Less than two months after Winston Churchill’s after-dinner speech at Hawke Castle, Nazi Panzer divisions rolled into Poland. Three days later, Great Britain declared war on Germany. In May of 1940, Winston Churchill was named Prime Minister.
On June 28 of the following year, German Luftwaffe squadrons attacked the English islands of Jersey and Guernsey. On July 1, 1940, the governor of the Channel Islands surrendered to the Luftwaffe at the JerseyAerodrome. It was the first and only time in history that English soil had been occupied by a conquering German army.
The Channel Islands were to remain under oppressive German occupation and control for almost four years, until shortly after D-Day, June 6, 1944.
On one of the four islands, the one called Greybeard, a small pocket of resistance fighters engaged in constant disruption and daring feats of sabotage against the Nazi invaders for the duration of the war.
But that, of course, is another story.