Model Occupation: The Channel Islands Under German Rule 1940-1945 - Softcover

Bunting, Madeleine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006379737 ISBN 13: 9780006379737

Publisher: Trafalgar Square, 1998

Synopsis

When the Germans arrived on the Channel Islands in June 1940, they and the islanders agreed that it would be a "Model Occupation". But as the war dragged on and Britain appeared to abandon the islands to their fate, so features of Nazi occupation widespread throughout Europe emerged. Making use of recently released archives, private papers and interviews with islanders, slave labourers and German soldiers who lived through the five-year Occupation, the author tells the human story of the only part of Britain to fall under Nazi rule. She tells of love affairs, betrayals and black marketeering, individual acts of courage and endurance. What was collaboration and what legitimate pragmatism? How did Geman officers responsible for attrocities escape justice?

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Within the vast body of WW II literature, only a few volumes examine the five-year German occupation of Britain's Channel Islands. The seemingly peaceful takeover has long been viewed as a historical curio; it was the only incidence in which British territory fell under Nazi rule. Bunting, a reporter for Britain's Guardian newspaper, takes a sociologist's view of the episode, examining the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands as an indicator of how a small, closed community coped with the trauma of a forced takeover. Relying on previously untapped archives in the Channel Islands and Moscow, plus other sources, she has produced a captivating study of life during the "model occupation." On the surface, the islanders' behavior toward the Nazis was shocking. Unlike most citizens in other occupied lands, residents of the Channel Islands acquiesced to German rule, to the point of helping to round up local Jews. But Bunting shows that there were strong pockets of defiance and allows the islanders to make the case that in their isolated location, they cooperated for the sake of survival. The author, who took as her research motto, "There but for the grace of God go I," clearly has taken pains to present truth. She has produced a model study. Photographs; maps.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Trafalgar Square
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0006379737
• ISBN 13: 9780006379737
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384