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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 occupation had made him a target and he was taken there for...
How exiles from the Nazis helped British intelligence listen in on German prisoners-of-war. Ninety-three-year-old Fritz Lustig, a refugee from Nazi Germany, is one of the last surviving members of the secret "M Room". He helped glean vital information from German...
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 Nazi leader's luxury flat. Edgar's family were forced to flee Germany after...
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 ended up in internment camps, sometimes for years at a time. Hear from one woman...
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 the time she was 16 she had been recruited into a Polish army in...
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 vividly remembers the surrender of his country to the Allied...
During World War II, Allied bombing raids brought death and destruction to German cities. A controversial memorial to the British aircrew who flew on bombing missions is being unveiled in London. Douglas Hudson is one of the airmen who took...
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 relative, 87-year-old Buddy Elias. (Photo: Anne Frank/Press Association)
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. Henriette Dodd lived through the occupation and shares her memories with Witness. PHOTO: Marshal Petain...
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, the British government sent a psychiatrist called Henry Dicks to examine Hess at a safe...
In 1943, a group of Belgian Jews escaped from a train bound for the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. In the only incident of its kind, they were helped by members of the Belgian resistance. Witness speaks to Simon Gronowski, who at...
Throughout World War II, Myra Hess organised concerts in London's National Gallery. The lunchtime performances were intended to raise morale in the capital. Many other concert venues had been shut because of the Blitz. Photo: Myra Hess at the piano...
In February 1942 all Japanese Americans were ordered to internment camps. They were viewed as a threat to US security during World War II. Photo: A Japanese American family preparing to go to an internment camp. (Credit: Dorothea Lange/Hulton...
On January 25 1933 the last legal communist march was held in Berlin. Just a few days later Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. Soon the Communist Party was banned and the Nazi grip on power was complete. Eric Hobsbawm...
It is 70 years since senior Nazi officials met to plan the killing of European Jews. The meeting was organised by Reinhardt Heydrich. It took place in a villa in a prosperous suburb of Berlin. Photo: Getty Images News.
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. Norman Scarth is a Witness listener who was on board a British ship...
Seventy years ago the American president Franklin Roosevelt gave the go-ahead to the project to develop the world's first atomic bomb. Young scientist Bill Wilcox helped make the bomb.
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, and shot. Raissa Maistrenko escaped the shooting as a three-year-old girl. ...
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. Photo: Getty Images
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 invasion of Poland in 1939. We hear Clare Hollingworth's own account of...
Through the BBC's Archive footage Alan Johnston pieces together the story of a Battle of Britain fighter pilot who was shot down during a dogfight and badly burnt before parachuting from his stricken aircraft. We hear how Richard Hillary then...
A frontline Soviet officer tells of what he saw the night that Hitler ordered Operation Barbarossa - Germany's invasion of the USSR.
During World War II, many British children were sent away from the cities to escape German bombs. Most went to the countryside but some went as far away as Australia. Helen Cuthbert (right) and her sister were sent to live...
When Italy joined World War II in June 1940, British-Italian men were rounded up and interned. Joe Pieri was just 21 years old and living in Glasgow when he was arrested and sent to a prison camp in Canada. Photo:...
A British soldier tells us of one extraordinary day on the beaches of 1940 Dunkirk during World War II. We hear of how he managed to work his way through the chaos and constant danger, and escape to England....
The Red Army took control of the German capital Berlin, in May 1945. The Soviet soldiers had a terrifying reputation and civilians in their path feared looting and violence. One German woman who survived that time tells her story. Photo:...
On May 8 1945, Winston Churchill announced the end of the war in Europe. It meant defeat for Germany, but great rejoicing in Britain. One man whose joy was captured on camera that day speaks to Witness about the celebrations...
The city of Krakow in Poland was home to a large Jewish community before World War II. But with the arrival of the Nazis many of its Jews were deported, or fled. Then in 1941 a Jewish ghetto was...
When Leningrad was cut off from the rest of Russia by German troops during World War Two, one third of its population died. Some were killed in the fighting, but most died of hunger. (Photo: Two women collect remains of...
Horst Woit was just 10 years old when he and his mother boarded a ship in the hope of escaping Russian forces towards the end of World War II. He recalls the night that ship - the Wilhelm Gustloff...
Over 10,000 Jewish children were brought to Britain from Nazi Europe in the months leading up to World War II. They travelled on trains which became known as the kindertransports. Listen to one little boy's story. His name is...
The film, The Great Escape, has become an all-time favourite. It is about a mass breakout from a German prison camp during World War 2. Flight Lieutenant Ken Rees, who died in August 2014, took part in the real-life escape...
When Japanese bombers and fighter planes attacked the US fleet in the Pacific it came as a huge surprise to many. Listen to some archive recordings from the time.
The first trains full of Jewish children left Berlin in early December - heading for sanctuary in Britain. The Kindertransports only stopped with the outbreak of war in September 1939. They helped thousands of children from all over...