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Witness History: World War TwoEpisodes
Episodes of Witness History
Mark All
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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 Philipp
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 a German invasion, a
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
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
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
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 w
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.
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 the incredible
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 c
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 was a schoolboy commu
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 highly p
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 could be ta
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. Peter came cl
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 fighters who surviv
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 previously broa
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 Cen
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 out of UK cities and in
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 occupatio
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 was respons
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, Robi
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 of Hitler's Germany. In
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 of Hitler's Germany. In
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,
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, one of t
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 line
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