Living with the Enemy: What Really Happened-Roy McLoughin-Hardcover-0952565900-V - gebrauchtes Buch

During the Second World War the Channel Islands were the only part of the British Isles to be occupied by German forces. Living with the Enemy tells the unique and true story of life in the Islands under Nazi rule. With eyewitness accounts from both Islanders and German soldiers this book gives an accurate insight into this ill-assorted community at war and portrays how it felt to be living in the shadow of a foreign power. A sample of what the United Kingdom would have experienced should it have fallen. The Channel Islands hold a unique place in British history, not least because during the Second World War they were the only part of the British Isles to be occupied by the Nazis. For five long years the Swastika flew here in place of the Union Jack and all the worst excesses of Nazi rule were present in some form or other. The iron fist in the velvet glove policy did not last long. The Secret Field Police employed Gestapo operatives on secondment and many Islanders soon experienced the horror of the early morning knock on the door leading to brutal interrogation in a manner familiar elsewhere in occupied Europe. Only those who experienced the Occupation know the anguish of it and it has always been particularly distressing to those who lived through it when outsiders complain that there was no resistance movement in the Islands. Logic alone makes it clear that such action was simply not possible in so small an area and yet many thousands of Channel Islanders received prison sentences of one kind or another for contravening the law of the jackboot. To be a Jew was a crime under the anti-Semitic laws and even keeping a radio to listen to the BBC news broadcasts meant a stiff prison sentence. Many Islanders went further, assisting Russian slave workers and others on the run, eventually being sentenced to terms in French prisons or concentration camps such as Ravensbruck and Belsen. In some cases they died there.