The German Occupation is still a sensitive subject on the Channel Islands, and some islanders have been resistant towards what they perceived as my intrusive questioning of their personal histories. I hope my attempt to be balanced and charitable will repay the trust and generosity of the many islanders whose memories I have been privileged to draw on. I would particularly like to thank Dolly and Willi Joanknecht, Bob Le Sueur, Stella Perkins, Joe Miere and Bernard Hassall.
I am very grateful to Rollo and Jonathan Sherwill and their family for kind permission to read the private papers of Sir Ambrose Sherwill. Sir Peter Crill, the Bailiff of Jersey, agreed to allow me access to the Jersey Occupation Archives while they were being held by the Jersey police, and members of the force were extraordinarily helpful in accommodating my requests.
I owe much to the meticulous research of local historians who have generously shared their knowledge with me at different times over the last five years, including Michael Ginns, Brian Bonnard, Brother Andrew Marratt-Crosby, Richard and Margaret Heaume and Colin Partridge. M.R.D. Foot kindly helped to put the Channel Islands’ Occupation within a wider context of occupation and resistance in Europe. I am grateful to my husband Patrick Wintour and to Adam Curtis for long, enlightening discussions in which the central ideas of this book were formulated. Thanks are also owed to Dr David Cesarani, Dr Anthony Glees, David Batty, Martin Doerry of Der Spiegel, Colin Izod, historian Peter King, David Millward and David Goodhart, all of whom helped the book’s progress at key points. Despite the seemingly arcane interest of the Occupation for a newspaper, the Guardian has encouraged my enthusiasm and the editor, Peter Preston, generously gave me leave to complete the research for this book. Thanks also to my editor Richard Johnson and my agent Andrew Lownie for gently nudging me on, and my copy editor Robert Lacey, whose invaluable work has saved me from many heinous errors.
I have been lucky to have the help at different times of several able and enthusiastic researchers: Jamie Coomarasamy’s Russian and Dorothea Slevogt’s German were essential; Sharon Garfinkel gave up much time to plough through archives; Karen Haith and Euan Mahy kindly helped on Guernsey, where Odette Paul provided a warm welcome.
I am very grateful to the survivors of the slave labour camps. Norbert Beermart, Otto Spehr and Ted Misiewicz all gave me a warm welcome to their homes in Belgium, Germany and London, and delved deep into painful memories to answer my questions. Mr Misiewicz’s comments on drafts of Chapter Five were much appreciated. My greatest debt is to Galina Chernakova and Georgi Kondakov for their invaluable work in tracing survivors of the slave labour camps. The warm welcome in Russia and Ukraine which all the survivors and their families gave me will long remain my most powerful recollection of writing this book. It is to them – Georgi Kondakov, Albert Pothugine, Kirill Nevrov, Ivan Kalganov, Alexei Ikonnikov, Alexei Rodine, Ivor Dolgov and Vasilly Marempolsky, and to the memory of all those of every nationality who did not survive the islands’ occupation – that this book is dedicated.