World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseGuernsey, along with the smaller islands of Alderney and Sark, formed a British Crown Dependency situated in the Channel Islands off the French Normandie coast. Airfields on Guernsey were used to launch strikes against German advances in France in 1940, but after the French armistice, the British recognized that the Channel Islands were not defensible, and a belated evacuation hurriedly began. Guernsey, the largest of the three islands, saw 17,000 of her population departing, a significant part of whom school children; Sibyl Hathaway, the Dame of Sark, encouraged her people to stay. German troops arrived on Guernsey on 1 Jul 1940, and on the following day reached Alderney and Sark. In 1942, German Army engineers, personnel of Organization Todt, and Eastern European slave laborers arrived to fortify Guernsey. Some Guernsey civilians were deported to various prisons and concentration camps in continental Europe; at least 9 of them did not return at the end of the war. The island of Alderney hosted four German concentration camps; the prisoner population of the camps was about 6,000. After the successful Normandie invasion in Jun 1944, the Channel Islands were cut off from Germany, and the winter of 1944 to 1945 posed a serious threat to the welfare of the population. The Germans at Guernsey surrendered to the British in May 1945.