If Britain Had Fallen (31 page)

The rest of the
Ordinances
on this subject bear out this impression. Although they had never followed in international affairs the principle of throwing back the smaller fry—Luxembourg could hardly be considered a very big catch, for example—the Germans were sticklers for piscatorial etiquette in this respect and solemnly laid down the ‘minimum measurements’ under Occupation law which qualified a fish to be kept and eaten. Salmon had to be fifty-three centimetres long, river trout eighteen, perch
fifteen, while it was even an offence against the dignity of the Reich for one not to return to the water a crayfish under eight centimetres in length.

Although carefully set out in English and German, with an appendix explaining the British system of local government, many of the
Ordinances
seem to have been drafted by someone who knew nothing of the British Isles or had some other place in his mind. The rules concerning
Hunting Rights,
for example, are spelt out in even more detail than those for fishing, and occupy four times as much room as the postal regulations. ‘Forestry officials’, it is laid down, ‘may be allowed to shoot over state preserves’, a significant statement in Westphalia, perhaps, but of doubtful value in England. The main purpose of the rules was, however, clear enough. The Germans were to have the run of every covert or grouse moor in the country, subject to forming themselves into officially approved shooting-clubs and coming to terms with the landowner concerned, though ‘when all attempts at an amicable agreement shall have failed, the preserves shall be placed at the disposal of the German armies by way of requisition’. Here, too, the framers of the law had gone into fantastic detail, providing, for example, that the agreement could be terminated ‘in case of transfer of the majority of the members of the club to another garrison or if, in consequence of negligence or complicity on the part of the gamekeepers, there shall have been a considerable decrease in game as the result of poaching’. The Germans, it is clear, had tried to think of everything, even the possibility of the local poachers getting to ‘their’ pheasants and partridges first—and of the gamekeeper for once turning a blind eye to their activities.

While the German Army was in this somewhat elephantine way imposing restrictions on freedom to kill game—though it recognised no close season for the shooting of human beings—the Gestapo was making far simpler plans to deal with other types of recreation. The Germans had had some success before the war in using international sporting events as a means of establishing contacts with other countries, a process which had reached its climax in 1936 with the holding of the Olympic Games in Berlin, but those dim-witted, athletic dupes of the Germans who had argued that ‘sport was above politics’ were in, when the invaders arrived, for a nasty shock. Armed with an academic thesis by some obscure German researcher on the subject of ‘Sport in England’, the ‘commandos’ expecting to leave shortly for London were instructed on 29 August that among the ‘immediate measures’ to be taken on their arrival were ‘the suspension of the activities of all sports clubs, closure and seizure of the large sporting associations and of the branches of the Olympic Committee [and] confiscation of sports equipment’. What precisely the Germans had
in mind was not stated, but it is probable that it was team games which were their real target, rather than private amusements like golf and tennis, since these not merely offered a ready-made framework for resistance, but also assembled crowds of spectators, who might engage in anti-German demonstrations. Even so the proposal seems strangely short-sighted, for the opportunity to take part in, or watch, sporting events would have provided a useful safety-valve. But this apparently did not trouble the Germans, and among their ‘important targets’ the Gestapo included not merely ‘denominational and Jewish sports organisations’, but also ‘large sports associations, the Football Association, etc.’. No reference was made to local, amateur football league matches and similar activities, and these would probably have been permitted as they were in the Channel Islands.

The Gestapo were less concerned about the most traditional of indoor recreations, since this was an activity which only involved two people at a time, but the Army had not forgotten it. Its lawyers seem to have been under the strange impression that in Great Britain, as in some continental countries, there were ‘licensed houses’ registered for prostitution, instead of strictly illegal establishments whose existence, at least officially, was unknown even to the police. To the German mind, however, since one country possessed brothels all must possess them and the ‘Civil Authority’, to whom most of their orders were addressed, meaning the mayor of a town or the chairman of an urban or rural district council, would, had the Germans arrived, have found himself facing the embarrassing requirement to ‘prepare without delay a list of:

1. All brothels in the district administered by him, with the names of the inmates.

2. The names and addresses of all known prostitutes, not living in brothels.

3. The names and addresses of all women known to be suffering from Venereal Disease.’

In view of the Germans’ passion for carrying out the law to the letter, it seems unlikely that a mere ‘nil return’ would have sufficed, and the preparation of the required information might have given a certain amount of amusement to the local government officials deputed to assemble it if nothing else. It would, however, have been no laughing matter for the girls concerned, for the military commander was authorised to ‘appoint officers especially to supervise the sanitary police regulations to be exercised by the Civil Authority’, and, unaware of the furore caused half a century before when attempts had been made to enforce very similar laws in garrison towns in England, the Germans proposed, in their high-handed way, to brand as a prostitute ‘any woman whose
usual place of abode is outside the zone of occupation present therein without any visible means of support’, and ‘any woman who solicits or has illicit sexual intercourse with any person being a member of the army of occupation’. The German ‘vice squad’ were also to ‘see that the measures taken by the Civil Authorities are not designed to prejudice, and do not in practice affect, the dignity or safety of the troops of Occupation’. There were, in other words, to be no conspicuous notices in English High Streets reading ‘This brothel is for German troops only’.

The queues of officers and men outside their separate brothels was in fact one of the sights of Occupation in the Channel Islands, the establishments being staffed by local girls reinforced by others from France—‘Very attractive’, one local man remembers—the occupants, to the wry amusement of other Channel Islanders, being classed for rationing purposes as ‘heavy workers’. The French girls were needed because too few local women volunteered for the job, but eventually some of them became redundant. One Jersey physiotherapist remembers being called on, as a qualified male nurse, to give injections at a local brothel, staffed by twenty girls under a French madame, until told that his services would not be needed in future as it was being closed down due to amateur competition from ‘collaborators and local girls’. The scenes witnessed in London, Ipswich and elsewhere after the arrival of the Americans later in the war—though these were, of course, allies—suggest that in England, too, ‘Jerrybags’ would not have been unknown, especially if the Germans had, as they threatened, deported the whole younger male population to the Continent.

Experience in other countries also suggests that, once the immediate danger of revolt was over and their machinery for plundering the country had been set up, the Germans would have encouraged the resumption of a life as near to normal as possible, and this conclusion is borne out by a detailed study of both the military commanders’
Orders
and the Occupation
Ordinances.
Even the initial
Announcement regarding Occupied Territories
to be posted immediately the Germans arrived had ordered, as already mentioned, that ‘all businesses, trade undertakings and banks are to remain open’, and pegged prices at the prevailing level. Von Brauchitsch’s
Directive for Military Government,
which contained dire threats as to what would happen to anyone resisting the Germans and made dark references to the taking of hostages, also promised that ‘Laws of the country operative prior to the occupation will be upheld unless they are contradictory to the purpose of the occupation’. The Germans seem, in fact, to have envisaged several separate legal systems existing side by side. German troops, and the civilians who followed them, were to be subject
solely to German military law, as was any British citizen aiding and abetting a German engaging in crime, and also outside the jurisdiction and protection of the British courts was any British citizen who committed any offence against the German troops, or Occupation authorities, and whom the Germans asked should be handed over to them. This would, no doubt, have happened to anyone charged with serious offences such as sabotage or spying and, if they behaved in England as in the Channel Islands, the German courts would also have dealt with people who failed to show proper respect to the occupying forces. In Guernsey this included that splendid woman subsequently nicknamed ‘Mrs Churchill’, who refused to say ‘Heil Hitler’ when offered her sweet at dinnertime in the German-occupied hotel where she worked, replying ‘To hell with Hitler for a rice pudding—and made of skimmed milk at that!’ a gesture which earned her six months in gaol.

With these exceptions, and the private undercover activities of the Gestapo, which are nowhere mentioned in the official literature, it was intended that the whole elaborate machinery of British justice should carry on as in peacetime though the Germans proposed to add an additional storey to the existing structure, with a new ‘High Court’, consisting of two German lawyers, one of whom would preside, and one British lawyer. To this court anyone who had been engaged in a civil action could ‘if he considers he has suffered from a miscarriage of justice … appeal’. This innovation would obviously have been popular with unsuccessful litigants, who had nothing to lose by appealing and to whom the Germans, eager to impress the public with the excellence of German justice, would probably have been indulgent.

The very first article of the occupation
Ordinances
laid down that ‘the ordinances of the military commander shall have the force of law and on publication shall be recognised as such by the German [authorities] and by the authorities of the occupied country’, and it was infringements of minor regulations promulgated in this way which would have presented British courts with their greatest problem. Major offences the Germans would have dealt with themselves so that no British court would have been asked to condemn a fellow countryman to death for sabotage, but a British magistrate, or jury, might well have been called on to fine someone who had scribbled ‘Down with the Nazis’ on a poster, or guests who had rounded off a wedding reception by singing ‘God save the King’. There were many such incidents in the Channel Islands, mainly concerning the illegal possession of radio sets, or the chalking up of the ‘V’ sign, and in July 1941 the Jersey authorities even offered a £25 reward for ‘information leading to the conviction of anyone … for the offence of
marking on any gate, wall or other place whatsoever visible to the public the letter ‘V’ or any other sign or any word or words calculated to offend the German authorities or soldiers’.

If the courts would have been at least as busy as in peacetime, so too would the Town Hall and municipal offices. The Germans laid upon the head of the local civil authority the task of operating the whole complicated machinery of the non-military aspects of the Occupation. He was, they declared, ‘personally responsible for the performance of the duties assigned to him in any regulations issued by the German military authority and for the observance of civil laws and of military regulations on the part of the community administered by him’. If the Germans demanded billets or bicycles, it was the mayor and his staff who had to find them; if they wanted a list of Jews, or Freemasons, or Jehovah’s Witnesses, a harmless sect which the Nazis had singled out for persecution, he had to provide it; if they demanded that the town’s sports grounds be reserved for German use, or ploughed up to grow food, or be renamed ‘The Adolf Hitler Memorial Park’, he had to try to satisfy them. A good mayor and, perhaps even more, a good town clerk, since it was on him and his staff that the day-to-day burden of carrying out the German orders rested, was likely before long to be unpopular all round. The Germans would call him obstructive; his fellow-countrymen would accuse him of being ‘too soft towards the Germans’, if not actually collaborating.

The most senior public figure in the British Isles actually to face the problem of walking the tightrope between futile opposition to the Germans and active collaboration with them was Alexander, now Lord, Coutanche, formerly Bailiff (i.e. Prime Minister) of Jersey. Lord Coutanche had been born on the island but had trained as a barrister in England and served in the British Army in France during the first world war, later returning to the island and rising to the post of Attorney-General. When the Germans arrived he was forty-eight, not an age at which it is easy to adjust to totally new conditions, but he had no doubt where his duty lay. ‘I considered my orders were contained in the letter from the Home Office which instructed me to assume the office of governor’, recalls Lord Coutanche. ‘My instructions were that I would do the best for the people of the island whether I could get instructions from London or not. That I regarded as the orders of my King … I hope I carried them out as intended.’

The situation on Jersey was very different from what it would have been on the mainland, for the Bailiff had been formally appointed governor, his predecessor having been ordered to leave with the departing British troops, and the German Commandant who moved in at Government
House, the Buckingham Palace of Jersey, issued a proclamation that ‘such legislation as, in the past, required the sanction of His Britannic Majesty in Council for its validity, shall henceforth be valid on being approved by the German Commandant and thereafter sanctioned by the Bailiff of Jersey’. Some similar device would have had to be adopted by the Reichs Kommissar in London, though strictly speaking everything that happened once the King and the government he appointed had gone would have been illegal. The Parliament of Jersey, ‘the States’, could legally have met but the Bailiff decided that to summon it to debate legislation would be too slow and cumbrous a process, so that Jersey was ruled during the Occupation by a Council of eleven men, who met weekly, the Bailiff himself, the two law officers and eight ‘presidents’ in charge of the main departments of the Council, though the states could still, Lord Coutanche has pointed out, ‘abolish us at any time and resume the government’. Wisely, it may be felt, it did not do so and Lord Coutanche himself has no doubt, looking back a generation later, that ‘the record of Jersey and the Channel Islands during the German occupation was an honourable one’, a judgment with which most Channel Islanders, who still feel a deep respect and admiration for their wartime leader, would agree.