WI: The British defend the Channel Islands

Freizeit

Banned
In June 1940, the British decided to abandon the Channel Islands to the Nazis because they held no strategic importance. But what if Churchill decides not to let the Nazis occupy British territory and insists that the islands hold out? How long could they be defended for? What would be the results of this?
 
In June 1940, the British decided to abandon the Channel Islands to the Nazis because they held no strategic importance. But what if Churchill decides not to let the Nazis occupy British territory and insists that the islands hold out? How long could they be defended for? What would be the results of this?

For about an hour, which is why they didnt bother to try. They are close enough to France to spit on it....
 

Freizeit

Banned
For about an hour, which is why they didnt bother to try. They are close enough to France to spit on it....

IOTL, the Nazis were prepared to send two battalions over, which IIRC is about 2400 men. Seeing as the British would be prepared and dug in they could probably hold off the Nazis for a few days at least.
 

Cook

Banned
In June 1940...What would be the results of this?
The expectation would be that the Germans would ignore the heavily defended Channel Islands which hold no strategic value and would face even less resistance when they land on the beaches of southern England. The British didn’t have troops to defend what was critical, let alone what was unessential; so the most that you could conceivably have sent there would be a battalion for prestige purposes only. (Along the same lines as insisting on continuing to send shipping through the channel)
 
Most likely any infantry dies when the Germans bomb away before they land. The RAF loses precious fighters that would be needed during the BOB, and the RN will lose ships as they TRY to defend the Channel Islands.
 
Sorry for a bit of a nerco but...

as a national of Jersey who knows quite a bit about the occupation of the islands, and their involment in the war, I can add several important points of consideration here;


Overview:
The Channel Islands are not part of the UK, they are/were only parts of the British Isles, and themselves are their own administrative districts and do not/did not share UK governance, or a communal governance between all the islands;


[URL="http://www.lonelyplanet.com/maps/europe/channel-islands/map_of_channel-islands.jpg%5B/img"]http://www.lonelyplanet.com/maps/europe/channel-islands/map_of_channel-islands.jpg[/img[/URL]]


There are 7 main inhabited islands; The Bailiwick of Jersey, Bailiwick of Guernsey, Aldery, Sark, Herm, Jethou and Brecqhou.


Of the first three they were heavy fortified from the Napoleonic era. Jersey for instance had the major fortifications of Elizabeth Castle, Fort Regent St. Aubins fort, and Mont Orgieul. As well as ~14 round artillery towers (often mistaken as Martello towers, but the Jersey breed are not Martellos, instead they were built/designed later than the original early 19thC towers which I believed were an Italian design). Not only were there these towers, but their were also several battery positions on the islands, although during the lead up to the invasion of France these were not armed.


Guernsey, again could boast existing fortifications, Castle Cornet dominates the only real port on Guernsey in much the same was as Elizabeth Castle, Fort Regent and St. Aubins fort does on Jersey and it also had its own batteries and towers.


Alderney is small enough that [s]its single[/s] it's major fort dominates the entire island. EDIT: Along with additional associated towers forts...


Sark, Herm and the rest are too small to really need fortifications. Herm you can walk around in less than an hour I believe, and Sark is so small it doesn't even have roads!


If the islands were to be defended by the UK only Alderney, Guernsey and Jersey would be worth properly fortifying. Simply occupying Guernsey would be enough to exert control over Herm and Sark due to proximity. The Islands themselves are predominantly made of very hard pink granite, and on Jersey the highest point is some 300m above sea level. Jersey is 5miles tall, by 9 wide. Guernsey is about 5.5miles by 5.5miles and Alderney 3 miles by 1.5 miles.


For comparison, the notorious island Iwo Jima in the Pacific war is only 2.8miles by 2.8miles or so. In that sense it is smaller than any of the three main Channel Islands and yet we know it took 70,000 US Marines to take Iwo Jima's garrison of 22,000.


Physically, the islands were of a size substantial enough that operations of defence could be conducted from them.With their existing fortifications, local infrastructure and steep cliffs and fairly harsh terrain the Channel Islands could have poised a formidable defence against the 3rd Reich.


[B]Pre-war:[/B]
[U]-The Islands Point of View[/U]
In the lead up to the war (sept 1939) the Lieutenant Governor of Jersey put in a request for an additional 2 4.7 Coastal Guns, 4 Bofors AA guns, and 12 Bren guns. Remember that at the time it was expected that any war would follow a course similar to WW1 so Jersey among the Channel Islands was not expecting attack let alone occupation! And hence it was only expected that some 270 officers and men would be needed to defend the islands.


In terms of financial funds put up locally for the defence of the islands Guernsey raised £180,000 (£5,169,600.00 today), and Jersey £100,000 (£2,872,000.00). Proportionally, that is the same as the UK raising [COLOR=#cc0000][B]£3,388,960,000[/B][/COLOR] in today’s money, in defence funds, that's about the same as 9% of the UKs current defence budget (37bn). So we are not talking peanut funds here!


In reality, the UK War Office said they couldn't supply the equipment before the end of 1940 and instead advised that the “States should rely solely on Lewis guns”, this was the same as the majority of UK home defence at the time.


[U]-The UK Point of view:[/U]
In June 1938 the UK Home Office had considered how the Channel Islands could be put on a war footing if war did break out. Their position had been to let the islands determine their own defence preparations and regulations so long as they didn't conflict with Britians war aims. i.e. trading with the enemy, keep the islands wartime arrangements in step with the Uks. As part of this food and other essential supplies were also scrutinised in 1938 with the Island bailiwicks deciding their needs, these supplies were to be sent via regular shipping.


However to help ameliorate any supply issues the UK home office wished that the islands take more steps to self sufficiently by increasing food production.


This was a silly request from the islands point of view as all suitable land was already under cultivation, and while there was scope for increased fertiliser use, additional agricultural machinery as was suggested was simply not needed. Either-way, rationing numbers were posted to the UK as 55,000 in Jersey, and 42,600 in Guernsey.


Remember that like the Islands Lieutenant Governors, the UK expected any future war to be like WW1, and so the UK had deemed the Channel Islands to have virtually no strategic value for Britain in such a war. You can't dig a trench across the sea etc.


It was also seen to be a liability to station troops there that would be difficult to extract if need be, and the local populations would have been subject to the total horrors of war if any military actions were conducted there. Hence in 1925 the Jersey Battalion was removed, however the troops in Guernsey stayed right up until 1939.


As part of this 'demilitarisation' policy, in 1928 the committee of Imperial Defence recommended that there was no reason to help the islands local militias, which the islanders appealed against several times over the next few years and right up until the outbreak of war.


Essentially it was decided that the UK taxpayer was not going to foot the bill for defending the islands at all in another Great War which would, with all likelihood not affect the Channel Islands.




The governing zeitgeist of the time was the the UK really didn't expect a war to encompass the Channel Islands and at the end of the day because of this they didn't want to pay for or deliver any equipment to the islands for defence.


Of course come May 1940, with the 3rd Reich’s Blitzkrieg in full motion that view was somewhat put to the test.




[B]-The German View of the Channel Islands[/B]
[U]---Pre-occupation[/U]
The Germans had calculated that inevitably they would need to occupy the channel islands and in June 1938 as the islands were making plans for war, the Germans already had at least 1 agent there gathering information about the strategic uses of the islands. Concluding that Guernsey would do well with an expanded airbase, given that it was already twice the size of the one at Cologne, and a good enough location to establish a submarine base due to the granite cliffs and well-concealed bays around the island. He also reported back that the local garrison was only ~400 men, although there were in his opinion prepared gun positions running round the entire island, but couldn't be sure. (if indeed there were it is difficult to tell, but this is what the Germans believed from his report). He also noted a radio receiving station on Guernsey and spoke to a number of pro-german Irish workers there.


By June 1940, it was almost a forgone conclusion that the Wehrmacht would end up invading the islands, and reconnaissance put together by German naval Intelligence noted that little but talk of modernising the defences on Jersey and Guernsey had taken place (this corresponds with the UKs demilitarisation and lack of supplying the islands with requested arms).


Alderney on the otherhand, had been noted in the 1939 newspaper for its strategic value for basing reconnaissance planes, and motor torpedo boats. The presence of two dredgers there apparently had strongly confirmed this for the Germans, and in July 1939 British naval flying boats had visited Guernsey and that training for the Guernsey militia had become compulsory. The Germans completely missed the Jersey militia however...


The Wehrmacht decided that given the swift cause of events in the war in France and that little had been done to defend the islands before the war that the British could not feasibly fortify the islands at this late stage, and that the islands could be captured and defended with a few light AA guns.


In Jersey, it was written in the JEP (jersey evening post; local newspaper) that; “if we [Jerseymen] keep our heads and act swiftly it [an invasion] is doomed to failure”. It was expected to some degree locally that the Islands would have the UK coming to aid them, and with 18 Whitley bombers arriving in the islands on the 11 of June for raids in Italy, it was looking to the OKW that the islands if left could become a thorn in Germanys side. Thus it became obvious that the Channel Islands would need to be occupied, and so on the 18 June discussions were mounted to take the islands.


Part of this required additional intelligence gathering that confirmed the lack of heavy guns, but mistook potato and tomato trucks for troop trucks and so they thought that that indicated the presence of troops on the island reinforcing the garrisons. This is partially why the Germans initially put together such a large force to take the islands.


Indeed Luftflotte 2 flew several sorties of the next few days to try and work out if the islands really were defended, and although their planes were not fired upon the intelligence gathered from the German perspective looked gloomy as Lindau of the OKM didn't believe the islands could be taken by surprise, and Admiral Schuster noted that all the three main islands had harbour fortifications and inland forts, and he noted in his War Diary that the fact that they had seen non hostile action at all was “highly suspicious”.


He reported to Berlin that it would take heavy aircover including Stukas, Two engineer companies, and 6 battalions to take the three main islands, and that the tides would make any landings problematic, and that was knowing that the islands had been at least partially evacuated of civilian population by now.


As it happens all this was to come to nought when Hauptmann Liebe-Pieteritz landed at Guernsey airfield after noting it appeared abandoned, thus establishing the islands were undefended, and thus Jersey and Guernsey were occupied on the 2nd and 3rd of July.




All over, the Germans were very cautious about invading the Channel Islands, they had seen the Coastal defences and considered them enough that it would not be a small endeavour to take the islands even without an obvious military presence. They had also noted that the islands, particularly Guernsey did have strategic importance.




[U]--Post Occupation[/U]
What is somewhat more enlightening is the inclusion of the Islands in Hitlers Atlantic Wall. This is where the Germans having occupied the islands quickly came to the conclusion that most of the existing fortifications would serve amenably as strong points if only equip with modern weapons.


To this end, weapons from the cancelled operation Felix were sent to the islands, and Organisation Todt was moved in to construct defensive works to turn the bailiwicks into Island Fortress's.


Now much of this was Hitler’s madness, 1/12th of all Atlantic wall funds were spend on the defence of the islands, but Lindau did visit the islands to appraise them for U-boat and S-boat sites, which were approved.




The point here is that the Germans believed the islands to be well defendable even with existing fortifications, just with modern equipment.




[B]Point of Divergence:[/B]
Now if the question is [I]what if the Channel Islands had been defended?[/I] We would have to go back to the 1920s or early 1930s to reverse the UKs 'demilitarisation' of the islands, if you do that, then you have to assume that the UK was going to foot the bill for the islands defence and would be amicable towards providing the equipment that the islands needed for defence.


That being said, the UK would have had to have looked at WW2 differently in the sense that the islands would be strategic. Remember the UK believed the coming war would be like the Great War.


Given that, we would have to assume that the UK would be seeking to use the Channel Islands, particularly Alderney as a base for a naval war. Anti-submarrine warfare being the most logical choice, given Germanys use of Uboats during WW1. Since it's the only real logical way you could shoehorn in making the islands important.



Thus this gives us a point of divergence with a rationale for why the UK would decide to defend the islands to use as a naval post. Compared to the real life rationale that any war wouldn't effect the islands.


Assuming that in the UK plan Alderney is to become a small naval base, we can assume that they would have brought in at least some light anti-aircraft guns, and perhaps a couple of coastal guns to defend the port. After all, they aren't expecting the Kreigsmarrine to just float-on-by. But by extension, Alderney is close to France and so could end up being attacked by light surfacecraft.


As June 1940 goes on, the UK would then note that if France falls, Alderney is very exposed to air attack from the Luftwaffa, hence the War Office decides it is prudent to base an RAF wing on Guernsey seeing as it has a large airfield (note: all of the three main island have/had airfields, so it is likely that fighters would be based across all the islands).


With now planes and escorts based in the islands the War Office would consider moving troops in, as the civilians are evacuated. Given that the Channel Islands are now looking to take part in the war, all civilians (barring those who won't move / the militia) are evacuated. This means they shan't eat up supplies, or get caught in the crossfire. (historically many civilians were evacuated from the islands)



The Wehrmacht is now beginning their intelligence missions and have noted all these causes of events. Rather than seeing empty trucks, they are now seeing full ones, and RN vessels in Alderney.


The British engage with the Luftflotte reconnaissance planes, and report this back to Whitehall. Come the 18 June Churchill gives his famous speech about fighting on the beaches. Just about at the right time for the imminent invasion of the Channel Islands to actually make it mean something real.


Hence the War Office ends up sending a couple thousand soldiers to the Islands over the next few days.


Again the Germans see this, and it delays their invasion plans long enough that the UK can really sort out the defence of the islands with modern equipment.




At this point it becomes difficult to speculate on what next. The Germans historically saw the islands as tough to attack even with no obvious military presence, but now we have one. Stirred up by his speech, the Channel Islands have now become a political issue for Britain. If they loose the islands, then it's a loss of face for Britain, and visions of an impending doom for Britain, because if the islands are taken...well...Britain has not fought on the beaches has it?


For the Wehrmacht, they are likely to now have Hitler breathing over their shoulder as he saw the Islands again as a political propaganda tool, and with Churchill’s speech, this is now a battle of wills, hearts and minds.


So we've got Churchill backing the defence of the Islands, Hitler backing an invasion with a whole load of aircraft flying overhead in the Battle of Britian.


You can be certain that the Brits will have put one of their most modern radar instillations here so they can get a major heads up warning on Luftwaffa aircraft from France, and can call in the fighter wings from Cornwall. This probally gives the RAF a minor bonus to winning the Battle of Britain in the air.


However, where is Hitlers and Gorrings attensions at? They are at the islands, not Britian. Therefore the Blitz probally doesn't happen, there never is the switch over focus from bombing the airfields of Britian to bombing London.


Futhermore the fact that the islands are so small, means reconnaissance flights by the Luftwaffe will identify the radar instillations. This means that the Germans realise how radar is helping the RAF. This means that all the instillations along the south coast of Britain get priority bombed too.


The Battle of Britain probably ends up being lost by Britain.


Of course Barbarossa isn't going to stop for some military build up in north-west France, so defeat at the hands of the Soviets is still probably inevitable for the Germans. But with Britians air force crippled, Britain’s industry and infrastructure gets ruined by the Luftwaffe instead of Germany's.


Ships are bombed in the ports, and Britain's war economy is wrecked. This probably means that the wars in the Pacific are much less supported, so the Japanese have it slightly easier (although doesn't change any major outcomes). Britain doesn't have air superiority so D-day can never happen.


All the while there has just been a stand-off on the French coast. Hitler probably ends up calling in/building super heavy artillery positions to bombard the place and maybe launches a failed invasion attempt in a gamble to take the Channel Islands then sue for peace with Britain by handing them back so that he can concentrate on Russia bearing down on Berlin.


Since the Allies never open up that second front, Stalin feels betrayed and goes on the full hog to 'liberate' all of Continental Europe....


...And all because somebody thought hunting U-boats off Alderney might be a good idea.






Of course this is all hypothetical, just building up from perhaps a logical starting point of the strategic use of the Channel Islands and not differing too much from the immediate events during the fall of France and the Battle of Britain.


Who knows how accurate an alternate history this might have been, but it would be scary if such a small set of islands, because of where they were at the 'wrong time' given Churchill’s speech and ego, coupled with Hitler’s ego could have had such a profound change in the course of events during the Battle of Britain.


Now I'm sure others have speculated on what is Britain had lost the Battle of Britain, and maybe it might be worth using this here as a point of discussion for that, if the Channel Islands could have made an impact on that. Given that the Battle of Britain was won only by 'days' in some accounts, it's an unstable pivot point for world history.




Thoughts? Comments? Queries about the Channel Islands during the war years?
 
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Radar was only one component in Britain's early warning/air defence system, while the Germans will recognise Radar as important earlier and concentrate more on suppressing it, this diverts attention away from the cities and the airfields, meaning fewer losses/greater endurance for British units and probably no blitz, not to mention the British bolstering defences around the Radar stations once the one on Guernsey is destroyed.

If the Germans do attempt to take the Channel Islands as a bargaining chip for prospective negotiations, the level of defences outlined here would take a lot of time and resources to reduce, which would be diverted from efforts on the mainland. Either we have a rushed assault which fails or a successful one which provides valuable breathing room for the British, perhaps putting paid to an invasion scare much earlier than OTL.

On the other hand, as impressive as the defences in this scenario may be to begin with, reinforcing/repairing/replacing casualties is going to be a major challanged perhaps resembling a mini Malta. However, if they can concentrate enough troops and transport for an airborne assault they might get lucky and secure the main airfield, and then attempt to destroy the British defences in detail, but again this diverts valuable time and resources from the mainland.
 
If we assume that the Channel islands are fortified and heavily manned, wouldn't it be wiser for the Germans to simply lay seige to the island? Food and water supplies could be strangled quite easily, while the Luftwaffe pound anything useful until the British surrender.

A few coastal u-boat and maybe a few small surface units, plus the Luftwaffe can hold back resupply. Perhaps long range artillery from the army.
 

Coulsdon Eagle

Monthly Donor
Keeping the islands supplied with food for the garrison & civilian population (if not evacuated) as well as fuel, ammunition, reinforcements (& casualty evac) would cost both the RN & RAF a pretty packet, considering the Luftwaffe would probably be based nearer to the CI than they were to Malta.
 
You couldn't even attempt to hold the islands without also holding the Contentin peninsular. The only reason they weren't retaken after D-Day was the planners didn't consider them worth the lives it would take to liberate them.
 
Guernsey, again could boast existing fortifications, Castle Cornet dominates the only real port on Guernsey in much the same was as Elizabeth Castle, Fort Regent and St. Aubins fort does on Jersey and it also had its own batteries and towers.


Alderney is small enough that its single fort dominates the entire island.

By the Second World War Castle Cornet wasn't sufficient to defend St. Peter Port against seaborne attack alone - it was mainly used for anti-air defence. Instead Fort George (with Clarence Battery) was larger, better armed, and with a better vantage point over the port and its approach. There's also forts round the north coast, which has a lot of beaches and gentle sloping land, though in 1939 these were in varying states of repair, and had to be made workable by the Germans.

There's not just one fort on Alderney, but a ring of 13 (Albert, Chateau a L'Etoc, Clonque, Corblets, Doyle, Essex, Grosnez, Houmet Herbe, Mount Hale Battery, Platte Saline, Raz, Roselle Battery, and Tourgis) built or renovated in the 1850s.
 
Very true Stateless_englishmen, I didn't want to delve into massive lists just a general overview, it's just Fort Tourgis is preaty imposing;

http://www.cipostcard.co.nz/p205s.jpg

Thankyou


Taken on board.

What in general people are eluding too is how many troops would the British garrison the islands with, in comparison to the prepared German invasion forces?

We know in real life the Germans stationed about 26,800 men across all the islands by 1943 (13,000 Guernsey, 8,850 Jersey and 2,850 on Alderney) (although there were also an additional 16,000 Organisation Todt workers on the islands).

Initially in 1940 there was only about 1,700 on each island (although there was also about 1,100 Luftwaffe forces there). By 1942, it was 36,960.

Now this has a lot to do with Hitlers madness that the islands be made impregnable against attack. But assuming the reverse from Churchill that not one step could the Germans be allowed on British soil, we could expect something in about the same orders of magnitude.

Recall that pre-war planning had planned rationing for over 97,000 people to be present on the islands. Not only that, the islands were already at peak agricultural production levels.

Therefore in terms of supply, without a civilian population to eat up supplies the islands would become very resistant to being sieged out.

Indeed if we consider real life. The German garrisons on the island only surrendered the day after VE day May 1945, and remember D-day was way back in June 1944. The Germans were able to remain besieged for over a year! and they were still actively at their posts right up until that time*.

Now while it did get tight towards the end of this period and red cross parcells were sent the estimated calorie count per day was still fairly high at 1,137 (compare that to other sieges), the islands were totally out of supply due to the allied advance, and you did have large numbers of German troops and civilians to be fed. Reduce either of these, and it is likely the garrisons could hold out even longer.

It is important to realise that the Germans Occupying the islands only surrended because of the fall of the 3rd Reich at the time. It is unknown how long the siege may have had to continue untill the garrison would have had to surrender.

Incidentally all the islands have fresh water sources. Water doesn't need to be imported, food was also fairly self sufficent, but medical supplies or manufactured goods were the main imports that the Germans needed to bring in.


The end result, is if we assume that a British garrison is very simmilar to a German garrison, it is likely the British garrison could hold out just as long and so besieging the islands would unlikely have been a winning stratergy for the Germans.

The British would probally recognise if the German Luftwaffe was targeting the merchant shipping about the islands, and then take steps to give the merchant ships the required escorts to deter those kind of attacks.

However realise that the English channel at this point would be very 'British waters' and hostile to the German Luftwaffe because the Islands would present a forward base, even if there was no radar instilation on the islands, the fact that all three have airfields means that if one island spied incoming German planes, they can scramble from all three islands. Plus reinforcements are only ~20mins away from Cornwall.

All in all, the islands would present a difficult location to maintain air supiriority over for the Germans.

U-boats, assuming Alderney is turned into a ASW base, would be folly because the ships at Alderney would actively be searching for U-boats in teh Channel. Therefore making it even harder to cut of supply.

This doesn't mean to suggest that the Germans wouldn't try to beseige the islands, but it would go to suggest that the tactic would ultermatly be unsuccessful and not cost the Allies a huge amount in the long run.



Having said that Hitler was very much for placing 'super guns' on the islands to cover the French coast in that region as part of the Atlatic wall. It might be fairly likely that the Germans would bring in heavy artillery into that region of France and try and bombard the islands (it would be unfessible to to bring big guns onto the islands, hence why the Army scrapped Hitlers ideas quietly).

Since the islands themselves were never bombarded during the war, we cannot say what the effect of that would be like.

However we could draw some parrellels with operations in the Pacific where the big guns of the US Pacific fleet were generally ineffective at reducing the capacity for the defenders to fight.

Of the islands Guensey and Jersey are fairly 'hilly' with areas of steep cliffs, sand dunes and an elevated plataeu from the beaches. Then you have effectively the same equvilent of the french bocage terrain through the areas of fields.

So that is about the best comparisons that can be drawn.



It is likely in my opinion that niether side would have made any moves, unless Hitler had ordered a suicidal attack on the islands (since one could not be taken without the others really) and that would have meant a stalemate.

If there had been an invasion it would have been tremendously costly for the invaders.

Something touched on by I'll highlight now is the tides. The Channel Islands have the 3rd highest tidal range in the world at 12-13m you might say so what? But that means that at low tide, you've got about 1km on the wide flat beachs from shore to sea, and in some places it goes out 4km! Most of these beaches also have associated towers, and the Germans saw very quickly the worth in constructing more machingun pillboxes to cover these wide expanses.

At high tide, the water came up right to what was then, the Dunes at St. Ouens and along St. Lawerence and Gorey (this is Jersey, I'm not so certian on Guensey here) while again the Germans realised was perfect to mine, the terrain itself is sandy and difficult to run in, and nearly always overlooked by cliffs of the central plateau (again they put pillboxes up on the cliffs).

So what about landing mid tide?

Well firstly your not going to land on the ebb, otherwise reinforcements are placed futher and futher from the fighing. So your going to land on the incoming tide.

Taking into account the rule of twelfths you've got a major problem with that and a high tidal range, because if your soliders don't press forward, then they are in serious danger of finding themselves 3m underwater, and struggling in the surf!

Indeed the British commandos found that one out for themselves on raids on the islands, but any local could have told them that right away.


If the Germans worked that above out they would have seen the folly in trying to take the islands, much like what the British realised about trying to retake them. Hence with good intelligance you don't get any invasion, with poor, you'd end up with a hell of a lot of dead before you even got off the beaches. Then you still have to fight up the headlands, and if you know about Pointe du Hoc during D-day I wouldn't envy being a German trying to scale our islands cliffs!

Like has been mentioned an air assult would be the most sensible course of action given all of this, but doing so against islands that have their own RAF wings, or once you land are completely on a do or die mission, and if you know about the invasion of Crete that didn't go to well either.

On the islands you wouldn't be able to land gliders effectively either due to small fields and hedgerows. You still then left having to take many of the fortifed towers and forts on the island, some of which are out to sea themselves so either wait for low tide and get machinguned, or get in a local boat and have the same issue. Kein problem!


* That kind of makes what you say Peg Leg Pom inaccurate, historically the Germans did hold the islands without the peninsular. It is true that attacking the islands would have been a waste of lives and this is why historically the British didn't attack them.

It is likely without input from Hitler, the Germans would see British defended islands in the same way, and not bother attacking them.
 
The Germans may have been holding the islands at the end of the war, but they weren't getting any supplies from outside after late 1944 (except during the Granville Raid), and were close to starvation (as were the islanders).
 
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