Following the success of editing Reverend Ord’s diaries, John Nettles returns with the first unabridged and unexpurgated English translation of the diary of Baron von Aufsess. The Baron arrived in the Channel Islands in 1943 as the commanding officer of the Feldkommandantur (German Civilian Administration), firstly based in Jersey, and then from late 1944, in Guernsey. First published in German in 2020, the diary has now been translated into English, and will be launched in May 2023.

His diary documents his innermost thoughts about his contemporaries, as well as the behind-the-scenes wrangling amongst the German command, particularly as food supplies began to run out after D-Day in June 1944. It also reveals the Baron as a well-read multilingual aspiring intellectual and inveterate womaniser.

An introduction to the German edition (see here) of the diary, by German academic Tobias Arand, explores the extent to which the diary reveals whether the Baron’s membership of the National Socialist party was due to his true sympathies with the cause, or a scheming career move. It also questions whether the diary – of which there are several versions – were written at the time, or during his period of captivity as prisoner-of-war in England after the Liberation of the Channel Islands.

The diaries of the Reverend Douglas Ord are the most significant original source to have emerged from the German Occupation of the Channel Islands.

John Nettles has edited the diaries and written an introduction.

More info here.

This book was born of a series of documentary films about the German Occupation of the British Channel Islands from 1940 to 1945 entitled The Channel Islands at War (DVD). It is also the fulfilment of an ambition to tell in much more detail than was possible in those documentaries, the true story of those extraordinary years. The Channel Islands were the only British soil to be occupied in the war, the Islanders the only British citizens to fall under German rule.

How the Islanders reacted to the invaders has recently been the subject of heated argument and impassioned debate and for very good reasons which are explored in this book.

It used to be thought that the Occupation of the Channel Islands was a rather gentle, even benign affair, utterly unlike that of, say, France or Holland on mainland Europe. It was believed that by and large the German invaders behaved reasonably well and kept within the terms of the Geneva Convention. For their part the Islanders responded by offering no resistance to their masters and only co-operating, not collaborating, with them according to that same Convention. It was certainly uncomfortable but not horrendous. Unpleasant but not unendurable - the conquerors and the conquered getting along together in what was thought to be the very model of a model occupation. That is not the whole truth. The real history of the Occupation is much different from that. It is more morally complex, ambiguous and difficult. It is the story of a sustained and wholesale attack on human values, of great suffering, venality, violence and grotesque and hideous murder. It is also the story of extraordinary courage, wise and resourceful leadership and, surprisingly, given the awful conditions, much good humour.

This is the story which is told in Jewels and Jackboots. From the bombing raids on St Helier and St Peter Port in June 1940 to Liberation on 9th May 1945 the narrative unfolds largely through the words of those who actually endured those years, those people who were actually there when thousands of their neighbours were taken from their homes and shipped away to camps across Europe, there when the slave workers arrived from the eastern front, actually there when the Jews were rounded up and haled along the Via Dolorosa and actually there when after five long years the British soldiers returned once more to the Islands. Alongside the words there are the pictures that illustrate the progress of the Occupation every step of the way.

Photographs of the heroes of those times of course and pictures from the Island of Alderney where untold hundreds of Todt workers worked and died. Extraordinary photographs too of the Germans as they arrived in the Islands, tall, handsome, proud, immaculately uniformed. Then, in stark contrast, photographs of the Wehrmacht in the final days of occupation.

There are the stories too of the American PoWs, Clark and Haas and their successful escape from the Islands and of the three Jersey boys Audrain, Gould and Hassall who failed so tragically in their attempt and were betrayed by the mother of one of the lads. Every respected authority has been consulted to help establish the truth of the account of the Occupation that appears in this book but it is the voice of the Islanders themselves which is its most fascinating and important feature.

Author: John Nettles, first published in 2012/13 by Seeker Publishing, Jersey (now in its 4th edition, see newly released edition here).

Die verlorene Luftschlacht gegen England bedeutete das Ende von Hitlers Wahn, englischen Boden zu erobern. Nicht ganz! Es gab ja bereits ein britisches Territorium, das von der Wehrmacht okkupiert wurde. Am 28. Juni 1940 griffen die Deutschen von Frankreich aus die Kanalinseln an. Bomben trafen die Häfen von St. Helier auf Jersey und St. Peter Port auf Guernsey. Damit fiel britischer Boden den Deutschen in die Hände und verblieb dort bis zu seiner Befreiung im Mai 1945.

John Nettles legt in seinem Buch eine detaillierte Schilderung der deutschen Besatzungszeit vor. Er lässt Zeitzeugen zu Wort kommen und von ihren Erfahrungen berichten. Der Autor spart dabei auch die heiklen Aspekte der Okkupation nicht aus, etwa die angespannte Beziehung zwischen den Kanalinseln und der englischen Regierung. Denn auf den Inseln verlief die Linie zwischen Kooperation und Kollaboration, zwischen Widerstand und Kriegsverbrechen viel dramatischer als bisher angenommen. Der komplexe Fall der Kollaboration wird ebenso beleuchtet wie das Schicksal der Juden und Zwangsarbeiter auf den Inseln. Nettles lebte während der Dreharbeiten für die Serie Bergerac auf Jersey, seither verbindet ihn eine enge Beziehung zu den Kanalinseln. 2011 unterbrach er seine Karriere als Schauspieler, um sich seiner Arbeit als Dokumentarfilmer und Sachbuchautor zu widmen. Ein Jahr später erschien sein aufsehenerregendes Buch.

More info here.