Discourse and Defiance Under Nazi Occupation: Guernsey, Channel Islands, 1940-1945 (42 page)

Ken gave hints of the life-and-death importance of such interventions and the deeper level of tension involved in continuous negotiations with the Germans. In his postwar address, Leale described the options when the Committee received an order:

We could carry it out without demur or could risk doing nothing in the hope that this would be the last we would hear of it; or try by arguments to get it reversed; or accept as a fait accompli, that something unpleasant was going to happen and to make the best of a bad job by suggesting alternative proposals which, though unpleasant, would be less burdensome than the original order.
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Ken described many of the Committee's moves as typical of “the ‘go-slow’ policy in Guernsey.”
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And such work slowdowns are classic forms of resistance under a general veil of compliance. After all the arguments are made against an action, if arguments are allowed at all, a smiling, vague willingness shelters a molasses-like pace of completion. It is little wonder
that powerless populations of all kinds earn reputations as lazy, inefficient, and incompetent; these are disguised strategies of obstruction.

From Leale's report and from the contemporaneous diaries, it is clear that the Committee attempted to push back whenever they felt that opposition would yield results. At other times, the Committee bided its time, believing that delay would put them in a better position to make their case. The ability to read those in power, a sensitivity to the nonverbal cues of those in control, has often been noted as an adaptation of those in subordinate positions. It is posited by some that women's “intuition” is tied to centuries of reading nonverbal signs, because pleasing others was integral to fulfillment of their subordinate role. Even children develop a sense of the danger signals when approaching a parent with a request would be an unwise move. Whereas those with the ability to enforce their own will often remain insensitive to the emotional cues given off by those in their power.

It is clear that the Controlling Committee made the decision to serve as “middle management” for the Nazi occupiers whenever orders affected the life and well-being of the Islanders—a sweeping decision that has been treated by some in the late twentieth century as conscious collaboration. It is also clear from Ambrose Robin's and Ken Lewis's accounts that the Controlling Committee lacked any discernable collaborative intent—in fact, quite the opposite.

As Leale himself stated in his report given only two weeks after Liberation, “The apparent motives for the actions of an administration are by no means always, perhaps they are seldom, the true motives. To discover these one has to penetrate more deeply.”
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There could be few better descriptions of performed compliance and the thickness of a carefully sculpted mask of subordination. Yet, how did the Islanders see their own States leadership at the time? If properly veiled, performed compliance is as mystifying to those below as it is to those above. Did the average Guernseyman and woman “get” the intent of the Committee in their role as the overseers of German policy?

The answer is sometimes. There are moments when the diarists reveal an Islander understanding of moves by States officials that met with criticism at the time and would become controversial in later years. Let us just take as one example Sherwill's recording of a speech on August 1, 1940, that was meant to assuage any fears that evacuees would have concerning the fate of their friends and families left behind in Guernsey. He started his speech, “I imagine that many of you must be greatly worried as to how we are getting on,” and he went on to extol the courtesy with which the German military authorities had treated the Island officials. He continued to include the key statement, “The conduct of the German troops is exemplary.” This proclamation describing the occupier as the model of restraint and civility, broadcast over Radio Bremen on August 8, was a gift to Nazi propaganda.

So why would Sherwill allow himself to be used in this manner, one that could not help but imply a cozy relationship with the enemy? There were practical reasons behind what Knowles Smith called “the façade of bonhomie” evident in this speech. Considering what he was up to behind the scenes, Sherwill was rather like a duck, all calm to outside appearance while actually paddling frantically. At the time, Sherwill was fully embroiled in the Martel and Mulholland affair.
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It was also during this time, according to John Leale's report and backed by other witnesses, that the Germans had threatened to shoot twenty leading citizens if they discovered that Islanders were harboring members of the British armed forces.
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Considering that these hostage shootings had taken place in occupied areas of the Continent, it was a threat to be taken as real.

In many ways, this speech was pure Sherwill in its tactics, and was consistent with other moves made during his brief tenure as president of the new Controlling Committee. Sherwill seemed perfectly willing to schmooze the occupier, as we would say today, and later described some of his letters to the Germans as “a bit smarmy.”
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He played to German vanity, to their sense of having a higher culture, and to their desire that other nations ultimately acknowledge the superiority of the German race. It is one of the oldest rhetorical tricks during times of tyranny to laud the oppressor in advance with the aim of structuring their actions in a positive direction.
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How much harder would it be for the Germans to shoot civilians when they had just been complimented before the world as the beau ideal of consideration and restraint? Of course, behind-the-scenes machinations and Sherwill's rationale for such a thick coat of varnish were sheltered from the average Islander. Still, they were all eager to send a general message to allay the fears of displaced Guernseymen. Evacuated relatives were painfully aware of the bombing raid that had ended evacuations in such deadly fashion. Also, prior to the Occupation, there had been fearful speculation whispered through the Island that women left behind would be subject to wholesale rape by German forces.

So, despite the heaping of approbation on a hated occupier, and even acknowledging that the propaganda benefited the Third Reich, response to the broadcast to England through Bremen was met with “great excitement” according to Rev. Ord. The text of the address was published in the Guernsey papers, so Ord could accurately describe how the message spoke to “the courtesy of the German authorities, of the efforts being made to re-start the economic life of the Island after the severance of communications, and of the exemplary conduct of the troops.” Quite likely, a man with Ord's training and earlier experience of Germans during his years as a prisoner of war could sense exactly what Sherwill hoped to accomplish. Just taking his words at face value, however, Ord saw the speech through the lens of his calling as a pastor, as a balm and strengthener in time of trouble: “If this message is allowed to go through as it stands written, and if our people believe it, it may comfort troubled minds.”
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Others had a different, although still positive, response to the speech. Dorothy Higgs took the motives behind the speech to be of a more personal nature: “Mr. Sherwill, who made the record, has three children away. Everyone envies them being able to send love even by such a chancy method.”
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Far from worrying about the praise of the Germans, Dorothy viewed the speech rather like a modern hostage recording: as simply an opportunity to allow relatives to hear the captive's voice and know that he was alive. The intelligent listener might be expected to take the veracity of the message with a grain of salt. Others, and among them the British government, considered Sherwill's actions as “unwise” and even naive.
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A more accurate critique might have described the move as shortsighted, for Sherwill's eyes truly were focused on immediate, at the expense of long-term, effect.

The Islanders seemed to understand the States' interposition between German orders and the Guernsey populace. Scott posits that tactical compliance is unlikely to “affect the face of the actor” unless such compliance is viewed as an “uncoerced choice.”
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The coercion under military occupation was clear to those living under similar conditions, and they could ask themselves just how often they were personally forced to comply with demands of a German soldier or to hold their tongues to avoid reprisals. Still, there were plenty of times when States officials received the fury often reserved for middle management under oppressive conditions. It has already been discussed how the States chose to take responsibility for requisitioning, out
of fear, as John Leale put it in his postwar report: “To say to them: ‘You must do your own requisitioning,’ was tantamount to saying: ‘Go and help yourselves to as much as you like.’”
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But the communication to let Islanders know how hard the Committee fought for them was spotty at best.

So, even though the German
Bekanntmachungs
were published in the newspapers, it would be the States that would oversee the demand for a person's bicycle, or the amount of milk to be rationed to children. When things went wrong, it was the States officials who received the blame for their inability to stop the Germans. Even fair-minded and knowledgeable people could lose sight of the Controlling Committee's lack of recourse. When, for example, a harvest of haricot beans was stored in a single location in the fall of 1941, the Germans simply located them and took the lot. Winifred Harvey, already exasperated over the loss of tons of potatoes carried off in much the same manner, wrote, “The States hand everything over without a protest. There is a great deal of dissatisfaction about.”
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Bert Williams provides a sense of the “armchair quarterbacking” in which some Islanders indulged. He firmly believed that many food shortages and rationings could have been avoided entirely “if the Powers that be had been efficient & listened to people who knew their job.” The primary problem was sheer incompetence, and simply that “there isn't one man in the right job.”
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Perhaps it was critiques from some Islanders that led to one piece of plain speaking by John Leale after the fact. Apparently stung by criticism from those not forced to face up to the Germans and negotiate for the well-being of the Island, Leale stated bluntly, “It is easy to talk big when you have no responsibilities on your shoulders. We all met the type whose fierce hostility to the Germans varied in inverse ratio to their proximity to Grange Lodge.” Those attitudes might earn the critic some “undeserved reputation for heroism,” but there was real work to be done by men who could not spend time “adopting histrionic attitudes.” Leale answered not just contemporary critics unaware of the facts behind the scenes but also the journalists of the future seeking dramatic “last stands” of defiance from the very men charged with their countrymen's survival: “We were facing real life not acting in a melodrama.”
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The States decided that the Hague Convention was the best overall safeguard and their partner “through thick and thin.” It was clear from the Convention and the establishment of International Law that occupying powers had the right to requisition the service of tradesmen, bakers, butchers, etc. But could they force growers to raise food for them, fishermen to fish for them, and other men to do a variety of work? A close examination of International Law made clear that the men could not be forced to work on entrenchments and fortifications, though that seemed to be the extent of refusal allowed. The States pushed the point with the Germans, who, in their turn, pointed out that on the back of the call-up notices, it distinctly said, “Service of labour is not demanded for work of any kind against your own country.”
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So, this dealt with the technicalities but not with the feelings involved. Leale was frank that this conclusion reached under the Hague Convention “seemed unpatriotic.” He told of a grower who was informed that he would have to comply with the German demand for his services. The grower simply looked at Leale, and in that stare, Leale could see what the man was thinking: “You're not much of a Briton.” And in one sense, Leale said, he agreed with this silent condemnation, for “truth to tell, I was not feeling particularly heroic at the moment.” With more thought, Leale knew this to be “a very superficial view,” for the Hague Convention was a protection worth following, even when the results in a given instance were not to their
liking. All they really had to fall back on, considering that they were under the control of an armed belligerent, was the balancing of rights and responsibilities of both the occupied and occupier under this neutral document. Whenever the Germans sought to stray outside the bounds of the Convention, the Committee would play to German vanity, claiming that “they [the Germans] were setting a lower standard than the British.” Rather smugly, Leale noted that the Germans “were always susceptible to arguments of this kind.”

At times, the Controlling Committee used the Hague Convention to great effect, although it could not prevent the general order that Islanders must work for the Germans. Ultimately, the Controlling Committee interposed itself in the work question as it had in requisitioning and rationing, clarifying to Guernseymen that they must comply with the hated order. They could not stop it, in their view, for fear that the Germans would simply send the Island men “to France to build bridges or to the Rhine to clear away the debris left by the bombers,” replacing them in the Island with Continental workers already impressed into slave labor. All the States could do, once again, was to try and verify that all tasks fell within the guidelines of the Convention, and to intervene on behalf of Islanders asked to do work that seemed directly tied to the German war effort.
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