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Adolf Hitler thought much the same, indeed he went so far as to say that after the war was over and Germany had won, the islands would be handed over to Robert Ley, Head of the German Labour Front, because: ‘… with their wonderful climate, they constitute a marvellous health resort for the Strength through Joy organisation. ’2 Two of the ‘little ships’, loaded with BEF on their way to England and safety. Author's Collection Public notice about evacuation – designed to calm the population. It is now on show in the Occupation Museum, Guernsey.

He had seen German aircraft fly over on a number of occasions, taking photographs, but this was the first time they had taken any aggressive action. He recalled: ‘On that afternoon, I was working at the Albert Pier …We were loading potatoes into a small freighter called the Hull Trader which was one of the very last ships to leave before the occupation began… I was down in the hold … they came out of the blue. In fact I don't ever remember the siren going. I don't think it ever did. And they dropped these bombs which landed across the harbour and did extensive damage.

Adolf Hitler met a French delegation at Compiègne on 21st June, to accept their surrender, deliberately chosing the same railway carriage in which the Versailles treaty had been signed on 11th November 1918. It had been a remarkable few short weeks since he had launched his Blitzkrieg (Lightning War) on the West on 10th May, swiftly overrunning Holland, Belgium and France and forcing the battered British Expeditionary Force and remnants of the other Allied armies, back over the beaches and into the Channel, where they would have perished but for the remarkable heroism of the Royal Navy, ably supported by the ‘Little Ships’.