Captives in the Channel Islands

The Spanish refugees in France were among the first to suffer the consequences of the disaster of June 1940. More than 10 000 Spaniards were taken prisoner by the Germans, and the Vichy Government, made no attempt to protect them under international agreements pertaining to prisoners of war. Many of them thus found themselves back where they started, in the concentration camps of the south-west. ¹ On 27 September 1940, René Belin, the Vichy Minister of Labour and Industrial Production, introduced a law whereby all male foreigners aged 19 to 54 who were a burden on the French economy and who could not return to their country of origin were subject to enlistment in the Groupes de travailleurs étrangers; they would receive no salary, but their families were entitled to aid according to rates fixed by the government. ² Perhaps as many as 15 000 Spaniards who were enlisted in this way found themselves employed by the Organization Todt (OT) in the building of the Atlantic Wall. ³ Their work included die construction of the submarine bases at Lorient, La Pallice, and in the Gironde estuary, and of an airfield at La Rochelle, despite frequent bombing attacks by the Royal Air Force. A considerable number of these workers were transferred in late 1941 to Vigo, in north-western Spain, where they were employed in the construction of another submarine base, probably intended for German use. ⁴