Discourse and Defiance Under Nazi Occupation: Guernsey, Channel Islands, 1940-1945 (35 page)

As is typical of the stream of consciousness of diaries, Ken mentioned on September 5, 1944, that he had washed his hair that evening, abruptly making the mental leap to write that girls who had gone with the Germans would have their hair cut off after the war. A post office worker told Ken that postcards had been sent to some girls, “You are No. ———on the list for a hair cut,” with the cards signed, GUB (Guernsey Underground Barbers). Reportedly, a young dancer whose baby had a German father was number one on the list.
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Just a few days later, Kitty confirmed this report of the GUB and its inspiration in the attacks on women with German babies in post-Occupation France. Rumor was going around that a local woman had already been “scalped,” as Kitty put it, not for having a baby but for revealing the location of an Islander's hidden wireless.
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Had punishment been based on such betrayals, and Kitty's report appears to only be a rumor, then the GUB might have garnered widespread support.

Yet, many people feared being falsely labeled as fraternizers. That same September, Winifred Harvey described how she was pushing a heavy cart up St. Julian's Avenue, an exceptionally steep road, when “two hands descended over mine on to the handle,” and a German soldier—unbidden—started to help her push. Once they reached the Grange Club, Winnie
worried that watching eyes would see her German helper and she would “earn the attentions of the G. U. B.” The fact that the GUB was rumored to consist of young men, who had set themselves up as judge and jury over the women of the Island, evidently rankled Winnie. “But they themselves are in a doubtful position,” she noted, “for why are they in the island at all and not in the army?”
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This was not fully fair on Winnie's part, because many of these young men, now of fighting age, were trapped in the Island four years earlier at a time when they were too young to enlist. But Rev. Ord, too, saw the sexual politics being played out by the GUB and proclaimed it “lynch-law.” As he put it, “There are people who might well be taught a lesson—and they are not all of one sex.” Ord wisely believed that any punishment for sexual indiscretions were already natural to the situation, and “Girls who have had children to Germans will have their own burdens to carry long after public feeling has cooled.”
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Young women were not the only ones who had to guard their reputations against claims of fraternization. Only young men like Ken Lewis and his mates seemed to have no thought about appearances, probably because of their age. They cheerfully would talk to Germans whenever and wherever possible, seeing little but an opportunity to learn something new. This was not the case for most adults. For example, Winnie Harvey was a woman deeply interested in music. The loss of the wireless and her regular musical evenings of concerts in her home were both great blows to her. Of course live concerts were available to her at Candie Gardens and other venues, but these were concerts held by the Germans. Would going to such a concert be a form of fraternization? In March 1941, Winnie was firm in a principled stance. A concert of top musical artists from Berlin was being presented at the Regal Theater. The concert was free, and the opportunity was a rare one to hear some world-class music, but Winnie chose not to attend. “Why did you not go to it?” Winnie's friends asked her. “Music is an international thing.” While Winnie agreed with these sentiments, she saw the concert as little more than propaganda “turned to the use of the war machine. And I am not accepting
their
invitations.”
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But music was an irresistible draw for Winnie. When a friend was spending a week with Winnie, they took their “courage in both hands and went to hear the German band at Candie.” Winnie described the scene on that sunny Sunday in June 1942 as “truly Continental, “filled with German officers, soldiers, sailors, and a small number of Islanders. Rather than intermingle with the Germans and be an obvious audience for the concert, Winnie and Miss Caparne simply strolled around the lower gardens to look at the flowers and found an “inconspicuous bench” tucked away at some remove to rest and hear the music. She obviously was conflicted about visiting the Gardens when the German band was playing and being seen there.
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Kitty and Peter had their own difficulties avoiding the appearance of collaboration, especially just after D-Day, when “on the whole, the Germans are as eager to fraternize as we feel eager to remain quietly aloof.” One German officer began stopping by the house during the times when Peter was at the shop in town. Kitty was careful to leave the door shut and locked and would talk to the man at the open window, a wise precaution on her part. But this was not acceptable in the long run, as his repeated visibility at her window could end, Kitty feared, with her being “branded as a collaborator.” Just as Kitty and Peter had decided to run the risk of directly insulting him by reminding him that their shop was in town and telling him not to come by their house, his visits stopped.
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The Bachmanns' son, Peter-John, was a German magnet, for it seems that many of the soldiers and officers saw in him the children that they had left behind. But this was a problem for Kitty, who was sensitive to what people thought, and determined to get through the
Occupation with the Bachmanns' good name intact. When P.J. turned two, Kitty was out with her son picking flowers, only to look up and see a German officer kneeling close by with his arms outstretched. P.J. who had a great fascination with the Germans (calling them all “Oys,” a reference that Kitty and Peter never could figure out) rushed happily into the man's arms. So, here stood Kitty in sight of “the possible raised eyebrows in upper windows along our lane,” her son happily fingering the epaulettes and hat of a German who was grinning broadly and showing his gold-filled teeth. Summoning up a mixture of “good nature, firmness, and aplomb,” Kitty said to her son, “Say good afternoon,” which P.J. did happily. “Now say good-bye,” which P.J. did more reluctantly. The German took the hint, set her son down, clicked his heels, “Heiled Hitler and departed, seemingly unoffended and quite unabashed.” When she told Peter of the incident later, her husband simply said, “The poor devil—he is probably missing his own youngsters.” Kitty was left feeling that she had maintained her honor without unnecessary offense, and “in case of possible witnesses, only the most gossip-starved could have made anything of the incident.”
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SMUDGING THE LINE

Reputation with their fellow Islanders was particularly important for those who represented the civilian population. Those who were tapped by the States government to serve as liaisons with the Germans were in a particularly vulnerable position. Winifred Harvey had a chat with two friends after the Occupation had been underway for just a few months, and the topic turned to Smith, a man who served as “general factotum to the Germans and who, everyone says, is too friendly to them.” Smith had actually asked Winnie's friends about the gossip going around concerning his relationship with the occupiers and was trying actively to let people know that the stories were not true. According to him, he had taken steps to try and give up the position entirely, but Sherwill (still Procureur at that point) prevailed on him to remain in the post. According to Smith, Sherwill was having great difficulties with the Germans by then; indeed, Sherwill would not be in his position for much longer and needed all the help he could muster.
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Yet it did not take a special position that required contact with the Germans to have one's reputation threatened. If we want to understand how outward deference could be combined with resistance under the Occupation, a vital concept is the notion of “performed compliance.”
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In situations where all of the power is in the hands of others—be it in a workplace, a family situation, or in the larger historical loci of slavery, indentured servitude, or military occupation—direct and total refusal to comply is a rare and risky gamble with few rewards. For every nineteenth-century woman who defied her husband and convention, there were thousands more who, unwilling to risk losing their children, homes, and finances under laws that gave parental and financial rights only to the husband, learned the game of outward compliance and covert manipulation. For every Nat Turner or “troublesome” slave, thousands more wore a neutral or even cheerful mask of compliance for fear that their families would be sold away from them. It is the nature of performed compliance that it is a survival device—a way around hostile conditions for the powerless, but one that leaves the underlying identity intact.

This Janus-headed approach of overt compliance and covert impeding/resistance is unlikely to be understood based on a reading of the public transcript of speech and acts. Only
those outside of the coercive situation are fully free to express their opinions about that situation publicly. One must be naive to look at African Americans suffering under slavery or living in the Deep South under Jim Crow and expect them to be the clear voice of public opposition to their servitude. Southern slaveholders often pointed to the “happy” and compliant slave majority as proof of their benign ownership, conveniently ignoring the number of slaves who attempted or succeeded in escape. It often took many years of effort constructing the perfect mask to gain the trust and privileges that put a slave in a position where escape was even possible. Then again, any individual resistance held a likelihood of punishment for the entire community, so those who did escape or rebel knew that they could make conditions worse for others. And this threat to the larger community became a further mechanism for the powerful to prop up the status quo.

Thus, the prudent stance of those in a position of powerlessness is to adopt a blanket public deference to those in power. When a hierarchy is extreme in its power differential and marked by oppression, the need for a believable performance of deference becomes more serious, particularly when it covers acts of personal and collective subversion. James Scott makes several points about deference in situations of pervasive imbalance of power. First, many deferential acts are “highly routinized and shallow.” The Guernsey police continued to preface their reports, as they did before the Occupation, with “I beg to report,” a standard acknowledgment of their position in serving the larger community and their superiors. This did not reflect any actual respect toward their new German masters any more than did their opening a car door for a German officer whom they were required to chauffeur to some destination. Second, deferential acts are learned behavior, and Scott uses as an example the need for slave mothers to train their children in deference and conformity for their own safety.
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The kabuki of averted eyes or the attentive but nonchallenging gaze, honorifics of titles and “sirs and ma'ams,” and all the other small gestures of respect and deference are still a part of social education in any hierarchical society.

It was important to the solidarity of the Islanders that they were able to sort out necessary deference and performed compliance from true collaboration. For the most part they became adept in knowing those for whom compliance was a protective pose versus those who conformed willingly to German dictates. Compulsory work for the Germans became one of the gray areas during the Guernsey Occupation, and one that could spark charges of collaboration in some quarters. In effect, as mentioned earlier, any work that sustained the Island and kept it intact for the day of liberation could be characterized as “working for” the new German owners. Most people at the time, and in later assessments, have understood the unfairness and basic illogic of such a critique. Still, it was difficult even for the Islanders to sort out when work was compulsory and when it was not.
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In March 1943, Winifred Harvey wrote of a German announcement that the number of foreign workers would be drastically reduced, due to the disease and filth that these poor men brought with them. Instead, Island men were to be impressed into work for the Germans. A form was being sent around to various offices and businesses that accounted for the activities of men and women. This then was “followed by a quick round-up, especially from the shops,” where the unemployed, the underemployed, and older men were apt to congregate. The men would then be put to work driving lorries or working to move ammunition (a perilous job).
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By June, she described yet another German “round-up of labour” where men and women from banks, shops, and offices were pulled away from their regular work and set to packing up produce for shipment. Sympathetically, she described Ruth Ferguson being pulled from her pleasant job at Hirzel House, the headquarters of the Controlling Committee, and forced
to do physical labor for thirteen hours at a stretch. She “saw poor Mrs. Ferguson looking completely exhausted,” dragging sacks of food through the wet weather to feed the Germans' rabbits.
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Obviously, this was not work that Mrs. Ferguson chose for the temptation of larger rations and pay.

Yet, even knowing the compulsory nature of impressed work for the Germans, Winnie was oddly torn on the issue. In early 1944, she could not get workers to help her head gardener Moullin in his upkeep of the Newlands property. In Winnie's view, the men were “all working for the Germans at a high rate of pay, with extra food,” and growers and Islanders such as herself could not compete. She did find a man to work for her from St. Martin (Mr. Dorey) who was “steady and respectable and no lover of Germans.” It is interesting to note that as she needed to hire men herself, her understanding of the forced nature of German work, or at least the difficult quandary the workers experienced, went out the window. Somehow, only the men free to choose to work for Islanders were not “lovers” of the Germans.
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