Laurence Rees

Jan 26, 2025 | thewest.com.au | Laurence Rees

In early June 1944 the train carrying 20-year-old Freda Wineman, her family and nearly a thousand other Jews from France passed under the red-brick guardhouse of Auschwitz Birkenau and down a railway line directly into the camp. As the doors of the freight wagon opened and they emerged into the light, Freda thought she had arrived in Hell: “The smell! The smell was awful.”She was confused and bewildered. Nothing seemed to make sense.

Jan 24, 2025 | dailymail.co.uk | Laurence Rees

In early June 1944 the train carrying 20-year-old Freda Wineman, her family and nearly a thousand other Jews from France passed under the red-brick guardhouse of Auschwitz Birkenau and down a railway line directly into the camp. As the doors of the freight wagon opened and they emerged into the light, Freda thought she had arrived in Hell: 'The smell! The smell was awful.'She was confused and bewildered. Nothing seemed to make sense.

Jan 21, 2025 | the-independent.com | Laurence Rees |Simon Calder |Robert McCrum

mccrum on booksIn his new book, the acclaimed historian of the Nazis, Laurence Rees, takes a forensic look at how the authoritarian regime rose to power and the ordinary citizens who let it happen. Nine of the 12 warnings already strike a chord, says Robert McCrum, and in the age of Trump 2.0, it is compulsive readingThe British fascination with the tyrannies of sinister, evil, and possibly mad foreign dictators is a tale we love to tell.

May 19, 2024 | telegraph.co.uk | Laurence Rees

Wing-Commander Charles Pickard, the bomber pilot who led the drop squadron Credit: piemags/ww2archive / Alamy Stock Photo Superficially, Max Hastings’s Operation Biting is a typical Second World War tale of derring-do.

May 1, 2023 | historyextra.com | Laurence Rees

How did the Nazis’ poisonous antisemitic rhetoric eventually culminate in the systematic mass-murder of millions? In the fourth episode of this five-part series tackling the big questions of the Second World War, historian Laurence Rees charts the course of the Holocaust – from its origins to its devastating conclusion. Watch the next episode now, or go to the series homepage. Finished all five episodes?