Smithsonian Journeys Experts

Dr. Paul Sanders is an Anglo-German historian and leadership scholar with special expertise in World War II. Paul obtained his PhD from Cambridge University and he is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (London). His major published works are "The Ultimate Sacrifice", a book on British Channel Islanders in Hitler's prisons and concentration camps (3rd edition, 2018, first published in 1998), "History of the Black Market 1940-1946" (2001, in French), "The British Channel Islands under German Occupation 1940-1945" (2005), and "Protest, Defiance and Resistance - Channel Islands 1940-1945" (co-published, 2014). He lectures on a broad range of subjects and is currently engaged in research projects on RAF Bomber Command and the Holocaust in Hungary. Previously, Paul served as deputy director of the Central Registry of Information on Looted Cultural Property 1933-1945 and as official historian of the island of Jersey. In 2010 he advised the UK Department of Communities and Local Government in conjunction with the British Heroes of the Holocaust award. One of the accounts he researched for "The Ultimate Sacrifice" was turned into a major film, "Another Mother's Son" (released in March 2017).