Second World War

Milton Goldin explores Himmler’s ambitions to establish the SS as a ‘state within a state’, and highlights schemes the Nazis devised to finance the organisation through industrial enterprise and plundered Jewish assets.

A profile of the issues raised by A level questions on this history topic.

Richard Wilkinson challenges the consensus of contempt for the Nazis' leading diplomat.

Max Beloff reviews a fresh account of de Gaulle and the Free French movement.

How did Britain come to make the promises to Poland that resulted in a declaration of war against Germany in September 1939? Sir Nicholas Henderson unravels a curious story.

Ian Locke investigates an intriguing and little-known attempt to commandeer Third Reich assets as reparations - and its mixed results.

Paul Preston amplifies recent claims that Franco offered safe havens to fugitive Nazis

Why did Goering and Goebbels fall out over a performance of Richard III? Gerwin Strobl on this and other intriguing reasons why the Bard mattered to the Third Reich.

In the first of our mini-series on the Nazis and social culture, Lisa Pine looks at how lessons in the classroom were perverted in the service of the Third Reich.

Dresden was carpet-bombed by the allied forces over two nights in February 1945. Anthony Clayton on how the aftermath of war has tested belief in the city.