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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Helmuth Weidling

Helmuth Weidling was a German general and the last commander of the Berlin defence area during the Battle of Berlin. On ...

#Biography

Hanna Reitsch

Hanna Reitsch was a famous female test pilot in Nazi Germany, who among a few women was awarded with both classes of the...

#Biography

Miroslav Štandera

Brigadier Miroslav Štandera was a Czech fighter pilot who fled Czechoslovakia after Nazi Germany occupied the country in...

#Biography

Miluše Axamitová

Miluše Axamitová was born in 1929 near the city of Pilsen. She lived through the German occupation and witnessed Allied ...

#Biography

Michal Brummel

Michal Brummel was born on 27 May 1933. His father came from a wealthy Jewish family, his mother was a Catholic from Aus...

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William McBurney

William McBurney fought in the Battle of the Bulge as a member of the U.S. 761st Tank Battalion. As an African-American ...

#Biography

Warren Gamaliel Harding Crecy

Warren Crecy joined the U.S. Army when he was 19 years old. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge as a member of the 761s...

#Biography

Suzanne Grégoire

Suzanne Grégoire was an ardent communist activist. She dedicated her life to women’s rights and female activism. During ...

#Biography

Nikolaus Brüll

Nikolaus Brüll was born in 1922 in Eupen, a formerly German city annexed by Belgium after the First World War. Nikolaus'...

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Malka Zimetbaum

The life story of Malka Zimetbaum takes us from Poland to Belgium and back to a tragic end in Poland. Today Malka is a s...

#Biography

Marie Vassiltchikov

Marie Vassiltchikov was a Russian princess, who wrote her Berlin Diaries from 1940 to 1945. These diaries describe the e...

#Biography

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...

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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...

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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...

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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 ...

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