The Second World War

by Antony Beevor

Poland was one of the very few countries in the Nazi empire where collaboration with the conqueror was virtually unknown.

So when the air-raid sirens sounded, and Molotov was led downstairs into the Wilhelmstrasse bunker, he could not resist remarking to the Nazi foreign minister: ‘You say that England is defeated. So why are we sitting here now in this air-raid shelter?’

Tobruk also surrendered, offering up another 25,000 prisoners, 208 guns, eighty-seven armoured vehicles and fourteen Italian army prostitutes who were sent back to a convent in Alexandria where they languished miserably for the rest of the war.

As Ian Kershaw wrote: ‘the road to Auschwitz was built by hatred, but paved with indifference’.