German Forces

At the seaside ...

German Army and Naval offices surveying Braye Harbour, Alderney, Channel Islands. Braye Harbour was a result of a mid-19th century British project to fortify the Channel Islands against French Naval attack. Having built, with considerable difficulty, one of two projected harbour barrier walls, it finally dawned on the British that, given the pretty extreme tidal variations on the Channel Islands, they were indulging themselves in a futile exercise, both from the point of view of defence and possible French occupation. As a result, the main project was abandoned - although the difficult project of maintaining the single (therefore grossly inadequate) harbour wall continues to this day. The German occupation of Alderney represents perhaps the most extreme, and most curious aspect of the wartime occupation of the Channel Islands. Before their arrival, the entire population of the island (some 1,500 people at the time) had been evacuated to England or (in a small minority of cases, self-directed, to Guernsey). This seemed to have freed the Germans to fortify Alderney to an extraordinary extent, using slave labour, both Jewish and non-Jewish, confined in a number of concentration camps technically subortinate to the Neuengamme Concentration Camp near Hamburg, Germany, and its Channel Island subsidiaries. Enforced labour from Aldernay was also use to help fortify the neighbouring Channel Islands - in the context of the 1940s, an equally futile exercise. Alderney became a sort of concentration camp/holiday (for Germans) holiday camp) until 1944 when, under the threat of Allied invasion, the prisoners and garrison were evacuated to the Continent. Best regards, JR.