World War II: Up Close and Personal

The horrors of Nazi Germany are one hallmark of World War II. How did ordinary German citizens find themselves participating in such heinous events? In this first lesson, go inside the propaganda machine of Hitler’s Germany and see how it targeted the youth with messages of strength and pride.

The origins of World War II lie in Asia in 1931, when the Japanese army sabotaged a railroad line in northeastern China. From here, trace the invasion of 1937 and the brutal Rape of Nanjing. Witness the events through the eyes of a Chinese soldier and a Japanese journalist, young men who bore witness to the flesh and blood of battle.

In addition to the story of people, World War II is the story of technology—and the innovations that changed the nature of combat. Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than the tanks Germany used to barrel across Poland and France in “lightning warfare.” See how new technology defeated the old ways of war.

Wartime Warsaw offers a gateway to the darkest events of the war. Bear witness as the city’s Jews were rounded up and put in the ghetto—cramped quarters where the specter of disease and starvation always loomed. Hear the wrenching stories from several of the ghetto’s inhabitants.

The daily reality of war was complicated for everyday citizens living far from the battle lines. In Nazi-occupied France, informants created an environment of paranoia and fear, yet some people offered resistance in ways big and small. Revisit the legacy of the French Resistance to experience life under the Nazi boot.

Shift your attention across the English Channel, where Britain now faced the Nazi war machine alone. Trace the war in London through the eyes of a Jewish child in the East End, a bureaucrat performing unglamorous duties, and a young Oxford student who flew against Hitler’s Luftwaffe.