran to Australia after the Allied invasion of Persia.

From, really, from February onwards,

we were recognized as being prisoners of war

and we got a Red Cross parcel roughly every 10 days,

which came from Switzerland and Portugal.

So, we'd just settle into a routine. We went to school.

Initially, the boys and the girls of a certain age

went in the morning, the younger ones in the afternoon.

And we started getting Red Cross,

and other teaching aides from the YMCA and the YWCA.

The internees from the Channel Islands

would have to sit out the war in camp Biberach

until their liberation in April 1945.

(movie reel rolling)

(ominous music)

In 1942, the outcome of the war is anything but certain.

Since the fall of France,

the British Army has been raising special forces,

whose brief is to keep the Germans on their toes

by hit and run operations

against selected targets on the Continent.

The Commandos, as they're called,

have already undertaken several raids

against the Channel Islands,

albeit without tangible results.

(boat engine whirring)

On October the 3rd, 1942, they embark for Operation Basalt.

A motor torpedo boat is to set them ashore

on the island of Sark.

(wire cutters clicking)

A troop of 12 highly-motivated Commandos prepare to strike.

Their mission?

To bring back prisoners for interrogation.

(tense music)

They come upon a small hotel

whose annex serves as a billet for about 20 German soldiers.

The sentry is killed before he can cry out a warning.

The other Germans are aroused from their sleep,

lined up outside, and tied up.

And the stories vary about what happened on that night.

But it's certainly true that they were bound in some way,

they were tied up in some way.

(soldiers yelling)

When the Germans become aware

of their own superior numbers, a struggle ensues.

(soldiers yelling)
(suspenseful music)

(gun blasting)

These were bound prisoners, shot in the back.

(gun blasting)

Hitler was enraged by this

and gave out the order that all Allied prisoners

from henceforth should be in chains.

They should be kept bound.

(suspenseful music)

Yet, events take an even darker turn.

From now on, Commandos will no longer

be treated as regular soldiers.

Hitler decrees that they be regarded as terrorists

and saboteurs, who are to be summarily executed

when caught behind the German lines.

It's the infamous Commando Order.

This marked an escalation in the savagery of the war.

It wasn't gonna be polite.

It was gonna be more like the Eastern Front from now on.

That's what happened.

And Basalt was a big signpost

pointing in that awful direction.

(suspenseful music)

But there are also other sides to the war.

On Sark, by far the smallest of the inhabited islands,

German soldiers, and the few islanders who have remained,

are living side by side.

(Werner speaks in foreign language)

In March '43, my unit were given orders

to deploy to Sark for six months.

I went along as my company's medical sergeant.

(waves lapping)
(gentle music)

Young Phyllis Baker

has been learning German in school,

and her command of the occupants' language

now proves most useful.

The German doctor was the only doctor on the island.

Our doctor had left the day before the occupation.

(suspenseful music)

Phyllis assists the army doctor

as an interpreter,

since he's also treating the civilian population

of the island.

They had the surgery for the Germans,

the soldiers, from eight to nine,

and the civilians from nine to 10.

So, I used to go up to the hospital every morning,

for nine o'clock,

and then after that, I did the rounds with the doctors.

(lively music)

Then one day, she falls ill herself.

So, my sister called the German doctor

and he came down in the morning

and diagnosed a tonsillitis,

and he said that he'd send the orderly down in the afternoon

with the medication I needed.

And so, that's what happened.

At two o'clock, the front doorbell rang.

My mother went to answer the door,

but she couldn't speak German, Werny couldn't speak English.

The medical orderly is Werner Rang,

the doctor's new assistant.

(Werner speaks in foreign language)

So, I went up there, I knocked at the door,

and a female voice said, "Please, come in,"

in perfect German.

She turned out to be my patient.

I was very surprised.

We talked, I gave her the medication and then left.

I still hear her saying,

"Thank you very much. Goodbye,"

in German.

So, that was how we met.

He sat on the end of the bed and chatted a little bit,

and then off he went.

And apparently, that's when he fell in love with me,

but I didn't realize that.

(laughs) I didn't know anything about this until 1947.

(Werner speaks in foreign language)

I found her most impressive.

I thought, "That is a very nice girl."

(bright music)

In September 1943,

Werner's unit is redeployed to Guernsey.

(waves whooshing)

As on Jersey, too,

the Germans turn the island into a gigantic building site.

(tense music)

In both islands, there are tunnel complexes,

massive tunnel complexes.

They go for hundreds of thousands of yards underground.

They are storage units for ammunition and so forth,

and also used as hospitals.

(metal clanking)

And some of the scale of the ambition

of the Third Reich can be seen in these tunnels.

Thousands of Russian POWs

must toil under the most severe conditions.

The harsh treatment meted out to them

horrifies the islanders.

The acts of cruelty are too numberless, really,

to itemize, but they were very, very cruelly treated.

And the islanders, they'd never seen people

treated like this before.

One day, in autumn 1942,

one of the slave workers on Jersey manages to escape.

(ominous music)

(dog barking)
(footsteps tapping)

His name is Theodore Buery.

The Germans are determined to track him down.

(downbeat music)

A farmer affords him provisional shelter,

an act of resistance out of near decency.

It's not the only one on the islands.

Louisa Gould doesn't live far from the farm.

She runs the village shop in this house.

Two weeks later, a farmer, neighbor,

asked her if she could take a young man

for a week or two,

he was an escapee from a camp,

while this farmer found a safer place further away.

And her words to me were,

and I don't think this farmer knew

that she'd lost her eldest son,

but her words to me were,

"I had to do something for another mother's son."

And she took him in,

(gentle music)

and she bathed his wounds, and she fed him,

and she mothered him,

and he was the same age as the dead son.

Her son, Edward,

a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, had been killed in 1941

when his ship was torpedoed in the Mediterranean.

Now, Theodore is wearing his clothes.

Louisa just simply calls him Bill.

An English-Russian dictionary

helps them to communicate after a fashion.

(dramatic music)

Yet, Louisa is denounced by a resentful neighbor.

Bill manages to slip away just in time.

Louisa, however, is arrested,

and there is evidence that incriminates her.

(Land Rover engine rumbling)

And she was tried, and instead of being given

what is expected, a jail sentence,

she was transported to France,

and from France to Ravensbruck.

Incredible.

And there, she was, we don't know,

but it is thought that she was worked to death,

and then when she became too ill to work,

she either died or she was gassed,

and then, in either case, was put into the ovens.

That's what happened to Louisa Gould,

who, for an act of sheer humanity,

and for another mother's son, as she said,

well, suffered that terrible, terrible fate.

(solemn music)

This is for Louisa Gould,

a fine Jersey lady.

The man, whom she's been protecting

for more than 20 months, finds another hideout.

After work, I took him, and he on the bicycle,

following me at some distance, to my office,

of which I was in charge,

and he spent that weekend in the filing room.

But Theodore cannot stay in the office

when there's public business.

Friends of Bob Le Sueur share the risk of hiding him

until the war finally ends.

Theodore, alias Bill, survives,

unlike many of his comrades.

There's documentation on the death of at least 400

slave workers and POWs, there may have been even more.

(dramatic music)

June the 6th, 1944.

(arm squawking)
(waves crashing)

Allied troops storm the beaches of Normandy.

It's D-Day at last.

(bombs whistling)

The second front in the west,

Hitler's strategical nightmare, is now a reality.

The fortifications on the Channel Islands

are being readied for all-around defense.

But no attacker appears on the horizon.

The Allied planners have decided to leave the islands alone.

The divisions strong German garrison

can merely sit things out,

and tighten their belts.

After D-Day, everything changed

because all the supply ports for the islands

on the Cotentin Peninsula, the Cherbourg Peninsula,

were occupied by the Allies,

and they quickly moved inland

and the front moved away from the Channel Islands.

And there were no supplies coming through, therefore,

to the Channel Islands,

and almost immediately there were shortages

of medicine, food, and fuel.

(waves whooshing)

When autumn approaches,

there's hardly any food left in the shops.

(solemn music)

We were all trying to eat on what 116 square kilometers,

not all of which are fertile, could produce.

So, it soon became real privation.

And in other ways, too.

I mean, there was no heating of any kind

unless you could get hold of wood, but that was illegal.

We were cold.

We were hungry.

Our clothing was threadbare.

(gentle music)
(wind whistling)

For the German soldiers, too,

the good life is a thing of the past.

Shortages are the order of the day.

(horse-drawn carriage rattling)

The army's horses provided with meat for a while,

the locals must resort to different means.

Cats and dogs were eaten by the locals, come the end,

so people lost their pets.

Only the cows are spared the butcher's knife.

(cows mooing)

Germans and islanders have agreed to keep them

so at least the children will have milk.

The islanders themselves appealed to Churchill

'cause they were starving, they wanted food.

They said, "Please allow a Red Cross ship,

"or something, to bring us help, to bring us aid,

"to bring us food and medicine, that sort of stuff,

"'cause we are dying," simple as that.

There was a famous minute at the side of

a paper at the meeting of the war cabinet,

when this proposition was put to Churchill,

that he should, indeed, send a boat full of goodies

to the Channel Islands,

and the note at the side says, "Let them starve."

Charitable commentators say this merely referred

to the German soldiers.

In late December 1944,

after months of negotiations,

the S.S. Vega, a Swedish Red Cross ship,

delivers badly needed supplies.

(tense music)

Her cargo is for the civilian population.

The Germans come away empty-handed.

They never, never took a parcel, to their credit,

because they were literally starving.

There's not even fish

to augment the meager diet.

(waves whooshing)

The mistrustful Germans weren't allowed the islands' cutters

to put out to sea since, once out of sight,

the fishermen could make contact with the enemy.

(birds cawing)

The German soldiers resort to the most primitive measures

in their search for food.

(Fritz speaks in foreign language)

Our company had three platoons.

One was sent to collect

the edible leaves of stinging nettles.

The second one was ordered to the cliffs

where they were to scrape off muscles.

So, only 1/3 of our unit was on actual duty.

The muscles were made into meatballs

with sand grinding between your teeth.

(birds squawking)

(Werner speaks in foreign language)

In the end, we shot seagulls,

which we plucked like chickens

and then cooked and ate.

(majestic music)
(birds cawing)

(church bells ringing)

This is London calling.

Here is a news flash.

The German radio has just announced that Hitler is dead.

I'll repeat that.

The German radio has just announced that Hitler is dead.

May the 9th, 1945.

The German garrison has held out right to the end,

isolated and half-starved.

Now, they surrender.

(majestic music continues)

We thought, "Well, this gotta be it.

"Mom, Dad, come on. We're going down to the harbor."

Five years after their withdrawal,

the British Army returns to Guernsey.

(crowd applauding)

It's an emotional moment for everyone.

And we just loved these soldiers.

Their hats were tipped off, their rifles were down,

everything was just right with them,

but they were crying with us.

They were actually so overcome.

Bob Le Sueur recalls one particular day

shortly after the liberation on Jersey.

Two Spitfires came over the fort.

Zoom!

With a lot of noise.

And I glanced up and,

And, "Oh, the markings. They're ours, it's all right."

(laughing) There was still that first reaction.

And they went over the bay, and they came back.

Zoom!

And I burst into tears.

And I was 24.

Big boys don't cry.

And it wasn't just tears, I was sobbing.

(imitating sobbing) Like this.

And I drew myself together,

within a minute probably, terribly ashamed,

and then I could see a man,

who was perhaps in his 40s,

standing nearby, and he was doing the same.

I didn't understand at that time

that this was therapeutic, that I was releasing.

The Channel Islands had lived through

five years of German occupation,

the only part of the British Empire

ever subjected to Hitler's rule.

It is certainly true

that the British did not understand

the nature of the experience

that the Channel Islanders had gone through.

(birds squawking)

They didn't understand what had gone on,

because they didn't understand what it was like

to be in the same room with a savage dog.

Didn't occur to these people, it seems to me,

that it is far better to try and pacify the savage dog

than to have the savage dog bite your bum.

(upbeat pensive music)

The need to come to terms

with the enemy is over.

Almost 25,000 German soldiers lay down their arms.

How do they look back on their years on the islands?

(Fritz speaks in foreign language)

In part, it was a time

when you lived as if on holiday.

On the other hand, there were the months of hunger,

which were just terrible.

But all in all, for a German soldier,

to have been stationed on an island

that didn't come under attack, where there was no combat,

I still consider it a blessing from God.

(upbeat tense music)

The former occupants, now POWs,

are shipped to England,

and again, destiny smiles on them.

Post-war captivity is a comparatively mild affair.

After some time, there are even permits

allowing a day outside the camps.

(Werner speaks in foreign language)

I think it was in 1946

that the German prisoners

could be invited by English families for a day.

Werner Rang is granted a special perk.

A high-born English Lady invites two German POWs

into her house for Christmas.

And they were the lucky ones to be selected.

So, off they went.

And then she took them under her wing.

And she used to have them there some afternoons

and make sure they had a nice tea

and gave them five schillings each.

They used to do jobs in the garden

or polish the car, or something, for her.

(gentle thoughtful music)

Their hostess, Lady Vera,

even takes care of her prodigies

when it comes to matters of the heart.

I told her about Phyllis.

She asked, "Would you like to have her come over

"for a holiday?

"That would be nice, wouldn't it?"

And since I wasn't allowed any phone calls, she said,

"Leave that to me. I'll invite her."

And then the next thing was

I had a letter from her inviting me to go for a holiday.

And so, I went.

I had a three weeks holiday during

the end of October, November,

and so, I went there

and that was where the acquaintance was renewed.

And we had a lovely time.

In 1948,

thousands of German POWs are released and shipped back home.

Werner is still in Britain.

Six months after their reunion

and 160 letters later, he and Phyllis meet again.

And then he said that he wasn't going home

because his home was in the Eastern zone,

and would I marry him, you see?

And I said, "Yes."

But I said, "Hadn't you better go home first?"

because he was an only child.

It was awful for his parents.

But he said nothing would induce him

to go into the Russian zone.

There's only one solution. An express wedding.

We were married on the 13th of May, on a Thursday,

and he would have been deported on the next morning

at nine o'clock.

That was how short that was.

For almost 70 years now,

the erstwhile member of the occupying forces

lives on the isle of Sark, side by side with his wife.

(gentle rousing music)

John Nettles, too, spent many years on these islands.

To him, their unique history as Hitler's England

still holds particular significance.

(birds cawing)

The people who had been through the occupation,

I think, they, too, were changed,

because one thing I think that conflict does, war does,

it forces people to face up to what they really are,

and Bob Le Sueur is most wise on this

and he will tell you, as I will tell you, too,

that those people who are good tend to become better,

and those people who are bad tend to become worse.

You find out who you are,

and the islanders certainly found out who they were.

(birds squawking)

(gentle rousing music continues)