Guernsey's West Coast

As the Channel Islands celebrates 80 years since being liberated, we walk Guernsey's rugged western coast and encounter a land of unique beauty and Nazi-era relics

- Matt Baird

An imperial Nazi eagle and a Swastika are etched onto a wall. The year's hottest day is thus far shielded by the 47,000 cubic metres of concrete that surrounds us in a damp, squalid and oppressive windowless bunker. This isn't the Führerbunker in Berlin, however, but Batterie Mirus, on British soil - a subterranean labyrinth of once-secret corridors and huge gun emplacements that formed part of the Nazis' Atlantic Wall coastal defence, which stretched from Spain to Norway. The rural idyll of Guernsey sits three metres of concrete above our heads.

Weeks after the Dunkirk evacuation in June 1940, Britain abandoned the Channel Islands to the Nazis. On the 30th, German forces invaded Jersey and the Bailiwick of Guernsey (including Alderney and Sark), and the archipelago became the only occupied part of the British Isles during the Second World War. The invasion was a propaganda coup for Adolf Hitler, who wanted the islands transformed into an impregnable fortress. More concrete was poured into fortifications here than anywhere else in the Third Reich and the islands held more guns than the 600 miles of Normandy coastline.

"The islands are known as Hitler's Island Madness"

The Channel Islands became one of the most fortified places on the planet, yet these vast defences weren't tested as an allied invasion never materialised. Three of the four 12-inch naval guns at Batterie Mirus initially didn't function - their recoil was too much for their mountings - and once active they reportedly never hit a single ship. The tour guides, Steve Powell and Pierre Renier, turn to me. “You can now see why the Channel Islands are known as 'Hitler's Island Madness.”

FORTRESS GUERNSEY