Lawrence Rees recounts horrors of WWII [audio 1st 14min]

Laurence Rees discusses his new book, Their Darkest Hour: People Tested to the Extreme in WWII (Ebury Press, 2007), with David Musgrove, editor of BBC History Magazine. Rees describes ordinary people who made terrible choices in the Second World War, such as Zinaida Pytkina, a female member of the infamous SMERSH department of the Soviet Army, who felt joy when killing a German prisoner; and Petras Zelionka, a Lithuanian who shot Jewish men, women and children for the Nazis. Rees won the British Book Award for History Book of the Year 2006 for his international bestseller Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution' and created the acclaimed television series Nazis: A Warning from History.