Gilly Carr (University of Cambridge, UK)

The notoriously fraught issue of whether civilians in any formerly occupied country during WWII resisted against or collaborated with the occupiers is something that continues to cause ill feeling and controversy among the populations involved for many generations after the event. The central issue is, of course, how one defines ‘resistance’ and ‘collaboration’, whether occupation can be boiled down to such binary opposites, and what other alternatives were possible under a restrictive and suppressive military regime. There is also the added feeling to contend with that anything less than armed resistance somehow doesn’t ‘count’ towards restoring wounded pride and upholding an honourable wartime record.

During the German occupation of the Channel Islands, organised armed resistance was not possible due to the small size of the islands, the lack of anywhere to hide and the very high ratio of soldiers to civilians. Thus, much defiance happened silently, on an artefactual level. This paper examines how material culture became a (relatively) safe haven for acts of resistance during this period.