Second World War

Australia and the US were allies during the Second World War, though that wasn’t always apparent in the relationship between GIs and Diggers. This is the story of one especially bitter encounter.

The last operation of the Japanese Naval Command, writes Albert Vulliez, was a deliberate act of suicide. It was received by the people with a ‘sombre bitterness’. Translated by Patrick Turnbull.

The mass breakout from Sobibór death camp in October 1943 has been largely forgotten. What happened?

Norman Bentwich recalls the official meetings in Paris of 1946, which were concerned with the future of Germany’s former allies in Europe. At these protracted sessions the conflict between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers gradually came into the open.

Marseille is the 2013 European Capital of Culture – time to recall the heroics of Varian Fry, a US citizen who lived there during the Second World War. Markus Bauer reports.

The Wilhelm Gustloff, once an elegant cruise-liner of Hitler’s Reich, was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine on the night of 30 January 1945.

Benn Steil argues that John Maynard Keynes had an astute grasp of Britain’s debt situation in 1944 and how it might recover from ‘financial Dunkirk’. Yet his arrogance and ineptitude in negotiating with the Americans at Bretton Woods cost Britain dear and has had repercussions to this day.

The Dambusters Raid is one of the best known operations of the Second World War. But, as James Holland explains, the development of the ‘bouncing bomb’ took place against a background of bitter rivalry between the armed services.

The indiscriminate use of ‘Nazi’ to describe anything to do with German institutions and policies during Hitler’s dictatorship creates a false historical understanding, says Richard Overy.