A Tour Of WW2's Most Fortified Island | Alderney With Dan Snow
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2025
- 'The Most Fortified Island In The World? | Alderney With Dan Snow'
Join Dan Snow as he explores one of the world's most fortified islands, discovering Roman ramparts, Victorian gun emplacements and giant underground bunkers built by the German occupiers during the Second World War.
Alderney may be a tiny scrap of land in the English Channel - part of the Channel Islands archipelago - but its size belies its importance. It's played an important strategic part in British and French history. Despite only being ten miles west of La Hague on the Cotentin Peninsular, the island has for roughly a thousand years mostly belonged to the English and British. And for this reason, the island has a wealth of historical sites, quite out of proportion to its small size, from Roman walls to impressive concrete bunkers built by the Wehrmacht during the Second World War.
Measuring just three square miles, the island of Alderney remains one of the most heavily fortified places in the world after it was transformed into an impregnable fortress as Hitler looked to strengthen his Atlantic wall. But the island's wartime story didn't end there. The majority of the island's population were evacuated to the mainland prior to the occupation, but a small number chose to return to their homes despite the trials of living alongside the enemy. The two communities weren't alone, they were joined by thousands of foreign labourers - slave labour - who endured meagre rations and rampant disease. To house the influx of POWs, the German occupiers built four camps on Alderney, including Lager Sylt - the only concentration camp on British soil.
In this video, Dan Snow visits a host of Alderney's historic sites starting with the Roman Wall overlooking St Peter's Port to the Odeon - a terrifying concrete tower on the northern tip of the island.
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As an Alderney resident I'm so happy to see a piece about my home, it's a wonderful little island filled with so much history. I am blessed to have been able to grow up exploring these bunkers and forts which is what got me into history. Hope you can cover more about our island in the future Dan!
I spent time there in the 40s but then we had to leave
I feel like I’ve met you before.
@@Twistednc nah mate never seen you in my life 😂
As a total Atlantikwall nut, Alderney has always been at the top of my list of places to visit. It was nice to see that the bunkers are rightly being treated as historical artifacts with information panels on them and not being tagged by modern grafitti artists as they do across the rest of Europe. They remain as solid testaments to those prisoners who built them
I love the TV work Dan does and as always another great report. As a resident now of Alderney, it is great to see the research his team did to produce this video and the scenery shown and blue skies are so typical of this beautiful island renowned for wildlife and walking holidays.
i dont i freaking hate nepotism.
Wow Dan, brilliant video. Mid 60's my Dad & Mum took me to Alderney for a holiday. Dad took me round many of the bunkers & explained them to me. He had served in UK, France & Africa in the war. Still stays with me to this day.
We thank your dad for playing his part in keeping the world out of the hands of the Nazis and the fascists
In 2012 I sailed from Cherbourg to Alderney on a 48 foot sloop...I think it took us about 10 hours.
The island these days is a summer haven for tourists from UK and France...I think someone said that it is the sunniest place in England :)
The weather is pleasant and the main town near the harbour is filled with souvenir shops, ice cream parlours, pubs and old timey grocery stores...quite charming and a far far cry from the horrors of war.
I remember there was a cliff diving contest that week we were there and there was also an event where nearly a thousand people walked thru the streets with candles for almost 2 hours one evening...a large number of summer residents leave back to the mainland for the winter...
Hard to believe that such a tiny place was considered such a strategic piece of the war...
Jersey retains the sunshine crown, lol 😝
‘ Jersey crowned sunniest place in British Isles (again)
JERSEY retained the title of the sunniest place in the British Isles in 2022, with 10% more sunshine than the nearest rival, new figures have confirmed.
Data from the UK Met Office showed that Preston in Dorset was the sunniest place in the UK for the second year running, with a total of 2,204 hours of sun across the year - well behind the Jersey total of 2,420, which was the highest figure since records began in 1925.…’ - Jersey Evening Post
🤝 🍻
great route if world war z begins
I Remember sailing there in 1978 as a teenager with a school trip, after beaching the boat we all went off exploring, the fort at the end of the beach was a kids paradise, no keep out signs etc. The amount of treasures there was amazing and today would be worth a lot to collectors but then it was just scrap. German signs, bullet and shell casings, solders possessions etc. I also remember a massive pile of rusting metal hoops, piled high on the breakwater, and old local told us they were submarine nets, it was all so cool to a 14 year old.
You can still find plenty of shell casings here in Jersey and you don’t even need to dig for them, they’re just a few of inches deep so you can just pull them up with your bare hands.
What’s interesting is you can tell which are the older ones vs. the later ones; The older ones are in much better shape; The later ones are all corroded due to being manufactured with inferior metal due to the shortage of raw materials as the war dragged-on,
🤝🍻
Takes me back to holidays on the Channel Islands, including Alderney, as a child. I remember being driven around in an old Land Rover with a canvas-roofed back and a bungee cord holding the passenger door closed (registration number was AY1), and visiting several of these bunkers.
As an American, I love watching your videos! Back when I was around 10 or 11 years old in the 60s, my dad and I would watch Alastair Cook documentaries. They were great but your enthusiasm is so refreshing and enjoyable - keep it up!
I remember going to Alderney for two weeks with some schoolfriends on our first holiday after finishing our O-Levels in 1986. I say "remember", but all I remember really was arriving. The rest of it was an alcoholic haze.
Amazing fortress. A piece of history I had never seen.
Love all your shows . Bullet point , no nonsense delivery , told with passion and enthusiasm . Great stuff .
Incredible content as always, really enjoy Dan Snow as a host probably my favourite on this channel. He does a remarkable job. This was something I thoroughly enjoyed this morning with my coffee, cheers to more great videos soon!
Excellent video. The Channel Islands were the only British territory to be occupied by the Germans. Alderney certainly was the one of the last Nazi-occupied territories to be freed but the very last place in Europe to be liberated from the Germans was the neighbouring island of Sark. I'm glad Dan spoke about the slave labourers. Among them were many Spanish Republicans who had fled to France after Franco's victory.
I’m afraid you’re slightly off, Alderney was liberated on the 16th of may whereas sark was liberated on may 10th.
15:00 just to add the picture their is a 37mm tank gun from a captured French tank. So not one of the big heavy guns, the largest guns on the island was four, 17cm SK L/40 gun which shell weight was 64kg compared to the 37mm tanks shell which weighed around 0.61kg a 100 times less in weight.
Honestly not a huge deal just thought I'd add that in as it's quite interesting.
Some really well informed comments on this, I see. Although I was aware of the broad outline of the story its nice to have some detail! Also the pictures are stunning. A lovely job Dan and team. Nice one! 🌟👍
Sorry Dan this is unacceptable, get your wellies or waders and get through those tunnels.
I was about to say the same. Bunker diving w/o wellies or atleist a pair of waders.
I second that motion!!! 🤠👍
He shat it!!
I dunno, from my experiences visiting coastal artillery bunkers in the US, you never want to put your foot where you can't see what you're stepping on (or in). There are uncovered shafts of all sizes, some just ankle breakers, and some big enough to swallow a person.
Yep
Great show, keep up the good work
Amazing Video, very Educational. I enjoyed it very much. Thanks for Sharing!
✌️😁
Thank you Dan yes another very interesting video
fantastic video this one would love to visit one day
You can still see the gun placements and the OG flame throwers at corbier light house wich was also the first one made completely from concrete in the world
I live in Jersey, we have amazing German bunker's here too! I still haven't been too Alderney yet!
As do I! St Mary’s resident
its a bit expensive, thats why, cheaper to go to st malo !
That island reminds me a lot of the Marin Headlands in the SF/Bay area California. It's one of my all time favorite places to wander around, because there are so, so many random bunkers and old bits and pieces of military hardware, some of which you can pretty easily explore, and some. . . not so much.
This really reminds me of the fortification system built here in old Czechoslovakia for only one reason - against nazi Germany. And since Germany took over us, they were testing their guns on our bunkers and found out they couldn't hurt them at all. Our bunkers even had anti-grenade "slides" so if you throw a handgrenade in the air shaft, it slides back under your feet. They had one machine gun aiming through the only entrance, which was L shaped, so you couldn't get inside.
The largest bunkers even had the exact same pits for heavy artillery like you can see here 5:19, only deeper so the entire cannon could slide underground during bombarding. And since Germans built some forts on this island which look exactly the same, i can't help it but think they just copied our bunkers.
Many of the bunkers are still intact today and are opened to public, so if you Come to Czechia, be sure to visit one! In my opinion the best one to visit is Bouda, where you can see the giant cannon pit, you can walk the entire underground system which leads to other bunkers and it's all a giant museum with great staff.
Awesome series
can you imagine the noise in there!!
Hey, as a Guernsey-man who recently visited Alderney- Which i have to say, I knew they were well fortified but the concentration of it was genuinely ridiculous. I thought Guernsey was fortified. Never saw anything like this. Can tell it was the very tip of the western front. You cannot stand in almost any outdoor location without seeing a bunker.
Anyway, chatted to a lot of locals, a couple of things to add.
Alderney was not entirely abandoned/evacuated by it's locals pre invasion. Some lifelong locals were forcibly removed by the germans and shipped to Guernsey because the Germans didnt want the residents split across all islands and had other plans for Alderney.
Alderney largely acted as the base and concentration camp of the slave laborers who worked across all islands fortification construction however it was also the place the Germans used to farm most of their food with Alderney/Guernsey farmers kept there specifically for that purpose.
The Roman ramparts covered at the start there. Outside the beach facing wall is a drop off to a headland ledge. I was told that this ledge is one of the places that many slave laborers who died in construction were buried.
There is a touching story of a local Jewish immigrant care nurse who was shipped off to a European mainland concentration camp. Forgive me, i forget her name.
There is a heavy focus on the World war 2 affected fortifications in this video but there are actually a load more pre-ww2 forts with varying levels of German alteration all over the place.
There is a clip of Dan at the above ground part of this location when he is backed by the giant seabird colony at the western tip (past the gannets) including Annes Battery. Under his feet is a large network of bunkers and trenches. Now this network was almost entirely buried besides the actual gun posts until last year.
When there, the guy who owned it and his family were digging them out. We got chatting and he kindly gave me an awesome tour of one of the recently dug-out bunker networks. The amazing thing about it was how untouched it was. There were hand written notes and markings all over the walls. Even their ammo store had symbolic labels across the walls, we assumed referring to the type of ammunition to be kept in each area because they were like '-' '*' with one just an obvious shell drawing.
At the centre of this huge ammo store ringway was these incredible shell elevators which though largely rotten, painted a clear picture of how ammo would be fed from the below ground store areas through a series of thin shafts on these metal shelves mounted on almost bicycle chain linked pullies with some rotting, thick electric cables also running up the shaft sides upto those people manning the St Anne Battery. Anyway the guy actually completed his restoration of that network now and i saw it listed on a local property site!
One final Aldernsey related point. My grandfather was a teenager on Guernsey during the occupation. He took a joy-ride on a soliders motorbike and also stole a pair of binocullars/ kept telling the soliders that alderney was England. Anyway he annoyed them enough so that they put him in the Aldernsey labor camp for a period of time before transfering him to a french labor camp. Luckily the war ended and he survived.
I'd love to see you do one on Sark if possible. I know there is not much to cover and it would be incredibly short, but more specifically covering the story of the British SAS group who were sent to do reconesence on the German occupation in WW2 and ended up hitman game style stealth killing some Germans on their way around. Sark is my favorite of the islands and that story was especially interesting, at least to me.
Very scary to see such massive structures of war. Even scarier to think what would be reality today if this regime wouldn't have brought down. And a reminder of what a huge effort was put into the liberation of Europe to bring down such an awesome opponent, represented here by these massive forts and military structures. It was a horrible time and we can be blessed to life in our reality today.
The irony was, the Germans thought they were building a large fort, but in reality it turned out to have become their prison. The Allies just ignored the Channel Islands and concentrated on other areas.
@Beaudile don't be so silly it was a tactical move to leave the islands and attack full frontal assault to Normandy we knew to attack the islands was going to cost to many lives as it did the french when they tried, by attacking the mainland the allied forces were able to push the Germans back and cutting of supplies to the islands thus forcing their surrender so no we were never conquered to conquer you need to remain they didn't
It was a reverse maginot line 😂
@@apocalypticweasel9078 Alderney was never a concern for the allies ok it was a mop up operation at most, however the channel islands were attacked in 1944 HMS Rodney along with another big gun war ship bombarded the island enemies gun emplacements with Rodney's 16'' guns which it accomplished, the channel island weren't liberated until a year later may 1945 .
Would love to visit! Thank you :D
Heartbreaking to think of WHY these marvels were built
They say History repeats itself. They keep it up kept for a reason.
Especially with so many deniers on social media now.
It is amazing how many of their limited resources the Germans basically wasted on the Channel Islands, thankfully.
Interesting to see the Isle of Wight at 6:23! We're pretty far south, but not _that_ far! Oopsie!
Always love your content
The breakwater still being one of the biggest in the world and an extraordinary feat of napolionic engineering. The air defence tower in the centre of bray is now a phone mast. The numbers of dead in the camps probably grossly underestimated. Pushed off the cliffs and rumoured evidence of cannibalism it was so bad
My mate Ginge used to be a fisherman in Alderney. He told me he lived in a bunker!
I thought for a second that this movie was a new DLC for my Game Sniper Elite 5 which I just completed a map where these buildings were off the coast. How the game makers were able to almost get these buildings down to the last brick is beyond me. The story and History as well covers so much of the pass war, it is so wonderful that I'm able to be a part of the reinactment in that war within a War game. EA Games was the best War Game makers but have completely last site of whats real and whats not and the History within these types of games are now lost. The new Kids on the block are Ubisoft who are makers of the old History that will change iall future wars!!
Well presented
The fact the allies never attacked doesn't mean the fortifications were built in vain, it is instead a testament to their strength.
You should go to jersey and see the war tunnel hospital is awsome
If you had to be in the German army in the war, duty on the island would have been the best. Although there were some air raids, the bunkers would have been, and there were no land battles. I wonder if the troops were rotated to the continent, or once on the island, spent the rest of the war there?
Units would have been rotated, but a rear echelon place like this may also have been a likely posting for soldiers who had been too badly injured to fight but not so badly injured as to be invalided out of the military. Someone who had lost an eye or had only partial use of one hand, or who could walk well enough but not run readily, wouldn't be any use as a front-line rifleman but would be quite capable of guarding conscripted labourers on an island where there was nowhere to escape to.
Couple amendments from a Crapaud (Jerseymen)
There are at least 2 remnants of the wooden machine gun positions in jersey.
Secondly, a lot of the artillery pieces were captured French guns, including FT17 turrets
Where in Jersey are the wooden machine gun positions?
At 6:22 it's very clearly the Isle of Wight being shown, The Needles, Alum Bay etc. Perhaps an edit is needed! :)
there are lots of mistakes with the still shots. the bombing raid photos are of the German bombing of Guernsey harbour and the large gun is a small caliber French FT turret used as close defense on the bunkers.
Well worth looking at the WW2 stuff on Jersey too.
Can we start a GoFundMe to get this chap a better torch?!
And some whellys
I'm not a military tactician, but, think it was probably a wise move to bypass this place on the route to Berlin.
Very interesting. TFP
thx
That observation tower look like something out of starwars
Yeah it did ! 👌🏻😆
One minor thing: when you mention the huge guns that would be in contact with the observation bunker you show a turret of a tank with a light infantry gun which were commonly used by Germans on top of bunkers for close range direct fire on for example beaches. The long range guns needed that bunker to guide their indirect fire out to sea or to the peninsula. Those canons were a bit bigger 😅 see the restored example in Guernsey
Not just that it was a capture French FT tank that has a 37mm gun, when the largest gun on the island was 4, 17cm SK L/40 gun which shell weight was 64kg compared to the 37mm tanks shell which weighed around 0.61kg so a staggering 100 times less in weight.
I was a bit puzzled when I saw that. I know the Germans used them but they certainly weren’t capable of being powerful naval guns.
I think Kinmen islands in the taiwanese strait is probably the most fortified island in the world nowadays.... anyway great piece of history in Alderney!
good mentioning the people who died making all those fortifications. Excellent look at a slice of history
Great place to bring a metal detector .
Really interesting place .
HELLP!!! 10 to 15 years ago i seen a documentary on 1 of the discovery channels.. abbot Rear-Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood "basically his life story " it woss a full episode abbot 60 mins long,
i have searched the net and i starting to think it never happened ass i cannot find it ..being from tynemouth and seeing his statue i wood love to find the documentary and get a copy off it !!!
18:50. From a strategy point of view, it wasn't in vain, because it denied the allies the ability to use it
Go to Guernsey, there is a military emplacement about every 500m around most of the coastline. Many used and repurposed during WW2.
Evidently Hitler got a little silly on the only British land he conquered, hence the over the top military installations on the channel islands. And ofcourse there is huge military instillations on the Normandy coast as well
AFAIK no locals were used as slaves on Guernsey.
We happened to get Liberation Day on our short visit and they defenitly remember! m Family came to Oz from Guernsey in 1852.
A lovely place to visit.
No locals were used as slaves in Alderney, was the only channel island with concentration camps, in fact in the British isles. The most heavily fortified place in the British isles per square mile, though guernsey is full of history, and a lovely island to visit
Peter Snow was very good
Imagine how loud it was firing those big guns inside those concrete bells.
Somebody in the German high command must have known that fortifying these islands was a waste of resources.
Having a drug addicted raging lunatic as the final voice was the problem.
Hitler ordered the building of the Atlantic Wall, so that's what they built. Questions were unlikely to have been welcomed.
Hi Many years ago I was talking to a Islander and he was telling me that when the Germans took the Islands they decreed that all traffic will drive on the right ,so everyone drove on the right including Horses Cars bikes etc,so for a few days there was carnage. then when the war ended they changed back to driving on the Left More carnage.
All the guns and armaments they could move were thrown into the sea.
Many Islanders thought that the allies would retake the Islands but Churchill correctly said { Leave them there to rot there are 8 thousand germans there ,that is 8 thousand that we don't have to fight }
Sounds a bit suspect I highly doubt they'd leave 8 thousand people to rot and die
@@Rat_King_Reviews Churchill was referring to the Germans.
Yeah !
14:59 Zordon?
Great history and well presented. Was there a crematory for the concentration camp dead?
Wow - where did all the concrete building materials come from?
the Concrete and steel came from France and the granite and sand was quarried on the island.
That thumbnail building isn't that the mighty morphing power rangers command centre??? Zordon is in there
Imagine how loud it was in those bunkers with full guns firing.
Wellington would have got his wellies on!
NICE JEEP
I wonder if this inspired that mission in sniper elite 5?
"Big heavy guns" shows small french tank turret. :)
Architecture is history
Yes ... There's a branch of history called architectural history you know. It's often combined with art history.
My wife and her family were born and raised in Guernsey
Aurigny in French(and Norman-French)
Given rough translation... "Plug - reinsert or you will die!" 16:46
The Channel Islands were the last remnant of the Dutchy of Normandy retained by England after the mainland part was lost to France by King John in the early 1200's.
Very little about the Palmerston era fortifications in this video
Do you mean 24" (2') search lights , perhaps !?
I think Fort Drum in Manila Bay may have an argument as being the most fortified
Look there, you can see the 18th century addition👈👀 ...2 bricks 😂
That had a touch of the purest green about it.
Could it be??!.....Percy?!!👀
Also remember Alderney had a concentration camp on where quite a few poor soles were tortured and died whilst under the Germans in the second world war
It was the only Channel Island to be depopulated and used as a concentration camp. The forced labourers on the other islands lived in open camps received pay and so on.
and that's a contentious issue eh !
And duck earlier! Every time you enter a door way, I think you're about to crack your head open.
This remind me of the Havana fortress. It's so well defended from naval attack that the British attacked it overland. And it is REALLY well defended seaward. There were even multiple kill zones. None what so ever on the landside.
It wasn't in vein. The allies show how well fortified the islands where. What's the the point of a attacking a fortified position when you can go around. That's what the Germans did with the Maginot line they went around it.
«..big heavy guns..»
Shows a French tank turret.
I have a hard time not seeing the mighty morphin power rangers base in this place. We sure zordon isn't in there?
Looks like a real life fortification. Similar to the fictional movie “The Guns of Navarone”
Guersey 🏝🚩🇬🇬south America
Would make a good COD or Battlefield map
As an Alderney resident I would lose my mind if they did that (in a good way)
One battleship - and this island would remain a flat, lifeless desert. What was he protecting? show-offs and a sense of their own greatness.
Looks like Zordon base
That’s the needles on the Isle of Wight
Do you mean Victorian or Georgian Dan? The Battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo more or less finished hostilities between England and France, Victoria came to the throne in 1838, so most of these pre German fortifications were already in place when she became queen?
The Palmerston forts in Spithead and the red brick forts around Portsmouth were all built in the mid 1800's when France was still perceived to be a threat.
Is the island in the sky ?
This would be a great place to be during the upcoming meteor swarm!
Halos 👨🌾🇩🇪😊
I'm sorry, in the picture, does it not look like the Power Ranger's old base where Zordon lives? Is no one else curious?
The channel islands ....... probably the most unknown piece of Europe 😁
The video thumbnail looks like the mighty Morphin power rangers base where Zordon and alpha were at
IAderney 🏝👉🇩🇪400km😊