Clue to only Brits 'killed by Nazis on British soil' as archive unearthed

A murdered two English prisoners on British soil during the , newly unearthed documents have revealed.

The killings were documented by Obergefreiter (Private) Kraus who was stationed at a forced labour camp on Alderney, the most northern Channel Island, after Germany invaded. His account, recently found in the , says he witnessed the murders by Sonderführer (Special Commander) Richter in 1944.

Richter was leader of the Alderney Outpost of Military Administration of Field Command. Kraus wrote: “Richter had beaten two Englishmen and had ordered them to be fired upon.” He added that Richter later ordered his men to level their burial site and remove the crosses marking it.

READ MORE:

Speaking in a Sky History documentary about the revelation, historian Dr Helen Fry says: “If this incident is true, then it does represent the only known incident of British dying at the hands of Nazis on British soil.” But the killings revealed in the show, Hitler’s British Island, are far from the only wartime atrocities the Germans committed on Alderney.

The Nazis built four concentration camps on the island, using thousands of slave labourers, as Alderney became part of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall project – a chain of fortresses on coastal positions. Alderney became home to more than 4,000 prisoners from 27 countries, hidden in camps out of sight of the international community.

Among them was Spaniard Francisco Font, who recalled in 1976: “If atrocities mean killing people for no reason whatsoever, we saw some of that. We saw a Russian who apparently stole bread from someone else. Soon afterwards, he was hanging.”

His son Gary says: “The prisoners were emaciated... the Nazis were literally working them to death.” The Soviet Union led post-war investigations into war crimes on the island.

But, preoccupied with repatriating their own citizens, the Soviets did nothing with the evidence of Nazi atrocities. So it is thought that Richter, and many of his fellow war criminals, were never brought to justice.

Hitler’s British Island is on Sky History at 9pm on Tuesday, October 15.