A compilation of the latest Witness History programmes.

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. Our guest is World War Two military historian and archivist Elisabeth Shipton. We start by concentrating on two events from the last year of the Second World War.Exercise Tiger took place in April 1944 in preparation for the D-Day landings of Allied forces in Normandy. But during that rehearsal a German fleet attacked and about 749 US servicemen died. We hear remarkable archive testimony from Adolf Hitler's secretary who witnessed his last days in a bunker in Berlin before he took his own life. Plus, 20 years since the video sharing platform, YouTube, was first launched.We hear about the apartheid-era production of the play Othello in South Africa, which broke racial boundaries.And finally, how in 1985, Coca-Cola messed up a reworking of the drink's classic formula.Contributors: Paul Gerolstein - survivor of Exercise Tiger (from archive audio gathered by Laurie Bolton, from the UK Exercise Tiger Memorial, and the journalist, David Fitzgerald).Traudl Junge - Adolf Hitler's secretary.Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen - on the start of YouTube.Dame Janet Suzman - on the staging of Othello in 1987.Mark Pendergrast - author.(Photo: US troops ahead of D-Day. Credit: Keystone/ Getty Images)

The History Hour

Secret D-Day rehearsal and YouTube begins

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. It’s 50 years since soldiers of the communist Khmer Rouge party stormed into the capital, Phnom Penh. It was the start of a four year reign of terror which resulted in up to two million people being killed. We hear two stories from people affected by the regime. Our guest is journalist and author, Elizabeth Becker. She is one of the foremost authorities on the history of Cambodia, and one of the few westerners to have interviewed Pol Pot.The scientist who invented the white LED lightbulb in 1993 tells his story.Plus, the Bali Nine: young Australians facing the death penalty for drug smuggling and, Spain’s historic link to World Book Day.Contributors:Youk Chang – lived through the Khmer Rouge regime
Aki Ra - child soldier of Cambodia 
Elizabeth Becker – journalist and author
Professor Shuji Nakamura – inventor of the white LED lightbulb
Bishop Tim Harris – friend of one of the Bali Nine families
Pere Vicens - book publisher and one of the creators of World Book Day(Photo: The fall of Phnom Penh in 1975. Credit: Roland Neveu/LightRocket via Getty Images)

The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and World Book Day

8th May 1945 was a day of rejoicing in Britain, the US and many other countries: Germany had surrendered, and World War II was over, at least in Europe.Yet it was not a day of celebration for everyone: for the vanquished Germans, it marked the end of bombings and of Nazi rule. But it was also a time of deprivation and chaos, fear and soul-searching. Millions of ethnic Germans had fled their homes to escape the approaching Red Army. In this documentary, Lore Wolfson Windemuth, whose own father grew up under Nazi rule, unfolds the stories of six ordinary Germans who lived through that extraordinary time, through their memoirs and diaries. Amongst others, we hear from:Siegbert Stümpke, a 12-year-old schoolboy who was used as a runner by the German Wehrmacht in the final days of the war;Lore Ehrich, a young mother from East Prussia (now Poland) who had to flee with two small children across a frozen lagoon;Hans Rosenthal, who was Jewish and had survived the Holocaust hidden in a Berlin allotment colony before very nearly getting shot by the Soviet liberators;Melita Maschmann, who got hooked on Nazi ideology aged 15, became a youth leader and took years to acknowledge her share of the responsibility for the crimes committed by the National Socialists. Narrator: Lore Wolfson Windemuth
Producer / Editor: Kristine Pommert
Research: Katie HarrisA CTVC production for the BBC World Service.

Bonus: Defeated

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. Our guest is Dr Katrin Paehler, Professor of modern European history at Illinois State University.First, a journalist describes how he accompanied Hitler through the embers of the Reichstag fire in 1933.Then, the harrowing recollections of a doctor who saved survivors of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.Next, a woman describes how she was caught between her job and her clan during the UN's disastrous Somalia mission in the 1990s.A Liberian woman explains how she helped end the country's civil war.Finally, how Germany's 'death zone' became a natural paradise.Contributors:Sefton Delmer - British journalist at the Reichstag fire.
Dr David Tuggle - surgeon at the Oklahoma City bombing.
Halima Ismail Ibrahim - former UN worker in Somalia.
Leymah Gbowee - Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace.
Professor Kai Frobel - co-founder of Germany's 'Green Belt'.(Photo: Reichstag building on fire. Credit: Corbis via Getty Images)

BBC World Service

The History Hour by BBC World Service

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