Introducing World War II Today

A daily chronicle of the experience of war ...

World War II Today is illustrated with thousands of contemporary images. At 8.02 pm on 14 October 1940, a 1400kg semi-armour piercing bomb dropped on Balham Underground Station, London, causing the massive crater shown here. The bomb exploded 32 feet underground above the passageway, which joined the two platforms. A number 88 bus, travelling in the blackout, drove straight into the crater. About 600 people were sheltering in the station when the bomb exploded. Water, gas and sewage mains were all ruptured, and many people drowned as the station flooded. Sixty-eight people were killed.

“The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a million people is a statistic”¹. How do you make sense of the most lethal conflict in human history, in which tens of millions died around the world? My approach is to take it one day at a time.

Every day World War II Today examines some aspect of the war, based on an individual event, precisely eighty years later.

Waffen-SS motorcyclists lead a column of German troops during the advance into the Soviet Union, 22 June 1941.

All of the war's pivotal events are covered, but there is much more. As often as possible, I look at an event as experienced by those who were there. The personal experience of war - drawn from the diaries and memoirs of hundreds of individuals - is a central theme.

A squad of the Einsatzgruppe D shooting Jewish women in an open pit near Dubossary in Soviet Moldavia, 14 September 1941. The unit's commander, which can be seen in the background, is probably Max Drexel.

I aim to include as many different perspectives as possible - combatants from all sides, and all theatres appear. Represented here are men and women on the front line, key decision makers, workers on the home front, both holocaust perpetrators and holocaust survivors … and many, many more remarkable human stories.

The Japanese take British soldiers prisoner in Singapore during World War II, 15 February 1942

Selected daily stories are regularly collected in the ever-growing Explore the War section, where subscribers can look at an aspect of the war in more detail.

A crowd of civilians runs through a street to greet Allied troops arriving in Naples on 1 October 1943.

Low-level oblique photograph taken from Short Sunderland Mark III, EK591' U', of No. 422 Squadron RCAF after sinking the German type VIIC submarine U-625 in the Atlantic Ocean on 10 March 1944. The surviving crew manoeuvre their dinghies together for support after abandoning the sinking U-boat some 500 miles west of Land's End. None of them survived their ordeal.

And most weeks in the Sunday Feature I take a more extended look at some aspect of the war, not necessarily linked chronologically. Some personal experiences are also featured here, but a much more comprehensive range of topics, whether political, strategic, technical etc., are included.

The left wing of B-17 Flying Fortress (LG-W, serial number 42-31333), nicknamed "Wee Willie" of the 322nd Bomb Squadron, 91st Bomb Group, falls away after having suffered a direct flak hit. 10 April 1945.

Trinity, the world's first nuclear explosion, 25 milliseconds after detonation, Alamogordo Bombing Range, New Mexico, 16 July 1945

Many people tell me it’s the first thing they read every day! Sign up for the paid subscription to get every post, every day direct to your inbox. Or sign up for free access and get at least one timely, interesting story weekly.

Take a closer look at World War II Today on the About page.

1. Often attributed to Stalin.