World History: True Stories of the 20th Century

Elisabeth Willhaus remains one of the most controversial female figures associated with the Nazi occupation system in Eastern Europe during World War II. As the wife of SS officer Gustav Willhaus, commandant of the Janowska concentration camp in occupied Lviv, she lived inside one of the most feared camp complexes established by Nazi Germany. This documentary follows Elisabeth Willhaus from her ea...

The Rinnan Gang, officially known as Sonderabteilung Lola, was one of the most feared collaborationist organizations in Nazi-occupied Norway during World War II. Led by Henry Rinnan and working closely with the German Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and Gestapo, the group became notorious for infiltrating resistance networks, gathering intelligence, and helping crush opposition to German occupation. Founde...

Mauthausen was one of the most brutal concentration camps operated by Nazi Germany during World War II. Established in Austria in 1938 after the Anschluss, the camp became a central site of forced labor, starvation, torture, and mass murder within the Nazi camp system. Located near Linz, Mauthausen was designated a Category III concentration camp, reserved for prisoners whom the Nazi regime consid...

Antonina Makarova was one of the most notorious collaborators of World War II, a former Soviet nurse who became an executioner for the Nazi-backed Lokot Autonomy in occupied Russia. Her actions earned her the nickname “Tonka the Machine-Gun Girl” and made her one of the most infamous female perpetrators on the Eastern Front. Born on 1 March 1920 in the Soviet Union, Makarova served in the Red Army...

Martin Gottfried Weiss was a German SS officer and one of the most important concentration camp commandants in Nazi Germany. During World War II, he held senior positions at Dachau, Neuengamme, Majdanek, and Mühldorf, helping oversee forced labor, deportations, executions, and the broader machinery of Nazi persecution. Born in 1905 in Weiden in der Oberpfalz, Weiss joined the Nazi Party and the SS...

Baldur von Schirach was one of Adolf Hitler’s closest followers and the man responsible for transforming millions of German children into loyal supporters of the Nazi regime. As leader of the Hitler Youth and later Nazi governor of Vienna, he played a central role in spreading Nazi ideology and facilitating the persecution of Jews during World War II. Under von Schirach's leadership, the Hitle...

Operation Unthinkable was a secret British military plan developed in 1945 that explored the possibility of war between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union immediately after the defeat of Nazi Germany. Conceived under the direction of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the plan reflected growing concerns about Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe and the future balance of power on the con...

Louis Collard was one of the most prominent Belgian fascist collaborators during the Nazi occupation of Belgium and a leading figure within the Rexist movement. His career of collaboration culminated in the Courcelles Massacre, one of the most notorious atrocities committed by Belgian collaborators during World War II. When Nazi Germany invaded Belgium in May 1940, the country quickly fell under o...

The Oradour-sur-Glane Massacre was one of the worst atrocities committed against civilians in Western Europe during World War II. On 10 June 1944, just days after the Allied landings in Normandy, soldiers of the 2nd SS Panzer Division “Das Reich” entered the peaceful French village of Oradour-sur-Glane and murdered 642 civilians, including more than 200 children. Under the command of SS officer Ad...

Gerrit Kastein was one of the most remarkable figures of the Dutch resistance during World War II. A neurologist, anti-fascist, and resistance leader, he dedicated his life to fighting Nazism and ultimately sacrificed himself rather than betray his comrades to the German occupiers. When Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, Kastein quickly joined the underground resistance. Having witn...

Vasily Blokhin was the Soviet Union’s most prolific executioner and one of the most feared figures of Stalin’s era. As the head of the NKVD's elite execution squad, he personally carried out thousands of killings during the Great Purge and became one of the principal perpetrators of the Katyn massacre. Born in 1895 into a poor peasant family, Blokhin rose from humble origins to become one of t...

Lev Shvartzman was one of the most feared interrogators of Stalin’s Soviet secret police, becoming notorious for torture, forced confessions, and his role in the Great Purge. Born in 1907 in Shpola, in the Russian Empire, Shvartzman came from a family opposed to Bolshevik rule. Despite this background, he joined the Komsomol in 1925, worked as a journalist, and entered the NKVD in 1935 as Stalin’s...

Erna Petri was the wife of an SS officer who became a willing participant in Nazi crimes during World War II. Her story remains one of the most disturbing examples of how ordinary civilians could become involved in the Holocaust and the machinery of mass murder. Born in 1920 in the Weimar Republic, Erna Petri married Horst Petri, an ambitious member of the Waffen-SS. When he was assigned to manage...

The 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen was one of the most notorious Waffen-SS formations of World War II, becoming infamous for anti-partisan warfare, reprisals against civilians, and mass atrocities across the Balkans. Created by Nazi Germany in late 1941, the division was recruited largely from ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) living in Yugoslavia and neighboring regions. Unlike many...

The Le Paradis Massacre was one of the first major Waffen-SS war crimes in Western Europe during World War II. On 27 May 1940, during the Battle of France, ninety-nine soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Norfolk Regiment surrendered after being surrounded near the French village of Le Paradis. Expecting to become prisoners of war, they instead became victims of one of the most notorious atrocitie...

Igo Sym was a famous Polish actor who became one of the most notorious Nazi collaborators in occupied Poland during World War II. Once a celebrated film star of the interwar era, Sym chose to cooperate with the German occupiers after the invasion of Poland in 1939, becoming a symbol of betrayal in the eyes of the Polish resistance. Born Karol Juliusz “Igo” Sym, he rose to prominence in silent film...

Hermann Pister was the Nazi commandant of Buchenwald concentration camp during some of its deadliest years in World War II. Hermann Pister was one of the key figures within the Nazi concentration camp system and served as commandant of Buchenwald during some of its most brutal years. Born in 1885 in Lübeck, Pister first served in the Imperial German Navy before transitioning into civilian life as...

Wilhelm Frick was one of the key architects of Nazi Germany, helping create the legal system that enabled persecution, dictatorship, and the Holocaust. Wilhelm Frick was not a soldier, nor a battlefield commander, nor a man who ever pulled a trigger—yet he helped build the legal foundations of one of the most murderous regimes in history. Born in 1877 in Bavaria, Frick spent his early life as a qu...

Operation Anthropoid was the daring World War II mission carried out by Czechoslovak resistance fighters to assassinate senior Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich in occupied Prague. Operation Anthropoid was a World War II mission in which Czechoslovak resistance fighters Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš targeted senior Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich. In 1939, Nazi Germany took control of Czechoslovakia, tra...

Hermannus Reydon was a leading Dutch fascist collaborator whose propaganda helped support Nazi occupation policies in the Netherlands during World War II. Hermannus Reydon was one of the most influential Dutch collaborators during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. A committed National Socialist long before the German invasion, he rose quickly through the ranks of the NSB and became a central...

The Lviv pogroms of 1941 were among the first major waves of anti-Jewish mass violence during the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. The Lviv pogroms of 1941 mark one of the most violent outbreaks of mass murder during the early phase of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. Taking place in the chaotic aftermath of Operation Barbarossa, these events reveal how Nazi ideology, local collaboration, and exploita...

Tetyana Markus was a Jewish resistance fighter in Nazi-occupied Kyiv who infiltrated German circles and carried out assassinations against occupying forces during World War II. Tetyana Markus — often remembered as Tatiana Markus — was one of the most daring female resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Ukraine during the Second World War. Born in 1921 into a Jewish family, she came of age in Kyiv ju...

Johann Reichhart was the most prolific executioner of Nazi Germany, carrying out thousands of executions during the Third Reich using the guillotine. Johann Reichhart was the most prolific executioner in modern European history and a chilling symbol of how ordinary professions became instruments of terror under Nazi Germany. Born in 1893 in Bavaria, Reichhart came from a family that had served as...

Yakov Dzhugashvili, the eldest son of Joseph Stalin, became a Soviet prisoner of war after the German invasion of the Soviet Union and later died inside Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Yakov Dzhugashvili, the eldest son of Joseph Stalin, lived a life marked by tragedy long before the Second World War began. Born in 1907, he lost his mother as an infant and spent fourteen years being raised by he...

Ilse Koch became one of the most infamous women of Nazi Germany, feared for her brutality and association with the Buchenwald concentration camp during the Holocaust. Ilse Koch was one of the most infamous female figures of Nazi Germany and a symbol of cruelty within the concentration camp system of the Third Reich. Known as the wife of Karl Otto Koch, the commandant of Buchenwald, her name became...