INVASION OF THE SUN GODS
Artemis Cooper, explaining the Channel Islands'
Venybags', says the Germans were often more attractive than their own menfolk
'IF WE should lose this campaign,' the Luftwaffe ace Heinz Knoke wrote during the Allied invasion of France, 'the conduct of Frenchwomen must bear a major share of the responsibility. Nights of passion and debauchery have undermined the morale of our officers and soldiers. They are no longer ready to sacrifice their lives to the glory of the Fatherland, thanks to the enthusiastic collaboration of those ama- teur and professional harlots.' Sadly, for those women accused of collaboration hori- zontale, Knoke's diary was not available as evidence in 1944. They might have argued that they deserved the Medaille de la Resistance instead of a shaven head.
Events in France under the occupation strongly influenced opinions about conduct in the Channel Islands, but French ideas could be very confused. One female intel- lectual even maintained in the communist Les Lettres Frangaises that 'supremely ele- gant' Parisiennes, who humiliated 'the fat ugliness of those German servicewomen packaged in grey,' were also part of the Resistance. Channel Islanders never went in for such resistant chic. Their main sub- versive activity seems to have been chalk- ing V-signs on German bicycle seats to leave an imprint on Wehrmacht bottoms. But war on the Channel Islands was not a gentle Ealing comedy, whatever the super- ficial resemblance.
The latest release of documents on the subject has re-ignited an uneasy debate for the British. The record was, overall, dis- tinctly unheroic. The Channel Islands were the only part of occupied Europe in which no active resistance movement existed. Yet we should first remember that the British authorities had abandoned them without a shot being fired and, most shabbily of all, Without even a warning. They clearly con- sidered the islands of no strategic value. Certainly, SOE had no plans for them. In any case, the concentration of German troops was greater there than anywhere in Europe — including Germany itself — and the terrain offered little natural cover, and no routes of escape. The British govern- ment was, in fact, quite content for the Germans to immobilise a huge garrison, and Churchill came to see the occupation as an inexpensive prison camp for their 37,000 troops. So how should the islanders have behaved?
Isaiah Berlin, who knew France well during the immediate postwar period, pro- duced an informal definition of acceptable conduct under occupation. To survive, you might have had to serve the Germans in some capacity, but 'you did not have to be cosy with them'. Relations with the occu- pying power in the Channel Islands, how- ever, could hardly have been cosier.
There is more than just a prurient fasci- nation in the debate over the `Jerrybags' who slept with Germans. In July 1940, the islanders, abandoned by the British and deprived of most men of military age, dreaded the enemy's arrival. Young women, having been told to expect the baby-crucifying Hun of British propaganda, were soon won over. German behaviour was deliberately civilised; in fact these for- eign soldiers appeared much more courte- ous and dashing than their own absent menfolk. Handsome, blond and soon tanned from nude sunbathing during the glorious summer, they offered a dangerous excitement to enliven a suffocatingly provincial, often incestuous, existence.
Illegitimacy rates doubled on Jersey and quadrupled on Guernsey. These figures do not cover the children of married women whose offspring, whatever the paternity, were legally attributed to the absent hus- band. Hundreds of abortions also seem to have been performed. Indications from the German side tend to confirm that sex- ual relations with local women were far more spontaneous and extensive than any- where else in occupied Europe. The Ger- man authorities became alarmed by the rapid spread of venereal disease.
A number of relationships developed into something much deeper, and some couples married after the war, yet many other relationships caused great bitterness within the island communities. As in France, the issue was not just one of sex and patriotism; it focused on unfairly gained privileges, particularly food, at a time of great privation. In Paris, Arletty, the star of Les Enfants du Paradis, was condemned for loving a Luftwaffe officer. She defended herself with the retort, 'Mon coeur eat francais, mais mon cal est inter- national', but popular resentment was mainly inflamed by the affair taking place in the Ritz, where Arletty enjoyed delica- cies denied to everyone else.
Island life in wartime evidently produced a strong sense of unreality. In France, col- laborators rushed to join the Resistance after D-Day, but in the Channel Islands conduct barely changed. The lack of touch with reality might have been more excus- able if it had not involved ignoring the numerous SS and Todt Organisation slave labour camps. Over 2,000 Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, French Jews and Spanish Republicans were worked, starved or beat- en to death. The most unforgivable aspect of the story, as Madeleine Bunting demon- strated powerfully in her book The Model Occupation, was the failure of the British authorities to pursue the SS guards. The idea of concentration camps on British soil was clearly regarded as too distasteful to be followed up.
Hypocrisy was infectious from the start. The Channel Islands authorities defined the desired standard of relations with the Ger- mans as cool but correct. They were not. They were cordial and totally subservient. Victor Carey, the Bailiff of Guernsey, offered a £25 reward to anyone who denounced a chalker-up of V-signs. Anti- Jewish orders were registered in the Royal Court. Residents of Jewish ancestry were told to register by the local authorities and, worst of all, three non-British Jews were handed over to the Germans. Two died in Auschwitz. The local authorities also assisted in the deportation of 2,200 British-born islanders as hostages to camps in Germany.
At the end of the war, a particularly vile pudeur anglaise prevented any washing of dirty linen. The authorities did little to stop small mobs punishing `Jerrybags', yet they evacuated the worst collaborators back to Britain, then quietly released them to avoid controversial trials, like those in France. Black marketeers handing in reichsmarks were not investigated, and bank staff were told to keep quiet. The Home Office sup- pressed the truth that up to three quarters of the population had worked directly or indirectly for the Wehrmacht, including a dozen or so in German uniform. The few genuine heroes, such as a Jersey woman who died in Ravensbriick for sheltering an escaped slave labourer, were never acknowledged because their example showed up everyone else.
The Bailiffs of Jersey and Guernsey, like officials of the Vichy regime, had adminis- tered the occupation on behalf of the enemy power, yet after the war both men were thanked in Parliament and awarded knighthoods. It was a thoroughly British solution for bad consciences all round.
The author is co-author with Antony Beevor of Paris After the Liberation, 1944-1949, published by Penguin.
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