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Abandoned by the British Government after the fall of France in 1940, the Channel Islands were the only part of the British Isles to fall under Nazi occupation during the war. Over the course of the war, almost 2300 citizens of the Islands would be deported, of whom 45 died in interment camps. However, despite being only four and a half hours by boat from the mainland, the Channel Islands were not liberated until May 1945. Heavily fortified and of little strategic value, it was easier to the Allies to simply bypass the islands and wait for the German garrison to surrender.

Believing the islands could not be defended against the German armed forces, the British withdrew all soldiers from the islands and surrendered them to German occupation. Fearing a British operation to either retake the islands or cause large scale damage, and judging the state of the current fortifications to be lacking, Hitler issued a decree in October 1941 ordering that the islands be turned into 'an impregnable fortress'. Also a motivating factor was the events of Operation Ambassador, where Commando units landed on Guernsey with the aim of killing German soldiers and carrying out sabotage. While the Operation was a complete failure, the fact that 140 men were able to approach the island undetected further highlighted the need for better fortifications. The propaganda value of the islands took on a disproportionate importance in Hitler's head, and it's estimated that between ten and twelve percent of the resources expended on the Atlantic Wall were spent on fortifying the Channel Islands. The fortifications, while a significant deterrent for a major attack, provided little defence against the Commando Raids which continued throughout the war.

The first phase of fortification of the islands was the light fortification carried out immediately after the islands were occupied. Anti-aircraft guns were brought in to protect airfields and ports, and infantry fortifications such as trenches and machine gun emplacements were built to protect roads and other important areas. Initially, the Germans didn't put much energy into fortifying the islands, as it was expected that the rest of Britain would soon also be occupied, rendering fortifications useless. However, the loss of the Battle of Britain and the increasing unlikeliness that Operation Sea Lion would succeed led the Germans to more heavily fortify the islands.

The second phase of fortification followed Hitler's decree in 1941. The Naval Artillery Section constructed a battery on each of the largest islands; Strassburg on Guernsey, Lothringen on Jersey and Elsass on Alderney. The batteries were constructed so that each was in range of the other two, allowing them to shell any forces attacking the batteries themselves. Smaller batteries were established by the Army, who also ended up providing the personnel who manned the Naval Artillery batteries. The largest of the Naval batteries had a range of 38km.

Since the islands were relatively small in terms of area, the Germans placed an emphasis on stopping any attack from landing, rather than trying to defend in depth. These coastal defences took the form of concrete strongpoints, with emplaced artillery and machine guns. A good example of these fortifications could be found at Vazon Bay in Guernsey, which had been previously used for an invasion of the island in 1372. The beach was defended by two strongpoints with mounted 105mm guns, five bunkers with 47mm anti-tank weapons and machine guns, and two turrets with heavy machine guns, as well as assorted other trenches and stretches of anti-tank wall. By 1944, on the island of Jersey, roughly 300 concrete fortifications had been constructed, and 7397m of anti-tank wall placed around the island. Guernsey was also heavily mined, with an estimated 54,000 mines being laid on the island, with another 30,000 on Alderney and 16,000 on the other islands.

It was also determined that the Islands should be able to defend themselves from attack by air without any assistance from the Luftwaffe. Accordingly, more anti-aircraft batteries were established on the islands. Alderney had at least at least 11 anti-aircraft batteries containing 117 guns. Jersey had 25 light and six medium anti-aircraft batteries containing 165 guns, whereas Guernsey recieved six mixed and thirty light containing 175 guns. The three largest of these were built with concrete emplacements and fortifications. Despite German cities needing an ever increasing number of guns to defend themselves from allied bombing raids, Hitler overruled any attempts to remove the more or less useless guns from the islands.

All of these fortifications were constructed by Organisation Todt workers from Eastern Europe, the majority of whom were housed on Alderney, where the civilian population had mostly fled. 6000 workers would be housed there, almost 700 of whom would lose their lives from the brutal treatment of the SS, or attacks on Nazi shipping by the Royal Navy while being transported to the island.

As we have seen, the scale of fortifications on the islands was huge, and any attack would take large casualties. The major British proponent of an attack to retake one or all of the Channel Islands was Lord Louis Mountbatten, who proposed a number of operations to retake the islands over the course of the war. In 1942, he proposed to retake Alderney, and use it as a radar site and base for attacking German shipping. However, he was overruled as the attack was unlikely to succeed and the islands were in any case very close to two major German airfields, allowing them to very quickly attack any invasion force. Attacking the other islands risked heavy civilian casualties, which could easily turn the attack into a severe embarrassment. Instead, a number of small scale commando raids were launched against the islands. In September 1942, Operation Dryad saw the kidnapping of seven German soldiers from a lighthouse off the coast of Alderney. In October 1942, a twelve commandos killed two German soldiers and captured a third, although news that the prisoner's hands had been tied lead to a number of tit-for-tat hand tyings, resulting in the Canadian and British Governments tying the hands of up to 5000 German prisoners. More sinisterly, Hitler also ordered that any Commandos captured during raids to be immediately shot. 200 Channel Islanders were also deported to intenment camps. Two more raids in 1943 failed to cause any casualties, and led to more deportations. Ultimately the Commando raids probably did more harm than good.

During the war, the British tried to keep mentions of the Channel Islands out of the press and media, judging that keeping them in the public eye would be dangerous for morale. They were rarely mentioned on the BBC, and even left out of the King's Speech at Christmas. Obviously, this had the opposite effect for morale on the Channel Islands; one islander wrote a letter to The Times in 1944, claiming that the Islanders had 'been thoroughly neglected'. In Parliament, it was only thanks to the efforts of Lord Portsea and Charles Ammon MP that the issue of the Islands was not completely forgotten. Lord Portsea attempted to get the Government to send food parcels to the islands, at one point offering to captain a boat carrying supplies. This recieved widespread public support, but the Government refused, fearing that the Germans would simply confiscate the supplies. They also refused the elderly Lord's request that he be parachuted onto the islands.

The great hope of the Islanders was that they would be liberated during the D-Day landings, which were visible from the islands. The bombing of St. Malo and Cherbourg could be heard on the islands, and Allied troops could be viewed with binoculars on the mainland. However, it was judged that invading the islands would be unnecessarily costly, and that they could simply be bypassed and starved out instead. In August of 1944, the Jersey Civilian Authorities informed the Occupation Commander that they had four months of fuel, in response to which, the German Foreign Ministry asked the Swiss to ask the British either to send food supplies, or to evacuate the Civilian population. The British had made preparations for such an eventuality, and the necessary supplies had been set aside ready to be transported to the islands. However, Churchill refused, famously writing in the margins of one plan for the liberation of the islands: 'Let 'em starve. No fighting. They can rot at their leisure.' In September he wrote: 'I am entirely opposed to sending any rations to the Channel Islands ostensibly for the civil population but in fact enabling the German garrison to prolong their resistance.' The deadlock went on until November, until Churchill finally relented. By this time, the civilian rations on the islands had shrunk to 500g of Bread, 125g of fat, 20g of meat and 500g of potatoes a week. In contrast, the Germans, who no longer considered themselves responsible for feeding the civilian population having referred the matter to the British, recieved a weekly ration of 2100g of bread, 500g of meat, 245g of fat and 2800g of potatoes. It was not until the 14th of December that the Home Secretary announced he would allow a Red Cross ship to set sail with food and medicines. On the 27th of December, the Vega arrived in St Peter Port with 100,000 food parvels.