Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat, saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis during World War Two. Once Soviet troops reached Budapest, Wallenberg reported to Soviet officials on 17 January 1945. But he was never seen in public again. Rumours of his fate have circled ever since: a Soviet government report said he died of a heart attack in prison, while former officials said he was executed, and prisoners claimed to have seen him decades later. There is still a campaign to uncover what ...
Jan 09, 2025•9 min
During World War Two, a Japanese American battalion became one of the most decorated army units in US military history. The 442nd Regimental Combat Unit earned more than 4,000 Purple Hearts and seven Presidential Unit Citations for extraordinary heroism in battle. The unit was set up in 1943, just over a year after Japan bombed the US naval base at Pearl Harbor. Following the attack, 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the west coast were sent to internment camps, but many were keen to show the...
Dec 11, 2024•10 min
Irena Sendler was a Polish social worker who risked her life to save 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto during World War Two. Irena, a Catholic, was able to enter the ghetto because of her job. She was soon smuggling in food, medicine and clothing; and smuggling out children. And, as a member of the Zegota underground resistance movement, she recruited others to help. Some children were hidden in suitcases, potato sacks, and even inside coffins. Others escaped through sewers. In 1943, ...
Nov 07, 2024•9 min
Charles Norman Shay was a field medic in the United States Army when he landed on the Normandy beach codenamed Omaha on D-Day. On June 6, 1944, the US 1st Infantry Division faced a bombardment of machine gun fire from the German soldiers on surrounding cliffs. More than 1,700 men died on Omaha alone. Aged just 19, Charles risked his own life to save his comrades from drowning, for which he was awarded the US silver star for gallantry. Although he had served his country, as a native American, he ...
Jun 06, 2024•9 min
In 1944, a young Irishwoman called Maureen Flavin drew up a weather report that helped change the course of World War Two. Maureen was working at a post office in Blacksod on the far west coast of Ireland. Her duties included recording rainfall, wind speeds, temperature and air pressure. On 3 June, she sent one of her hourly reports to Dublin, unaware that the figures were being passed on to the Allied headquarters in England. It was the first indication of bad weather heading towards the coast ...
Jun 05, 2024•9 min
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 Indonesia to be raped by Japanese soldiers. Today, the issue remains a source of tension between Japan and its neighbours, with continuing campaigns to compensate the few surviving victims. Dan Hardoon speaks to Chinese survivor Peng Zhuying who,...
Mar 20, 2024•9 min
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, air bombardment, and surrender to the Allies. And then at 16:30 on 18 March, Vesuvius erupted. The sky filled with violent explosions of rock and ash, and burning lava flowed down the slopes, devastating villages. By the time it was over, 11 days later, 26...
Mar 15, 2024•9 min
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 she was taken from Paris to Savigny-Poil-Fol, a small town more than 300km from her home. She’s been speaking to her granddaughter, Carolyn Lamboley, about how her life changed. She particularly remembers how she struggled to fit in with her host family,...
Mar 05, 2024•10 min
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 route became known as the Pat O’Leary Escape Line - or the Pat Line. It’s estimated 7,000 Allied personnel escaped through this route and similar escape lines, thanks to a network of people who clothed, fed and hid them. Peter Janes was one of t...
Feb 12, 2024•9 min
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 in 1940 he agreed to lead a Japanese-controlled puppet government in Nanjing. Many Chinese have hated him ever since – his name is synonymous with the word ‘Hanjian’, a traitor to China. But Pan Chia-sheng’s memories of living ...
Jan 24, 2024•10 min
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 weekly shows were heard by thousands of American servicemen who gave her the nickname Axis Sally. After her capture, she denied being a traitor, but a jury in Washington convicted her of treason, and she served 12 years in prison. Jane Wilkinson has been ...
Jan 23, 2024•9 min
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 hadn’t been a concern for the Nazis but the meeting alarmed Hitler and within months Germany started its invasion of Norway. From that moment, Quisling was consigned into history as a traitor. So much so that in the time since, his name has become a...
Jan 22, 2024•10 min
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 moment Japanese generals handed over their swords. The United States, China, Russia and the United Kingdom were all represented. John Stanfield, now 103, is the last surviving British person who was there. He recalls to Josephine McDermott how he signed th...
Jul 19, 2023•10 min
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. Lee Miller's son and biographer, Antony Penrose, explains to Josephine McDermott the significance of the photograph taken in the final days of World War II in Europe. (Photo: Lee Miller in Hitler's bathtub. Credit: David E. Scherman © C...
Jun 12, 2023•10 min
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 communist at the time. He spoke to Andrew Whitehead in 2012. (Photo: Communist rally 1932. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Jun 08, 2023•9 min
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 protected but 617 Squadron of the Royal Air Force had a new weapon – the bouncing bomb. Invented by Barnes Wallis, the weapon was designed to skip over the dams' defences and explode against the sides. The Dambusters mission was a huge propaganda success f...
May 17, 2023•10 min
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 taught. Alex Collins has listened to archive recordings from "Haus der Geschichte der Bundersrepublik Deutschland" in Bonn one of Germany's national history museums and hears the stories of former camp residents Gunter Stoppa and Klaus Reimer. You may find ...
May 16, 2023•9 min
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 close to dying many times. He recalls how he once hummed God Save the King to prevent himself being shot by friendly fire. He was under the command of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, fresh from victory in the North African desert, and recalls him being ins...
May 12, 2023•12 min
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 survived to tell his story. He spoke to Louise Hidalgo in 2010. (Photo: Warsaw Ghetto. Credit: HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
May 11, 2023•9 min
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 broadcast recordings, taped by Jean-Luc Schwab, who wrote Rudolf’s biography, we hear Rudolf’s reaction to returning as a 95-year-old man. Jean-Luc Schwab who became friends with Rudolf in the last few years of his life, speaks to Reena Stanton-Sharma. This pr...
Feb 28, 2023•9 min
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 range of subjects using brown paper bags to write on. The school was called Lunghwa Academy and it had its own badge, motto and certificates. A syllabus was followed, exams were taken and there were even evening classes for adults. ...
Feb 23, 2023•11 min
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 into the countryside, away from the risk of German bombs. She’s been speaking to Laura Jones. (Photo: child evacuees leaving a London train station. Credit: Getty Images)
Sep 19, 2022•10 min
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, local people in Shanghai endured starvation and brutal treatment; while foreigners scrambled to escape as their lifestyle of servants and glamourous parties slowly disappeared. Josephine McDermott speaks to Liliane Willens, who lived through the invasio...
May 19, 2022•9 min
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 responsible for spreading rumours, generating fake news, leaflet drops and creating fake clandestine German radio stations to spread misinformation and erode enemy morale. We hear archive recordings of those involved and speak to professor Jo Fox of the Institute...
Nov 06, 2019•14 min
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, Robin Duff, Ward Smith and Alan Melville - we tell the story of D-Day. Photo: D-Day Landings: US troops in an LCVP landing craft approach Omaha Beach in Colleville Sur-Mer, France, on June 6th 1944 (US National Archives)
Jun 06, 2019•9 min
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 this episode, we present the accounts of veterans held in the BBC archive. Photo: The photo titled "The Jaws of Death" shows a landing craft disembarking US troops on Omaha beach, 6th June 1944 ( Robert Sargent / US COAST GUARD)
Jun 04, 2019•12 min
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, who survived the slaughter in Nanjing as a boy and then fought in China's war of resistance against the Japanese. Photo: Huang Shih-Chung as a young soldier.
Dec 17, 2018•10 min
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 the women tasked with helping clear the rubble to make the city habitable again. Photo: Women in post-war Berlin pass pails of rubble to clear bombed areas in the Russian sector of the city. (Photo by Fred Ramage/Keystone/Getty Images)
Dec 03, 2018•9 min
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 to capture a series of bridges on the Dutch/German border. Mike Lanchin has spoken to Hetty Bischoff van Heemskerck who, as a young woman, watched the Allied paratroopers come down close to her home in the city of Arnhem. (Photo: Allied pla...
Sep 20, 2018•9 min
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 from enemy attack. Mikhail Bobrov was just 18 years old when first got sent up the city's spires. He's been speaking to Monica Whitlock about his wartime experiences. Photo: A climber suspended from a spire in Leningrad. Credit: Tass/PA.
Dec 28, 2017•10 min
