This evening talk with Prof. Anthony Glees looks at the occupation of Alderney, the Nazi war crimes committed there, and how these crimes were overlooked and unpunished.
During their wartime occupation of the Channel Islands, the Germans set up three forced 'Todt' labour camps and one SS concentration camp in Alderney to house the forced and slave labourers brought there to build fortifications on the Island as part of Hitler's Atlantic Wall, intended to safeguard the Nazi 'Fortress Europe' from Allied invasion.
The most appalling atrocities were meted out to these workers. However, the British authorities never brought any of the perpetrators to justice, despite the 1943 international treaty obligations placed on Britain to try war criminals for crimes committed on our territory.
Not surprisingly this has led to seven decades of accusations of conspiracies to hide the facts and cover-ups by successive UK governments.
In 2023, Lord Eric Pickles set up an expert review to tell the story of Alderney and list these crimes. Speaker Professor Anthony Glees was appointed to try to discover, for the first time, why the authorities had never tried anyone for them, on the grounds that all war crimes must be investigated and justice be done, especially, one might argue, if committed in the UK.
Anthony Glees, a lifetime professor at the University of Buckingham, was the advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's War Crimes Inquiry, 1989-91, and special advisor to Lord Eric Pickles 2023-4 for his 'Alderney Expert Review’.
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Featured Image: 'Russian Cemetary' at Longis in Alderney (RAF Museum)
