Witness History: World War Two history

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,...

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...

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: Johnn...

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. Gett...

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: Hul...

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)