Yes it is.

Ew, seriously? I mean Churchill was kinda a dick, but questioning the origin of the Reichstag fire? That's really suspect David Irving-type territory.

Neo-Nazi perspective? What are you talking about?!
Nice quote mining.

I loved Shirer's book and it's the only complete ww2 narrative I have read besides Churchill's 6-volume account (also a great read).

Thanks for this recommendation, I just finished listening to the audiobook of the first volume and am loving it so far. I do find indeed that it appears to gain from having access to many more sources than Shirer did. Nonetheless, Shirer's writing style is a wee bit better IMO but Evans' is commendable.

Completely unconfirmed by anyone reputable as far as I can see, but the below appears to be the last known photo of Hitler, two days prior to his death surveying bomb damage from the entrance to his bunker:

I think in time, the 20th Century will be looked at like we look at the Hundred Years War. Instead of being a series of independent conflicts, future historians will look at WWI, WWII, The Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, Aghanistan, and all those little brushfire wars as just a century-long conflict to establish a new proder on the ashes of the old. WWI saw the beginning of the end of colonialism and European Monarchies, WW2 shifted the major players from England and German to the West and the East, the Cold War finished colonialism and then the Soviets fell apart. It was 75 years of open and covert hostilities all about determining who was going to be king of the hill.

At the very least, there is pretty good reason to consider the period from 1914-1945 as a sort of new Thirty Years' War in Europe. Much like the original Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), the fighting was not constant, but went through different stages and sporadic waves. The Russian Civil War, small-scale war between Greece and Turkey (with some British involvement), ethnic conflict in the Balkans, the fascist takeovers of Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Romania, the Spanish Civil War... all took place between WWI and WWII. That's not much of an inter-war period except in a very Anglocentric or Francocentric view of Europe.

Facinating tool charting the hits during the blitz: http://bombsight.org/.

Great fun for any Londoner

I can see WWI and WWII as the same conflict, but I think the cold war and beyond was completely separate.

Wedding rings at Auschwitz.

I am reading, and enjoying, An Army at Dawn. Not a history buff at all but it is a fun read.

What the hell kind of history is taught in schools today? I am amazed at the amount of high school students(not goof offs honor students)know hardly anything about WW2. They know who Hitler was, the Holocaust and about Pearl Harbor and thats about it. They know nothing of D day, Stalingrad, Hiroshima, Midway, the blitzkrieg of Poland and France, or the battle of the bulge. Unbelievable.

They know who was the bad guy, the victims and the heroes. Anything else beyond that is kind of frowned upon. The less they know, the easier is to manipulate through media. A few years back there was a poll in Japan as to who dropped the nuclear bombs. Half of jap teens claimed it was the russians.

On that note I remember seeing a story on the news a few months back (I think it was the BBC) where they were questioning the Russian education minister about history. Basically they are being taught in Russian schools that WW2 started on the day Germany invaded Russia with obviously no mention of the Russian invasion of Poland etc. They've also completely eradicated anything about the allied convoys to Russia throughout the war.

History is far more than just a series of battles in a series of wars.

Even talking about wars, studying individual battles will never tell you why a war happened in the first place.

Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact you are referring to is no secret in russian schools I assure you. "Territorial and political rearrangements" was a reaction to Munich Agreement in 1938 when Great Britain, France, and Italy permitted German annexation of the Sudetenland in western Czechoslovakia. Was that mentioned on BBC? A fine example of media manipulation with historical facts.

Ah, so they teach in schools that Russia invaded Poland in September 1939?

Ofc. They also teach that the year before Poland gave an ultimatum to the Czechoslovak government and annexed what was seen as crucial importance to the area and to Polish interests. Everyone acted in their best interests. That's the difference between seeing historical facts objectively and manipulating them depending on an agenda.

Well your education minister at the time was on tv getting interviewed and had no answer to the claim that it was being taught that WW2 started when Germany invaded Russia.

As for everyone acted in their best interests, if invading Poland and massacaring thousands as well as annexing various other countries sits fine with you then fair enough. But I don't believe for a minute that is what is taught, and neither does your education minister. If it was all so straight-forward Russia wouldn't have tried to suppress the fact there was an agreement with Germany for almost 50 years.

As for minister's words: there is a difference in terms. WWII that indeed started on sept 1939 and the Great Patriotic War against nazy Germany on June 22 1941. He probably meant the latter. It is a widely used term in russian historiography.
It doesn't sit fine with me. Don't shift it personally. The Soviets paid for that with millions of lives.
As for M-R pact: ofc it was a secret for almost as long as the Soviets existed. For an obvious reason. Since the collapse it became part of a school program. Believe what you want.

Sounds like someone misunderstood something. In Russia they put most emphasis on teaching about the Great Patriotic War which began with operation Barbarossa. So when you mention WW2 to an ordinary Russian, they automatically think about 22 June 1941 - 9 May 1945 period. What happened before or after that period is of less interest to Russians.

Does anyone know good documentaries about The Second World War with actual footage? Also I'm intrested in books about the second world war.. i know there are lots of books but wich one does it worth reading?

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The World at War is by far the best documentary imo

The actual figure of Russian dead was TWENTY FIVE MILLION. No wonder Russia wanted to keep Germany split to try to stop it re-arming.

As for regarding wars differently - how many Brits know about the war between Japan and China in the 1930s, which included some of the most horrific war crimes ever perpetrated, which was still going on when WWII started? Or know that the Allies stood by while Mussolini invaded Ethiopia before the war started? Truth is the first casualty of war!

PS I note posters have said that the firebombing of Japanese cities was largely irrelevant as regards the outcome of the war; presumably, then, there's no point in one soldier killing one enemy soldier because it's irrelevant so far as the outcome of the war is concerned? So what should a country do to win a war?

history of mankind is a big lol donkaments