pre-war Nazi girls' school on UK coast - read the history, see the film

Blazer badge

Victoria Augusta College, Bexhill-on-Sea

Bexhill Museum’s curator Julian Porter explained that Bexhill-on-Sea had German associations going back to 1804, when infantry from the King’s German Legion was based in the East Sussex barracks. And since the late C19th, many independent schools have operated in this seaside res­ort-town, including German language schools. Thank you to the Times of Israel.

Bexhill Museum

NB the Bex­hill school that was open from 1932-9: Victoria Augusta College/AVC, named for the last German emp­r­ess, Victoria Augusta of Schleswig-Holstein. This Nazi finishing sch­ool for girls aged 16-21 was located on UK’s south coast. Bex­hill was perfect since it had been long considered a heal­thy, safe place for Bri­t­ish and foreign aristocrats, diplomats and wealthy parents to place their children while they worked abroad. The school’s stated goal was to cultivate inter­nat­ional friendship between Germany and Britain.

AVC took in the daughter of high-ranking Nazi officials and moulded them into respectable wives for the British ruling class. Students included SS chief Heinrich Himmler’s god­daughter, Foreign Minister Joachim von Rib­bentrop’ daughter, Hit­l­er’s ambassador at the Vat­ic­an Diego von Bergen’s daughter, and Countess Hald­en­berg, niece of German ambassador to Britain Herbert von Dirksen.

Did any documentation sur­vive? Bexhill Museum’s Julian Porter dis­pl­ay­ed local newspaper clip­pings and a 2014 interview with Mollie Wil­l­ing Hick­ie who worked in the late 1930s as a young school au-pair. There was also a school badge worn on the girls’ blazers, the logo including the German lion, imperial German flag, Union Jack and Nazi swastika flag. Plus there was a school bro­chure from c1935, coinciding with the ar­r­ival of principal Frau Helene Rocholl who had close ties to the Nazi regime. And the school was ment­ioned in Paris Fashion And World War Two: Global Diffusion and Nazi Control.

1935 was the year when Earl De La Warr commissioned architects Erich Mendelsohn, a Jewish re­fugee from Nazi Germany and Serge Chermayeff, a Russian Jew, to de­sign Bexhill’s De La Warr Pavilion. It was the first Inter­national Modernist-style public building in the UK and the first time Bexhill ?knew about the risks Jews were ex­posed to. A clash between the British Union of Fascists and hundreds of locals led to disorder one Friday night. The situation might have become serious had not the police intervened, said Bexhill Observer, July 1936.

Didn’t the locals think it was bizarre that young women were wear­ing the Nazi swastika on the British seaside pre-WW2? No! Locals didn’t consider the young AVC students a threat, because as long as the girls were present, German-Brit­ish hostilities were unthinkable. And the students thought it perfectly normal since they listened to Hit­ler’s speech­­es on the radio and celebrated Hitler’s birth­day. The Times showed AVC students greeting German war minister Field Marsh­all von Blomberg, Hitler’s Minister of War at King George VI's coronation in May 1937; note the Nazi salute.

Field Marsh­all von Blomberg, Hitler’s Minister of War

Welcomed by AVC students in May 1937

The Third Reich was telling Britain that it would support its cont­in­ued rule over its empire, so long as it didn’t stand in Germ­any’s way of conquering all of Europe. By the end of the 1930s, AVC’s goal was ?about the Nazis trying to keep Britain out of the upcoming war by seeking an alliance with British aristocracy.

Remember AVC was designed as a finishing school where daught­ers of Germany's arist­oc­ratic and diplomatic families completed their ed­ucation. The curr­ic­ul­um com­prised domestic studies, Baroness von Kor­ff’s cookery classes, regular reviews of Ger­man news­papers and English lang­uage instruction. Au pair Hickie reported that all the girls did attain the Cam­b­ridge Certificate of Proficiency in English.

The girls were of marriageable age, they could speak good English and would be in high society finding husbands who were decision-makers, so they could infiltrate Brit­ish society. Whether the girls actually had any success marry­ing English men was uncertain.

It didn’t matter. The girls were evacuated back to Germany in the Munich Crisis in Sept 1938, but returned to Bexhill after a fort­night. As Bexhill locals readied for war with gas masks and sand­bags in April 1939, The People newspaper reported that principal Frau Helene Rocholl was confident there would not be a war. WRONG! The girls left for Germany in late Aug 1939 for good!

AVC students on the beach at Bexhill-on Sea, 

1935 prospectus.

Students relaxing at AVC, 

1935 prospectus. 

Students reading newspapers at  AVC, 

1935 prospectus.

The film
This largely forgotten 1930s Nazi girls school in Bexhill pro­vided the histor­ical basis for the spy thriller, Six Minutes to Mid­night. It opened in Britain in March, starring Dame Judi Dench, Carla Juri, Celyn Jones & Eddie Izz­ard, who also wrote the screenplay, and dir­ector Andy Goddard. As in real life, the daughters of Hit­ler’s off­ic­ers intend­ed to use their fine English to marry high up in British society.

New teacher Thomas Miller's predecessor was found dead on the beach. In an interv­iew with Frau Rocholl, she asked what Englishman would acc­ept a post teaching Hitler's League of German Girls? Miller resp­ond­ed in Ger­man that his father was German! Frau Rocholl apparently had no alt­ern­­ative, so Miller got the job and was immediately teach­ing. The issues of individual, cultural and national loyalty, and how to res­pond to aggressive actions by other nations, were open to anal­ys­is. As were the spying possibilities. See the film, which opened in Australia in late April 2021.

All photo credits: Bexhill Museum