Episodes
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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 the surrender declaration documents on behalf of the British.
(Photo: Crowds gather in the Forbidden City to watch the Japanese surrender. Credit: John Stanfield, Bristol University's Historical Photographs of China)
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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 © Courtesy Lee Miller Archives)
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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)
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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 for Britain and later inspired a famous film.
In 2013, Simon Watts spoke to George "Johnny" Johnson, the last survivor of the Dambusters squadron.
(Photo: Squadron Leader George "Johnny" Johnson. Credit: Leon Neal via Getty Images)
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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 some of the contents distressing.
(Photo: German children being evacuated to Prussia. Credit: Getty Images)
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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 inspirational to the troops.
This episode is presented by Josephine McDermott. Ahead of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in 2025, the BBC is trying to gather as many first-hand accounts from surviving veterans as possible, to preserve for future generations.
Working with a number of partners, including the Normandy Memorial Trust and the Royal British Legion, the BBC has spoken to many men and women who served during the war. We are calling the collection World War Two: We were there.
(Photo: Peter Royle in battle kit in 1941. Credit: Peter Royle's family)
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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)
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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 programme contains distressing details.
(Photo: Rudolf Brazda. Credit: Frederick Florin/ Getty Images)
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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.
The Japanese set up more than 20 internment camps in China and Hong Kong holding an estimated 14,000 people, but it is not believed that such a sophisticated schooling system was established elsewhere.
In spite of the many hardships, educational standards were kept so high that qualifications taken in the camp were later recognised by the Cambridge exam board when the exam scripts were taken to England after the war.
Christopher John Huckstep shares his memories with Josephine McDermott.
(Photo: Christopher John Huckstep and other children at Lunghwa Civilian Assembly Centre, Shanghai, in 1945. Credit: Oscar Seepol. Image courtesy of Susannah Stapleton and Special Collections, University of Bristol Library)
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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)
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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 invasion and occupation of Asia's most international city.
PHOTO: Japanese troops in Shanghai in 1937 (Ullstein Bild via Getty Images)
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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 of Historical Research about the secret history of British "black propaganda".
(Photo: The actress and singer Agnes Bernelle, who was recruited to be a presenter on a fake German radio station during the war)
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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)
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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)
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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.
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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)
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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 planes and parachutists over Arnhem, Getty Images)
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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.
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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 of the Jewish Hungarian underground, who helped produce tens of thousands of forged identification documents. These allowed Jews to hide their true identities and escape deportation to the death camps. Now 91 years old, David has been telling Mike Lanchin about his part in one of the largest rescue operations organised by Jews during the Holocaust.
Photo: False Hungarian ID document (BBC)
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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 moved to the Vatican. Pasquale Rotondi was a leading figure in the operation, his daughter Giovanna Rotondi spoke to Alice Gioia about his wartime work.
Photo: St George by Andrea Mantegna, circa 1460.(Credit DeAgostini/Getty Images)
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