Includes bibliography.

When the Germans arrived on the Channel Islands after the defeat of France in the summer of 1940, they and the islanders agreed that it would be a 'Model Occupation'. But as the war dragged on and Britain appeared to abandon the islands to their fate, so features of Nazi occupation already widespread throughout Europe emerged. Making use of recently released archives in Moscow, Berlin, Paris, London, Guernsey and Jersey, as well as unpublished private papers and over a hundred interviews with people - islanders, forced labourers and German soldiers - who lived through the five-year Occupation, Madeleine Bunting tells the riveting human story of the only part of Britain to fall under Nazi rule in the Second World War. Madeleine Bunting has travelled to Russia, Ukraine, Germany, France and Belgium to collect the harrowing stories of the former slave workers, survivors of the biggest mass murder ever to take place on British soil - two thousand died of starvation and disease. Drawing on newly declassified documents in Moscow, she has penetrated the web of lies and apathy which allowed the German officers responsible - some of them still alive today - to escape justice. On the Channel Islands, British officials acquiesced - in some cases actively assisted - in the implementation of Nazi policies. The Model Occupation challenges Britain's most cherished beliefs about its wartime record. It is a remarkable addition to the history of Britain in the Second World War, and will make readers confront the question of how they would have behaved under Nazi rule.