In the spring of 1945, as the war in Europe collapsed, a forgotten corner of the British Empire remained under Nazi control. The Channel Islands, Crown Dependencies lying off the coast of northern France, had been occupied by German forces since 1940. While the rest of Europe celebrated victory, the Germans on these islands held on, isolated far behind Allied lines after the breakout from Normandy. The occupation had begun five years earlier.
As the German army rampaged through France, the British chose not to defend the islands. A partial evacuation took place, but many residents refused to leave their homes and possessions. The Germans moved in, and Hitler treated the occupation as a propaganda triumph. Film footage of British policemen opening car doors for German officers and photographs of German troops marching past familiar high street institutions like Lloyds Bank became symbols of the occupation.
Hitler ordered the islands massively fortified as part of the Atlantic Wall, and they became the most heavily fortified section of that defensive line, consuming a remarkable twenty percent of the materials allocated to the entire project. An entire infantry division was assigned to garrison the islands. Today, the islands remain scattered with towers, bunkers, artillery positions, and underground tunnels from that era. After the Allied breakout across France, the Channel Islands, along with several heavily defended French ports, were left far behind the front line.
They continued to hold out until May 1945. Following the official German surrender, the islands capitulated in stages: Jersey and Guernsey on the 9th of May, Sark on the 10th, and Alderney on the 16th. Even then, one overlooked German outpost on a collection of barren rocks called the Minkies did not surrender until the 23rd of May, two weeks after VE Day. The British moved quickly to deal with the prisoners and the vast quantities of military equipment left behind.
The German garrison became prisoners of war, either shipped to France for processing or held on the islands for months as working parties to help with the cleanup. The British had no use for the German equipment, so they decided to store most of it in the vast underground tunnel systems the Germans had dug, known as Hohlganganlage, or cave passage installations. On Jersey, German weapons, including flak guns, were moved into HO1, the first of these tunnels, built in 1941 as a munitions storage facility. The weapons were then sealed up inside and left to rot.
German personal kit, including steel helmets, gas masks, bayonets, and entire field kitchens, was dumped into HO2, a former ration storage facility. Those tunnels were sealed as well. Even captured French Char B1 bis tanks used by the Germans on the island were driven into a tunnel and stored. The huge numbers of German artillery pieces removed from their casemates and positions across Jersey were dealt with differently.
Most were simply pitched over the cliffs, and they remain there today, half-submerged in the sea. For a time, the sealed tunnels sat undisturbed. Then, in 1948, the local government had a change of heart. Some tunnels were reopened, and scrap metal merchants began removing the equipment.
At that point, the material was virtually valueless, worth only the metal it contained. That is where the story takes an unexpected turn. From the very day of the German surrender, island children had been among the first to trade German equipment with one another. They scoured the island to add to their collections.
German helmets and bayonets did a roaring trade on the swapsies market in school playgrounds. Some adults saw utility in the materials as well. German motorcycles and bicycles were auctioned off, along with mess kits, knives, bowls, lamps, and other useful items the population still needed in the months after the war. Orders were published requiring children to hand in weapons, along with German vehicles and other kit they had acquired and hidden.
A huge number of loaded weapons were recovered. But inevitably, a great deal was hidden away. The abandoned bunkers, tunnels, and gun emplacements became playgrounds for these children, who stripped them of whatever they could find, from telephone systems to German uniform pieces. After a couple of children got lost overnight exploring one of the tunnel complexes, the authorities tried to keep people out.
But the tunnels remained crammed with helmets, equipment, and assorted objects. The number of German steel helmets hidden in the tunnels on Jersey was astounding. Around twelve thousand were dumped in 1945, and thousands were removed in the late 1940s and early 1950s for scrap. Even in the 1960s, huge stockpiles of moldering, rusting helmets remained, especially in the HO2 tunnel complex.
There were so many that they formed a gigantic wall, which children had pulled down during their explorations. On the 27th of May 1962, tragedy struck. Two teenage boys died of carbon monoxide poisoning while exploring HO2 in search of German souvenirs. The authorities responded by concreting the entrance shut.
But older children soon found another way in, and by then, adults were also seeking the famous piles of untouched helmets. In 1972, men sent to clear HO2 pulled out about seven lorry loads of German helmets. At least 2,200 of the best quality ones were kept by the salvors and later sold to collectors and antique shops. By the 1970s, collecting German militaria had become big business, and finding troves of forgotten helmets was highly desirable.
A good-condition helmet from HO2 could fetch around twenty-five pounds at resale. By the 1980s, the tunnels seemed played out, filled only with truly valueless junk. But items kept appearing, not only from the tunnels but also from barns and lofts across Jersey, where residents had stored things after the surrender. The likelihood of any German helmets still being found in these tunnels today is remote.
Whatever remains in those damp, dark passages must now be fragile lumps of rust after more than eighty years. But the photographs from that era give a sense of the treasures that lay beneath Jersey for over four decades: a king’s ransom in the most iconic of World War II relics, the German Stahlhelm.