Secrets of Hitler's Island Fortress - The Islands of Guernsey (WW2 Documentary) | Timeline

scraps of land in ever-changing waters of the channel Guernsey and its neighboring islands have a unique distinction which sets them apart from the rest of the British Isles the islands of Guernsey together with the rest of Channel Islands the only part of the British Isles to fall to Nazi Germany in the Second World War the only place where the Union Flag gave way to the Nazi swastika I'm here to find out about the unique wartime experience of these islands and the people who lived on we remember the marauding headland it was a big adventure for us as kids I'm travelling across these islands to explore the extraordinary wartime relics above and below the ground and watch as the remnants of the Second World War are once again brought to the surface workplace you guernsey all Denise Arkin home make up the Bailiwick of Guernsey an archipelago off the coast of France these islands of Guernsey are subject to the British crown but are run by independent governments they are small an area but have played an outsized part in history during the Second World War they were transformed into fortresses they became integral parts of Hitler's Atlantic Wall his defence against invasion from the Western Allies I'm arriving in some eatables the capital of Guernsey strategically positioned overlooking the harbor and with a clear sight of the other bailiwick islands towers Castle kornpett for centuries it's been the key to controlling Guernsey in the 13th century the castle was built on a rocky promontory that still forms its foundations this castle changed hands many times through its history and one of those occupations has left an enduring mark on the fabric of this castle and that is the German occupation because in June 1940 German troops landed on Guernsey and the island remained occupied till the very last days of the Second World War they instantly realized that this was a hugely strategic point allowing them to control some Peter port and therefore the island of Guernsey and so they set about reinforcing its already powerful defenses with 20th century technology Hitler was very proud of having taken British territory so weapons artillery in hardware poured into these islands on an unimaginable scale when the Germans left all of that stayed behind and much of it still exists this is an artillery platform built on the orders of Henry the eighth now when the Germans arrived here they quickly realized that this castle was built with the wisdom of the ages so rather than replicate it or replace it they decided to reinforce it which is my uniquely in the British Isles this is the only place you can see Henry the eighth's defences enhanced by hip I'm meeting Sean from fetch Don Guernsey a local collective of enthusiasts dedicated to making the vast number of German structures on the island available to the public the group take their name from the publication fish Don Guernsey a German blueprint for turning the entire island of Guernsey into a fortress machine gun position on what was this was a mortar position and water when you came to work at the castle there's no one user to bring it here but it'd been filled in with bricks sometime in the 80s versus this this has been lost yeah and I grew up in playing in this so one of the first things I asked could I open it and my boss said yes we removed we estimate in excess of 80 tons of brick rubble must be very exciting future sort of reveal the extent of this little network of well what's a fortifications it's always exciting to come back into somewhere good obviously after 30 odd years I'd forgotten exactly what it was and being able to with my knowledge from now there's - when I was a child and be able to understand what it is it was very fascinating in the years ahead do you think the standards in your group and other enthusiasts and historians are gonna find yet more German wartime archaeology there's lots that we don't know where we know where the mains ruptures are from the book fessional merging we're discovering new things every time we start looking when we reopened this bunker we found small bits German coins or decontamination bottles maybe a bayonet occasionally or something like that ammunition so there's gonna be plenty more digging for you in the years to come I think digging is a passion of fresh tongues if there's concrete involved we won't stop Sean remembers well what it was like as a child to be playing in the German fortifications and speaks about it with a certain sense of excitement when he was a child the occupation had ended and the bunkers were abandoned some people on the islands however remember the occupation itself when there was a very different atmosphere Molly Roy and Diana all stayed on the island with their families as the German troops arrived and they think back on that time with mixed emotions almost 9:00 when the Germans came 14 when I finished the operation my sister and I we were too old and we would have had to go the school children and teachers and my mother didn't want to separate us because we were at different schools at the time so three times we walked down to the harbour being crushed panicky people crying it was awful and then we came back with our little bags and my father said right I'm gonna have to stay look after my grandfather like so we stayed we remember them arriving quietly there was only my mother that showed a lot of worry when the Germans arrived she was so frightened during the time my mother and father felt that we should have gone away you know we'd have been better but at the end we were still together still a close family and she was very pleased we did stay you know when I think back I was only much six-year-old they were just ordinary kids of their own me back in Germany and they didn't want to be here tell them they weren't frightening in that way at all and I mean that you know it was a big adventure for us as kids I mean it was a book that was a bad time for our parents from what I bill you know I was struggling to keep things going but I mean as youngsters you didn't worry about that in the fields opposite where we were living the Germans would go on like maneuvers and you'd see a mall rushing across a field and to a bank but firing blanks over the fields and that was all exciting to watch there were quite a few of us left who'd been at school together we were really having quite a unlovely hovered there long it was nice weather we picked up sort of certain amount of apprehension from my mother we lived in a very old Guernsey farmhouse it had outside stone stairs and there was a wall space where we could look over into the road but they couldn't see us so we used to chuck things at them and we require tube Yousef actually with we straightaway we didn't like them they were quite nice to children I don't think we came across many who weren't friendly it was quite a unique experience two people brought up in an occupied territory I'm not going to say that it was enjoyable that it was exciting the German occupation left a vast legacy not just concrete and steel Guernsey local historian Richard Hume has spent his life collecting and today the German occupation Museum is filled to the brim an absolute treasure trove I have come to see some of the more unusual items in Richard's collection this is one of the objects from your excellent no no it's rather a romantic I must admit I don't show the album to many people you are privileged and so this is a photograph belonging to a young Gansey woman yes her maiden name was Frieda Oliver she seemed to have spent quite a bit of time with a particular German under officer appalled slim back he sketched her yep he sketched her and he also had a camera being a German we civilians couldn't have a camera that the Germans could and he's kept a record of their love affair in Guernsey he was a very handsome good-looking man and she was a very attractive lady I love you forever they were very passionate it was acceptable to people of Guernsey that she was dating there were so many Germans and so few local girls they offered gifts and nylons and chocolates and flowers sparkling conversation yes and you must remember 1940-41 the world was really at Germany's feet we thought it was a German domination forever it's easy in those years this dates from 1942 for a local girl to fall in love I mean if you didn't know there was a war on do you think this very romantic this is romantic and it was a love affair which lasted they married so these two ends up getting married yes they got married they got the got marriage in England as prisoners of war when he was a prisoner of war went to Germany then came back we settled here worked here and married here so he became a guernseyman yes I mean this is 1943 he could have been on the Russian front fie singing while most appalling conflicts the world's ever seen instead look they're having a lovely time and what looks like a very nice time in Guernsey do you think do you think the German garrison were thrilled to be here I think they were very lucky some of the garrison were shipped off from here in 43 to the Russian front and that was a fear they had while they were here they were okay but to be sent to the Russian front was almost a death penalty when we think about the Second World War we think of this image of German troops as barbaric involved in the Holocaust extraordinary mass murder ticking on the Eastern Front what was the reality of the German occupation here in Guernsey in Guernsey it was quite different they felt they'd come on holiday they really were happy here they rillette were able to relax they could go on the beach they could even go home on leave right back to Germany until June 44 and of course they had the privilege of meeting Guernsey people and Guernsey girls they were just human beings and some of them ended up hmm coming back here after the war settling with this that's right girlfriends yes no I must ask you this caught my eye what on earth are these I have never seen this in all of my travels well what do you think it used to have no idea right these cones go up with the nostrils of a horse a horse yes it's a horse's gas mask what this is a horse's guys nose of the goggles which go with it that is something else now what the horse tolerate putting those nerves no no there was one or two instances of the horses bolting but they did have to try it the Germans had a fear of gas in the Second World War and they thought well they need to protect them not only their men with gas masks they needed to break their animals so this was provided each horse had its own gas mask well I've never seen one of those for you have got an Museum here thank you very much for showing me around it's a great pleasure to him the museum shows the wealth of unique objects the Germans left behind it's a fascinating picture of what life in the Third Reich was like but not everything is neatly preserved in a museum I'm on my way in to the Rouge route Una's these tunnels were used to store abandoned German military vehicles they were raided for scrap and the years after the war but they've been sealed off ever since I can't wait to see what might be in there that's just so much wartime detritus left in here mean look at this little collection here forks cutlery glass bottles it's the base of a German radar in the Second World War radar was one of those rapidly evolving and top-secret fields of scientific research that are now it's just a rotting piece of junk Wow whole tunnel packed with like well wheeled vehicles looks like it all seemed to be the same kind of type I they all look like soup kitchens mobile field kitchens just backed up in here there must be 20 at least and I think I've ever seen so many big pieces of German war material left over in one place ever before Haggai has some quite well preserved ones you can see these huge big round spaces in the center where they would have had a giant pot cooking all the food required for a unit out in the field mobile field kitchens here and it just drives home the amount of German troops were stationed on this tiny island the scale of the Second World War this is just one scrap of territory on the very far-flung edge of Hitler's Empire and yet the amount of hardware required to keep the men fed it just brings home a scale of what was of course the largest most destructive war in human history the presence of history on Guernsey is almost overwhelming people here have a strong attachment to the islands past and a dedication for preserving that heritage and making accessible to everyone locals and visitors alike well the tunnels are still far off from being open to the public an incredible amount of work has gone into the next place I'm visiting more than a thousand tonnes of Earth and spoil had to be shifted to restore it I don't think I've ever been anywhere that gives a better impression of the gigantic scale of building that occurred in Hitler's Third Reich just the amount of concrete and steel you see in this structure makes you think that he didn't just do it on this island but in fact he turned giant stretches the European coastline and huge parts the continent itself into massive fortifications and defensive structures and so many other parts of Europe these have been buried or filled in or dismantled but here in Guernsey thanks to organizations like fester and Guernsey they remain it's not just the scale of the materials that were used but the millions of people that were caught up with the building and the servicing of these structures the crew of this particular place alone was about 15 young men all to perform one very important task all the men were stationed here to ensure a smooth operation of that enormous gun this was French it had been captured after the Germans defeated the French in 1940 it was First World War era capable of firing around about 6 inches wide 22 kilometers out to sea there were four of them in this one German battery alone this was the weapon with which Hitler was confident he could take on the giant Allied landing force when it appeared on the horizon today the gun here at Battery Dolman is the last of its kind in Europe as you walk around these giant gun emplacements you cannot thinking how futile the whole thing was they were never used in the way their architects intended and Allied amphibious fleet never did try and seize back the Channel Islands from determined German defenders but that's not to say the Allies never landed here because they did the British were determined to learn what was happening on their occupied Islands they sent over a commando raids to gather intelligence on the islands their people and their ever-growing defenses there were six commando raids on Guernsey and Sark during the second world war but the most mysterious of them occurred here petty Bobe on the 1st of February 1944 it appears that two commandos landed here they made their way up these clips and went a couple of hundred metres in lands no one knows what their target was there was a radio beacon up there designed for allowing German aircraft to find the airstrip in bad weather or at night but they didn't have made it that far instead they came across the German patrol they overpowered some of the German soldiers and then fled back down to the beach and disappeared leaving their boat here on this beach no one knows what the true target of this raid was or if it was just a training mission this mysterious raid might be lost to history there's no mention of it in the official accounts were it not for local historians piecing together diary extracts from people living here at the time I love the story because it shows that despite all the work that's been done on the Second World War here there are still so many mysteries that remain I'm meeting major Marco shotty who studied the raids on the island of Guernsey see if he can dispel some of the uncertainty surrounding marker your servicemen and you've made a study of some of the raids that took place here in Guernsey and Sark with the British landing more on the Channel Islands because of their their fellow British subjects all were doing this all along the French coast as well it wasn't exclusively the Channel Islands there was the Normandy coast as well although there was quite a focus on the Channel Islands I think probably Churchill was keen to find out what the German strengths here were and it probably rank with a bit as well that the opponent the British Isles was occupied what are their objectives to find out what's going on or were these specific objectives it was to find out as far as they could what was going on and if possible to take prisoners to take back for interrogation they were interrogated by a special unit in London that's about one you things most remarkable but the one that really caught my eye to start with down was operation battled which took place in Sark overnight the third fourth of October 1942 that particular raid was led by a man called major Geoffrey Appleyard it was the second attempt to to land on the island if they were trying to take prisoners of war very modest aims really just if intelligence gathering fact-finding but it went on to influence Special Forces operations throughout the rest of the rest of the Second World War following the trail of Geoffrey Appleyard leads me to another of the islands of Gaza only a short boat ride away and it just 2 square miles the island of suck feels like it's a world of with cars prohibited the islands unspoiled landscape makes me feel like I've stepped back in time and climbing up the Hogs back in broad daylight I can only imagine what it must have been like to covertly reach the island Shore in the dark late in the evening of the 3rd of October 1942 Geoffrey Appleyard and 11 other commandos scaled these cliffs leaving their boat just out to sea they headed inland and they stopped at that house just there in it they found the formidable mrs. Peter he didn't seem it's all concerned by the fact that all these armed men had something turned up in the middle of the night she furnished them with very useful intelligence and she told them where the Germans were sleeping they headed a bit further inland and snatched some German prisoners but then the alarm was raised a firefight broke out Germans were killed but they did manage to bring one German soldier and engineer back down here down the cliff and out to the waiting boat before they went full speed back to Britain Appleyard raid on Sark said he didn't go as planned and he and his commandos were very lucky to make it out alive the death of the German captives was controversial and would be argued about the years to come it also sparked a far-reaching an instant reaction from Germany this raid drove Hitler mad with rage it prompted him to issue his now infamous commando order in it he said that commandos were criminals bandits and they should not be subject to the Geneva Conventions the German army was to shoot them on sight this order marked an escalation in the German Army's progress towards fighting a war of barbarism and criminality a small raid with big repercussions for the course of the war Appl yards legacy lives on to this day in the form of a famous fictional character during his time in active service he worked alongside an officer in naval intelligence this officer was a budding novelist he was so impressed with Appleyard that said that he modeled his new fictional hero on him the officer's name was Ian Fleming his hero was one James Bond as for brave missus petard who opened her door in the middle of the night and gave valuable intelligence the command I was helping to make it all those successful raids on the channel lines during the war she was arrested by the Germans and deported to a camp in Germany itself thankfully she survived she returned here to Sark where she died he's buried here in the cemetery each of the islands of Guernsey had a very different experience during the war in all Denis everyone was evacuated in Guernsey many were evacuated but about half the population stayed on the island and lived through the occupation here in Sark no one was evacuated and life went on pretty much as normal and that came down in large part to a very remarkable woman who lived here Dame Sybil Hathaway señor of Sonic hereditary ruler until she died in 1976 she spoke fluent German and she had an inherent understanding of the deference the respect for hierarchy shown by German military officers she insisted that the German commandant bowed and kissed her hand and she helped to ensure that life went on here pretty much as normal for the Islanders and the islands only Jewish inhabitant was able to live here unmolested for the whole of the course of the war although conditions worsened throughout the war and the strictures became tighter the regime on Sark was notably less ruthless than on the other islands of Guernsey the occupation here on Sark was gentler than on some of the other channel lines as one episode really sums up that story for me it's the war went on the German authorities did become more nervous about the local population a German all that went out that people here were to hand in their radios they didn't want them having access to independent news sources and finding out the war turned against the Germans but many people didn't hand in their and on this tree mysteriously a list appeared an anonymous list of inhabitants who hadn't handed in their radios this was taken to the German commander who tore it up said it was the act of a traitor and from then on this tree has been known as traitors tree as I make my way back to guarantee I passed by home one of the smaller islands of the archipelago tucked away in the middle of the Bailiwick it experienced a very different war the Germans claimed her along with the rest of the islands but never undertook any real building there occasionally German soldiers would come over to hunt rabbits or practice with landing craft but herm was left almost entirely untouched by the occupation I've come back the coast of Guernsey now and I've come to see a bunker that was part of this coastal defence network the group Fishman Guernsey are restoring it the plan is to open it to the public but before they do I don't have a sneak preview because in it there's some fascinating wartime features [Music] a strong construction underground big concrete walls and steel find that big steel door there's an ante room here where they've got the the rifle rack the mauser k98 here ready for the infantryman to come out of their barracks and go and take on the Allies landing on the beaches gasmasks decided to reconstruct this one is because it has the original murals from the soldiers that were stationed in look at this is something quite beautiful at this sword it says comrades remember be brave and then someone's done some wiring over it and written some slightly more prosaic instructions here the bunks suspended off these chains on ceilings there would have been twelve men stationed here some of them would have been on duty round-the-clock the others would have taken their turns to have a rest in these bunks you get essentially you don't get elsewhere of the humanity of the people that would have been posted here writing letters thinking about home thinking about the other fronts how the war was going and they would draw and they would making as humans do they were trying to make their surrounding just a little bit more enjoyable incredible mural of a pot of flowers there and then the pride the song of the infantry people here what infantryman they were the ones at the tip of the spear everyone's gonna do the fighting it was a great pride to that and here they are great camaraderie some amazing how they would have seen themselves as a tight unit singing away fighting together singing together crossed bayonets or knives with leaves it's a funny mix of military of camaraderie and of well abstract arts and flowers but this is the really chilling bit over here this is an area which we know from other bunkers and we have the evidence here was reserved for pictures of senior political and military figures this essentially says in German loyalty is the mark of Honor the importance of of loyalty and in this border here sheath in in oak leaves we know that it would have been a picture of an old Hitler in here and subordinate commanders in these these ones a picture of Hitler here and demand for absolute loyalty these men would have known that I mean they were supposed to fight the last I visited so many sites in the Channel Islands but what really striking about this one is for the first time I feel connected with the individual Germans who served here in the garrison it's too easy to think of the German occupation here is big a time of war crimes out of covering this landscape in concrete but in this room you just got a glimpse of a different kind of German occupation of thousands of young men far away from home worrying about the course of the war and their fates and trying to make their little corner of the German Empire just a little bit more pleasant for the German soldiers and bunkers like that guarding this coast for most the war their main enemy would have been boredom but that all changed after d-day in 1944 as Allied troops crossed the channel and swept through northern France Hitler refused to evacuate the garrison here so Churchill just let them rot 30,000 Germans isolated in the Channel Islands and with the onset of winter the food supply began to run out and there was the risk of famine there was really I think very little food coming in at all and the Germans of course were getting very very hungry about them so he had a big garden and we grew a lot of vegetables if they came around begging my mother would give them something to eat you know the food was scarce and I can remember being hungry then my grandmother used to make parsnip cake out of price the parsnips and carrot cake and you know one particular day she she made an a cake I don't know to this day what did she used to make it but it was something new and this particular night we were having our bath and we couldn't wait to get out of the bath and try this new cake you know was so exciting and when we did it was the most horrible tasting thing was so bitter what she'd used of no idea but she would make another one we children used to go scrounging and when the Guernsey boys used to unload the lorries of potatoes if the Germans weren't looking they'd tip it for us and here we go under the Germans the help the horse's belly ISM before went in the gutter he'd had a potato or two but there was one day I think I was showing off perhaps I was a bit older maybe and I was on the steppe horde a little Laurie ah miss Laurie full of potatoes I was filling my basket and with that herded steps of the Germans coming down and shouting how started running and he started running and caught me at the bottom and he kicked me and I went home but we went back the next day we had to I don't know how my mother managed but lots of it was queueing really bruh half a Swede or parsnip but if the Germans were there they'd be served first of course priority wherever they went I don't speak about it too often because she was so brave really and she did so much it was kindness people were trying to help each other we used to take a big enameled bowl with potatoes if you had potatoes and veg and what-have-you and not that far away from where we were living near was erm there was a bake house and they used to accept all these and put him in the ovens when they baked the bread and you'd go at you know six o'clock and evening to collect the evening meal and my eldest brother had a pair of rollerskates and we had an old pram and I'd sit in the pram when he's rollerskate and we go down and fetch the dinner and this particular night we picked up the dinner and we had to come up over a hill down the other side and the right-hand turn into the lane to get home and we came down over the the hill and he was going a bit too fast and we couldn't make the sperm and the prime tip-top and there was all the dinner the potatoes there wasn't rolling down the road so we thought oh my god there's Harrington meals my father'll killers so who scooped up all the veg and the potatoes put it in the bowl and carried on and he could never make out why there was no grain whose garlic not all memories from that time bring a smile to Roy's face well my father was so it was in charge of a large batch of greenhouses two or three times he caught Germans in the greenhouses they were so badly off for food themselves that they were there were well they were killing cats and dogs we felt sorry from really yeah you could pick them out easily they just had nothing there I could never imagine people treating all the people who I you know really as the war progressed the occupation became harder for the people of Guernsey in the winter of 1944 245 the food supplies on the island had reached a critical level and the prospect of making it through the winter looked bleak but help came in the form of a slightly delayed Christmas miracle on December the 27th the Red Cross ship Vega reached Guernsey loaded with food parcels tons of salt and soap medical supplies and even chocolate though in six weeks without bread until the Red Cross ship brought in flour there was this lovely condensed milk in parcels and no spoonful I had was lovely here my mother said right liberation when we liberated you can have at in each so liberation they should put three tins on the table and after about two spoonfuls we felt sick as dogs that's in first Rico it was so rich and their stomachs were introduced to food like that then we couldn't religion when I think back it was a dreadful thing that I did we went to collect our Red Cross parcels brought them home and I can remember my mother saying you must all be responsible for your own Red Cross parcels because by then people were breaking in at night either the slave workers who were starving to death or the Germans were very hungry by then I took my red cross parcel to bed and my brother who was nearly two years older than me brought his up and put his into his bedroom and then went downstairs because he didn't go to bed at the same time as I did and by the time he came upstairs I had gone into his parcel taking his chocolate and eating it all so he nearly killed me and my mother came out and said well you know that was a wicked thing to do and when the next parcel comes you will go all your chocolate to Tony so I thought she'll forget about that but of course she didn't and when the next parcel came I had to hand it all over which was right and proper so I never pinched anything out of his parcel the arrival of the Red Cross parcels marked a turning point for the people of Guernsey well they've been saved from starvation the occupation continued things are very difficult on the neighboring island of Alderney the final stop on my trip around the island of Guernsey challenging weather conditions mean the only way I can get there today is by air on the short flight across and passing over to Cass gets a group of rocks just off the coast of auld me sight of another commando raid of the Second World War whilst the jagged rocks look stunning from above they're incredibly treacherous for ships and I have to say I'm glad I don't have to navigate around them in these gales second in size after Guernsey alderney measures only three miles in length by one and a half miles away nevertheless the small area is jam-packed all Denise stories a little bit different it's allowed the other Channel Islands during the Second World War that's what when the Germans landed here they discovered the population and fled so it was empty a blank slate they could do what they wanted it was also strategically positioned quite close to the coast of France and so they turned it into one massive integrated fortress of concrete and steel but because there were no civilians around to record what was going on but it's an air of mystery about what happened here in all of me during the war and what remains on the 28th of June 1940 the entire island of Alderney was evacuated the number of people left on the island was in single figures bida is one of the local residents who fled before the German troops arrived only 12 years old when she was evacuated she remembers those days and her return to the island like it was yesterday didn't understand what it means it wasn't until we were actually being evacuated that we knew you know something was up I was 12 in the March and we left in the June so when did you realize that you had to leave we were sent home I'm told to come back I think who was it 2 o'clock but about the time we got home mom had packed our cases the last words my mother said look after your little sister never apart never be a part and we are I kept my word what was it like as a young girl saying goodbye to your mum you know they wouldn't come down we say goodbye at the door on the steps but the worst part was uncle of uncle Archie standing on some crates waving goodbye when they were singing auld lang syne and I can't stand up bloody son to this day from the day we were there we were coming back there was there any any doubts we went two black wolf on a week's holiday we went to a fortune tellers she said when you go back you'll have information and sure that when we open the door there was this letter on the floor with the thing do you want to go back to Alderney and when and my father put on the first available boat then he set sail it's half past eleven we were in the gale and then somebody said oh there's the lighthouse and then one of the young drew men came up and said do you realize we're going over a minefield and I thought surely not you know but come all this way and then we won't make it so for the rest of the journey I was looking over the side there for mines but of course they'd all been cleared now I didn't know he pulled a fast one on me well as soon as we got on the shore I looked up and I just said oh and what did old me look like terrible very depressing bleak but we were glad to be home but it's plenty above what I around and all over the place presumably also it was covered in all this concrete steel in my grandfather after we've been home a few days he come back laughing one day mom said what's up Pat he said I never thought they'd come a day I order neat when I'd be lost and he'd been out there with all the German bunkers he's like in a maze he couldn't hide it find his way out for some time were you happy to be back it was a mixed feeling I should say but some of them turned around and went back they couldn't face it we were all glad to be back but if this our family were in here listening to bida makes me wonder what happened to all the equipment the Germans left behind on Monday the 8th of May 1945 Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced the end of the war and the channelings would be freed the following day every year since then Guernsey celebrates Liberation Day on May the 9th with 2020 marking the 75th anniversary this is the end of the world as the occupation ended here on Albany the island was not only covered in barbed wire steel and concrete but also full of guns vehicles and other hardware some has been found but a lot remains undiscovered to this day historian Trevor Davenport has spent decades investigating where remnants might have been hidden on this small island so why did the Germans put so much war material so many fortifications on this time to Ireland well it's one of these questions has been asked since the war or Denis is so heavily fortified because one it was small to the population had basically left and so he could do what he want and they basically fortified the whole island and you could stand from one position with an almost fire a catapult shot to the next one they were that close we did hundreds of metres of each other less than hundreds of metres of each other when people came back after the war on earth they do with all the military material or Denis surrounded a week after jersey and guernsey on the 16th and within a week most of the prisoners of war were sent away to become prisoners of war mostly in the UK but they kept about a thousand Germans left in the main reason they were used was to tidy the island up and of course get rid of the minefields because there was this mass of hardware that was left here it was an impossibility for the people to come back the period from the 16th of April through to the return of the Islanders the engineers were over here with German prisoners cleaning up the island but they really never cleaned it up fully recently the focus has turned to a local quarry which might hold some of the answers why did you start investigating the quarry when everybody came back they built a new power station and the water in the quarry was used for cooling the electricity generators but when the engineers were over cleaning up the island they had been dumping stuff in there you could see it and they were for instance you can see barbed wire you can see some tank traps and it was then suggested that perhaps there was a lot of other stuff so in the big scrap drive in the 50s the Guernsey company came over and it's supposedly a great expense pump the quarry out and what was dumped in that quarry we didn't know but it was always suspected that a lot of stuff had been dumped in there so there's lots of stories lots of rumors do we have any hard evidence about what might be down there well this photograph was taken in the 1950s in where the quarry had been pumped out and plain as a pikestaff I could see four ft-17 tanks there there's an ft-17 on its side there is an upside down it looks like an ft-17 I don't know because we can only see the tracks there is one upside down there's its turret there's the tracks and there's another one on its side and that's possibly another one the story goes that they were possibly taken out but other stories say they were left in there there is there's just a huge mound of wartime detritus there it's extraordinary if that if that some of that stuff is still there now guns war materiel tanks this will be an unprecedented haul of Second World War archaeology absolutely what do you think might be down there we just do not know but my guess is there's a lot more than a single k18 gun in there spurred by these rumours Simon Livesey decided to dive into the quarry he couldn't believe his eyes I'm dying to find out what might be hidden beneath the water so this is the quarry this is here you are trevor showed me the picture of this when there was no water it this was a straight quarry you see you guys think the British just overwhelmed by all the stuff there they just pushed it on to hit so chucked it all in the quarry they filled the quarry up and it's been like that ever since yep full of fresh water you think the stuff down there won't have been corroded too bad it's not as corroded as badly as it might be if it was in seawater definitely not you I've been diving the channel lines you've been recovering Second World War weapons and objects have you ever seen anything like this before no it just absolutely extraordinary what's down there and it's just so much why do you think no one went in that for all these decades and why do you decide to investigate it I think there was a bit of diving early on in the 50s for the brass because there was a lot of empty shell cases and things and they went after those for the metal but apart from that no no one's really been in there for a very long time and there's all sorts of rumors about various things but we you know until we actually get in there and see we just we just don't know and when you went down for the first time did what you saw exceed your expectations they mad it's secret you've seen all that stuff and you only been nine metres down how do you put it it's 25 meters deep what at the deepest point which i think is sort of in the central area here so you haven't been halfway no and it's it's it's not easy diving if you've seen things like shell cases and tank tracks on that top level dare we dream about what might like the absolute bottom they might have put the heaviest equipment in first right there is a theory that maybe a lot of the drawn or wheeled guns on the island may be in there as well so that's that's quite exciting and we've heard rumors there's a half-track that they used to get rid of the equipment's at the end of the war the British Army we've got pictures of it so we know that exists who knows what's in there if there are artillery pieces and if there are mechanized vehicles down there it will be well surely the greatest haul of Second World War archaeology in Western Europe I can't think of anywhere else where there's that much stuff in one place there's a lot in there there's a lot to be done right I can't wait to get in oh yeah get you in there you'll see what I mean I find it absolutely astonishing to think that right here in the middle of this small island there might be a huge find of second world war archaeology almost entirely untouched I've been so lucky to see such a an array of Second World War ecology since I've been on Guernsey it's Islands but I think today is gonna be the highlight because we've just got the go-ahead for the dive I'm heading into that quarry I can't wait to see what's down there I'm heading back to the quarry and this time I'm going in all right see on the other side at first all I can see is murky water green algae all around me but as my I start adjusting to the environments as I dive deeper into the quarry suddenly I can make out shapes in front of me and I cannot believe my eyes here in the depth of the quarry I find myself surrounded by German military hard as far as the eye can see which admittedly isn't very far but everywhere I turn something new emerges from the mug then from out of the darkness appears what looks like the barrel of a huge gun floating right next to it and unlike anything I've experienced before I could spend hours down if it wasn't for a small issue of oxygen reluctantly I make my way to the surface but I'll be back the wheels the barrel stretch just from guns to ventilation ducts to shell cases and that's just a tiny tiny part of this quarry you could see and try and investigate goodness knows what's in the rest we didn't even get to halfway down as with so much else on these islands the wartime past is still lurking just below the surface well that dive was extraordinary done thing like it really as I went down through the murky layers of that quarry I just realized that all around me there was a mound of military equipment from the Second World War I cannot wait to come back cannot wait to dive it again hopefully retrieve some of that stuff and alderney like all the islands of Guernsey is just full of history full of archaeology there is a lot left for me to explore here I'm going to be coming back [Music] [Music]

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 737,463

Rating: 4.7561588 out of 5

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, history documentary, documentary history, world war 2, world war ii, adolf hitler, winston churchill, world war 2 documentary, ww2 documentary, nazi documentary, world war full documentary, world war documentary, hitler's island fortress, guernsey documentary, guernsey island documentary, History Hit, Dan Snow

Id: 8KBO7c9sHdI

Length: 54min 44sec (3284 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 12 2019