Royal Navy destroyers reach the Channel Islands; the last British soil under Nazi rule is free

For nearly five years, the Channel Islands endured as the only British territory under Nazi occupation—a humiliating thorn in Britain's side that Churchill himself seemed willing to let starve rather than risk a bloody rescue. By May 1945, as Hitler's Reich crumbled across Europe, 26,909 trapped German soldiers and 66,000 malnourished British civilians awaited liberation on islands so heavily fortified that Allied planners deemed them nearly impregnable. When Royal Navy destroyers finally arrived on May 9th, they found a powder keg of tensions, half-starved populations, and Germans desperate to surrender—ending the most peculiar occupation of World War II…