In the early years of World War II, Josef Stalin issued an order that made the Soviet Union the first country in the world to allow female pilots to fly in combat. Led by Marina Raskova, these three regiments, including the 588th Night Bomber Regiment--nicknamed the "night witches"--faced intense pressure and obstacles both in the sky and on the ground. Some of these young women perished in flames. Many of them were in their teens when they went to...

A gripping, authoritative narrative history of the siege of Leningrad from 1941-1944, interwoven with indelible personal accounts of daily siege life drawn from diarists and memoirists on both sides.

Americans call the Second World War "The Good War." But before it even began, America's wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens—and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war's end, both the German and the Soviet killing sites fell behind the iron curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness.

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"[Harro Schulze-Boysen and Libertas Haas-Heye] were leading a network of ani-fascist fighters that stretched across Berlin's bohemian underworld. Poets, philosophers, workers, and artists, they were all freethinkers united by a desire to bring down Hitler at any cost. Harro himself infiltrated German intelligence and began funneling Nazi battle plans to the Allies... Libertas used her position at the propaganda ministry to begin collecting evidence...

"Sisters Vera and Marya were brought up as good Soviets: obedient despite hardships of poverty and tragedy, committed to communist ideals, and loyal to Stalin. Several years after fighting on the Eastern front, both women find themselves deep in the mire of conflicts shaping a new world order in 1947 Berlin. When Marya, an interpreter, gets entangled in Vera's cryptic web of deceit and betrayal, she must make desperate choices to survive--and protect...

"The little-known story of a spy on the atom-bomb project in World War II who had top security clearance--American born, Soviet trained, he was never even suspected until after his information was in Soviet hands and he was safe in the USSR. It's LeCarre and "The Americans" for real"--

Documentary about the Blockade of Leningrad during World War II. The film presents an emotional picture of the struggle of some survivors, whose personal memories tend to be overshadowed by the heroic myth held up by the authorities. That myth is in painful contrast with the horrific truth they were forbidden to mention all these years.

In 1945 Russia, those who own German shepherds are considered traitors, but thirteen-year-old Mikhail and his family are determined to keep the dog a dying man brought them, while his classmate Katia strives to learn his secret.

World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But Hitler was not in power when the conflict erupted in Asia--and he was certainly dead before it ended. His armies did not fight in multiple theaters, his empire did not span the Eurasian continent, and he did not inherit any of the spoils of war. That central role belonged to Josef Stalin. The Second World War was...