A Nazi soldier saw his colleague order the murder of two English men on British soil during the Second World War, documents have revealed.
The killings allegedly took place on Alderney, the northernmost of the Channel Islands, in 1944.
The murders were witnessed by a soldier named as Obergefreiter (Corporal) Kraus, who was stationed at a forced labour camp on Alderney.
If true, they would be the first known incidents of Nazis murdering British people during their occupation of the Channel Islands from 1940 until 1945.
Kraus claimed to have witnessed a Sonderführer (Special Commander) Richter kill two people in 1944.
The document revealed in the programme reads: ‘Richter had beaten two Englishmen and had ordered them to be fired upon.’
Ms Mulley says to viewers: ‘This document, essentially an interrogation report of a German officer on Alderney, seems to describe two Englishmen, who have been beaten and shot and then their graves have been levelled and the crosses removed.’
The document added that Richter ordered his men to remove crosses marking their burial site.
The document was revealed in upcoming Sky History drama Hitler’s British Island, which airs next Tuesday.
Historian Dr Helen Fry says in the programme: ‘If this incident is true, then it does represent the only known incident of British dying at the hands of Nazis on British soil.’
A report commissioned by Lord Eric Pickles, UK Special Envoy on Post Holocaust Issues, concluded earlier this year that more than 1,000 people died during the Nazi occupation of Alderney.
A team of international experts found that between 641 and 1,027 people, which included Jews, prisoners of war and some Romanis who were shipped to the island, died as a result of ill-treatment.
For decades, official accounts had said only 389 of the 4,000 slave labourers shipped by Nazi Germany to the island during the war perished.
Labourers were transported there from countries across Europe to build fortifications as part of the German war effort.
They were housed in camps that shared many similarities with those in mainland Europe – and the labourers were subject to atrocious living and working conditions and executions.
The investigation was launched to dispel conspiracy theories and provide the most accurate figure of those who lost their lives on the island.
The report also aimed to bring justice for those who died, and ensure that this period of history, and the Holocaust, is ‘remembered fully and accurately.’
Slave labourers were forced to work as slave labourers in horrific conditions.
They were housed in four camps on the island: Helgoland, Nordeney, Borkum and Sylt.
By the end of the war, two of them had been converted into concentration camps by Hitler’s elite death squad – the SS.
After the Germans surrendered Alderney on May 16, 1945, it was another six months before any of the islanders could return due to the heavy fortifications placed around it.
Allied forces found in excess of 30,000 landmines that had to be painstakingly defused and removed in order for residents to return to their homes.