Nazi diary reveals love affairs on occupied Channel Islands

Telegraph

24-05-2025

A Nazi diary has revealed details of soldiers' love affairs on the occupied Channel Islands.
Guernsey, Jersey and Alderney were held by Nazi Germany from 1940 until after Victory in Europe Day on May 8 1945.
Baron Hans Max von Aufsess, Jersey's then civil administrator, kept a diary where he noted down his day's activities, including trysts with the locals.
The officer became known as Jerrybags for sleeping with the enemy.
Outlining his relationships with Jersey woman, he claimed there was a 'good understanding between the German soldiers and English girls'.
'As long as it occurs in sufficient secrecy, the girls give in to temptation. The Englishwoman is astoundingly simple, effortless and swift in her lovemaking.'
Comparing English and French women, he claimed: 'While the Frenchwoman involves herself totally in the game, which she likes to be conducted along intellectual lines, for the Englishwoman it is a surprisingly straightforward physical matter.
'This direct and uncomplicated fashion of making love is not to be underrated.'
His memoir, The Von Aufsess Occupation Diary, was published in 1985.
The islands, cut-off from mainland Britain, experienced chronic shortages of gas which shrouded the islands in darkness during the occupation.
Curfews were set, radios banned, and ovens were only allowed to be used for an hour a day.
But the occupiers enjoyed a lifestyle far removed from the 69,000 islanders – sunbathing on beaches, visiting black market restaurants and riding stallions.
'What a peaceful place this is,' he wrote. 'Everything runs pleasantly. The whole island is charming and romantic. Sunday morning begins riding Satan into the golden dawn. I spend the entire afternoon hunting which is wonderfully relaxing.
'I stand under the giant beech and oak trees at Rozel Manor, fully focused on the invading pigeons. I don't miss a single bird in the sky.'
He also describes visiting a black market restaurant in a 'splendid location' above St Aubin's Bay. 'They still have the most wonderful things,' he wrote. 'I feel quite embarrassed to have dined there so well.'
Baron von Aufsess spent two years in a British prison before returning to Germany.
Now historians have found a rare photograph album of SS officers during the occupation in the Fränkische Schweiz-Museum, in Pottenstein, Bavaria.
Von Aufsess's album, unveiled in the Channel 4 documentary Britain Under the Nazis: The Forgotten Occupation, shows holiday snaps rather than wartime photos.
In one of the images a man, who appears to be von Aufsess, is pictured sunbathing on a beach with his arm around a brunette woman.
Louise Willmot, a historian, told the programme: 'I've never seen this before. This is the Von Aufsess album. It is like a tourist guide to the island, which is the last thing you would expect.
'A copy was presented to Hitler, because Hitler had this great interest in this Channel Island prize that Germany had captured.'
On June 15, 1940, Sir Winston Churchill ordered the withdrawal of military personnel from the Channel Islands, abandoning its 94,000 islanders to their fate.
Some 25,000 chose to evacuate, but the remainder stayed on the islands undefended. On the evening of June 30, one month after the British evacuation at Dunkirk, German forces seized control.