Jersey in WW2 - Organisation Todt

by Deborah Swift

Russian Slave Workers of Organisation Todt

My latest research has been into the German Occupation of Jersey during WW2. At first, the surrender by the British and the occupation by the Germans was polite, and the aim by both sides was to make as little disruption as possible, but inevitably as time progressed, relationships between the German occupiers and British citizens began to break down, leading to many reports of trauma and atrocity.

One of the things that caused fear and distress on the island of Jersey was the treatment of the forced labourers of Oganisation Todt. Named for its founder, Fritz Todt, an engineer and senior Nazi, Organisation Todt was a civil and military engineering confederation responsible for building infrastructure such as defence works and railways.

Hitler saw The Channel Islands as key to the control of Europe and Great Britain. With this in mind, he became obsessed with the idea that The Channel Islands should not be lost, and became determined to defend them, with the idea that eventually, after Europe was defeated, they would become the ideal base for Nazi families to enjoy holidays in a 'Strength through Joy' (Kraft Durch Freude) Camp. Worryingly, when I searched for more about the KDF, I found it still exists, and has branches in the North of England. Here is a typical Propaganda poster, the only one I could find not emblazoned with swastikas.

In order to defend the islands a massive programme of fortification began, and the Organisation Todt provided the labour. This obsession with Jersey was seen by many Germans as Hitlers inselwahn - island madness. Before Hitler's supposed final victory, the islands were to be a stronghold and submarine base for forays into English waters.

For those living on the island, they had to endure the appearance of nearly 500,000 metres of reinforced concrete to make anti tank walls, gun emplacements, underground barracks and bolt holes. Historic castles were fortified with concrete, and new roads cut through the previously quiet lanes to carry truckloads of building materials, plus the many workers needed for this enormous enterprise. To prevent landing by sea, the beaches were mined by more than 100,000 mines.

The workers for this frenzy of building were imported labourers and prisoners of war from Russia, Poland and the Ukraine. According to Nazi propaganda, the Slav races were untermenschen and treated as slaves to the Nazi building machine.

To house the workers,  camps known as lagers were constructed in several places, all named after famous German poilots such as ‘Richthofen’ and ‘Immelmann’. The treatment of the workers was appalling, and most were on inadequate rations because the food was progressively stolen by German employees and guards - either for their own use, or for sale on the black market. The lorry that brought the inadequate soup to the quarries and construction sites, also took away the corpses of those who had died from malnutrition, cold, exhaustion or disease.

Note the armed guard supervising these construction workers

Jersey people were suddenly reminded through these atrocities, that their occupying force could treat pepople in this barbaric way, and this made the constant fear of the occupation much worse. The Germans shot workers caught stealing potatoes from the fields. Suddenly, their Germman neighbours seemed much less civilized when the treatment of their 'slaves' was exposed. Civilians were warned of the penalties for giving the workers food, but a number of Jersey people did try to rescue them, taking them into their homes at great risk to themselves.

According to 'The IslandWiki' - the Channel Island Website, German records show that by May 1943 there was a total of 16,000 foreign workers in Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney. In November of the same year, numbers had halved to 8,959 and by July 1944 only 817 remained.

Workers from Organisation Todt feature in one of the stories in a new collaboration by writers fron many countries - all proceeds are in aid of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The stories focus on the theme of Resistance, and the collection of ten novellas is available now.

More about the stories here

Sources: The Model Occupation - Madeleine Bunting

The First Casualty - Jersey's Occupation Experience

https://www.theislandwiki.org

Jersey Evening Post

Jersey Occupation Food in #WW2 by Deborah Swift

German soldiers on British soil

I've recently been working on a novella for a collection of stories set in WW2. My book is set on Jersey in the Channel Islands. Those of you who have read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (or seen the film) will know about the food shortages on Guernsey during the German occupation. All the Channel Islands suffered under the occupation, not just Guernsey.  The geographical position of Jersey meant the Germans saw it as an ideal place of fortification before their planned invasion of England.

When the Germans invaded The Channel Islands, Jersey was cut off from English food supplies, and with thousands more hungry Germans on the island, the finding of enough food became a priority. Potatoes and swedes were a staple, but food was so scarce in the Channel Islands that every last morsel of the potato was eaten, including the peel. By the Summer of 1941, the ration of meat was four ounces per person per fortnight. Bread was scarce, and soon become a rough, hard, mouthful, often adulterated with bran, chaff or sawdust. The British 'cuppa' was made with tea recycled by drying out the leaves.

'The shops were empty, you couldn't buy anything. If you went into town, everyone was talking about food.'
Dorothy Blackwell - farmer's daughter Jersey

Finding and preparing food mostly fell to the women, and was enormously time-consuming. On an island as small as Jersey, the beaches were a source of food, though the beaches were mined by the occupying forces, so it was a dangerous mission to collect mussels or crabs. Seaweed, and moss were avidly collected, and used as vegetables or to make setting agents for preserves or blancmange.

Sugar was not available, so islanders made syrup from sugar beet. Coffee substitute was made from collecting and drying dandelions or parnsips. In harvest time, corn was gleaned grain by grain from any missed by the Germans, and painstakingly ground in home mills originally intended for coffee or spices. Breeding rabbits for the pot, and catching sparrows from hedgerows supplemented the diet with a little protein. Bird's eggs of any type were filched from nests.

Occupation Menu
According to the book The Model Occupation by Madeleine Bunting - here is a typical day's diet on Jersey during 1943:

Breakfast
'Grape nuts' made from mangel-wurzel with drop of rationed milk
Bramble-leaf tea
Bread with smear of cocoa substitute mixed with sago

Lunch
Boiled potatoes, peas, swede or cabbage
Pudding made of baked breadcrumbs & milk thickened with maize meal.

Tea
Bread & 'butter'
Bramble-leaf tea

Supper
Vegetable soup
Stewed potatoes & peas

Living in Fear
Thousands of islanders traded on the Black Market, or stole from the Germans to survive. Farmers were luckier, if thery could hide a pig or chickens, but those in towns suffered real hardships. In the face of German authority, islanders were powerless. One wrong word could lead to an appearance before the court and transportation to a French or German prison camp. Islanders witnessed the inhumane treatment of the slave workers brought over from occupied territories in order to build the German fortifications, and they feared the same treatment. Between 1940 and 1945, more than 300 islanders were taken from Jersey to concentration camps and prisons on the continent, for crimes committed against the German occupying forces.

Cooking
As the occupation progressed, cooking grew difficult, as finding enough fuel became harder. The island was denuded of trees by the German forces. Not only was there no wood for fuel, but nowhere to hide for any type of Resistance, and no hope of escape from such a large invasion force, without capture.

Communal kitchens were set up to minimize the amount of fuel needed for cooking, but to stay warm in the winter months it was still essential to search for kindling and wood, and anything else that could be burned. Everything had to be made - soap soon ran out, and toothpaste had to be made by mixing soot and chalk dust.

By Christmas 1944, electricity was no longer available. Candles became scarce, and winter evenings were spent in semi-darkness by the light of a tin can full of oil, with a bootlace for a wick. Lack of warmth and gnawing hunger made winter on Jersey a true misery.

All food supplies were cut off altogether after the D Day landings of 1944 when France was liberated. Starvation began to stare people in the face. Many succombed to illnesses associated with malnutrition. When the first Red Cross parcels arrived on 27 December 1944, people wept.

My new novella, The Occupation is based on the story of  a Jerseywoman who hid her Jewish friend from the Germans. The real life story can be found here.

You can order the book (in an anthology with another ten WW2 novellas) by clicking the picture.

Links:
Channel Island website: https://www.theislandwiki.org/index.php/Food_and_Rationing
Read more about the occupation of Jersey on the BBC
Or in The Telegraph

My website www.deborahswift.com