‘Current UK government should consider apology’

A cover-up of the lack of justice given to Nazi perpetrators in Alderney has been made public for the first time after research for the Alderney Expert Review uncovered the truth.

The 1943 Moscow declaration, to which the UK was a signatory, laid down that German war criminals should be tried in territories where atrocities were committed, and handing the case over to the USSR when most victims were Russian would save Britain from putting people from 30 different nationalities on trial.

British authorities wanted to rescue the Stalag Luft III, otherwise known as The Great Escape, perpetrators from Soviet hands, where the British and American airmen were the victims, and believed this could be achieved by passing to the USSR the Alderney German war criminals, whose victims were Soviet citizens.

Evidence was sent to the USSR in 1945, but nothing was done and those who tortured or murdered their victims escaped trial.

‘I think what my work has shown is there was a smoking gun for a decision that was taken, which turned out to be the wrong decision, because justice was denied to the victims of the Alderney atrocities and that was unacceptable,’ said Professor Anthony Glees, who uncovered the truth.

‘But it was a decision that was taken with the right intention. With the victims being Russian, the perpetrators should be surrendered to Russia and that we could then use that logic to get our hands on the people who murdered the Great Escapees in cold blood.

‘That was worth it, and we did get our hands on them, and those people did suffer the penalty for what they had done.’

What was ‘covered up’ was not a lack of fervour on the part of the British to convict Nazi war criminals. Rather it was a lack of action by the USSR, he said.

Professor Glees said that an apology from the government could be in order, but politicians should use this as an example of why the truth should not be concealed.

‘I certainly think that the current British government could say sorry for the sins of omission and the initial decision to hand the file over to the Russians, but the really important thing is not to go around apologising, but to commit to transparency.

‘If people were just to tell it the way it is then there would be no need for any of this, and there was a good explanation.

‘In July 1945, there was a good explanation for handing over the file to the Russians, but it became a bad explanation. The should have owned up and they made the wrong call in the end.’

Lord Eric Pickles, who commissioned the report, said that it was a stain on the reputation of the UK that the perpetrators did not receive justice on British soil by a British judicial system.

‘I’m sorry that so may of the perpetrators died peacefully in their beds, but their memory remains vile.’