WW2: War Against Humanity

When the Second World War breaks out, it is at first largely a war between one side of totalitarian aggressors against a portion of the democratic countries of the world defending other totalitarian states. From the first day of the war in Poland, as it already is in China, this will be a war against humanity.

In April 1940 in Poland, if you are on the list of Nazi or Soviet non-desirables, there are three options: run for your life, be shipped off to a camp, or face the execution squad... if you happen to be Jewish it's likely to be the fourth option: the Ghetto.

When WW2 breaks out, the belligerents promise to not bomb civilians. The promise is broken, literally within minutes by the Nazis and within weeks by the Soviets. Now, nine months later the Allies are about to follow suite.

When the Nazi German Reich invades western and northern Europe this creates a massive refugee and forced migration crisis all across Europe. In eastern Europe, The Nazis and the Soviets have already been forcing families out of their homes to be relocated, incarcerated and murdered for nine months by now.

Strategic bombing was used to destroy the popular support for their governments war effort, and the British boosted that their resistance to bombing was an unique trait. But both are false, based on lies and propaganda.

Were all German faithful Nazis? Not by a stretch, but a resounding majority approved of the Nazis, especially before the war, and again after the victory in France. Anyone that actively opposed Hitler and his gang were not only risking their life, but faced an uphill battle against public opinion. And yet... some people did.

Immediately after France is occupied by the Nazis in 1940, the French are divided about what to do; resist for collaborate? To put it mildly, it's complicated.

When the Racism of Naziism hits the Nationalism of Monarchism, it doesn't quite go like Hitler would have imagined.

The war in China already started in 1931 when Japan invaded Manchuria. Early resistance was small and was met by heavy Japanese retaliations. But throughout the 30's, the movement started to grow.

Poland faces two brutal occupiers led by Hitler and Stalin, hellbent on wiping Poland off the map. But the Poles have been preparing to stand up and resist since before the war - and now they do.

The War Against Humanity is accelerating and accelerating. Across the world, people live under oppression. In Nazi Europe, solutions to the so-called "Jewish Question" has taken on new, fantastical, proportions.

As the Britain Blitz slows down considerably, violence in Croatia increases dramatically as the Ustaše government purges the country of Jews and Serbs and the Wehrmacht gets deadly instructions for their Invasion of the Soviet Union.

The German Fallschirmjäger target the Cretan civilian population as they take the Island with big losses. But the War Against Humanity intensifies dramatically as Operation Barbarossa is launched on 22nd June, 1941.

When the German armed forces invade the USSR, they come with an order to exterminate from Hitler. Now the defending Soviet armed forces receive similar orders from Stalin. The bloodshed that follows defies human imagination.

In China, and the Soviet Union, all sides are causing widespread death to the local civilians. The defending forces are scorching the earth and plundering their own civilians, the attacking armed forces of Japan and Germany are executing planned genocide and mass destruction.

Not all plans for Operation Barbarossa are as successful as hoped. In August 1941, Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler push forward their plans to wage war on all Jews, unleashing the Einzatsgruppen and the SS Cavalry Brigade of Hermann Fegelein on the Jewish people of Eastern Europe.

Fegelein's and Himmler's actions to 'comb' the Pripet Marshes for Jews continues. The largest mass-murder yet is committed in Kamianets-Podilskyi, while new methods to commit genocide on an industrial scale are being devised.

In the first half of September, Nazi murder campaigns in Vilnius and the Pripet Marshes continue. In the rest of Europe, the Germans tighten their grip on the occupied countries, taking away media privileges and further restricting the freedoms of Jewish populations.

Killing Jews by the thousands becomes the main way of eradicating the Jews in Eastern Europe in August and September 1941. The Mass Murder at Babi Yar in Kiev is yet another escalation in that process.

The Wehrmacht is deeply involved with the Nazis' War Against Humanity. They are complicit in the murder of thousands of Jews in the 'Holocaust of Bullets', and the severe treatment of Soviet Prisoners of War. In October 1941, Wehrmacht General Walther von Reichenau issues the 'Severity Order', taking away any ambiguity there may be as to the Wehrmacht's vision.

French resistance members liquidate a high-ranking German officer, triggering a series of retaliatory actions by the German occupiers. Meanwhile, actions in the 'Holocaust of Bullets' continue in the east as German forces move further into the USSR, taking Odessa.

As German troops pull into eastern Ukraine, locals fight back in any way they can. Some of them have been the target of Soviet brutalisation for decades. For many who are deemed 'enemy of the Third Reich', the first two weeks of November 1941 are their last, as the 'Holocaust of Bullets' continues.

Japanse deploys Biological Weapons in China, leading to un unspecified number of deaths. Meanwhile, European Jews from Germany and their occupied territories are deported to Eastern Europe, where Jews are already being killed by the thousands.

December 1941 marks the shift to a new chapter in the War Against Humanity. New fronts open up, exposing millions more to the horrors of war. Other developments continue their path of continuous escalation.

Christmas 1941. A holiday season in a year of darkness and suffering, where Hitler celebrates his own greatness as the world goes up in flames.

The early weeks of 1942 show how much of a global War Against Humanity this really is. People in occupied zones across the globe suffer under the boot of their tormentors. In Greece, thousands die in a famine, while repressive tactics claim the lives of many more in the Balkans. The Holocaust continues in cities and the extermination camp of Chełmno, while the Japanese army wreaks havoc in South-East Asia as they advance on Allied positions.

To most, the Wannsee Conference is synonymous with the moment the Holocaust started. In fact, the meeting is mainly designed to formalise policy, and to involve political and governmental organisations in the crime.

As the winter of 1942 continues, many Soviet civilians suffer under the German Siege of Leningrad. Meanwhile, the British are shifting their bombing strategy from targeting factories to targeting homes.

Franklin D. Roosevelt signs an order to intern all Japanese-American citizens on the West Coast of the United States, while the Italians open up new concentration camps to deal with their ethnic enemies in the Balkans. At the same time, a large group of Jews attempts to escape Europe by boat, with disastrous consequences.

The crackdown on 'undesired' ethnic populations in the Balkans continues as Mario Roatta issues 'Circular 3C'. The Germans kill 5000 German Jews in the 'Dünamünde Action', and the Japanese purge the Chinese communities of Singapore in the 'Sook Ching' massacre. Additionally, the new camp of Auschwitz Birkenau opens its doors in Poland.

A report on the effect of strategic bombing called the 'Dehousing Paper' is spread to justify the targeting of the civilian population of Germany. In Poland, one by one, extermination camps are starting construction. This month, a new one is finished, named Belzec. Here, Jews and other minority undesirables from Poland are gassed.

Malta and British cities are victim to German bombs, while the Japanese advance in Burma causes a refugee crisis. In the Philippines, 80,000 Allied POWs walk the Bataan Death March.

April 1942 sees bombing campaigns in Germany and Britain, as well as German anti-partisan actions in the Balkans and Eastern Europe.

A large number of European and asian inhabitants of South-East Asia are locked up in Japanese prison camps, while in Burma, a big refugee crisis claims the lives of thousands. In Auschwitz-Birkenau and Sobibor, gassing Jews on an immense scale begins.

Arthur Harris and his RAF Bombers carry out a massive bombing raid on Cologne. Meanwhile, one of the architects of the Holocaust, Reinhard Heydrich is the target of a spectacular assassination attempt.

Reinhard Heydrich is fighting for his life, as the hunt of his assassins continues. Meanwhile, news of the nazi atrocities starts to reach the Allied countries.

During the occupation of South-East Asia, Japan builds a large system of institutionalised rape to 'keep their soldiers happy'. Meanwhile, Allied refugees from Burma find a safe haven in India, but for some, hardship continues.

Operation Millennium is discontinued, while in Poland the Auschwitz Birkenau camp starts to systematically gas thousands of people a week. Some who aren't murdered on arrival are subjected to horrific medical and sterilization experiments.

The extermination camps of Operation Reinhard are ready to start killing hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto, starting the deadliest 100 days of the Holocaust.

The Big Action at the Warsaw Ghetto continues, while The Japanese carry out retaliations against the Chinese for aiding American airmen. Dmitri Shostakovich's 'Symphony no. 7' premieres in the besieged city of Leningrad.

Citizens in Stalingrad face German bombs as Soviet officials refuse to evacuate. The German counter-insurgency effort increases, but people continue to resist against all odds. The Treblinka camp breaks down under the ambitions of its commandant, Irmfried Eberl.

The Nazi German occupiers have kept increasing their pressure in occupied territory, and fooled their victims to still have hope, but at some point when the oppression gets unbearable, or all hope is lost, people will resist.

People in India are increasingly fed up with their British rulers and calls for independence grow. Resistance against the Nazis is also growing in Eastern Europe, which causes ruthless retaliations against the civilian population.

Resistance against occupation starts rising in the Autumn of 1942. It faces opposition not only from the occupiers, but also from collaborators killing their own countrymen.

As the war intensifies on all fronts, the occupied world is aflame with resistance and reprisals. From Paris to Papua New Guinea, Humanity is under attack - but it is also fighting back.

As the Winter of 1942/43 is beginning, the German Nazis are under more and more pressure, both on the frontlines and in the occupation zones.

In November 1942 the resistance fight in many parts of Europe becomes a part pf the regular military war. In Germany the Germans discover humanity while the German mass murders see no end.

Despite Allied occupation, the situation of the Jews in North Africa hardly improves, in newly German-occupied Tunisia it deteriorates. Meanwhile, the world learns more of the details of the Holocaust - they cannot believe their ears.

The world learns more details of the War Against Humanity in Occupied Poland, while in China and India starvation looms.

While Nazi Germany keep on escalating its War Against Humanity, the United Nations Alliance decides that they will escalate their war on Germany.

In early 1943 Nazi German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels is preparing to rally the German people behind an unrestrained war - or "total war" as he puts it. It's unclear what that means, Nazi Germany is long waging an unrestrained war, and it seems that the United Nations Alliance is now ready to do the same on Germany.

As the United Nations Alliance, and the Resistance in occupied Europe increase their pressure on Nazi Germany, they continue to escalate their war on humanity. Meanwhile, in more and more parts of the world there is little to eat.

Germany declares total (unconditional war) putting its economy on a full war footing over three years into the war. Given the unconditional war they are already waging, and the resistance and opposition they now face, it's unclear what it shall mean.

In the weeks after Goebbels' Sportpalast speech, we realize that Total War might mean an apocalyptic end for Germany, with Hitler's blessing. No wonder that some Germans are looking to end Hitler before he ends them, and what a blessing that at least one Nazi with influence on the fate of thousands of Jews turns out to have a heart and soul.

The Nazis and the Soviets discover each other's atrocities, while resistance is on the rise, and a half dormant conspiracy against Hitler comes back to life to take his life.

There are cracks in the alliances on both sides. Hitler's allies are refusing to do his every bidding, and the revelations about the Soviet massacre of Poles in Katyn has set a wedge between Poland and the USSR.

The war against Naziism is escalating on all fronts - in the War Against Humanity the main battleground is now the Warsaw Ghetto.

As the SS continues to crack down on the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, Great Britain and the US decide not to help Jewish refugees.

Europe is burning and it seems there is little that will end the suffering except victory over Naziism.

As the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is being quashed, there are renewed Japanese atrocities in China, and the RAF sets a world record by bombing German civilians.

When Air Marshal Arthur Harris and Reichspropagandaminister Joseph Goebbels agree that a lot of death and destruction is not enough death and destruction, the world is in trouble.

Arthur Harris and the RAF set another record in bombing Germany, and the outnumbered Yugoslav Partisans show the Axis that numbers mean little when you're clever.

Despair in Germany, more death in the Jewish ghettos, and Dr. Mengele tales command in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In the Balkans, the Axis powers fail to rout Yugoslav and Greek Partisans. In Bengal, British India starvation is spreading, and in the Netherlands, the Nazis send 1,296 children and infants from the Vught Camp to the gas chambers at Sobibor.

As the people of Bengal and Iran continue to be tormented by hunger, so are the people of Germany and Yugoslavia by bombs. In Eastern Europe, the Germans continue to kill anyone they deem an enemy.

The Gestapo deals a devastating blow to French Resistance, and in Bengal, British India the famine is only getting worse.

The Polish and French resistance find themselves weakened by the lots of their leaders. Hitler decided to give Werner von Braun hundreds of thousands of slaves to launch the German rocket program.

This week, we see a contrast in the way different civilians behave within occupied Ukraine, Patton order war crimes, and Jewish resistance give up one of their own fighters.

This week, civilians are on the frontlines once again. Children man the flak guns of German cities and Soviet laborers build defenses around battle-scarred Kursk. On-going tragedies also continue their relentless unfolding, from Bengal to Warsaw.

In Italy the Fascists fall from power in a peaceful coup, while in Germany the RAF and USAAF bring down a rain of fire of biblical proportions in Operation Gomorrah, launching the Firestorm of Hamburg.

While enslavement, and mass murder continues unabated in August 1943, at the Treblinka Death Factory the forced laborers decide that enough is enough, and bring battle to the SS in a daring escape attempt.

The reality of war finally seeps through to the majority of Germans, and it didn't match up with the propaganda. Meanwhile resistance is increasing, and part of that is a classic money carriers when the Polish Home Army robs a money transport.

The aerial bombing of Germany takes a new turn but continues to fail to bring long-term results. In occupied Greece and Poland, over a thousand children are murdered by the Nazis.

While the RAF and USAAF continue to try to bomb Germany into submission, the German Nazis move their war production underground. In the process they create an underground slave camp that defies imagination.

While the Allies give up on the first Battle of Berlin, Amon Göth goes on a murderous rampage in the Tarnow Ghetto.

When Italy leaves WW2, The Nazi German Reich immediately begins occupying the country, and the occupied nations it has held until now.

The German Nazi Genocide of the Jews surpasses four million deaths, while the Soviet Union and US step up oppression against some their own citizens.

The Wehrmacht continues Operation Axis and its slaughter of Italian soldiers. In Western Europe, the situation of the Jews becomes increasingly precarious, especially so in Denmark.

As the Allies advance in southern Italy, the people of Naples join them in fighting the Wehrmacht. In Denmark, the biggest rescue operation of Jews thus far begins.

This week the Nazis go on the record about their genocide of the Jews. Meanwhile the Jews in Denmark are coming closer to safety, and the Roman Jews are again at peril.

The German Nazis and their helpers are facing increasing resistance, this week in Rome from the Vatican, and at the Sobibor extermination camp from their victims.

Trainload after trainload arrives at the slave and murder factories in Auschwitz, and a fire storm is created in Kassel, while the United Nations War Crimes Committee UNWCC is formed.

From a conference in Moscow the United Nations Alliance issues a warning to Nazi Germany about their atrocities, while those atrocities continue unabated.

The genocide of the Jews of Eastern Europe concludes with Operation Harvest Festival - Aktion Erntefest when 42,000 are murdered in the Lublin district.

Hitler commemorates the twentieth anniversary of the failed Beer Hall Putsch, in Auschwitz 50 men are shot in celebration, and Arthur Liebehenschel replaces Rudolf Höss as commandant.

Hitler forces Himmler to betray his promise of independence for the Baltic states, despite giving the Waffen-SS 40,000 of their young men. Ion Antonescu of Romania decides to save the remaining Romanian Jews to save his own ass.

In Auschwitz the inmates gathering evidence of Nazi crimes score two successes, while the RAF score a direct hit on Goebbels as they set Berlin aflame. In the Pacific the accidental sinking of the SS Suez Maru triggers a Japanese war crime.

Ed Murrow accompanies the RAF on a bombing raid on Berlin, and files one of his most iconic broadcasts with CBS. In Teheran, Winston Churchill walks out on a dinner with Joseph Stalin, after the USSR Premiere suggests mass murdering German officers.

Japanese planes bomb Calcutta when it is still being crushed by the weight of the Bengali famine. Adolf Hitler and Albert Speer are obsessively trying to increase war production so Germany can begin launching its vengeance weapon against Britain. The wars of resistance continue across the Balkans with continued brutality and a new resistance force emerges in Italy.

The United Nations Allies has some success bombing the Nazi German Reich, but it comes at a heavy price. In the village Kalavryta in Greece, the Wehrmacht massacre hundreds of men and boys.

Two escapes, one from the Nazis in Kovno (Kaunas) Lithuania, from the prison at Fort IX, and one from Japanese terror on Panay in the Philippines this week, will help to document the crimes of the Axis powers.

The last week of 1943 is a busy one. Stalin deports the Kalmyk minority from Kalmykia, the escapees from Fort IX get away, and the US President moves to found the post-war UN.

The last week of 1943 is a busy one. Stalin deports the Kalmyk minority from Kalmykia, the escapees from Fort IX get away, and the US President moves to found the post-war UN.

While the Soviet Union declared they will annex parts of Poland, the Western Allies fear that the broken French Resistance may ruin the plans for D-Day.

The internal conflict between Poland and the other United Nations Allies deepens as Churchill faces them with diplomatic defeat over Soviet land grab. In the Occupied Netherlands and Poland the Nazis continue their atrocities.

Poland, occupied, abandoned or even threatened by her allies is left to fight her own war. A war that under the influence of internal and external forces looks more and more like a full blown civil war inside the world war.

Across Europe the anti-Nazi Resistance continues to rise as does the infighting. In France the RAF carry out Operation Jericho to break out captured resistance members held at the prison in Amiens.

Allied and German Air Forces fight fierce battles over Europe with civilians caught in the crossfire, while Joseph Stalin and Lavrenti Beria deport two entire ethnicities of half a million in just one week.

Authoritarian regimes on both sides, in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and Imperialist Japan the terror is once again escalating. The bombing war from both sides see continued death of civilians, while Harris of the RAF, Spaatz of the USAAF, and Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower are getting into a fight about how the bombers should be used for the upcoming D-Day.

As the RAF closes in on Berlin and the German Army is running dangerously low on men, the Nazi leadership is determined to use their resources to spread their crimes deeper into Hungary and Italy.

Until now Miklos Horthy's Kingdom of Hungary has been a rare sanctuary where most Jews have lived in relative safety. That changes with the German occupation. Now Adolf Eichmann. the Nazis, and their Hungarian allies bring the Holocaust to Hungary.

Bombing enemy civilians does nothing to advance a nation's war effort. But now, Adolf Hitler believes that the V-1 flying bomb, the first of the Vengeance Weapons, will bring London to its knees and unite the German population behind the war effort as never before. The missiles are ready for launch and thousands more civilians will die to satisfy the Führer's delusions.

Hungary's Jews are facing a Holocaust machine in overdrive. The deportation trains are arriving in such volume that even the extermination factory of Auschwitz can barely keep up with the pace. The entire country swiftly becomes Judenfrei and the Jews of Budapest sit helplessly as Adolf Eichmann and his Hungarian collaborators tighten the noose around them. Admiral Miklós Horthy is one of the few who can save them, but so far he has done nothing. Will that change?

The destruction of German cities has shown how difficult it is for the heavy bombers of the RAF and USAAF to hit small targets with precision. Things will be no different when these big beasts go into action to support the D-Day landings. Thousands of French civilians will pay the price for the flawed logic of Allied bombing.

The Home Army has fought hard to earn Poland its freedom from both Nazi and Soviet domination in Operation Tempest. But has it worked? Operation Bagration has seen the Red Army punching into Polish lands so what will become of Wilno, Lwów, and Lublin? And is the time right for an uprising in Warsaw?

The Allied Strategic bombing campaign has claimed hundreds of thousands of civilian lives across Europe and has made little real impact on the Axis war machine. Even so, the United States is determined to extend the campaign to Japan. Until now, the vast distances of the Asia-Pacific theatre have protected the imperial enemy. That all changes when the USAAF unleashes the Superfortress.

In Poland, the SS and Wehrmacht unleash their most sadistic fighters to crush the Warsaw Uprising and massacre tens of thousands of people. In Amsterdam, the German security forces finally discover Anne Frank and her fellow fugitives. Against this backdrop, Heinrich Himmler talks of an irreversible ‘racial realignment', and the Soviets discover the horrors of Majdanek.

In Normandy, the Waffen SS butcher their military and civilian enemies while some Allied soldiers play fast and loose with the laws of the war. In China, hundreds of thousands flee their homes as friend, foe, and famine take their toll. Meanwhile, the spectre of deportation haunts Eastern Europe as Stalin reshapes his new empire.

Fierce fighting continues in Warsaw as German forces battle the Home Army's uprising. Frustrated by a determined foe, the SS continues to retaliate against civilians, including Polish children. The Home Army calls for help but finds that London is silent. In Paris, the Resistance has their revenge against collaborators. The death factory at Auschwitz continues to burn as the Nazis start to evacuate the camps in the East.

At the centre of his shrinking empire, Hitler plans his legacy. Together with his genocidal accomplice Heinrich Himmler, these two top murderers plan the destruction of the imagined creature of Judeo-Bolshevism. This week the children of Warsaw, the people of London, the peasants of Italy, and the souls condemned to slavery and death at Auschwitz pay the price for their warped worldview.

The hour of resistance is here. Across Western Europe, armies of resistance fighters rise up to meet the Allied armies and sabotage the Axis war machine. In Slovakia, a secret army fights to restore Czechoslovak independence. But against this hopeful backdrop, the Axis forces strike back hard. And, all around, the spectre of communism strikes fear in the Western Powers.

Fight the Nazis or fight your countrymen? From Marshal Tito's Partisans in Yugoslavia to the ELAS fighters in Greece, that is the animating question among the Balkans resistance movements. For many, the question is already answered. It is Mihailović and his Chetniks and EDES, EKKA, and the Greek royalist government who must be out-maneuvered first. British foreign policy has so far failed to change this state of affairs, can Churchill get his SOE officers to stop these civil wars?

The imperial dreams of Germany and Japan are in tatters. But the expansionist beasts do their best to drag their enemies down with them. Across Europe the cycle of resistance and retaliation continues. Paris is free but Warsaw burns. V-1s rain down on innocent civilians in London. The Japanese cleanse West Borneo of opposition. The genocide of the Jews continues. For so many people, liberation is now so near yet so far away.

Even as they battle an uprising in Slovakia, the Nazis see the opportunity to continue their racial realignment of Europe. The latest victims of this genocidal legacy are Anne Frank and her family, who arrive at Auschwitz. In Britain, the V-1 menace is defeated. But as London breathes a sigh of relief, the Nazis and their allies reduce Warsaw to rubble in a rampage of burning, looting, rape, and murder.

Since the earliest days of humanity, where there has been war, there has been rape. This war is no different. As vast armies battle across Europe, the chaos in their wake breeds an epidemic of rape. In its action and its punishment the European rape wave is also highly racialised. It adds up to a storm of suffering.

Indonesian nationalists initially welcomed Japan's promises of pan-Asianism. But now, these have been shown to be entirely hollow. While Indonesian nationalist leaders continue to support the new occupier, it's clear that the country is simply under new colonial management. But the dream of Indonesian independence is still alive and this war will bring that day closer.

Organized resistance movements in Axis-occupied territory are often associated with beret-sporting, trench-coated Frenchmen. A far less known, but larger and more effective resistance movement existed in the Philippines.

The Japanese decided that the Western civilians living in their new imperial territories threatened the Empire. Over one hundred thousand of these people now live in misery in concentration camps across Asia. Disease, overwork, hunger, and brutalisation are all taking their toll. Can the Allies free their civilians before time runs out?

The Nazis have ripped the cultural and artistic treasures of Europe from their homes and brought them to the Reich to grace the walls of museums and the palaces of the criminal leadership. Now, with Germany on the ropes, those treasures are hidden away deep underground. But the Monuments Men, teams of Allied men and women fighting for art, are on the case. They will track down, preserve, and return these precious items.

You might think that the Cold War starts after this war ends. But already, as the Germans withdraw from Greece, the ideologically opposed Greek resistance groups ELAS and EDES are at each others' throats. It all culminates in Athens in December 1944; British troops fire some of the first shots of the Cold War as Greece descends into Civil War.

After the first waves of Hungarian Jews were deported in the summer, Miklos Horthy halted Eichmann's trains. Into the autumn of 1944 a coalition of diplomats, aid workers, and states attempts to save the Jews still surviving in Budapest. But when the SS launch a coup in Budapest and bring the Hungarian fascists come to power, time runs out.

Curtis LeMay orders his B-29s to begin the firebombing of Japanese cities. This begins a campaign that will destroy the Japanese economy but leave hundreds of thousands dead. Meanwhile, the radicalisation of Japanese society continues at all levels as the Kamikaze suicide-pilots attack Allied warships and school-children build vengeance weapons.

The RAF and USAAF reopen the Combined Bomber Offensive against Germany in autumn 1944. The Allied heavy bombers are targeting a German economy that is churning out more war materiel than ever before, fuelled by German Armaments Minister Albert Speer's army of slaves. But, as 1944 turns to 1945, the bombers finally start to break the German vampire economy. But, at what cost to civilian life?

How often have you heard that the German population was unaware of the horrors of the Nazi camp system? Well, the opening months of 1945 destroys that myth once and for all as the SS force hundreds of thousands of Jews and other prisoners to march across the Reich and into the vast network of sub-camps. All of this happens in in full view of the German people.

When the SS evacuate the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex in the second half of January 1945, their intent is to make sure that no live prisoners get into the hands of the approaching Red Army. The death marches that follow are a final act of mass murder at the camp, that brings the death toll to close to 1.1 million murdered.

When the Red Army invades the Eastern German Reich provinces, and occupied Poland, years of war, anti-German agitprop, and the general misery of being a Soviet soldier has whipped them into a frenzy of bloodthirsty revenge. It's the women of all ethnicities who pay the heaviest price as German and Polish women, even liberated Soviet victims of Nazi terror are subjected to repeated mass rapes day in and day out.

The Red Army taking Budapest launches a huge wave of crime by the soldiers and the Soviet state - the most famous crime will be when Moscow disappears Raoul Wallenberg. But he is not the only neutral country diplomat who has worked to save Budapest's Jews threatened by the Soviets.

This week yet another bloody urban battle draws to its conclusion. In Manila, despite clear orders from Tomoyuki Yamashita against wanton violence, his subordinates and superiors chose to ignore him. The Japanese defenders massacre, rape, loot and then burn the remains of the city.

The bombing war in Europe comes to an end in a fury of fire and destruction. Spartacus takes stock of the human toll of this campaign and assesses the near futility of it all. On the other side of the globe, the USAAF ratchets up the firebombing of Japan further still. Countless more civilian lives will be cut short.