Painting of a European marketplace

Europe

An 18th century village in Germany. Strict laws regulated the goods that each social class could buy. (DeAgostini/Getty Images)

Beware what you buy: the goods German citizens were forbidden to consume

The Golden Coast

The LibraryYe Olde Travel Guide: Mainz 1455. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

It was in this villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee that one of history’s most infamous conferences was staged. (Getty)

The Wannsee Conference

A statue of Joan of Arc in the home where she is thought to have been born, in Domrémy-La-Pucelle, eastern France. (PATRICK HERTZOG/AFP/Getty Images)

Where history happenedJoan of Arc. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

An illustration of Nikephoros II. (Photo by INTERFOTO/Alamy Stock Photo)

A big day in history: the all-conquering Byzantine emperor Nikephoros II loses his head

Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, the leader of a network of French resistance agents during the Second World War. (Photo by AFP/Getty Images)

My history hero: Marie-Madeleine Fourcade (1909–89). This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Guy Gibson (centre) with members of his squadron. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

The triumph of the Dambusters

Illustration by Jonty Clark

Ye olde travel guide: Pompeii 79 Ad. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The prisoner of war camp Stalag Luft III. Famous for being the location of the ‘Great Escape’, it was home to Ron Last for ten months. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The long road home

Francisco Pizarro seizing the Inca of Peru John Everett Millais. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

A big day in history: Francisco Pizarro's tiny Spanish army takes a mighty Incan leader hostage

Dambusters. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

English soldiers in the ruins of Palmyre in charge of taking over the Syrian Territory occupied by Vichy’s France. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

The untold Second World War

Illustration by Jonty Clark

Ye olde travel guide: Kiev 978 AD. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Vasily Grossman with the Red Army in Schwerin, Germany, 1945. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

A war of words

Illustration by Jonty Clark

Ye olde travel guide: Venice 1500. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Being a British Missionary and troubles in Ireland. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Hans Litten (centre) in court while representing communists, 25 August 1932. Litten’s decision to subpoena Hitler a year earlier was to cost him his life. (Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Hitler in the dock

BBC History Magazine

French celebrity

In his last official photo, Adolf Hitler leaves the safety of his bunker to award decorations to members of Hitler Youth. (Photo by Keystone Features/Getty Images)

Why did the Nazis fight to the death?

Greek slavery, Victorian heroism and Dan Snow on cars. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A poster depicting a First World War soldier musing over having caught a venereal disease while on furlough.(Photo by David Pollack/Corbis via Getty Images)

Sex and the First World War: the Tommies who visited brothels

Back to school and Hitler's schemes for war. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Clean-up crews salvaging what they can from the ruins of buildings in Hornsey, a north London suburb, 1944. (Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Hitler's secret weapon

A detail of a funerary monument from Athens, Greece depicting a squire taming a horse. Holding elaborate funerals was one of the many ways in which aristocrats broadcast their great wealth. (Photo By DEA/G.DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini/Getty Images)

The trouble with luxury

A Saracen attack on Crusaders, from the French manuscript 'Chroniques de Saint Denis', c1200. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Traders and crusaders

Illustration by Jonty Clark

Ye olde travel guide: Constantinople 976. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A portrait of Prince Charles Edward Stuart (better known as Bonnie Prince Charlie), the grandson of James II and VII. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The LibraryWhere history happened: The Jacobites. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Operation Barbarossa, which began on 22 June 1941, saw more than three million German troops surge into the Soviet Union along a front of more than 1,000 miles. (Photo by Art Media/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Barbarossa and Britain. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The Saint-Quentin canal, part of the Germans’ Hindenburg Line, which the Allies broke through on Sunday 29 September 1918. (Photo by 2nd Lt. D McLellan/ IWM via Getty Images)

The LibraryWhy didn’t the Allies march on Berlin in 1918?