About
The German Occupation Museum stands in the parish of Forest, a few minutes from Guernsey Airport and about fifteen minutes' drive from St Peter Port. It is an independent museum built on one man's collecting: Richard Heaume began gathering material as a boy in the years after the war, picking up what the departing garrison had left behind across the island's farms and fortifications, and opened the museum in 1966. It has grown steadily since and remains in family hands.
The collection is dense and physical in a way that institutional museums rarely manage. Uniforms, weapons, helmets, insignia, field equipment, vehicles, communications gear, medical kit, propaganda material and the fittings of bunkers fill room after room, much of it recovered locally rather than bought in. Because Guernsey was fortified far beyond any strategic sense — Hitler designated the Channel Islands a Festung and poured concrete, guns and men into them — the quantity of surviving material on the island is remarkable, and a great deal of it ended up here.
What gives the museum its character, though, is the civilian half. A reconstructed occupation street sets out shopfronts, a kitchen and domestic interiors as islanders knew them between 1940 and 1945: ration books, substitute foods, home-made shoes, the improvisations of a population cut off from Britain and, after the Normandy landings, from France as well. The winter of 1944 to 1945 brought Guernsey close to starvation before the Red Cross ship Vega arrived, and the displays convey that with unusual immediacy.
It is an old-fashioned museum — packed cases, typed labels, sheer accumulation, cash payment only — and that is much of its appeal rather than a shortcoming. There is no designed narrative route and no interactive screen; there is simply a very large quantity of the real thing, arranged by a family who know where every piece came from. Visitors regularly report needing considerably longer than they had allowed.
There is a tea room and a garden with larger outdoor exhibits, and the museum works best as preparation for the concrete still standing across the island — observation towers, coastal batteries and the underground military hospital, several of them opened by the Channel Islands Occupation Society. Note the two practical traps before setting out: the museum opens mornings only, from 10:00am to 1:00pm, and it takes cash alone.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- ⚠ CASH ONLY — no cards are accepted for admission, the shop or the tea room, and there is no cash machine nearby. This catches out more visitors than anything else here.
- The museum is open mornings only, 10:00am to 1:00pm. Arrive by 11:30am at the latest if you want to see it properly.
- Allow longer than you think — visitors consistently report the collection being far denser than expected.
- It is about ten minutes' walk from Guernsey Airport, so it works well at the start or end of a trip if you have time before a flight.
- Parking is free and on site, which is not true of most Guernsey attractions.
- Talk to the staff; members of the founding family are often present and can tell you exactly where individual objects came from.
- Ask which Occupation Society sites are currently open before setting out to see the bunkers and towers around the coast.
- Some content — deportation, forced labour, near-starvation — is genuinely grim, so look ahead if you are visiting with children.
Highlights
The Occupation street
A reconstructed street of shopfronts and interiors sets out what daily life looked like in occupied Guernsey between 1940 and 1945 — a grocer's with almost nothing on the shelves, a kitchen improvising with substitute ingredients, a parlour with the radio that islanders were ordered to surrender. It is the part of the museum that most effectively conveys occupation as a civilian experience rather than a military one, and it works because the objects are ordinary and local rather than impressive.
Most visitors spend longer here than in the weapons rooms.
Richard Heaume's collection
The museum exists because one Guernseyman started picking up what the German garrison left behind.
Richard Heaume began collecting as a boy in the years after the Liberation, gathering equipment, documents and fittings from farms, bunkers and clifftop batteries across the island, and opened the museum in 1966. Almost everything has a local provenance and many objects have a traceable story attached.
That origin is why the collection has a texture no purchased assemblage could reproduce, and why staff can so often say exactly where a given item came from.
The starvation winter and the Red Cross ship Vega
After the Allied advance through France in mid-1944 cut the Channel Islands off from the continent, both islanders and the German garrison faced genuine starvation through the following winter. The arrival of the Red Cross ship SS Vega in December 1944, carrying food parcels, flour and medical supplies, is widely credited with preventing mass deaths.
The museum's displays on rationing, substitute foods, the parcels themselves and the desperate improvisations of that winter are among its strongest, and they rest heavily on material given by island families.
Fortress Guernsey
Hitler designated the Channel Islands a Festung and ordered fortification on a scale wholly out of proportion to their strategic value, with a substantial share of the Atlantic Wall's concrete poured into these few square miles. The museum holds bunker fittings, gun components, observation equipment, searchlight and communications gear recovered from those works.
Interpretation explains the building programme, the Organisation Todt labour that carried it out, and why so much of it survives — there was simply too much concrete to remove after the war.
Collections
The German Occupation Museum holds an extensive independent collection assembled from the 1940s onwards by Richard Heaume and his family, almost all of it recovered on Guernsey. Military material includes Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine uniforms, insignia, small arms, ammunition, field and medical equipment, vehicles, communications and observation gear, and fittings recovered from the island's bunkers and batteries.
Civilian collections cover rationing, substitute foods and clothing, identity and registration documents, German occupation currency and orders, propaganda material, and personal effects and testimony from island families.
A reconstructed occupation street presents shopfronts and domestic interiors of the period. Documentary holdings cover deportation, forced labour under the Organisation Todt, the Red Cross relief of 1944 and the Liberation of 9 May 1945.
The Occupation street
Reconstructed shopfronts and domestic interiors showing civilian life in Guernsey between 1940 and 1945.
Military collections
Uniforms, weapons, vehicles, communications and bunker fittings recovered across the island.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.