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Telegraph
24-05-2025
- General
- Telegraph
Nazi diary reveals love affairs on occupied Channel Islands
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.
The Guardian
08-05-2025
- The Guardian
‘One bunker is now a surf school': a tour of Jersey's wartime coastal defences
I 'm woken by a tractor uprooting jersey royals in the potato field next door. In my simple hexagonal room, dawn illuminates five high slit windows marked with military coordinates and a compass etched into the ceiling. But heading downstairs, I timeslip into a 19th-century lounge where gothic-style windows frame sea views in three directions. During the second world war, Jersey's occupying forces requisitioned Nicolle Tower, a whimsical two-storey folly, and added an extra level. In what is now the bedroom, German soldiers kept lookout for an allied invasion that never came. Nicolle Tower, where German soldiers kept watch. Photograph: Debbie Ward It's thanks to restoration charity the Landmark Trust that I'm enjoying this hilltop tower. Inland from Le Hocq beach, it is now a self-catering holiday let. It's unique, yet one of a staggering 1,200 fortifications on Jersey, the Channel Islands having served as a showcase for Hitler's Atlantic Wall defences. During my 1980s childhood holidays, abandoned bunkers invited exploration and sibling jump scares. Now, on the 80th anniversary of liberation, which came on 9 May 1945 (a day after the German forces on mainland Europe surrendered), I want to discover how some of these structures have found a new lease of life. I start in an underground hospital hewn into rock. It never treated battle casualties; instead, a postwar farmer used its extensive passages to cultivate mushrooms. Now it houses Jersey War Tunnels, the museum of the island's almost five-year occupation. A tank on display at the Jersey War Tunnels museum. Photograph: Visit Jersey I learn about the scramble for evacuation, how remaining residents swapped meagre rations through newspaper personal ads, and about Organisation Todt, the huge Nazi construction operation that saw hundreds of fortifications built. Hand tool marks can still be seen in half-finished sections of the tunnels, one of which has lighting effects to simulate a rock fall. Elsewhere, amid islanders' personal stories are interactive exhibits posing the ethical dilemmas they faced, such as whether to launder a German uniform in exchange for food. That evening, I join nonprofit Jersey War Tours inside a resistance nest set into the sea wall at St Aubin's Bay. Our guide, Phil Marett, winds a hatch and sweeps the anti-tank gun over a deserted beach, demonstrating how soldiers were primed for a D-day-like scenario. Inland at Le Coin Varin, a farmer's field contains a huge block-shaped battle headquarters. Once poorly disguised as a house, its chimneys hid periscopes. Time has laced the outside with vines, but inside, acrid-smelling rooms are blackened by modern fire brigade drills. Nearby, Marett points out an oddly shaped bungalow that the homeowners built around another abandoned bunker. Waves crash below the wild headland of our final stop, Noirmont Point, where, amid the gorse, a crack of light entices us into Battery Lothringen. In a restored two-storey subterranean command bunker, I note the poignant bunk-side photo of an elderly German man who returned here as a tourist. Original graffiti at Battery Lothringen. Photograph: Debbie Ward Compared with that austere, imposing space, the cosy hexagonal lounge of Nicolle Tower feels like a trinket box. Its bookcases hold a thoughtful selection relating to Jersey's nature and history, but having stayed in other Landmarks, I seek the logbook first. Completed by visitors, this is part diary, part crowd-sourced guidebook and always charming. At a sea view writing desk, I turn the pages and smile at former guests' tales of big birthdays and marriage proposals and a naked yoga session interrupted by a dog walker. Many have left recommendations for walking routes and pubs. A few have contributed affectionate watercolours of the folly. Next day, I head to Faulkner Fisheries, a fishmonger and cafe based inside a former bunker for 45 years that lies on a rocky peninsula to the north of St Ouen's Bay, the largest of Jersey's sandy beaches. Lobsters destined for the lunchtime barbecue shuffle inside seawater pools flushed via pipes converted from wartime ventilation shafts. 'In the end tank, where the crabs are, there was a gun pointed towards Guernsey,' owner Sean Faulkner tells me as he shows me around. 'The office was originally another machine gun post.' Based inside a bunker, Faulkner Fisheries keeps its lobsters where a gun post once stood. Photograph: Danny Evans Faulkner grew up on a farm opposite, playing in the bunker as a child and diving for crabs to sell from a junkyard pram. After a career in the merchant navy, his youthful exploits became his business. As I enjoy huge, garlicky scallops at a picnic table, watching the waves glint in the sunlight, the plump seafood, barbecue aroma and 5-mile (8km) surfing beach suddenly recall Australia. skip past newsletter promotion Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion Later, on a cobbled slipway, I spot a smaller bunker housing boards and wetsuits. Jersey Surf School is painted on its original, still sturdy metal doors. Water ingress is never a problem, owner Jake Powell tells me, before reminiscing about teenage parties around a bar he constructed in another bunker. Jersey's vast tidal range reveals extensive rockpools, not least at La Corbière lighthouse, where I linger for the celebrated sunset view. Standing sentinel opposite is the Radio Tower, a German range-finding post. For years, a coastguard headquarters, it has since found a third use as holiday accommodation. The charity Jersey Heritage oversees this and other fortifications, from German-adapted martello towers to a 1940s bunker turned cold war shelter, many open to visitors. Chief executive Jon Carter acknowledges their tourist interest. 'They were all built in the most scenic places with the best views because that was the idea – they were observational and they wanted arcs of fire,' he tells me over tea. The celebrated sunset view at La Corbière lighthouse, Jersey. Photograph: Max Burnett The metres-thick reinforced concrete of these mass bunkers makes their destruction unviable. The mixture of abandonment, historical reconstruction and pragmatic reuse I've seen reflects decades of fluctuating attitudes. Any continued discomfort about the structures' presence is now less about why they were built than how, Carter explains. The back-breaking work often fell to prisoners of war and forced labourers. At the government's behest, Jersey Heritage is working with volunteer preservationists the Channel Islands Occupation Society to consider the reuse of 70 state-owned fortifications too, connecting with those 'wrestling with the same conundrums' along the Atlantic Wall. Carter anticipates a continued mixture of 'selective preservation' and 'contemporary use'. Next, I visit the island's newest fortification museum St Catherine's Bunker, which Marett dubs 'a real Bond villain lair'. Its cliff-face gun post fronts substantial German-built tunnels. For years, though, this was a fish market. Like the bunker turned toilets I discover on my childhood beach, it feels an ironic counterpoint to hubris. Ten minutes away, I lunch at Driftwood Cafe at Archirondel Beach. As I tuck into thick crab sandwiches opposite the French coast, fisherwoman and cafe owner Gabby Mason tells me she'll be at sea over the Liberation 80 weekend, her boat decked in flags. From today into next week, there will be street parties, an international music festival and historical re-enactments, including, in St Helier, British soldiers raising the union jack above Liberation Square, so named in 1995 to celebrate 50 years since the end of occupation. The Landmark Trust is also celebrating – 60 years of restorations. Before I leave Nicolle Tower, I take in those glorious views a final time and add a logbook entry, my own sliver in the multilayered history of this building and this island. This trip was facilitated by the Landmark Trust and Visit Jersey . Nicolle Tower sleeps two and is available from £180 for four nights .
BBC News
08-05-2025
- General
- BBC News
How a boy and deserter helped blow up German WW2 HQ in Jersey
How a boy and deserter helped blow up German WW2 HQ Just now Share Save Chris Stone BBC News, Jersey Share Save Jersey Heritage Gordon Huish grew up in St Helier and was introduced to a German soldier The date 7 March 1945 was another dreary day in the German Occupation of Jersey. Islanders and Germans alike went about their business, all suffering from the deprivations inevitable after five years of war. Then suddenly, from the direction of Mont Millais, a series of loud explosions shattered the peace, and so began a mystery that was to endure for decades. The Palace Hotel was a large, grand building at the top of the hill near the current Jersey College for Girls. Before the war it had offered "self contained suites, unsurpassed dining, a nine hole golf course and two full size tennis courts", among other luxuries. When the Germans arrived, they requisitioned it as an ideal headquarters. For the years of Occupation it bustled with high ranking officers coming and going in their staff cars, planning their operations and enjoying the facilities. It is thought they planned the successful raid on Granville in March 1945 there. However, members of a small resistance cell were planning a spectacular end to the palace. Jersey Heritage An aerial reconnaisance photo shows the Palace Hotel There had been little in the way of armed resistance during the Occupation of Jersey. Unlike France and other countries, it was far harder for islanders to obtain weapons, plan attacks and, most importantly, get away again. "One should remember that any kind of real resistance was simply impossible in an island where one in five people was a German and there was no chance of any arms drops or support from the mainland," recalled historian Bob Le Sueur MBE. "Even if there had been, any kind of collective action, armed or otherwise, would have been utterly futile in an island where there was nowhere to hide, prepare or train." Jersey Heritage The Palace Hotel was a large, grand building There was one small group which hoped to make a difference. They were a collection of communists led by Norman Le Brocq, who later went on to become a States member. Evidence which only recently came to light indicates they were responsible for the spectacular destruction of the glamorous Palace Hotel. On the morning of 7 March, a fire in the building very quickly led to several large explosions. As the Germans frantically tried to limit the damage and prevent flames from spreading, they added to the destruction by blowing fire breaks between the different parts of the hotel. Nearby residents reported their windows blowing out, and seeing hundreds enemy soldiers running around trying to get the fires under control, but they had little chance. By the time the fire was out, the hotel was destroyed, together with whatever equipment, maps and records the Germans had left inside. Jersey Heritage Until the appearance of Gordon Huish's letter, the mystery of the explosion remained What had caused this catastrophic destruction? It was the question on everybody's lips. There were all sorts of ideas about what had happened. Some suggested a wayward RAF bomber had dropped its payload over St Saviour and scored a direct hit on the Palace Hotel. Others said it was an accident from Germans training with explosives nearby, while others still said it could have been an act of resistance. For years there was no clear answer, although there was a degree of suspicion towards Norman Le Brocq's communist organisation. There was no definitive answer, until recently, when Jersey Archive received a letter from a man in Australia claiming he had been closely involved. The letter was written by a man called Gordon Huish, who would been 17 at the time of the explosion. After the war he and his family had emigrated to Australia - where he lived until his death. In 2017 he wrote an account of what happened, with the title The Bombing of the Palace Hotel. His family promised not to share it while he was still alive. Last year they sent it to the archive, where researchers realised with delight it was likely to solve the mystery. Very dangerous job It began: "As I am approaching my 90th year on June 7th and am the sole survivor who knows the true story of the events of March 7th 1945 which led to the destruction of the Palace Hotel I will describe truthfully how it happened." Born in 1927, Gordon Frederick Huish grew up in St Helier. His registration card showed he was living at No 8 Belmont Gardens, on Belmont Road. At some point during the Occupation he became involved with Norman Le Brocq's group of resisters and it seemed they recognised him as the perfect candidate for a very dangerous job. The letter goes on to explain he was introduced to a German soldier called Willi, and told that he was a "friend". Some days later, Huish was asked to go to a garage on Halkett Place to collect something to deliver to Willi. Jersey Heritage Disillusioned German soldier Paul Muhlbach deserted after the explosion He was told to wear gloves if he had them, according to the letter. Upon reporting to the garage, he was handed a heavy parcel wrapped in brown paper and string through a small hatch, so he could not see who was passing it to him. As instructed, Huish took the parcel, which felt like a car battery with wires coming from it, up to Mont Millais there to meet the friendly German. Willi was in fact a disillusioned German soldier named Paul Muhlbach who had somehow become acquainted with Le Brocq and his comrades. He fell out with the Nazi regime after his father was arrested and sent to the concentration camp at Dachau. Paul himself was also imprisoned for a short time before being forced to join the army. Before deserting in Jersey, he helped Le Brocq's group produce anti-Nazi propaganda, which was circulated among other soldiers, inciting them to mutiny. On the morning of 7 March 1945, in his uniform, he waited for Gordon Huish at the Palace Hotel. His official job there was to inspect the explosives that were stored in the hotel's magazine - a perfect opportunity for someone intent on destruction. Loud explosions Muhlbach was waiting at the entrance to the hotel, and Huish handed him the parcel before making his way to Mont Millais. He describes in the letter how soon after there was a "very loud explosion" followed by streams of German soldiers and ambulances racing down the road towards the scene. Huish wasted no time in making himself scarce, and was never caught. Muhlbach also got away with it, by deserting and getting shelter from the resistance group which used civilian clothes and hair dye to disguise his appearance. Further explosions and a fire devastated the whole site of the hotel. The Germans were furious, but baffled, and did not manage to work out what had happened. Digital access manager Harry Le Feuvre with the letter shedding light on one of the most dramatic moments of the Occupation of Jersey Until the appearance of Gordon Huish's letter, the mystery remained. Researchers at Jersey Heritage were surprised and delighted to receive the letter, and solve a long-lasting mystery. Digital access manager Harry Le Feuvre said it was important evidence of one of the most dramatic moments of the Occupation of Jersey. "The letter is so detailed, and so specific on certain details, that it really does feel like the story has finally been told and that that mystery has been finally resolved after 80 years," he said. Today, the site of the once-grand hotel is a private housing estate. It is named in recognition of its past, Palace Close. Follow BBC Jersey on X and Facebook. Send your story ideas to
The Guardian
07-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘The pain, the tears, it's all there': how Putin's war has left Ukraine haunted by its past
Mariia Sinhayevska was 11 when the Germans occupied her village, near Zaporizhzhia in south-eastern Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. She can still remember some German words from the year she spent in school under occupation. The soldiers were friendly, she said, though not if you were suspected of being a Communist or a Jew. 'There was a place about three kilometres away where people used to say the ground was breathing; it was where the Germans put the bodies of all the people they had shot,' she said. When the war ended, Sinhayevska trained as a welder in a Zaporizhzhia factory, and worked various jobs until her retirement in 1980. Now, at 95, war has come again, with the frontline just half an hour away from Zaporizhzhia and regular incoming fire not far from the home where she has lived since 1954. 'I hardly go out now, this war is so scary, maybe even more scary than that war,' she said. A granddaughter who lived with her until three years ago left at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, to the safety of western Europe with her children, leaving behind rooms filled with religious icons, teddy bears and memories. Lonely and frightened, though with the stoicism of someone for whom life has never been easy, Sinhayevska does her own cooking and cleaning, and hopes for the war to end. On Friday, Russia will mark 80 years since the Soviet victory in what is referred to there as the Great Patriotic War, with a military parade in Moscow and wild celebrations. In Ukraine, which contributed millions of soldiers to the Soviet army and where some of the most intense fighting took place, the anniversary will pass with a very different tone. View image in fullscreen Ivan Fedorov, the governor of Zaporizhzhia Oblast and the former mayor of Melitopol. Photograph: Julia Kochetova/The Observer 'Until 2014, 9 May was really a celebration, right until the time when Russia invaded and annexed parts of our country,' said Ivan Fedorov, the governor of the Zaporizhzhia region. After that, the country moved the commemoration date to 8 May, he said, in line with most of Europe. 'It changed from a celebration to a day of memory and respect,' he added. In Vladimir Putin's Russia, the Soviet victory has become a key pillar of propaganda, with commemoration of the Soviet losses and brutality of the eastern front turned into a day of parades, flag waving and cheering children in uniform. The memory of the old war seeped into the imagery of a new one. The orange and black St George's Ribbon, first introduced by Catherine The Great in 1769, was later adopted as an official symbol of the victory. It also re-emerged as the main emblem of the Russia-backed separatist movement in east Ukraine in 2014. Russian propaganda melds the memory of that war with the contemporary fight against 'Ukrainian Nazis'. When Putin ordered the full-scale invasion in February 2022, one of his stated goals was the 'de-Nazification' of Ukraine, even though the country's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, grew up in a Russian-speaking Jewish family. 'Nazis', in current Kremlin terminology, often seems to mean little more than those who oppose Russia's geopolitical goals. Fedorov was previously the mayor of Melitopol, a city not far from Zaporizhzhia that was occupied in the first days of the war. He was detained by Russian occupation forces who told him he could either collaborate or resign. During his days in detention, one of his captors began berating him about history. 'They didn't have much to justify their invasion with, and one of the reasons they gave was that supposedly we beat up veterans on 9 May,' he said. He assured the guard he knew all the remaining veterans in Melitopol personally, was grateful to them, and that nobody had beaten them up. The guards searched for a video on YouTube, but could not find it, and concluded it had been deleted, he said. 'It's such strong propaganda… for them 9 May is a cult, a cult that Russia should always be fighting for something,' he said. In Melitopol and other occupied parts of Ukraine, Russian authorities have mounted huge billboards featuring patriotic messages about the 80th anniversary of the victory. But in the rest of the country, the invasion, together with Moscow's grotesque propaganda, has helped build more of a consensus around second world war memory, which had been a complex and often pained topic. The wartime Ukrainian nationalist movement, part of which cooperated with Germany, had been considered heroes by some Ukrainians and villains by others. Now, the war for survival has become more important than memory politics, even if some difficult questions remain. At the Second World War museum in Kyiv, a vast complex opened in 1981 on Victory Day by Leonid Brezhnev, curators have left one part of the exhibit as a 'time capsule' of Soviet flags and military relics, said Yurii Savchuk, the director. In other parts of the museum, changes are underway. On the top floor, an art exhibition juxtaposes images from the second world war and the current war. In front of a huge Soviet-era mural of the storming of the Reichstag in a devastated Berlin, a contemporary artist has mounted a small metal Kremlin on a pedestal, the implication clear. View image in fullscreen Young soldiers visiting the exhibition dedicated to the Soviet Red Army in WW2 at the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War in Kyiv. Photograph: Julia Kochetova/The Guardian 'The new war has allowed us to quickly solve some questions that we had postponed for the next generations,' said Savchuk. The museum was also taking the 'first steps' to address issues such as collaboration, he said, though did not give details. The need for national unity in the current war means in-depth examination of some of the most difficult questions may be postponed a while longer. In Zaporizhzhia, a largely Russian-speaking industrial city in south-east Ukraine, Victory Day was traditionally celebrated at the Alley of Glory, built around a monument of a heroic Soviet soldier and opened in 1965, for the 20th anniversary of victory. In 2014, the spot became a gathering point for pro-Russian rallies. Clashes broke out at one of the rallies with pro-Ukraine protesters who threw eggs at the separatists, with the ensuing standoff entering local lore as Egg Sunday. 'That was really a time when the city showed itself to be proudly Ukrainian,' said Valentyna Vynychenko, a 74-year-old tour guide from the city. Both of her parents were war veterans, but their relation to the war had always been far from the official pomp and ceremony, she said. Her mother would break her teetotal rule once a year on 9 May, when she would drink a shot of vodka in memory of those she had left behind. Neither parent talked much about the horrors they had seen or the emotions they had felt during the war. 'It wasn't a celebration for her, it was a solemn day of memory. But she rarely talked about it and she never cried. I couldn't understand it at all. Now, with this war, I have come to understand her perfectly. The pain, the tears, it's all there, but it's there somewhere deep inside you,' she said. After 80 years, in Ukraine as elsewhere, the second world war will soon not be an event in anyone's living memory. One of the few veterans remaining in Ukraine is 99-year-old Ivan Nikolenko. In a small apartment on the outskirts of Dnipro, he donned a pinstriped jacket heavy with his Soviet-era medals to recount his story. He signed up for a sniper school as a 16-year-old in 1942, shortly after his father had left for the front and been killed. Nikolenko, who will turn 100 next week, fought on the Ukrainian front, where he was known as 'Sonny' among his comrades as he was the youngest among them. Most of his friends died; he was wounded twice, first in the leg near Dnipro and the second time as a result of shrapnel hitting his chest in the fight to liberate Kryvyi Rih. The second explosion left him deaf in the left ear, and more than eighty years later, he can still feel a hard lump in his chest. He lives just a few kilometres from the places he was once fighting, and like many of his generation, he misses the Soviet Union. He considers himself Russian, despite the Ukrainian passport he has held for the past three decades. But more than anything, he said, he wanted an end to the war, and for Dnipro to be safe enough for all of his great-grandchildren to return from western Europe. 'I always used to think in five-year plans but now I have a two-year plan. To live for two more years, to make it until there is peace,' he said.
