World History: True Stories of the 20th Century

Louis Renault was a pioneering French industrialist whose wartime role during the German occupation of France remains one of the country's most enduring historical controversies. Louis Renault was once celebrated as one of France’s greatest industrial pioneers — the man who revolutionized automobile manufacturing, designed innovative engines, and built the legendary Renault FT tank that helped...

Florentine Rost van Tonningen was a Dutch Nazi sympathizer whose unwavering support for National Socialism continued long after the Second World War. This historical documentary explores the life of Florentine Rost van Tonningen, one of the most controversial figures in the Netherlands during and after the Second World War. Set against the backdrop of the German occupation, it traces her journey f...

Ernst Röhm was the co-founder of the SA (Sturmabteilung) and one of Adolf Hitler’s earliest and most influential allies during the Nazi Party’s rise to power. As the co-founder and commander of the SA (Sturmabteilung), or “Brownshirts,” Röhm was instrumental in building the Nazi movement into a mass force through intimidation, street violence, and militarized loyalty. A decorated veteran of World...

he Mühlviertel Rabbit Hunt was one of the most brutal massacres of escaped Soviet prisoners of war during the final months of the Second World War. In February 1945, as the Third Reich was collapsing and Allied forces closed in from all sides, one of the most brutal episodes of the Holocaust and the Second World War unfolded in the forests of Upper Austria. It would later become known as the Mühlv...

Robert Alesch was a Catholic priest who became one of the most dangerous Nazi collaborators operating inside occupied France during the Second World War. During the Nazi occupation of France, betrayal did not always come from uniformed collaborators or political extremists. Sometimes it wore the face of moral authority. This documentary examines the life and crimes of Robert Alesch, one of the mos...

Otto Förschner was a Nazi SS officer and concentration camp commandant responsible for the exploitation and destruction of tens of thousands of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War. As commandant of Mittelbau-Dora and later the Kaufering camp complex, Förschner stood at the center of a system that combined industrial production with mass death. Born in Bavaria in 1902,...

Arthur Seyss-Inquart was one of the most powerful Nazi officials in occupied Europe, helping orchestrate the annexation of Austria and the persecution of more than 100,000 Dutch Jews during World War II. Born in 1892, he rose from a Viennese lawyer to one of the most influential Nazi administrators in Europe. After the failed Nazi coup in Austria in 1934, Seyss-Inquart positioned himself as the ke...

Miroslav Filipović was one of the most disturbing figures to emerge from the machinery of terror created by the Ustaša regime during the Second World War. A former Franciscan friar and Catholic priest, Filipović became a willing participant—and later a leading executioner—in the genocidal system of the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist puppet state allied with Nazi Germany. After the Axis in...

Vojtech Tuka was one of the most influential and dangerous figures of the wartime Slovak State—a politician whose ambition, ideology, and loyalty to Nazi Germany helped pave the way for the destruction of Slovakia’s Jewish community. His rise began long before World War II, shaped by radical nationalism, clerical fascism, and a fierce desire to break Slovakia away from Czechoslovakia. When Hitler...

The Distomo Massacre was one of the worst atrocities committed by German occupation forces in Greece during World War II. After the rapid collapse of Greek and Allied forces, the country fell under harsh Axis control, and resistance movements soon emerged in the rugged mountains of central Greece. These groups—most notably the ELAS partisans—launched sabotage operations and ambushes across the reg...

Zinaida Portnova was one of the youngest and most courageous figures of the Soviet resistance during World War II, a teenage partisan whose defiance of Nazi occupation cost her life. Born in 1926 in Leningrad, she was only fifteen years old when Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. Caught behind enemy lines in German-occupied Belarus, Zinaida witnes...

Friedrich-Paul von Groszheim was one of the few openly documented gay survivors of Nazi persecution — a man whose life reveals a lesser-known chapter of the Holocaust. Born in 1906 in Lübeck, Germany, he grew up during the turbulence of the First World War and the fragile democracy of the Weimar Republic. In the 1920s, he became part of Germany’s vibrant gay community, a world that would soon be v...

Description: Viktor Abakumov was one of the most powerful and feared figures in Stalin’s Soviet Union—a man who helped enforce a system built on fear, control, and repression. This documentary explores his rise through the ranks of the Soviet secret police, from humble beginnings in Moscow to becoming the head of SMERSH and later Minister of State Security. During the Great Purge of the late 1930s...

Clara Petacci was Benito Mussolini’s closest companion and remained loyal to him until the final collapse of Fascist Italy in 1945. Born into a well-connected Roman family, Petacci grew up in privilege and admiration for the Fascist regime. As a young woman, she developed a deep fascination with Mussolini, writing him letters and eventually meeting him in 1932. What began as admiration soon turned...

The Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler was Hitler’s personal guard unit that evolved into one of the most prominent formations of the Waffen-SS during World War II. Initially presented as an elite bodyguard unit, it quickly became closely tied to the centre of power in Nazi Germany, with its members swearing personal loyalty to Hitler rather than to the state. As the Second World War unfolded, the Leib...

The Broniki Massacre was one of the most controversial killings of German prisoners of war during the early stages of the Eastern Front in World War II. In the summer of 1941, as Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and pushed rapidly into Soviet territory, both sides committed crimes that fueled a cycle of violence without mercy. While German forces and SS units carried out systematic massa...

Karel Čurda was a Czech resistance fighter whose betrayal helped the Nazis destroy much of the underground network behind Operation Anthropoid during World War II. Born into a modest South-Bohemian family, Čurda joined the Czechoslovak army and later escaped the Nazi occupation to fight abroad. After training with the British SOE, he returned to his homeland as part of Operation Out Distance. For...

Franz Stangl was a Nazi camp commandant who played a central role in the Holocaust at Sobibor and Treblinka during World War II. Born on March 26, 1908, in Austria-Hungary, he began his career in law enforcement before joining the Austrian Nazi Party in 1931. After the Anschluss in 1938, he formally joined the SS and soon became a key figure in the T4 Euthanasia Program, helping organize the mass...

Josef Bühler was a senior Nazi official who helped implement the Holocaust and administer German-occupied Poland during World War II. Once a promising young lawyer from a devout Bavarian family, Bühler’s life changed forever when he entered the orbit of Hans Frank, Hitler’s trusted legal adviser and later the Governor General of occupied Poland. As Frank rose, Bühler rose with him. Following the G...

The Soviet invasion of Poland on 17 September 1939 completed the partition of Poland and reshaped Eastern Europe at the start of World War II. On 1 September 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, marking the beginning of World War II. Just over two weeks later, the Soviet Union attacked from the east—sealing Poland’s fate. This video explores the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the secret deal between Adolf...

Fernand de Brinon was one of the most prominent French collaborators who supported Nazi Germany during World War II. Born into a privileged French family, de Brinon built a career in journalism and diplomacy before the war. Long before the German invasion, he believed that cooperation with Nazi Germany was inevitable and even desirable. He admired Adolf Hitler, maintained close ties with German of...

The Lidice Massacre was one of the most notorious Nazi war crimes of World War II, carried out in retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. Orchestrated by Czech paratroopers Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš in Operation Anthropoid, the attack dealt a significant blow to Nazi authority in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. But it also unleashed a wave of terror that would culminate i...

Lepa Radić was a teenage Yugoslav resistance fighter whose courage made her one of the most iconic symbols of anti-fascist resistance in World War II. Born in 1925 in Gašnica, in today’s Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lepa grew up in a politically active family deeply rooted in communist ideals. When Nazi Germany and its allies invaded Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941, her world changed forever. The collapse of th...

Carl Gröpler was one of the last official executioners in German history and a key figure in the system of capital punishment that operated during both the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. Over a career spanning decades, he carried out at least 144 executions using both the traditional executioner's axe and the guillotine. Born in 1868 in Magdeburg, Gröpler followed an unusual path before ent...

Grigory Shtern was one of the Soviet Union’s most talented military commanders—a decorated war hero whose career ended not at the hands of a foreign enemy, but through Stalin’s own campaign of terror. Born in 1900 in the Ukrainian town of Smila, Shtern joined the Red Army during the Russian Civil War and quickly distinguished himself as a capable officer. After graduating from the prestigious Frun...