By Tom Dare
INCREDIBLE FOOTAGE FROM 1940 showing members of Hitler’s Nazi party strolling around the Channel Islands after their successful invasion has resurfaced this week, giving a terrifying glimpse at just how close Britain came to being overrun by the German military.
Footage shows members of the Nazi Party walking through the entrance of the Royal Air Force headquarters on Guernsey island during the war, with further shots showing British police officers chauffeuring Nazi officers around the island.
Other clips from the video, taken as a Nazi propaganda film, show one British police officer laughing as he stands with German soldiers, with the voiceover also informing the viewer that the islands are now heavily protected against any kind of English interference.
The Channel Islands, which include Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, Sark and Herm, were invaded by the Germans shortly after they took France in June 1940. Hitler thought that the islands were of strategic importance given their proximity to France, while Churchill had made the decision early on in the war to leave the islands undefended, as he thought they presented very little strategic advantage.
Not realising that the islands had been left undefended, the Germans launched a series of bombing raids on them on June 28, killing 44 people. A third of the islands’ population had been evacuated prior to the attack, but those that remained found themselves under German occupation after the Luftwaffe took control of Guernsey airfield on June 30. One day later, the German flag was raised over the islands.
A curfew was imposed and alcohol was banned following the invasion, but life under German rule was toughest for Jewish people, as it was across Europe. Jewish people were forced to register themselves and their businesses, and four concentration camps were set up across the islands, with many of their Jewish inhabitants sent to mainland concentration camps in Europe.
The video, taken in Guernsey, was broadcast across Germany to show her population how well the war was going. Indeed, the voiceover that can be heard on the film is saying:
“German occupation of Guernsey and Jersey was our first step on British soil.
“Garrison defenders fled or were captured. Inhabitants live normally, sheltered by German arms. Our posts here keep up their guard against English intervention.”
The film ends by showing a German Luftwaffe raid on mainland Britain following a reconnaissance mission. While the video plays a song can be heard playing over the top of the footage, featuring the words:
“We flew over Vistula and Warta,
“We flew through Poland’s heartland.
“Socked it and rocked it, each enemy pocket,
“Bombing, blitzing, scorching our brand.
“Comrade in arms, Comrade,
“The roses at home long to ramble.
“Comrade in arms, Comrade,
“Orders came, we must scramble.
“Comrade in arms, Comrade,
“The motto we all know.
“The enemy engage, ferocious combat wage,
“Blitzing the English foe.
“We challenge the British lion,
“To a fateful battle royal.
“We’re holding court, making Empires shrift short.
“The mongers of war we’ll foil.
“Comrade in arms, Comrade,
“The girls are all waiting down home.
“Comrade in arms, Comrade,
“We fly-boys are tasked higher to roam.”
The video finishes with the narrator telling the audience that bombs ‘rained down’ on British air fields, fuel dumps and industrial zones.
“English plutocrats want war,” he says.
“They got it!”
