Witness History: World War Two history
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Witness History: World War Two history
D Day, traitors and evacuees
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Prison Camp in WW2 Manila, Philippines
Thousands of foreign civilians were interned in camps when Japanese troops occupied the Philippines in World War II. Many of the inmates suffered from...
The Tehran Conference of World War Two
In November 1943, Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill all met together for the first time to discuss the progress of World War Two. The meeting was held i...
Degenerate Art and the Nazis
In 1937, Hitler and the Nazi party organised a huge exhibition of modern art in Munich. It was designed to ridicule works of art which they disapprov...
Tokyo Rose - The Most Hated Woman in America
In 1949, Iva Toguri, a Japanese-American woman, was wrongly convicted for making propaganda broadcasts on behalf of Japan during the Second World War....
Escape from Sobibor Death Camp
Hundreds of Jewish slave labourers in a Nazi death camp staged a revolt and escaped in October 1943.
Many were caught and shot. Around 50 made...
Danish Jews Escape the Holocaust
In October 1943, at the height of the Second World War, most of the Jews in Denmark evaded Nazi plans to send them to death camps. They were warned ab...
African Troops During WWII
During World War II, African soldiers were a vital part of the Allied forces. Many of them were sent to Burma as reinforcements for the British troops...
Appeasement
On September 30th 1938, Neville Chamberlain returned from negotiations with Hitler promising "peace in our time". He had agreed for Hitler to take ove...
Special Operations Executive
In World War II , Britain set up a secret organisation which waged war in Nazi occupied Europe. Noreen Riols, a former member of SOE, who helped train...
Scientists Flee Nazi Germany
The early 20th Century was a golden age for physics with pioneers such as Max Born, Robert Oppenheimer and Werner Heisenberg working together at Gotti...
Bombing of Nagasaki
In 1945, the allies dropped an atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Nagasaki. The explosion was bigger than the blast at Hiroshima three days earlier...
The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis
In the last days of World War II, an American warship, the USS Indianapolis, was torpedoed in the Pacific. For days, no one came to the survivors' res...
The Death of Jean Moulin
On July 8 1943, at the height of World War Two, the leader of the French Resistance was killed by German forces. Hear from Daniel Cordier who worked...
Dambusters
In 1943, the Royal Air Force attacked a set of dams in Germany's Ruhr valley which were considered indestructible. Flying low and at night, the crews...
The Arctic Convoys
The story of Jack Humble, whose ship was torpedoed while escorting a convoy inside the Arctic Circle. From 1941-45, Allied sailors and ships battled s...
The death of Hitler
On April 30th 1945 as Red Army soldiers closed in on the German capital Berlin, Adolf Hitler killed himself. But first he married his lover Eva Braun,...
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
In 1943, a few hundred Jewish fighters rose up against the German army as it began its final push to erase all traces of Jewish life in the Polish cap...
The Guinea Pig Club
How severely burnt Second World War airmen learnt to overcome their terrible injuries.
They were all patients of the revolutionary plastic surge...
The Bethnal Green tube disaster
It's 70 years since 173 people were crushed to death at an air-raid shelter in east London during World War II. They were killed as they sought refuge...
The fall of Singapore
In February 1942 Britain's stronghold in South East Asia fell to the Japanese. Tens of thousands of Commonwealth soldiers were taken prisoner. They we...
The battle of Stalingrad
It is 70 years since German troops lost their battle to take the Soviet industrial city. They had spent a harsh Russian winter fighting from house to...
Hitler's will
In January 1946 a young woman was given Hitler's will to translate into English. She had been sent to post-war Germany as part of the occupying forces...
The Hunger Winter
At the end of World War Two, millions of people in the west of Nazi-occupied Netherlands faced starvation.
The lucky ones survived on watery bre...
Tito on Vis
In 1944, in the middle of World War Two, the Yugoslav partisan leader found sanctuary on a tiny island in the Adriatic Sea. His resistance to German...
The M Room
How exiles from the Nazis helped British intelligence listen in on German prisoners-of-war.
Ninety-three-year-old Fritz Lustig, a refugee from N...
Edgar Feuchtwanger: Adolf Hitler's Neighbour
The memories of a German Jew who grew up across the street from Adolf Hitler. As a young boy, Edgar Feuchtwanger watched the comings and goings at the...
German refugees in post-war Europe
At the end of World War Two, many ethnic Germans in Central Europe were forced to leave their homes.
No longer welcome outside Germany they ende...
A Polish odyssey
One girl's story of exile and soldiering during World War II.
Danuta Maczka was just 14 when her family was sent to Siberia in 1940.
By th...
US Occupation of Japan
For six years following the end of World War II in August 1945, Japan was occupied by the US.
Akira Iriye was ten years old at the time and viv...
Bomber Command
During World War II, Allied bombing raids brought death and destruction to German cities.
A controversial memorial to the British aircrew who fl...
Anne Frank's Diary
In June 1947 the diary of Anne Frank was published for the very first time.
Witness has been speaking to her first cousin and closest surviving...
France under Nazi occupation
In June 1940, France surrendered to Nazi Germany, leading to four years of occupation and the rule of a puppet government led by Marshal Petain.
...
The Psychiatrist and Rudolf Hess
In 1941, the deputy fuhrer, Rudolf Hess, flew out of Nazi Germany and landed in Scotland.
Keen to study the psychology of the Nazi leadership, t...
World War II concerts
Throughout World War II, Myra Hess organised concerts in London's National Gallery.
The lunchtime performances were intended to raise morale in...
Japanese internment
In February 1942 all Japanese Americans were ordered to internment camps.
They were viewed as a threat to US security during World War II.
...
The Wannsee conference
It is 70 years since senior Nazi officials met to plan the killing of European Jews.
The meeting was organised by Reinhardt Heydrich.
It t...
The sinking of the Scharnhorst
She was one of Germany's greatest battleships during World War II.
But on Boxing Day 1943 she was sunk in the freezing waters of the Arctic.
Babi Yar
On 29 September 1941, the organised massacre of Ukrainian Jews began.
In the capital Kiev, most of them were taken to a place called Babi Yar,...
Translator at Nuremberg
The trials of senior Nazis began in the autumn of 1945.
Howard Triest was a German Jew who acted as a translator during their questioning.
...
The Scoop of the Century
The scoop of the century on the eve of World War II.
How a young British reporter witnessed the German military build-up just days before the i...