The unimaginable horrors confronting the Allies in 1945
No one had prepared the Allied soldiers, as they began their invasion of the Reich early in 1945, for what…
Has the role of resistance in the second world war been exaggerated?
When in 1941 Winston Churchill famously declared that the newly formed Special Operations Executive, set up to encourage resistance movements,…
How the net finally closed on the Nazi henchman Andrei Sawoniuk
Fedor Zan was 18, working on the river closing sluices, when, on a winter afternoon in 1942, he saw his…
It’s still impossible for Horst Wächter to recognise his father as a Nazi war criminal
In 1926, while putting in place the repressive laws and decrees that would define his dictatorship, Mussolini appointed a new…
The tragic story of Witold Pilecki, whose reports from Auschwitz fell on deaf ears
On 14 October 1942, the 23 Swiss members of the International Committee of the Red Cross met in Geneva to…
An Egyptian comedy of errors
The Yacoubian Building, the first novel of the Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany, sold well over a million copies in…
Picasso’s dealer
When she was four, Anne Sinclair had her portrait painted by Marie Laurencin. It is a charming picture, a little…
The Spanish Civil War hotel that Capa, Hemingway and Gelhorn called home
In February 1924 the Hotel Florida, a ten- storey marble-clad building with 200 rooms, a glass-roofed atrium and red plush…
Monsieur le Commandant, by Romain Slocombe - review
There can be few characters in modern fiction more unpleasant than Paul-Jean Husson, the narrator in Romain Slocombe’s Monsieur le…
