On This Day Tuesday 1st July

On This Day – 1 July 1940

Alderney was occupied by German forces, marking the beginning of one of the most haunting chapters in Channel Islands history. While Guernsey and Jersey had already seen German troops arrive days earlier, Alderney’s occupation was particularly stark—its entire population had been evacuated, leaving the island eerily empty. The Germans quickly transformed Alderney into a heavily fortified outpost, constructing camps that would later become sites of forced labor and suffering