German Occupation

On one extraordinary day in 1940, Miriam Talan’s comfortable life is shattered. While she gives birth to her second child, a son she and her husband, Max, name Monya, the Soviets invade the Baltic state of Latvia and occupy the capital city of Riga, her home. Because the Talans are Jewish, the Soviets confiscate Max’s business and the family’s house and bank accounts, leaving them with nothing.

The Nine follows the true story of the author’s great aunt Hélène Podliasky, who led a band of nine female resistance fighters as they escaped a German forced labor camp and made a 10-day journey across the front lines of World War II from Germany back to Paris. Drawing on incredible research, this powerful, heart-stopping narrative is a moving tribute to the power of humanity and friendship in the darkest of times.

Only 22, Emma learned to bake at the side of a master, Ezra Kuchen, the village baker since before she was born. Apprenticed to Ezra at 13, Emma watched with shame and anger as her kind mentor was forced to wear the six-pointed yellow star on his clothing. She was likewise powerless to help when they pulled Ezra from his shop at gunpoint, the first of many villagers stolen away and never seen again. In the years that her sleepy coastal village has suffered under the enemy, Emma has silently, stealthily fought back.

When Nicholas Shakespeare stumbled across a trunk full of his late aunt's personal belongings, he was unaware of where this discovery would take him and what he would learn about her hidden past. The glamorous, mysterious figure he remembered from his childhood was very different from the morally ambiguous young woman who emerged from the trove of love letters, journals, and photographs, surrounded by suitors and living the precarious existence of a British citizen in a country controlled by the enemy during World War II.

On June 14, 1940, German tanks entered a silent and nearly deserted Paris. Eight days later, France accepted a humiliating defeat and foreign occupation. Subsequently, an eerie sense of normalcy settled over the City of Light. Many Parisians keenly adapted themselves to the situation - even allied themselves with their Nazi overlords. At the same time, amidst this darkening gloom of German ruthlessness, shortages, and curfews, a resistance arose.

About Living With The Enemy and the German Occupation of the Channel Islands During the Second World War the Channel Islands were the only part of the British Isles to be occupied by German forces. Living with the Enemy tells the unique and true story of life in the Islands under Nazi rule. With eyewitness accounts from both Islanders and German soldiers this book gives an accurate insight into this ill-assorted community at war and portrays how it felt to be living in the shadow of a foreign power. A sample of what the United Kingdom would have experienced should it have fallen. The book ...

In this thrilling historical spy novel from New York Times best-selling author Alan Furst, two heroic resistance fighters smuggle valuable information to occupied Paris to turn the tide of the World War II and defeat Nazi Germany.

The Channel Islands were the only part of Britain to be occupied in the war, and the Islanders the only British citizens to fall under German rule. The narrative unfolds through the words of those who actually endured those years.This is their story.

Doctor John Lewis was a remarkable man. Possessed of great warmth, wit and, above all a humanity which informs every word in this extraordinary account of Jersey life during the German Occupation, he served the island community with unfailing resourcefulness and not a little courage for five long and stressful years. However, despite the awfulness of the time, Dr Lewis infuses his account of it with an irrepressible joie de vivre which is utterly delightful. It is an uplifting story of winning against the odds, by turns hysterically funny and then unbearably sad. Above all it has an ...

From the deserts of Libya and Egypt to the icy lakes of Scotland, from London under the Blitz to German occupied France, from Alpine glaciers to the stately homes of Britain, the book ranges over the landscapes of World War II. The protagonist escapes from Austria with a burning desire for revenge after the murder of his parents by an SS officer. He becomes a British agent, is involved in numerous missions against the German enemy and at the same time hunts for the killer of his parents. At the climax of the book, just as he finds the murderer, he is ordered by his chief to sacrifice his ...

This book was born of a series of documentary films about the German Occupation of the British Channel Islands from 1940 to 1945 entitled The Channel Islands at War (DVD). It is also the fulfilment of an ambition to tell in much more detail than was possible in those documentaries, the true story of those extraordinary years. The Channel Islands were the only British soil to be occupied in the war, the Islanders the only British citizens to fall under German rule. How the Islanders reacted to the invaders has recently been the subject of heated argument and impassioned debate and for very ...

In her book, 'Beyond the Call of Duty', former nurse and Health Promotion Officer, Val Garnier, describes the daily lives of medical staff and patients, in Jersey's hospitals and nursing homes, during the German Occupation. Doctors, pharmacists and nurses, deprived of their usual supplies of medicines, commodities, light and fuel, found innovative ways of coping. Medical Officer of Health Reports show how Islanders underwent a dramatic change in lifestyle and how the privayions of the Occupation caused some medical conditions, whilst easing, or eradicating, others. Diabetics were admitted ...

Richard Weithley was a boy of fourteen when the German Occupation of the Channel Islands began in 1940 - and a young man of nineteen when it finished in 1945. Like many of those living through the period, it is something that he will never forget. This book is an enchanting tale of excitement, humour, romance and intrigue. What started as teenage bravado against the Nazi 'authorities' soon turned into life threatening situations and ended with a dramatic escape from a German military prison. A fascinating account of how the author was forced to grow up under the shadow of the swastika, told...

Many books have been written about the German occupation of the Channel Islands but very few from the occupiers’ perspective. This book is simply a collection of personal letters, photographs and documents that reveal the fascinating story of just one man during WWII. Dr. Albert Kowald. From the very beginning of the Third Reich and being a member of the dreaded SS to the seashores of Guernsey, readers will discover some of the trials and tribulations faced by Albert. A person who through common decency towards his fellow man and at great risk to himself faced the dilemma between his ...

A young teacher navigates the politics of a territory continually “annexed:” Memel/Klaipeda. A raw, short account of what happened to a serious teacher of physical education when the Germans took over Memel and parts of Lithuania in 1939. He struggles with his multicultural identity in face of life-threatening politics, and continually weighs his convictions in choosing citizenship and jobs. The story is a fictionalized memoir written in the third person.

It is 1940. The Nazis have taken the Channel Islands, fifteen miles from the coast of France. The locals are provincial island folk, living at peace until evil forces land. No one is coming to save them. They are on their own. Geoffrey Norman, who was born and raised in Jersey and went on to become a Hollywood screenwriter, actor and author, relates his story, not written for TV, but actually experienced during his extraordinary childhood. Remembrance unfolds like a classic feature film through five years of Nazi Occupation. Family, friends, schoolteachers, Nazi guards, slave workers and ...

Foreword by John Nettles I was involved in the making of a TV documentary on the German Occupation of the Channel Islands. Naturally, I wanted to talk to anyone who had been in Jersey during that time and who might be considered an authority on the subject. Whenever and whoever we asked about this, one name always came up: Bob Le Sueur, who was, we were told, without doubt one of the most important voices of the Occupation still living. Robert Winter Le Sueur was working as a young (and handsome) insurance clerk when the German soldiers of 216th Infantry Division came marching into St ...

During the German Occupation of the Channel Islands Marianne Renouf's Life is turned upside down. With her friend Jacques she finds the next five years in Guernsey bring excitement, danger, and fear. The children are aware of the bravery of some civilians, but discover there are others who denounce their neighbours. They are horrified by the cruelty of the armed forces to slave workers, yet it is a German who gives them his bread ration when he is starving.

Paris, 1938. Two women meet: Mielle, a shy pacifist and shunned Mennonite who struggles to fit in with the elite cohort of foreign correspondents stationed around the city; the other, Jane, a brash American journalist, who is soon to become a fascist propagandist. When World War II makes landfall in the City of Lights, Mielle falls under Jane’s spell, growing ever more intoxicated by her glamour, self-possession, and reckless confidence. But as this recklessness devolves into militarism and an utter lack of humanity, Mielle is seized by a series of visions that show her an inescapable truth.

It is the plain matter-of-fact story of Belgian life under German rule. People might forget that, besides the 150,000 to 200,000 heroes who are now waging war for Belgium on the Western front, there are 7,500,000 heroes who are suffering for Belgium behind the German lines, in the close prison of guarded frontiers, cut off from the whole world, separated alike from those who are fighting for their deliverance and from those who have sought refuge abroad.