WW2 Anniversary

|   14 January 2015

Touched by Auschwitz

My new film, ‘Touched by Auschwitz’, a ninety minute feature length documentary, will transmit in the United Kingdom on BBC2 on Holocaust Memorial Day, Tuesday 27 January at 9 pm. It’s my attempt to answer one of the most profound questions of the Holocaust. What was the human legacy of the crime? It explores the […]

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WW2History.com News

|   1 November 2014

Touched by Auschwitz

The BBC recently announced that my new film ‘Touched by Auschwitz’ will be broadcast in January 2015 as part of a season commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz 70 years ago. I’ll write more about the film – a 90 minute feature length documentary – once I know an exact transmission date. All I’ll say now […]

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WW2 Anniversary

|   22 June 2014

The forgotten D Day

In the wake of Operation Bagration, the towns and cities of Eastern Europe would be ‘liberated’ Today is the anniversary of one of the most monumental military operations in the history of the world. A gigantic series of battles that dwarfed D Day in scale. But unlike the anniversary of D Day a few weeks […]

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WW2 Relevance

|   4 March 2014

Hitler and Putin

Are there any parallels between Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Putin? History never repeats itself precisely. There can never be another individual exactly like Adolf Hitler. The same circumstances that caused WW2 can never occur again. And yet…. Vladimir Putin’s ‘justifications’ for the invasion of the Crimea – and for his right to invade the rest […]

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WW2 Relevance

|   26 February 2014

The ghost of WW2 in Ukraine

As Ukrainians struggle forward they remember the past (The photo is of the entrance to a palace in Lviv). I’ve been traveling backwards and forwards to Ukraine for various WW2 related projects for many years, and so I’ve been particularly concerned about recent developments there. The sight of young people who are prepared to die […]

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WW2 Anniversary

|   28 November 2013

The most important Allied conference of the war.

The ‘Big Three’ at Tehran Today is a hugely significant anniversary – but it’s also a largely unknown one amongst the general population. That’s because the only one of the Allied leadership conferences of WW2 that seems to have penetrated into popular culture is the final one (involving Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin) held at Yalta […]

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WW2 Relevance

|   2 July 2013

The city where no one was safe

The Opera House in the city where no one was safe. Recently, researching a new project, I re-visited a city that I think was the riskiest place in Europe to live – not just during WW2 but during the 20th century as a whole. It’s an elegant place – beautiful in many ways. Cultured, sophisticated […]

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WW2 Relevance

|   27 April 2013

The rise of Poland

The market square of Rzeszow One of the few compensations of growing older is the sense of historical perspective that age can offer. I thought of that last week when I was in eastern Poland researching my next project. I’ve been going to Poland for work for twenty years and the changes I’ve seen during […]

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WW2History.com News

|   9 April 2013

Pre-publication press

Pre-publication press from the USA for ‘Hitler’s Charisma’ (Pantheon Books) “Rees moves easily from the broad themes of German politics and economics to the individual voices of those who supported and opposed Hitler. Incorporating most of the latest scholarship on Hitler, Rees provides valuable insights here into a topic that is not new.” –Library Journal […]

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WW2 Anniversary

|   3 February 2013

Is it ever right to kill yourself for honour?

The ruins of Stalingrad 70 years ago, on 30 January 1943, as Soviet troops closed in on the centre of Stalingrad, Gerhard Hindenlang, a German battalion commander, received surprising news from Hitler’s HQ by radio. The overall commander of the German 6th Army in Stalingrad, General Friedrich Paulus had just been promoted to Field Marshal. […]

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