Witness History: World War Two history

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 of France - and it was a huge blow.

Hundreds of thousands of British, American and Canadian servicemen had already gathered for the most ambitious operation of the war, the assault of the Normandy beaches on 5 June.

But after reading Maureen’s report, chief meteorologist Group Captain James Stagg advised a delay of 24 hours.

US General, Dwight Eisenhower, gave the order, and D-Day was finally launched on 6 June, 1944. A date that went down in history.

Maureen's son Edward Sweeney tells Jane Wilkinson about the family's pride in their mother.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.

Recent episodes explore everything from football in Brazil, the history of the ‘Indian Titanic’ and the invention of air fryers, to Public Enemy’s Fight The Power, subway art and the political crisis in Georgia. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: visionary architect Antoni Gaudi and the design of the Sagrada Familia; Michael Jordan and his bespoke Nike trainers; Princess Diana at the Taj Mahal; and Görel Hanser, manager of legendary Swedish pop band Abba on the influence they’ve had on the music industry. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the time an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the President of the United States in protest of America’s occupation of Iraq; the creation of the Hollywood commercial that changed advertising forever; and the ascent of the first Aboriginal MP.

(Photo: Maureen Sweeney. Credit: Sweeney family photo)

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, along with her elder sister, was captured and taken to a "comfort station" in central China.

This programme contains disturbing content.

(Photo: People visit a museum dedicated to the victims, on the site of a former comfort station in China. Credit: Yang Bo/China News Service/VCG/Getty Images)

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 people had died and about 12,000 people were forced to leave their homes.

Angelina Formisano, who was nine, was among those evacuated from the village of San Sebastiano. She’s been speaking to Jane Wilkinson about being in the path of an erupting volcano.

(Photo: Vesuvius erupting in March 1944. Credit: Keystone/Getty Images)

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, and how it all changed because of a pair of clogs.

(Photo: Colette (left) with her sister Solange in 1939. Credit: family photo)

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 those British servicemen.

Roland’s daughter Christine and Peter’s son Keith, speak to Jane Wilkinson about their fathers’ adventures.

(Photo: German-controlled checkpoint in France, 1940. Credit: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

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 under Wang Jingwei’s government tell a very different story. He speaks to Ben Henderson.

(Photo: Wang Jingwei. Credit: Wang Wenxing via Wang Jingwei Irrevocable Trust)

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 looking through the BBC archives to uncover her story.

(Photo: Mildred Gillars. Credit: Bettmann, Getty Images)

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 byword for traitor in numerous languages.

Matt Pintus hears from Norwegian journalist, Trude Lorentzen, who decided to study Quisling’s life after stumbling across his suitcase in an online auction.

As part of her voyage of discovery, Trude interviewed Quisling’s Jewish neighbour Leif Grusd who was forced to flee to Sweden when the Nazis took over Norway.

Leif Grusd's interview was translated from the NRK podcast "Quislings koffert" - Quisling's suitcase - released in 2021. It was made by production company Svarttrost for NRK.

(Photo: Vidkun Quisling and Adolf Hitler. Credit: Getty Images)

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.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.

Recent episodes explore everything from football in Brazil, the history of the ‘Indian Titanic’ and the invention of air fryers, to Public Enemy’s Fight The Power, subway art and the political crisis in Georgia. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: visionary architect Antoni Gaudi and the design of the Sagrada Familia; Michael Jordan and his bespoke Nike trainers; Princess Diana at the Taj Mahal; and Görel Hanser, manager of legendary Swedish pop band Abba on the influence they’ve had on the music industry. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the time an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the President of the United States in protest of America’s occupation of Iraq; the creation of the Hollywood commercial that changed advertising forever; and the ascent of the first Aboriginal MP.

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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.

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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.

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)

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)

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 17 years old when she started working 6 days a week on a farm in Scotland. Mona has written a book about her experiences: 'A Land Girl's Tale'.

Photo: Land girls carrying bundles of straw in 1941. (Credit: Maeers/Fox Photos/Getty Images)

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 Auschwitz death camp with other members of the court.

Photo: Members of the Frankfurt court and several journalists pass through the Auschwitz camp gate with the words "Arbeit macht frei" (work brings freedom) above them. December 14,1964. Credit: Press Association.

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 Dunkirk. It's believed around 5,000 people lost their lives. It was one of the worst maritime disasters in British history and news of the sinking was initially supressed in Britain. Alex Last spoke to 99-year-old Ernest Beesley, a sapper in the Royal Engineers, who is among the last survivors of the Lancastria. Photo: The Lancastria after being hit by German bombers off the coast of France in 1940 (Lancastria Association of Scotland)

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 old when he was sent to Transdniestria with his family.

Photo: Nomadic Roma in Bucharest, Romania, outside their tent. Circa 1930. (General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)

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 1990. Dina Newman speaks to the son of one of the murdered officers, Waclaw Gasiorowski. Photo: Gasiorowski family in Warsaw in 1936. Credit: family archive.

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 Jewish children out of Austria, Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia, without their parents, to safety in Britain. That young boy went on to become a British MP and today sits in Britain's House of Lords; Alf Dubs tells Louise Hidalgo his story.

Picture: German troops enter the centre of Prague on 15th March 1939; the German leader Adolf Hitler visited the city the next day. (Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

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 in the liberation of Vilnius, where she was famously photographed by a Soviet officer. Now in her 90s, Sara speaks to Witness. Photo: Sara Ginaite, a Jewish Lithuanian partisan , during the liberation of Vilnius, 1944. (USHMM)

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 2014, she was interviewed by Lyuba Vinogradova, author of 'Defending the Motherland: Soviet Women' who fought Hitler's Aces. Dina Newman reports.

Photo:Yelena Malyutina and Lyuba Vinogradova (credit: private archive)

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 was vicious fighting in many villages between the Partisans and Italians still loyal to the dictator. Alice Gioia speaks to a brother and sister who both took part in the Partisan struggle.

PHOTO: Italian Partisans celebrating victory, May 1945 (personal collection)

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 the biggest exoduses of people the world had ever seen. Witness talks to Daphne Wall, who lived in Paris in 1940 as a young English girl and whose family joined the exodus south as Paris fell.

Photograph: the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler visits the Eiffel Tower following the occupation of Paris by the German army on the 14th June 1940 (Credit: Harwood/Keystone/Getty Images)

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 destroyed a single tank, despite being widely promoted as heroes, during and after the war.

Photo: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev walks near World War Two veterans at a wreath-laying ceremony in Dubosekovo on May 7, 2010 during a visit to a memorial to the 28 Panfilov heroes. Credit: Dmitry Astakhov/AFP/Getty Images.

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, about his memories of this colourful and often unorthodox man.

Photo: General George Patton in Paris in August 1945 to celebrate the first anniversary of the city's liberation. (Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

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 Witness how he survived.

(Photo: The USS Arizona sinking at Pearl Harbor. Credit: Getty Images)

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, who was injured during the raid.

(Photo: Seventeen Allied ships go up in flames in Bari, Italy, after a raid by German bombers on 2 December 1943. Credit: Keystone/Getty Images)

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 Ravensbruck, including experiments on women and children, and how she survived.

Photograph: women at Ravensbruck concentration camp (Credit: Das Bundesarchiv)

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 in danger of stalling almost as soon as it began.

Witness speaks to Len Burritt who was then a 24 year old wireless operator with the British Seventh Armoured Division.

(Photo: A German tank is knocked out and British troops rush up with fixed bayonets to capture the German crew at the Battle of El Alamein. Credit: Getty Images)

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 troops. During the siege an estimated one million civilians died from starvation, exposure, and the bombardment by German forces. Hear archive recordings of Ksenia Matus who played the oboe in the orchestra, and hear from Sarah Quigley, the author of a novel about Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony. Dina Newman reports.

(Photo: Official Soviet picture of Dmitri Shostakovich working on his famous Seventh ("Leningrad") Symphony. AFP/Getty Images)

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 Lasker-Wallfisch talks to Witness about her experience and the power of music in the darkest moments in history.

PICTURE: Anita Lasker-Wallfisch in 1938 (Private Collection).

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 the Allies learn and plan for the real invasion of occupied France later in the war. But almost immediately things started to go wrong.

Ronald Miles, then aged 20, was a crew member on a landing craft.

(Photo: Two German prisoners brought back from the Allied raid on Dieppe, blindfolded after landing. Credit: Keystone/Getty Images)

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 of the Scout movement. Andrzej Slawinsky was one of them.

(Photo: Insurgents on the streets of Warsaw, 1944. Credit: HO/AFP/Getty Images)

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 invited to see the new planes and helicopters that had been developed for the Luftwaffe. He later went on to become a flying ace in Britain's RAF. Photo: September 1938: Giant bombers of the Luftwaffe leave a smoke trail as they fly over a Nuremberg rally in a show of German military might. (Photo by Max Schirner/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

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 was an 11-year-old prisoner in the camp.

(Audio archive courtesy of The National Centre for Jewish Film at Brandeis University)

(Photo: Children in Theresienstadt, taken by International Red Cross delegates, June 1944; ICRC archives (ARR)/ Rossel, Maurice)

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 in Argentina. Saskia Sassen talks about the tapes, her memories of their secret visitor and the night the Israelis snatched Eichmann off the streets of Buenos Aires.

(Photo: Adolf Eichmann stands in a protective glass booth flanked by Israeli police during his trial in 1961 in Jerusalem. Credit: Central Press/Getty Images)

In February 1941, a ship carrying nearly 30,000 cases of whisky was wrecked off the Scottish island of Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides. The islanders began to salvage the bottles from the wreck - and the incident later became the inspiration for the film "Whisky Galore".

Photo: An assortment of bottled whisky is displayed at Glenkinchie distillery March 13, 2008 in Edinburgh, Scotland.

In 1939 tension was growing in Europe, over Nazi Germany's expansionist plans. One young British camerman headed to Danzig (now Gdansk) to film what happened next. His name was Douglas Slocombe and he is now 101 years old. Hear his story.

(Photo: Hitler Youth marching over a bridge in Danzig in 1939. Copyright: Fox Photos/Getty Images)

In February 1946 the first 'war brides' ship sailed from the UK to Canada reuniting women with the foreign husbands they'd married while serving in the UK during World War Two. Witness speaks to two women who sailed on the Mauretania.

(Photo: Arnie and Grace Shewan's wedding day 1944. Courtesy of Grace Shewan)

In February 1944, the world's first electronic computer began attacking encrypted Nazi messages, from the secret British codebreaking centre at Bletchley Park. Hear from one of the engineers tasked with building and maintaining Colossus during World War Two.

In 1943, Rome's Jewish citizens were promised that if they gave gold to the Nazis, they would escape deportation. Despite handing over 50kg of gold - more than 1,500 of the city's Jews were rounded up and sent to the death camps. Alan Johnston reports from Rome.

Photo: Survivor Settimia Spizzichino (far right)

During World War Two conscientious objectors could volunteer for medical experiments. Hear the story of one young American who had refused to fight, but was prepared to starve for his country. Marshall Sutton is now 95 - he took part in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment in 1944 in an attempt to help scientists understand how best to look after starving civilians in war-torn Europe.

(Photo: Marshall Sutton today)

On the 3rd of January 1946 Britain's most famous wartime traitor was hanged. His name was William Joyce but he was better known as Lord Haw Haw. Throughout WW2 he broadcast Nazi propaganda from Germany to Britain. At the end of the war he was hated by much of Britain, but we hear from the son of one man who tried to save him from execution.

Thousands of foreign civilians were interned in camps when Japanese troops occupied the Philippines in World War II. Many of the inmates suffered from acute malnutrition. We hear the story of one boy, Desmond Malone, who was interned at the Santo Tomas camp in Manila.

Photo: American inmates of the Santo Tomas internment camp after liberation by US forces in February 1945 (AP Photo/Pool)

In November 1943, Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill all met together for the first time to discuss the progress of World War Two. The meeting was held in Tehran over four days.

(Photo: Joseph Stalin (left), Franklin Roosevelt (centre), Winston Churchill (right). Credit: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

In 1937, Hitler and the Nazi party organised a huge exhibition of modern art in Munich. It was designed to ridicule works of art which they disapproved of - they called it Degenerate Art. It went on to be one of the best attended modern art exhibitions of all time.

Picture: Two men prepare to hang German Expressionist painter Max Beckmann's triptych 'Temptation' at the 20th Century German Art Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries, London. The exhibition includes work by all the German artists pilloried by Adolf Hitler in the 'Degenerate Art' exhibition in Munich of 1937. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

In 1949, Iva Toguri, a Japanese-American woman, was wrongly convicted for making propaganda broadcasts on behalf of Japan during the Second World War. She was accused of being the infamous radio presenter known to American servicemen as "Tokyo Rose". Witness speaks to Ron Yates, a reporter whose investigation helped to clear Iva Toguri's name.

PHOTO: Iva Toguri in the 1940s (US National Archives)

Hundreds of Jewish slave labourers in a Nazi death camp staged a revolt and escaped in October 1943.

Many were caught and shot. Around 50 made it to the end of the war.

Listen to the story of Thomas Blatt, one of the survivors.

Photo: Sobibor Death Camp (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

In October 1943, at the height of the Second World War, most of the Jews in Denmark evaded Nazi plans to send them to death camps. They were warned about a planned roundup by a German diplomat. Hear the story of Bent Melchior who was 14 years old when his family made the journey to safety in neutral Sweden.

(Photo: Bent, aged 15 and living in Sweden)

During World War II, African soldiers were a vital part of the Allied forces. Many of them were sent to Burma as reinforcements for the British troops there. Hear just some of their memories - recorded by the BBC in the 1990s.

Find out more about African troops in Burma in Another Man's War: The Story of a Burma Boy in Britain's Forgotten Army, a book by former BBC correspondent Barnaby Phillips, published June 2015.

(Photo: East African soldiers in Burma fighting for Britain in WW2, unknown date. Credit: Topham Picturepoint)

On September 30th 1938, Neville Chamberlain returned from negotiations with Hitler promising "peace in our time". He had agreed for Hitler to take over the Sudetenland in western Czechoslovakia, as part of a policy known as appeasement.

In World War II , Britain set up a secret organisation which waged war in Nazi occupied Europe. Noreen Riols, a former member of SOE, who helped train the agents, recounts her experiences in Churchill' s secret army.

(Photo: A group of SOE agents during training. BBC copyright)

The early 20th Century was a golden age for physics with pioneers such as Max Born, Robert Oppenheimer and Werner Heisenberg working together at Gottingen University in Germany. But the rise of Hitler forced Born and many other Jewish scientists to flee into exile. Max Born's son, Gustav, tells Louise Hidalgo about his memories of the period and his father's friendship with Albert Einstein.

(Photo: A gathering of European scientists in 1927. Max Born is second from the right in the second row.)

In 1945, the allies dropped an atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Nagasaki. The explosion was bigger than the blast at Hiroshima three days earlier and killed 70,000 people. Louise Hidalgo introduces BBC archive recordings of survivors of Nagasaki.

(Photo: Mushroom cloud in the sky. Credit: US Air Force/Press Association)

In the last days of World War II, an American warship, the USS Indianapolis, was torpedoed in the Pacific. For days, no one came to the survivors' rescue. Left adrift in shark-infested waters, hundreds of sailors died. We hear from Loel Dean Cox one of the few who survived.

(Photo: Last rites for a crew member held by ship mates and men from the US base Peleliu) (Credit: TopFoto)

On July 8 1943, at the height of World War Two, the leader of the French Resistance was killed by German forces. Hear from Daniel Cordier who worked alongside Jean Moulin as his radio operator and secretary in the year before his death.

(Photo: Daniel Cordier today)

In 1943, the Royal Air Force attacked a set of dams in Germany's Ruhr valley which were considered indestructible. Flying low and at night, the crews used special bouncing bombs to bring down two of their targets. The Dambusters mission was a huge propaganda success for Britain and later inspired a famous film.

Simon Watts talks to Johnny Johnson, one of the few survivors of the raid.

PHOTO: Johnny Johnson (far left) with the rest of 617 squadron (DAMBUSTERS) at RAF Scampton, Lincolnshire, 22 JULY 1943 (Imperial War Museum).

The story of Jack Humble, whose ship was torpedoed while escorting a convoy inside the Arctic Circle. From 1941-45, Allied sailors and ships battled storms, bombers and U-boats to ferry war supplies to Russia in WW2.

(Photo: Frozen deck of a British warship on Arctic Convoy, Feb 1943. Credit: AP)

On April 30th 1945 as Red Army soldiers closed in on the German capital Berlin, Adolf Hitler killed himself. But first he married his lover Eva Braun, and dictated his will. Hear from one of the secretaries who was in the bunker when he died.

Photo: Getty Images.

In 1943, a few hundred Jewish fighters rose up against the German army as it began its final push to erase all traces of Jewish life in the Polish capital. Krystyna Budnicka is one of the very few Jews who survived the Uprising. As her older brothers fought, she hid in a sewer beneath the ghetto.

Photo: STF/AFP/Getty Images.

How severely burnt Second World War airmen learnt to overcome their terrible injuries.

They were all patients of the revolutionary plastic surgeon, Sir Archibald McIndoe at a specialist burns unit.

Two of the surviving "guinea pigs" tell their stories.

Photo: Former airmen Jack Perry (left) and Sandy Saunders.

It's 70 years since 173 people were crushed to death at an air-raid shelter in east London during World War II. They were killed as they sought refuge in an underground train station. Sixty-two children were among the dead. We hear from one of the children who survived.

Photo: Londoners sheltering from an air-raid in an underground train station, during World War II (Getty Images).

In February 1942 Britain's stronghold in South East Asia fell to the Japanese. Tens of thousands of Commonwealth soldiers were taken prisoner. They were sent to prison camps across the region and set to work. Maurice Naylor worked on the Thai-Burma railway until World War Two ended.

It is 70 years since German troops lost their battle to take the Soviet industrial city. They had spent a harsh Russian winter fighting from house to house on starvation rations. Eventually they were cut off from their supply lines and forced to surrender.

Photo: Red Army troops in Stalingrad, January 1943. Keystone/Getty Images.

In January 1946 a young woman was given Hitler's will to translate into English. She had been sent to post-war Germany as part of the occupying forces. It was the culmination of her work for the British Army intelligence corps. Her name was Rena Stewart.

Photo: Rena, front row, second from the left, in Germany in 1946.

At the end of World War Two, millions of people in the west of Nazi-occupied Netherlands faced starvation.

The lucky ones survived on watery bread, potato peel or tulip bulbs.

Witness speaks to one Dutchman who lived through what became known as the Hunger Winter.

PHOTO: Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

In 1944, in the middle of World War Two, the Yugoslav partisan leader found sanctuary on a tiny island in the Adriatic Sea. His resistance to German occupation had made him a target and he was taken there for his own safety by the British. After the war he went on to lead Communist Yugoslavia until his death.

Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

How exiles from the Nazis helped British intelligence listen in on German prisoners-of-war.

Ninety-three-year-old Fritz Lustig, a refugee from Nazi Germany, is one of the last surviving members of the secret "M Room".

He helped glean vital information from German POWs about Hitler's war machine.

Photo: Sgt Fritz Lustig, circa 1942 (courtesy of Lustig family)

The memories of a German Jew who grew up across the street from Adolf Hitler. As a young boy, Edgar Feuchtwanger watched the comings and goings at the Nazi leader's luxury flat.

Edgar's family were forced to flee Germany after the Nazis attacked Jewish homes and properties on Kristallnacht in November 1938.

Photo: Edgar aged 12, courtesy of Feuchtwanger family.

At the end of World War Two, many ethnic Germans in Central Europe were forced to leave their homes.

No longer welcome outside Germany they ended up in internment camps, sometimes for years at a time.

Hear from one woman who lived through that time.

(Photo: Martha Kent and her siblings after their release from Potulice concentration camp)

One girl's story of exile and soldiering during World War II.

Danuta Maczka was just 14 when her family was sent to Siberia in 1940.

By the time she was 16 she had been recruited into a Polish army in the Middle East and was fighting the Nazis.

For six years following the end of World War II in August 1945, Japan was occupied by the US.

Akira Iriye was ten years old at the time and vividly remembers the surrender of his country to the Allied forces and the arrival of the first American GIs in Tokyo.

(Photo: US President Harry S Truman holds up the official Japanese document of surrender with Emperor Hirohito's signature - Sept 1945. Getty Images)

During World War II, Allied bombing raids brought death and destruction to German cities.

A controversial memorial to the British aircrew who flew on bombing missions is being unveiled in London.

Douglas Hudson is one of the airmen who took part - many of his fellow fighters were shot down.

(Image: British Airforce AVRO Lancaster Bomber of the 50 Squadron in flight during World War II. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

In June 1947 the diary of Anne Frank was published for the very first time.

Witness has been speaking to her first cousin and closest surviving relative, 87-year-old Buddy Elias.

(Photo: Anne Frank/Press Association)

In June 1940, France surrendered to Nazi Germany, leading to four years of occupation and the rule of a puppet government led by Marshal Petain.

Henriette Dodd lived through the occupation and shares her memories with Witness.

PHOTO: Marshal Petain (second left) with the Nazi leader Hermann Goering. (AFP)

In 1941, the deputy fuhrer, Rudolf Hess, flew out of Nazi Germany and landed in Scotland.

Keen to study the psychology of the Nazi leadership, the British government sent a psychiatrist called Henry Dicks to examine Hess at a safe house in Surrey.

Professor Daniel Pick, author of "The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind", retraces the encounter using BBC archive recordings and Dr Dicks' personal papers.

The programme is adapted from "The Psychiatrist and the Deputy Fuhrer", first broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

(Photo: Rudolf Hess, German politician and wartime deputy of Adolf Hitler, during a public speech in 1937) (Credit: Central Press/Getty Images)

Throughout World War II, Myra Hess organised concerts in London's National Gallery.

The lunchtime performances were intended to raise morale in the capital.

Many other concert venues had been shut because of the Blitz.

Photo: Myra Hess at the piano in 1944.

In February 1942 all Japanese Americans were ordered to internment camps.

They were viewed as a threat to US security during World War II.

Photo: A Japanese American family preparing to go to an internment camp.

(Credit: Dorothea Lange/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.)

It is 70 years since senior Nazi officials met to plan the killing of European Jews.

The meeting was organised by Reinhardt Heydrich.

It took place in a villa in a prosperous suburb of Berlin.

Photo: Getty Images News.

She was one of Germany's greatest battleships during World War II.

But on Boxing Day 1943 she was sunk in the freezing waters of the Arctic.

Norman Scarth is a Witness listener who was on board a British ship and watched her go down.

Photo: Norman Scarth the young sailor.

On 29 September 1941, the organised massacre of Ukrainian Jews began.

In the capital Kiev, most of them were taken to a place called Babi Yar, and shot.

Raissa Maistrenko escaped the shooting as a three-year-old girl.

Rabbi Alexander, Dukhovny's mother survived the Holocaust outside the city.

Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The trials of senior Nazis began in the autumn of 1945.

Howard Triest was a German Jew who acted as a translator during their questioning.

Photo: Getty Images

The scoop of the century on the eve of World War II.

How a young British reporter witnessed the German military build-up just days before the invasion of Poland in 1939.

We hear Clare Hollingworth's own account of a daring trip across the border.

Photo: Clare Hollingworth in 1978. Credit: BBC

Through the BBC's Archive footage Alan Johnston pieces together the story of a Battle of Britain fighter pilot who was shot down during a dogfight and badly burnt before parachuting from his stricken aircraft.

We hear how Richard Hillary then had to prepare to die as he drifted for hours in the North Sea.

Photo: Press Association