Join John Nettles, author of Jewels and Jackboots, at Jersey Museum for an evening of reading and book signing.
Details
- 28 September 2024
- Jersey Museum
John Nettles Book Signing: Hans Max Von Aufsess Gentle Violence Diaries 1943-1945
Originally published in German in 2020. Gentle Violence has now been fully translated into English by Robert and Suzanne Crooker. The diary features a Foreward by John Nettles.
This is the only diary of the Occupation of the Channel Islands written by a German from a German point of view. And not just any German but a Franconian nobleman in the shape of Hans Max Baron von und zu Aufsess. He came to the islands in 1942 as a staff officer in the German Military
Government of the Channel Islands. He left in May 1945 as a prisoner-of-war bound for interment on the British mainland.
His diary chronicles in detail his dealings with the civilian population, his ‘parishioners’ as he called them, and with the leading island politicians in Jersey and Guernsey. There were disagreements and wrangles but by and large Aufsess managed to oversee an occupation considerably less oppressive than any other in Europe.
In 1944, as the war turned against Germany, Aufsess was forced to re-assess his political loyalties in the face of the inevitable defeat. Should he support the fight for an impossible ‘Final Victory’ which would surely mean the annihilation of the civil population or follow the path to surrender in the name of humanity and sound military sense? Aufsess’s account of his struggle to find a way through makes for compelling reading and this diary a major contribution to Occupation history.
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