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A multimedia resource on WW2 history brought to you by the award winning historian and filmmaker Laurence Rees. More about us

  • WW2 PODCAST LAUNCHED

    WW2 - THE KEY QUESTIONS
    WW2 - The Key Questions, answered by Laurence Rees, is now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

  • Laurence Rees' Blog

    Hitler and Stalin
    A selection of the previews of Laurence Rees' new book on Hitler and Stalin.

  • Expert interviews

    World class historians
    Many of the greatest WW2 experts in the world are interviewed at length, exclusively for WW2History.com.

  • Video

    PLAY
    3:06

    Eastern

    1941

    A different kind of war
    Hitler had ordered that the war in the Soviet Union would be a war of ‘annihilation’. What motivated that terrible demand, and what were the consequences of it?

  • Testimony

    LISTEN
    10:20

    Pacific

    1942

    Australian POW
    He was one of 60,000 allied troops who surrendered to the Japanese at Singapore. An Australian doctor, he vividly describes the horror of imprisonment at the hands of the Japanese.

  • Key Moment

    READ
     

    Western

    1944

    D-Day
    On 6 June, more than 130,000 Allied troops landed on five designated invasion beaches in Normandy. It was the largest opposed amphibious landing attempted in modern times.

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More information on Laurence Rees

  • Laurence Rees

    Laurence Rees is an acclaimed historian and filmmaker who has specialised in writing books and making TV documentary series about the Second World War for thirty years. In 2006 he won the British Book Award for history book of the year for 'Auschwitz: the Nazis and the 'Final Solution''. His many television awards include a BAFTA, a Grierson Award, a Broadcasting Press Guild Award, a BANFF festival award, an International Documentary Award, a Broadcast Award and a George Foster Peabody Award.
    Read Laurence Rees’ full biography

  • "Rees knows a vast amount about the Second World War and his judgments can seldom be faulted."
    Sir Max Hastings, Sunday Times.

    "Scholars across the world owe a considerable debt of gratitude to Laurence Rees for his immense and unique contribution to historical understanding."
    From the citation awarding Laurence Rees an Honorary Doctorate, University of Sheffield

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