Der Spiegel: World War II articles

Germany's occupation of Poland is one of the darkest chapters of World War II. Some 6 million people, almost 18 percent of the Polish population, were killed during the Nazi reign of terror that saw mass executions, forced evictions and enslavement.

The myth that the Nazi-era German armed forces, the Wehrmacht, was not involved in war crimes persisted for decades after the war. Now two German researchers have destroyed it once and for all. Newly published conversations between German prisoners of war, secretly recorded by the Allies, reveal horrifying details of violence against civilians, rape and genocide.

After Hitler's war had been lost, millions of ethnic Germans in regions that are today part of Eastern Europe were expelled -- often under horrendous circumstances. It has been proven that at least 473,000 people died as they fled or were expelled. The Nazis' crimes had been far worse, but the suffering of ethnic Germans was immense.

More than 65 years after the end of World War II, tensions can still flare up between Germany and Poland. In a SPIEGEL interview, Polish historian Krzysztof Ruchniewicz discusses the postwar "resettlement" of ethnic Germans, improving relations between Germans and Poles and changing attitudes toward the German past of many Polish towns and cities.

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