Witness History: World War Two

By BBC World Service

History

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Witness History: World War Two episodes:

03.20.2024
The 'comfort women' of World War Two
Between 1932 and 1945, hundreds of thousands of women and girls across Asia were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army. Referred to as "comfort women", they were taken from countries including Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines and...
03.15.2024
The last eruption of Mount Vesuvius
The Mount Vesuvius eruption that buried Pompeii in 79AD is well known, but far fewer people know about the last time the volcano erupted in 1944. It was World War Two, and families in southern Italy had already lived through...
03.05.2024
French child evacuees of World War Two
In August and September 1939, tens of thousands of children began to be evacuated from Paris. The move, part of France's 'passive defence' tactic, aimed to protect children from the threat of German bombardment. Colette Martel was just nine when...
02.12.2024
The WW2 escape line that fooled the Nazis
In 1940 a daring rescue operation began to help Allied servicemen escape from Nazi-occupied France. French resistance fighter Roland Lepers was among those who guided stranded Allied soldiers and airmen to neutral Spain during World War Two. The 1,000 km...
01.24.2024
Wang Jingwei: China’s traitor or protector?
In 1937, Japan invaded China committing atrocities including the Nanjing Massacre. Wang Jingwei was a Chinese national hero and second-in-command of China’s ruling Nationalist Party. He wanted to negotiate with Japan but his colleagues wouldn’t listen. So he defected, and...
01.23.2024
Axis Sally: World War II traitor who broadcast for the Nazis
In 1949, Mildred Gillars – otherwise known as Axis Sally – became the first woman in American history to be convicted of treason. The former Broadway showgirl broadcast antisemitic Nazi propaganda on German State Radio during World War Two. Her...
01.22.2024
Vidkun Quisling: Norway’s traitor
In December 1939, fascist Norwegian politician Vidkun Quisling travelled to Berlin from Oslo for a secret meeting with Adolf Hitler. Quisling suggested to Hitler that the British were planning to move into Norway for their own strategic needs. Norway...
07.19.2023
Japan surrenders in China
In the autumn of 1945, World War II surrender ceremonies took place across the Japanese Empire. The one in China was held at the Forbidden City in Beijing bringing an end to eight years of occupation. Thousands of people watched...
06.12.2023
Lee Miller in Hitler's bath
Vogue's war correspondent Lee Miller found herself in Adolf Hitler's Munich apartment when the news broke that he was dead. Earlier that day, she and fellow photographer David Scherman had witnessed the harrowing scenes at the liberated Dachau concentration camp....
06.08.2023
Last communist march before Hitler
On 25 January 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...
05.17.2023
The Dambusters
In the early hours of 17 May 1943 a bold World War II attack destroyed two dams in the Ruhr Valley in Germany's industrial heartland, causing 1,600 casualties and catastrophic flooding which hampered the German war effort. The dams were...
05.16.2023
German child evacuees of World War Two
Beginning in 1940 thousands of German children were evacuated to camps in the countryside to avoid the bombs of World War Two. These camps were seen as safe places where they could continue their education but also where Nazi beliefs...
05.12.2023
World War II victory in North Africa
Peter Royle, 103, endured a month of solid fighting in the hills outside of Tunis in 1943. Eventually the Allies prevailed and took more than 250,000 German and Italian prisoners of war. They declared victory in Tunisia on 13 May....
05.11.2023
Warsaw Ghetto uprising
In May 1943, the uprising in the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw in Poland came to an end. The Germans had crushed the uprising and deported surviving ghetto residents to concentration camps. Simha "Kazik" Rotem was one of the Jewish...
02.28.2023
Pink Triangles: Gay men in Nazi concentration camps
In 2009, Rudolf Brazda, one of the last known survivors of the Pink Triangles, returned to the former site of Buchenwald concentration camp where he’d been imprisoned during World War Two, for being gay in Nazi Germany. In never...
02.23.2023
Families interned in WW2 China
Despite facing malnutrition, starvation and disease, Christopher John Huckstep's father set up a school in the Japanese internment camp where his family was sent in 1943. Herbert Huckstep ensured the 350 children of Lunghwa Civilian Assembly Centre were taught a wide...
09.19.2022
World War Two child evacuees in Britain
The 1 September 1939 was Kitty Baxter’s ninth birthday, it was also the day her life and millions of other people’s changed with the beginning of World War Two. Kitty was among the hundreds of thousands of children taken...
05.19.2022
Shanghai at War
In 1937, Japanese forces entered Shanghai - spelling the end of a period when the Chinese city had been a thriving commercial centre governed by international powers and known as the "Paris of the East". During the eight-year Japanese occupation,...
11.06.2019
Britain's secret propaganda war
How sex, jazz and 'fake news' were used to undermine the Nazis in World War Two. In 1941, the UK created a top secret propaganda department, the Political Warfare Executive to wage psychological warfare on the German war machine. It...
06.06.2019
Broadcasting D-Day
Hear how the BBC reported the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France on June 6th 1944. The operation was a crucial step in the liberation of western Europe. Using original BBC reports from the time - from Chester Wilmot, Richard Dimbleby,...
06.04.2019
D-Day
Eyewitness accounts of the Allied landings on the coast of Normandy during World War Two on 6 June 1944. The massive operation was a crucial step in the liberation of western Europe from years of Nazi rule and the defeat...
12.17.2018
China and Japan at War
Japanese troops reached the Chinese city of Nanjing in December 1937. The violence that followed marked one of the darkest moments in a struggle that continued throughout WW2. Rebecca Kesby has been speaking to former General Huang Shih Chung,...
12.03.2018
Berlin's Rubble Women
At the end of WW2 much of Germany's capital had been destroyed by bombing and artillery. Almost half of all houses and flats had been damaged and a million Berliners were homeless. Caroline Wyatt has been speaking to Helga Cent-Velden,...
09.20.2018
The Arnhem Parachute Drop
Thousands of Allied troops parachuted into the Nazi-occupied Netherlands in September 1944. At that point, it was the most ambitious Allied airborne offensive of World War Two. British, American and Polish troops were dropped behind German lines in an attempt...
12.28.2017
The Climbers of Leningrad
Mountaineers risked their lives to camouflage churches and palaces in the great Russian city during World War Two. The city was besieged by the Germans and under bombardment. The climbers used paint and canvas to conceal the landmarks...
10.25.2017
The Fake IDs That Saved Jewish Lives
Soon after Hitler ordered the invasion of Hungary in March 1944, the Nazis began rounding up hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews. Most were immediately sent to their deaths in the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. David Gur was a member...
10.11.2017
Saving Italy's Art During WW2
Italy's great works of art were threatened by bombing and looting during World War Two. But a plan known as 'Operation Rescue' was devised to keep the paintings and sculptures safe. Some were hidden in remote spots, others were...
09.26.2017
Britain's Land Girls
Around 80 thousand women and girls volunteered to join the Women's Land Army during the Second World War. They helped provide vital food supplies to a country under siege. Kirsty Reid has spoken to Mona McLeod who was just...
08.21.2017
The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials
Hear from one of the German prosecution lawyers who helped put Nazi war criminals on trial 20 years after World War Two had ended. Gerhard Wiese has been speaking to Lucy Burns about the trial, and about visiting the...
06.16.2017
The Sinking of the Lancastria
On 17 June 1940, a packed British troopship was sunk off the coast of France by German bombers. The ship had just picked up thousands of British military personnel left behind in France after the evacuation of the army at...
05.23.2017
The Roma Victims of the Holocaust
In 1942, the fascist government of Romania deported 25,000 of its Roma citizens to the former Soviet territory of Transdniestria. Half of them died of hunger and disease. Dina Newman spoke to one Roma Gypsy man who was five years...
04.11.2017
The Katyn Massacre
Tens of thousands of Polish officers were secretly executed in the USSR during World War 2. The German occupying forces reported the first mass grave, in the village of Katyn in 1943, but Moscow only admitted to the killings in...
03.16.2017
The Germans Occupy Prague
On March 15th 1939, the German army occupied Czechoslovakia. Witness hears the story of one young boy who watched the German troops march into Prague and who later escaped on the Kindertransport. These were trains that brought thousands of mostly...
12.13.2016
Sara Ginaite Lithuanian Jewish Partisan
During World War Two, a young Jewish woman, Sara Ginaite, escaped from the Kaunas Ghetto in Lithuania to fight the Nazis, With her husband Misha, she joined a detachment of communist-led partisans in the Rudnicki forest . They took part...
12.06.2016
Soviet Woman Bomber Pilot
Yelena Malyutina was a Soviet female bomber pilot who fought in WW2 and was wounded in action in 1944. She was in one of the three Soviet women's flying regiments which fought on the front line. Before her death in...
09.05.2016
Italy's Partisan Fighters
In September 1943, Partisan fighters in Italy began organising in large numbers to help the Allies defeat Nazi Germany and rid their country of the remnants of Benito Mussolini's fascist state. As World War Two drew to a close, there...
06.17.2016
The Fall of Paris
In June 1940, German forces, having swept across Belgium and Holland, and into France, were closing in on Paris. In the face of the German army, millions of French, Dutch and Belgians had taken to the roads in one of...
05.09.2016
The Imaginary War Heroes
During World War Two, Soviet propaganda promoted a heroic feat that never happened. It was the story of a small ill-equipped unit who destroyed over a dozen German tanks, delaying the German advance on Moscow. But it's unlikely that they...
12.21.2015
The Death of General Patton
In December 1945, one of America's most famous miltary commanders, General George S Patton, died from injuries sustained in a car crash, just months after the end of the Second World War. Witness talks to his grandson, George Patton Waters,...
12.02.2015
Surviving Pearl Harbor
On 7 December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii. Thousands of American servicemen died in a raid which brought their country into World War Two. Former Navy mechanic, Adolph Kuhn, tells...
12.01.2015
The Bari Raid 1943
How a devastating air raid on the Italian port of Bari during World War Two led to the deadly release of mustard gas. Winston Churchill ordered the incident to be kept secret for years. We hear from Peter Bickmore BEM,...
11.26.2015
Surviving Ravensbruck
In November 1938, the SS commander Heinrich Himmler ordered the construction in Nazi Germany of the only concentration camp built specifically for women. It would be called Ravensbruck. Selma van der Perre tells Witness about the horrors of life in...
11.05.2015
The Battle of El Alamein
In October and November 1942, the Allies fought a famous battle against German and Italian troops close to the small Egyptian village of El Alamein. General Bernard Montgomery, the British commander, knew that victory was crucial. But his offensive was...
09.18.2015
The Leningrad Symphony
In an act of defiance during World War Two, starving musicians in the besieged city of Leningrad performed Shostakovich's new Seventh Symphony. The piece was composed especially for the city, which had been cut off and surrounded by invading Nazi...
08.29.2015
The Auschwitz Cellist
In 1943, the cellist, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. She expected to be killed in the gas chambers, but survived because she was recruited to play in an orchestra set up by the women prisoners. Anita...
08.18.2015
The Dieppe Raid
In the early hours of 19th August 1942, a convoy of Allied ships approached the port of Dieppe carrying more than 6,000 troops. The mainly Canadian force was supposed to carry out a hit and run raid that would help...
07.28.2015
Scouts in the Warsaw Uprising
On 1 August 1944, the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi occupation of Poland began. Hundreds of thousands of people died during the fighting and Poland's capital was almost completely destroyed. Among the underground fighters were children, many of them members...
07.03.2015
German Re-Armament
In the 1930s Hitler began to rebuild Germany's armed forces. When WW1 ended Germany had been banned from having an air force under the Treaty of Versailles. Hear from Eric 'Winkle' Brown who as a very young man was...
07.02.2015
Red Cross Visits Nazi Concentration Camp
In June 1944 the International Red Cross was allowed by the Nazis into the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The Nazis tried to use the visit to project a positive image of their treatment of the Jews. Hear from Ela Weissberger, who...
06.04.2015
The Eichmann Tapes
The Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann recorded hours of interview about his involvement in the Holocaust, before his capture in 1960 by Israeli agents. Witness talks to the daughter of the Dutch journalist, Willem Sassen, who recorded the Eichmann interviews...

What's Witness History: World War Two about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Witness History: World War Two episodes:

The 'comfort women' of World War Two

The last eruption of Mount Vesuvius

French child evacuees of World War Two

The WW2 escape line that fooled the Nazis

Wang Jingwei: China’s traitor or protector?

Axis Sally: World War II traitor who broadcast for the Nazis

Vidkun Quisling: Norway’s traitor

Japan surrenders in China

Lee Miller in Hitler's bath

Last communist march before Hitler

The Dambusters

German child evacuees of World War Two

World War II victory in North Africa

Warsaw Ghetto uprising

Pink Triangles: Gay men in Nazi concentration camps

Families interned in WW2 China

World War Two child evacuees in Britain

Shanghai at War

Britain's secret propaganda war

Broadcasting D-Day

D-Day

China and Japan at War

Berlin's Rubble Women

The Arnhem Parachute Drop

The Climbers of Leningrad

The Fake IDs That Saved Jewish Lives

Saving Italy's Art During WW2

Britain's Land Girls

The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials

The Sinking of the Lancastria

The Roma Victims of the Holocaust

The Katyn Massacre

The Germans Occupy Prague

Sara Ginaite Lithuanian Jewish Partisan

Soviet Woman Bomber Pilot

Italy's Partisan Fighters

The Fall of Paris

The Imaginary War Heroes

The Death of General Patton

Surviving Pearl Harbor

The Bari Raid 1943

Surviving Ravensbruck

The Battle of El Alamein

The Leningrad Symphony

The Auschwitz Cellist

The Dieppe Raid

Scouts in the Warsaw Uprising

German Re-Armament

Red Cross Visits Nazi Concentration Camp

The Eichmann Tapes