The Model Occupation: The Channel Islands Under German Rule 1940-1945 Paperback – April 1, 2004

Finish the first chapter, maybe two, and you think this book is going somewhere, that the author has thought it all through and she looks to tell the story behind the history. But then you run into an early chapter on the dalliances between German occupiers and channel island women and what you find is what you will get for the rest of the book, a verbatim transcript of interviews with the thinnest narrative to hold them together. One entire chapter is little more than the case histories, one after another, of Jewish men and women who found themselves on one of the islands when the Nazis moved in. They are dearly worth remembering and a better story-teller might have done them justice, but the real lesson behind it all is just how eager the local authorities were to cooperate when the Nazis came knocking. This gets little more than a mention or two as the book fails to address the questions of how and why. What did the authorities on Jersey and Guernsey think they were doing when they bent over backwards to accommodate Nazis in their genocide? We don't know because it seems the author never asked. We just get the raw facts of what brought Jewish people to the islands and what became of them. We see the same approach when it comes to Slavic prisoners brought to the islands to construct defensive walls - an enumeration of events rather than some critical analysis of what the island residents did. In short, this is a book twice too long for what it offers, much more a diary of the author's interviews than a real attempt at piecing together what could have been a fascinating and vital story.

Bunting's analysis of this often neglected theatre of war answers virtually any question one might have regarding the Channel Island occupation. The Model Occupation clearly outlines the preceding circumstances which led to German domination, the interaction between natives and the occupying forces, and the precarious aftermath following liberation. A must read!

I found this book very interesting. I've read many books on WWII, but this is a little known, but very worth knowing, aspect of the war. Shows human nature at it's best and worst.

A most unusual and well-researched work that is entirely "readable". I learned a great deal, and Bunting challenges several previously-held notions about how the German authorities treated workers. The subject matter of the occupation is treated with respect. A welcome addition to my occupation library.

The five-year occupation of the Channel Islands by the Nazis during WWII (1940-1945) was "swept under the carpet" both during the war by the (mainland) British authorities and afterwards by the British and the Islanders themselves who were never sure what to make of their islands' behavior. The author has done a very good job putting together information that could not have been easy to uncover as well as interviewing islanders, Germans and former slave laborers (mostly Russian). The Channel Islands are a cluster of semi-independent islands, each with her own island government, situated about 20 miles off the coast of England and 7-12 miles from the coast of France. Guernsey, Jersey and Alderney are the best known. Despite their proximity to France, the islands have always thought of themselves as English and were almost totally dependent on England for food, fuel and manufactured goods. They were also a holiday destination for the English but otherwise not of strategic value in the war (so thought the British). For Hitler, however, occupying the Channel Islands was his first (and only as it turns out) foothold in England. This was to be a "model occupation", and for various reasons, as the book well explains, it was. Basically the British armed forces abandoned the islands when it became clear Hitler was approaching and left the islanders to cope on their own. They coped as best they could with dwindling supplies and under punishing restrictions (no cars, no radios), but after five years there was sometimes a fine line between captives and captor, the latter pretty much abandoned as Hitler started pulling back and ultimately losing the war. The camps and slave laborers were another side as well, and the author has done, I feel, a very good job presenting all the evidence she could find and coerce from both the locals and former slave laborers. This book was written in 1995. No doubt less of the individuals Madeline Bunting interviewed would be alive today. The Model Occupation is a fascinating study in war, politics and human nature.My interest in the subject was sparked by a British drama series called "Island at War". I think the two together make for a very good insight.[...]

Mostly based on interviews with those who experienced the German occupation of the Channel Islands, this book paints an interesting picture – being more critical of the Island authorities, and especially of the “sweep it under the carpet” attitude of the British Government after the liberation, than those from other histories and the latter day commemorations of the individual islands themselves might lead you to expect. It seems that the Guernsey authorities were less likely to protest or be uncooperative with the Germans than Jersey, and that on the whole these deeply conservative authorities were overly concerned with maintaining the status quo with as little disruption and provocation as possible. Not much likelihood of Heydrich-style assassination attempts here, though infrequent small-scale incursions from the mainland kept the occupiers on their toes. The book tries to recount the unhappy fate of the few Jews (many of them refugees from mainland Europe and caught in a limbo when the Phoney War of 1939/40 came to an abrupt end), and the horrors of the forced labour camps on the otherwise deserted Island of Alderney. There is a good description of the hardships and what must have been a strange sensation as the Islands were bypassed by D-day and its aftermath, suffering from supplies being cut off from the continent, and having to wait until May 1945 for the long-awaited Liberation Day. It is also heartening to read of the many individual acts of courage and resistance that did take place, and last but not least some of the humanity shown by a few of the ordinary soldiers of the occupation. Human stories make for a riveting read.

My book group chose 'the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society' and I bought this book to find out as much as I could about the German Occupation of the Channel Islands still a contentious subject. Madeleine Bunting has done a superb job of turning over as many stones as possible despite being hindered by documents missing 'because of lack of shelf space'. We should be very grateful that she travelled to Russia to track them down and to complete interview. Not an easy read but a very worthwhile one.

This is the best book I have read on the subject of the Channel Islands' occupation by far. Beautifully written, carefully researched - it is a masterpiece of narrative non fiction. But by the grace of God go any of us in that situation. However there are big questions about Churchill's 'let 'em starve' attitude to the islanders, Whitehall bungling; the way the Jews were handed over and how the Todt workers written out of history. Let us ask in each case, whom did that suit? There were also wonderful acts of heroism on the islands which deserve to be celebrated, plus looting, informing and collaborating within a suffocating feudal culture of deference. The best compliment I can give this book is that I am not the same person having read it as I was before. The fact that the book was snarlingly described to me on Guernsey recently as 'fiction!' by one of those jolly good chaps who thought they had seen history all nice and safely white washed for posterity - shows that Bunting scored a bulls eye.

Brilliantly conveys the difficulties and dangers of life under Nazi occupation. The book will make readers consider how they might behave in such circumstances, as the most ordinary aspects of life become full of life or death decisions.

A brilliant book. Well written and very informative. It shows just exactly how hard it was for the islanders during the occupation.