9. Hitler Ordered Mass Deportations From the Channel Islands
Even though the population of the Channel Islands was a fraction of what it had been before, Adolf Hitler still believed that there were too many British people on his new islands, so he ordered that thousands of British women and children be deported to German internment camps. They were given black bread and potatoes to survive on, so the Red Cross tried to give them care packages with other supplies whenever possible. Some people were deported to prison camps in Europe. Teenage boys around the age of 16 were often targeted for deportation, because there was a large population of boys who chose not to evacuate, and they were also too young to go to war. Hitler believed they would end up potentially causing an issue for the Germans when they grew into men.
For years, records of what happened to many of the deported citizens were kept a secret. In 2010, a briefcase full of papers was found in the back of a wardrobe full of records of what happened to these people. People who were deported were never told where they had actually been taken. Many were in damp prison cells without very much sunlight, and they were forced to witness their friends and family members killed by the guillotine. The Nazis would take at least 25 people per week to behead them. According to these testimonies, they were near starvation, and denied all basic human rights.