Barbara Necek

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, thousands of documents were hastily shredded by the dreaded GDR political police. 16,000 bags filled with six million pieces of paper were found. Thanks to the meticulous work of technology, the destinies of men and women who had been spied on and recorded without their knowledge could be reconstructed.

In 2016, an album containing 250 previously unseen photos of Nazi officials was discovered in the USA by Stephan Hördler, a prominent Holocaust historian, who immediately understood the album's inestimable value. The album brings together photographs of a "group of friends," all from the same region of Germany, all of whom became SS men. From 1928 to 1943, the photo album allows us to follow their journey. Hördler conducted the investigation, comparing the photos in the album with other, better-known ones, the faces of these men with those of concentration camp officials, and ultimately revealed that it was at Lichtencburg that these young men were trained, a "school" for future camp executioners, and the bonds of camaraderie and informal network that would allow them to help each other, even after the war.

When the long nightmare ended, most German women were perceived as passive witnesses to the horrors of the Nazi regime, but actually the leaders of the Third Reich used millions of them as an essential cog of their criminal machinery: they were members of the Nazi party, reproductive mothers, contributors to the war effort, factory workers, volunteers as guards in the death camps.

The gruesome story of the Jewish ghettos during the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe in the dark days of World War II, based on the records written by their inhabitants, who bear witness to the human tragedy of the Shoah; but also to an indomitable will to live.

Starting in 1940, 80,000 women left France to work in factories in Nazi Germany, encouraged by the Vichy government. These young, urban women often left more out of social precariousness than ideology. However, upon their return to France in 1945, these "volunteer" workers were branded as collaborators. As a result, many remained silent, and their story, considered taboo, fell into oblivion. This historical investigation combines personal drama with documents and archives that have never been examined before.

The real dream of the American pastor Martin Luther King was never limited to civil rights. He hoped for a just America, where poverty would no longer have a place. Social equality was for him the only guarantee of a true emancipation. During the last four years of his life, he mobilized all his energy to realize this "other dream". But there were many obstacles: he was scorned by white, racist America, abandoned by the political class, but also by some of his own people, who decided to turn their backs on the principle of non-violence.

During World War II, the photographer Francisco Boix and other Spanish Republican prisoners of the Mauthausen concentration camp, where 120,000 people died, managed not only to survive their indescribable experience, but also, after the war, to reveal to the world what really happened in that hell, saving from destruction thousands of official photographs taken by the SS.

In Russia, love, sex and family are personal matters. But increasingly, they are also political ones: Putin himself is a vocal proponent of patriarchy and large families. This is especially challenging for women, young people and the LGBTQIA community. Through a steady dose of propaganda, the state is attempting to reinforce outdated gender roles - in part, to combat the country's shrinking population. But the majority of Russian marriages fail. The most common causes include the husband's alcoholism, domestic violence or infidelity. Yet single mothers receive little support, protection, or even recognition from the state. The LGBTQIA community, or couples who do not fit into the "traditional" family model, face stigmatization and violence. But there are pockets of resistance. In Moscow, for example, a small group of young people is organizing a sexual revolution of sorts. Their goal? To break free of both the Christian Orthodox Church and the Russian state’s rigid dogmas.

Coming from all social strata, a priory model citizens of the Third Reich, one thing unites these women: hatred against the Hitler regime and the desire to end the Führer.

With their long working hours, cultural obsession with productivity, and high-stakes schooling system, South Koreans live life in the fast lane. Everyone has the same aim: to be successful and to beat the competition. Thanks in part to this hard...

The year after the downfall of the USSR, President Boris Yeltsin declared: “the imperial Russia is over”. A long era that started with Ivan the Terrible… 10 years later, his successor, Vladimir Putin answered him by stating: “The downfall of the Soviet Union was the biggest catastrophe of the 20th century”. Behind official positions, what are the real relationships between Moscow and its former satellites? Are they the fruit of a shared past or the sign of a new form of imperialism? Do Russians want to rebuild a new glacis, as revenge for the 1991 humiliation? Or recreate a new empire?

Weekly current affairs show

La Case du Siècle is a French television program launched in 2010 and broadcast on France 5. Hosted by Fabrice d'Almeida, it airs documentaries every Sunday that aim to shed light on the history of the 20th century, both in France and around the world. Through these documentaries, viewers can deepen their knowledge of a specific subject or simply discover a particular era. *La Case du siècle* offers an in-depth look at the events that changed the course of history.

The history of military tanks unfolds in a documentary series that traces their role in history and geopolitics from World War I to the 21st century.