Chilling footage of members of the Nazi party strolling around the Channel Islands offers a terrifying glimpse of how close Britain came to being invaded by Hitler’s army.
Released as a propaganda film, the video shows how the slice of British territory remained under the Nazi heel until its liberation in 1945.
Footage reveals members of the party walking through the entrance of the Royal Air Force headquarters on Guernsey while British police officers can be seen chauffeuring Nazi officers around the island.
A British police officer can be seen laughing in the footage as he stands with German soldiers
A soldier stands guard at the entrance to the Royal Air Force on Guernsey
The Channel Islands, which include Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, Sark and Herm, were invaded by the Germans in 1940
Other clips show one British police officer laughing as he stands with German soldiers, with the voiceover informing the viewer that the islands are now heavily protected against any kind of English interference.
The Channel Islands, which include Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, Sark and Herm, were invaded by the Germans shortly after they took France in June 1940.
Hitler thought the islands were of strategic importance given their proximity to France, while Churchill made the decision early on in the war to leave the islands undefended as he thought they presented little strategic advantage.
Not realising that the islands had been left undefended, the Germans launched a series of bombing raids on them on June 28, killing 44 people.
A third of the islands’ population had been evacuated prior to the attack, but those that remained found themselves under German occupation after the Luftwaffe took control of Guernsey airfield on June 30. One day later, the German flag was raised over the islands.
Members of Hitler’s Nazi party can be seen strolling and driving around the Channel Islands after their successful invasion
The clips offer a terrifying glimpse at just how close Britain came to being overrun by the German military
Hitler thought that the islands were of strategic importance given their proximity to France, while Churchill had made the decision early on in the war to leave the islands undefended, as he thought they presented very little strategic advantage
A curfew was imposed and alcohol was banned and Jewish residents were forced to register themselves and their businesses.
Four concentration camps were set up across the islands, with many of their Jewish inhabitants sent to mainland concentration camps in Europe.
The video, taken in Guernsey, was broadcast across Germany to show the population how well the war was going.
Alderney was unique in the occupation of the Channel Islands in that — whereas most of the civilian population remained in Guernsey and Jersey — the island was almost totally evacuated before the all-conquering German army arrived in late June 1940.
In six ships, its 1,500 residents left en masse for the mainland of Britain, where they remained for the rest of the war.
Just half-a-dozen resolute souls stayed behind and quietly got on with their lives.
The result was that, with no prying eyes to monitor the activities of the roughly 3,000-strong German garrison, they had a free hand to do whatever they wanted.
They began by putting in massive guns to protect the island from air and sea.
Then — on Hitler’s express order in the summer of 1941 after a number of British commando raids on other Channel Islands — they built fortifications on an unprecedented scale to make Alderney virtually impregnable. Forts and barracks built in the Victorian era were updated and strengthened.
New bunkers, blockhouses and reinforced defences were constructed by slave workers brought in their thousands from the Nazi empire all over Europe under the direction of the notorious Organisation Todt.
This was an immense joint civilian and military engineering group that in peacetime had built Germany’s autobahns, and in wartime was given the task of fortifying the defences of the Third Reich.
Hitler made it plain he intended to hang on to the Channel Islands at all costs.
He had turned his attention away from Britain after the RAF thwarted his attempt to bomb the country into submission in 1940. He switched the direction of the war to the Soviet Union and the Eastern Front.
But his occupation of these outposts in the Channel symbolised his power.
They were his jackboot planted firmly in England’s front garden. They would also cover his back.