Learn about WWII History

Explore the critical events related to the war and the personal stories of those who lived through that challenging time.

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Valery Faminsky

Valery Faminsky was a Red Army photographer who made a number of photos during and after the Battle of Berlin. His warti...

#Biography

Wilhelm Mohnke

Wilhelm Mohnke was an SS general. He commanded the SS guard units that protected the city centre and the government dist...

#Biography

Vasily Chuikov

Vasily Chuikov was Marshal of the Soviet Union, who accepted the surrender of the German garrison of Berlin in May 1945....

#Biography

Hans Fritzsche

Hans Fritzsche was a senior Nazi official of the Reich Propaganda Ministry who offered to surrender the city to the Red ...

#Biography

The role of women in World War Two

The Second World War greatly disrupted the societies of the countries involved. As many men volunteered or were called u...

#Storyline

Ignati Feodotovich Dementyev

Ignati Feodotovich Dementyev was brought into the world around 1 January 1908 in the village Chaadayevka, in what is now...

#Biography

X-2212

We now know him as X-2212. For after his death he became a number. An X-number. An unknown soldier, victim of a war that...

#Biography

Andrey Mikhailovich Semychev

Andrey Mikhailovich Semychev (Андрей Михайлович Семычев) was born in 1917 in the village of Podvyazye in the province of...

#Biography

Elizbar Chitashvili

It is April 2021 when in the Georgian village of Sabue, the relatives of Elizbar Chitashvili are finally located. 76 yea...

#Biography

Ivan Ivanovitch Gavrilov

A day after she landed at Schiphol airport, after travelling from far off Kurgan, Zoya Kozyreva stood at her father’s gr...

#Biography

Konstantin Grigoryevich Butorin

Konstantin Grigoryevich Butorin was born in 1909 in the far east of Kazakhstan. At ten years of age he leaves the parent...

#Biography

Mikhail Ivanovich Vorobyov

Daughter Alexandra: “My daddy was born in the village of Zudilovo near Omsk (20 May 1917). Since childhood he worked on...

#Biography

Kazichan

His stomach is grumbling louder than gunfire in the fields around Smolensk, observes Kazikhan. Sure, the battles at the ...

#Biography

Les Merlinettes

The Merlinettes were the first female soldiers allowed into the French Army. Their unit was created in 1942 and they pla...

#Biography

Sidney Cornell

Private Sidney Cornell was a British parachutist that participated in Operation Varsivity in March 1945 in France. He di...

#Biography

Audie Murphy

Audie Leon Murphy was the most decorated American soldier of the Second World War. He received every military combat awa...

#Biography

Waverly Woodson Junior

Waverly Bernard Woodson Jr. was an African American corporal who came ashore on Omaha beach in Normandy on D-Day. Despit...

#Biography

Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller during the war years

After the death of Helene Kröller-Müller in 1939, Sam van Deventer becomes the new director of the Rijksmuseum Kröller-M...

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The Liberation of the Channel Islands

The Channel Islands were left undefended by British forces throughout WWII and lived under German Occupation for five lo...

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Liberation of Stutthof

The concentration camp in Stutthof was initially founded to eliminate and persecute Poles. Later in the war the role of ...

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Liberation of Pilsen

By 1945 it was clear that Nazi-Germany would lose the war. In May the Czech population rose up against the German occupy...

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Battle of Berlin

The battle of Berlin was one of the last battles of the Second World War in Europe. The war that had proceeded from Berl...

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Operation Cannonshot

Operation Cannonshot was the code name for the Canadian crossing of the IJssel at Gorssel and Wilp on April 12, 1945. Af...

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The Rhineland Offensive

The Allied Rhineland Offensive comprised several large-scale military operations during the last months of the Second Wo...

#Storyline