And the British were able to hold Dunkirk and the port long enough for the greater part of their troops to embark, largely thanks to the gallant stand made by the French, who fought us to the finish there.

Nettles says: "It was believed that by and large the German invaders behaved reasonably well and kept within the terms of the Geneva Convention.For their part the islanders responded by offering no resistance to their masters and only co-operating not collaborating with them, according to that same Convention. It was certainly uncomfortable but not horrendous. Unpleasant but not unendurable."

The truth, he asserts, is rather different. "It is more morally complex, ambiguous and difficult. It is the story of a sustained and wholesale attack on human values, of great suffering, venality and violence."

Curfews were imposed, identity cards were issued and food shortages threatened the islanders with starvation. Radios were forbidden so islanders were utterly isolated, only hearing about the progress of the war as it was filtered through Nazi propaganda.

How the island leaders reacted to Nazi rule is one of the highly sensitive topics surrounding these years and some details are damning.

Nettles notes how the Dame of Sark, Sybil Hathaway, invited the invading German officers round for a lobster dinner. In the immediate aftermath of the war when the British government investigated all claims of collaboration with the Nazis in the Channel Islands, they immediately pointed to this as evidence of fraternisation, of collaboration.

Similarly in Guernsey, where Victor Carey was bailiff, the British government didn't know "whether to hang him or knight him so mired in controversy was his tenure of office".

Nettles mounts a robust defence of many of the island rulers arguing that they offered "wise and resourceful leadership" in an unprecedented situation. "As one of the Guernsey politicians said, 'The Germans always had the gun. We could do nothing but obey. Otherwise we would be dead.'"

Island leaders tried to act as a buffer between the Germans and the islanders and called for little resistance towards the invaders because, defenceless as they were, they feared swingeing reprisals.

However, the fact the administrators often did the Germans' bidding - dutifully drawing up lists of the places of birth of all residents, for example - had tragically fatal consequences.

Although the island leaders did not know why the lists were required they ultimately allowed the Germans to round up thousands of people who they then sent to concentration and death camps. It also allowed the Nazis to identify Jewish residents.

"The Jewish question in the Channel Islands is one of the most difficult to address," says Nettles. "People are deeply, deeply hurt by accusations that they are anti-Semitic, or that they were too much inclined to load the Jews on to the transporters.

"Their defence is, 'We didn't know what was going to happen to them' but there seems to be a lack of awareness that the Jews were a special case in the Nazi ideology.

They were there to be killed and they were deserving, therefore, of the protection of the civil authorities."

This is something they did not receive.

If I were freezing and there was a clothing shortage, would it not be reasonable for me to take clothing from a dead body so as to keep warm?