Discourse and Defiance Under Nazi Occupation: Guernsey, Channel Islands, 1940-1945 (15 page)

DIFFERENTIATION

The final element of
sousveillance
that would influence the structure of resistance involved Islander differentiation of Nazi foe from potential anti-Party ally. In considering life under Occupation, one aspect seems to grip the public imagination. What would it be like during time of war to have contact with the enemy on a daily basis in a civilian setting? Over the five years of Occupation, the Channel Islanders encountered the occupiers in the Market, the street, the movie theater, at the communion altar rail, even (due to extensive billeting) in the bathroom, the hallway, the staircase of their own homes. Under these conditions, what would be considered proper behavior that would not “aid and comfort” the enemy or cross the indistinct line into collaboration? The fascination with this question has in some
ways controlled discussions of the Occupation both in academic studies and in popular understanding.

This aspect is prominent, for example, in the Jersey War Tunnels exhibit, a beautifully designed museum set up in HO8, a former underground hospital complex constructed by slave labor in that larger Channel Island. In one of the primary exhibits of this examination of Occupation life, there are mannequins of German soldiers holding out an ice cream cone or laundry, or seated in an armchair, each with a video screen in place of his head. On each video screen, a young German's face appears, smiling and attractive and speaking directly to the viewer. One says, “How are you? Very nice to be here,” and at his feet is a placard: “Would
YOU
…say hello to a German soldier in the street? If he shouted a cheery greeting could you ignore him?” Another “soldier” says, “But I very much like it. It is a very nice island. It has so much nature and sun and it is very beautiful.” And at his feet is the placard, “Would
YOU
…invite a German soldier to your home? He speaks perfect English and shares your love of music.”

The concept of putting the viewer in the place of the occupied is a strong one and obviously seeks to show outsiders that moral dilemmas were part and parcel of the Occupation. However, the situations described and questions asked were generally easy ones for the populace to answer. Most quickly developed a polite “game face” to present to the cheery greeting, some colder and more dismissive than others. In shaky handwriting appended to her diary, probably years later, Elizabeth Doig wrote, “I never stepped off the pavement for soldiers. I stood still & they had to walk round me.”
²⁴¹
The response to soldiers on the street had more to do with age and gender, “decent” young women taking particular care not to encourage the soldiers.

In an attempt to simplify for a general public, some of the questions in the exhibit may unconsciously foster false impressions. Inviting a soldier to your home, or taking in washing “for extra rations,” another of the placard questions, might be viewed as collaboration, although the position of the person involved would be a mitigating factor. Just as a shoe-repair shop would be required to repair German boots, an individual working from his or her home in such a business would be compelled to provide services to the Germans or face serious repercussions. Such work would mean regular contact with Germans in the home. States officials or ministers might be viewed as having good reason for meeting with German officers in their homes, simply because it often signaled an informal intervention on behalf of a civilian.

The problem with the questions in the exhibit, sharpened by the underlined and capitalized
YOU
, is that they deal with relatively voluntary interactions. It is not difficult to come up with the patriotic, “correct” response foregoing the extra rations, or the pleasure of the nice German soldier's company and a stimulating discussion of music. Yet, Channel Islanders—in the case of this study those in Guernsey—had no choice but to interact with Germans. It was not a case of invitation into the home; a German soldier was billeted in the adjoining bedroom. Perhaps, as in Winifred Harvey's case, the family home was taken over entirely by Germans and contact was necessary, if only to monitor what was happening to the property. For the Warrys and Bachmanns as shop owners, both in the Guernsey Arcade, many of the customers crossing their doorsills would be Germans. For Ambrose Robin, Ken Lewis, and Rev. Ord, contact with Germans, particularly officers, came because of work with the States or in the course of the ministerial vocation. For those in certain positions, whether by vocation or standing in the Island, contact was handled on the basis of “keep your friends close and your
enemies closer.” The more that the Islanders knew, the more information informally gleaned of German reasoning and plans, the better for the civilians.

This matter of contact with the enemy was driven home to Rev. Ord one day as he sat typing an entry in his diary. Looking out the window, he could see a farmer's cart going into town as it did every other morning. Seated beside the Guernsey farmer was a German soldier who apparently had the job of purchasing for his battery and also had to make regular trips into town. Although Ord did not seem to know whether the German was also billeted on the farmer, the soldier had the right to demand transportation. In any case, Ord had watched as “week after week they go together,” and contemplated the fact that sitting side by side for such a length of time would have to lead to some greater understanding between the two. Contact with the Germans was simply unavoidable, and in Ord's Christian viewpoint, “the only course is to judge a man as his character is revealed.” Although, Ord wrote, “we ‘see red’ when a Nazi appears in his true colours or when we see the ‘system’ at work,” Islanders also had opportunity to see “the Other Germany” of the anti-Party Germans, those who opposed Hitler and had been dragooned into the military, unable to resist out of fear for self and family. These were men “on our side in this struggle not of Empires but of ideas.”
²⁴²

There was relief, of course, for civilians whenever these armed men in their midst behaved in a simply decent fashion. Two aspects seemed to influence positive interactions with the Germans: the formal politeness that the more educated soldiers, particularly officers, displayed, and the youth of the soldiers in general. There was brutality, cruelty, and a cold Nazi pride on display as well, but that served to heighten the comparison when Islanders met up with the other type of German. When Jack Sauvary was introduced to the German staying with Mrs. Godfray, he noted that despite Jack's poor French, perhaps their only means to communicate, “being a polite officer” the man declared Jack to be quite fluent. When he saw that Jack was smoking a mixture of Lipton tea and bramble in his pipe, the officer immediately went upstairs and brought down a 2 oz. bag of tobacco (“very kind” mentioned Jack in parentheses).
²⁴³
These little interactions, unsought but unavoidable, and small kindnesses lessened some of the tension of contact.

Ken Lewis came across a German painter one Saturday evening as the man was trying to capture a pastoral farm scene down one of the charming Guernsey lanes. With his curiosity and total lack of concern about German contact, Ken spoke to the artist and discovered that he had been a professor at a Bohemian university during peacetime. Ken proclaimed him to be very good at painting and, despite being “only a private,” to be a “very decent fellow.”
²⁴⁴
As there was no benefit to the German war effort, artists, hobbyists, and intellectuals seem to have been appraised somewhat differently from the average German soldier. Bill Warry, who had studied for two years and passed the examinations at Kew Gardens, at times would go out into the field with a German botanist (“a good fellow”) in order to show him a rare plant or a particular kind of Guernsey grass, the interest in the topic overriding the reality of their being enemies.
²⁴⁵

As a shop owner, Bill Warry was in constant contact with German customers and seemed to have little difficulty in interacting with Germans, even to the point of some humorous baiting. When Bill and his wife, accompanied by a Mrs. Williamson and their shop assistant, went to Petit Bot to pick some ripe sloes in order to make jam, they found the area overrun with Germans. One German police officer fell into conversation with Bill. He asked if the Warrys liked the German people. “Yes,” Bill replied, “but not their Government.” He then asked, “When do you think the war will finish?” to which Bill replied that he knew, “but had been
told not to tell.” To this, the German responded, “Another 2 months then finished.” Finally, the German remarked, “We like the English, you know,” to which Bill dryly rejoined, “Yes it looks very much like it.” Both men seemed to enjoy this back and forth, and neither seemed to fear repercussions. In fact, Bill finished recounting the exchange by writing, “Some of these Germans are very decent fellows & very polite.”
²⁴⁶

Of course, the social traits of politeness and decency, however that latter culturally charged term is defined, are easily assumed guises providing a convenient cover for all types of evil intent. Yet over five long years, the Islanders were observers of far deeper emotions in the occupying troops. Propinquity, simply being near another in time and place, provides an opportunity to see the soul of the other and to discover a common humanity that transcends our differences. This is the reason that propinquity is one of the key predictors of attraction in interpersonal relationships; we tend to be drawn to others as we get to know them, rather than being repelled by our greater knowledge.

Some interactions could not help but summon up thoughts of their own young men, serving with the Allied forces and out of contact with their homes and families. In January 1941, Ambrose Robin mentioned a temporary suspension of leave for the German troops and its impact on a young soldier who was his mother's sole support. He had not been home for four years and had been promised leave that very week, only to have it suddenly canceled. “He wept,” Robin wrote with apparent sympathy, “like a child.”
²⁴⁷

Jack Sauvary witnessed this same rush of emotion when Goldie, the beautiful spaniel belonging to Elsie, Mrs. Godfray's maid, was run over by a car and killed. The family was devastated by the loss, and the German officer, the one who had been so polite to Jack at first meeting, actually cried because he was so attached to the dog. The officer had always brought in Goldie's meals, and took the dog for a drive with him in his car every day.
²⁴⁸
Even in the first month of Occupation, Kitty Bachmann learned through her husband that Germans in town were pathetically eager to show photographs of their homes and families “to anyone sufficiently interested to see them.” She saw this as a tacit admission that the soldiers “had their fill of Hitler's Promised Land” and wanted little more than to return to their home and live their lives in peace.
²⁴⁹

Humor, and a sense of the absurd, was a point of unity between some of the occupiers and the civilians under their control. Ernie Carre, whose brother owned the Bungalow Hotel in Sark, reported that the thirty or so men still in that tiny Island would spend evenings at the hotel. They would sing “Tipperary” and “There Will Always Be an England,” and the loudest voices of all would belong to any Germans present, at least “when they have reached the stage when hats can be exchanged.”
²⁵⁰
Not all the humor was alcohol-fueled, of course, and some was based on the personalities involved and their sense of the ridiculous. Two highly respectable Guernseywomen, Mrs. Sherbrooke and Mrs. Kinnersley, were put under temporary guard at their home while a charge that they had signaled to Allied parachutists from the upper windows of the house was being investigated. Neither woman seemed much perturbed by the situation, nor did their guard. When their friend Mrs. Brock went to visit, she was introduced by Mrs. Sherbrooke (“with much flicking of eyelashes”) to “Our guard, Herr Gans.” Whereupon the guard replied happily, “Ja, Herr Gans, Goosey, goosey gander.”
²⁵¹

But let us state the obvious here from our position of knowing the full truth of Nazi atrocities. Hearing of these displays of humanity cannot help but trigger the response that Hitler, too, had a fondness for children and dogs but still was able to order the butchering of children and the poisoning of his own dog, Blondi. SS guards could have a rousing song at a
biergarten
and return to their work at the abattoirs of the concentration camps. It is important to point out that, even lacking information about the Final Solution, the Islanders were not fools, nor were they naive and easily won over by displays of emotion or humor. Still, they struggled often with how to properly behave so as not to collaborate, yet to encourage kind treatment of their own people, and even to foster questions within the occupying troops about the morality of the German cause.

This ethical dilemma was most intense from a Christian perspective, and many Islanders turned to their ministers for guidance. Rev. Ord, with his knowledge of German and experience as a prisoner of war, had urged his flock at the very outset of the Occupation not “to succumb to the facile temptation of hating,” a Christian stance that he acknowledged to be increasingly difficult over the years. He developed and advocated a policy of differentiation, where Islanders would “do our utmost to distinguish between the régime and those who may have no way of open revolt against it. There is no inconsistency in hating the National Socialist system and those who exemplify its beastly features
AND
at the same time judging every man as we find him.”
²⁵²
This proved to be useful advice, for as Hazel Knowles Smith so aptly put it, the Islanders saw “the full spectrum of violence and decency side by side in their topsy-turvy world.”
²⁵³