The BBC have published a very interesting timeline, exposing the chronology of Hitler's rise to power, the genocides committed and the downfall of the Third Reich. This is even more interesting, I think, as a lot of people, especially young ones, say they don't know much about it. See the bottom paragraphs of this post on more of that.

This timeline will take you through the 12 years of Nazi rule, allowing you to experience events as they happened to those who lived through them, without the benefit of hindsight or a view of the future.

Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany persecuted and killed vast numbers of people who did not conform to its ideas of racial and biological 'purity'.

It's available both as flash, and non-flash, here.

Facts from a recent BBC survey showing how little people know of the atrocities committed at WWII. A snippet from this page, courtesy of the BBC:

With a number of recent high profile Hollywood films such as Schindler's List and The Pianist and iconic books such as The Diary of Anne Frank it is easy to assume that everyone is familiar with the Holocaust and Auschwitz.

Yet a recent BBC survey suggests that almost half the adult population (45%) claim to have never even heard of Auschwitz.

Amongst women and people aged under 35 the figure is even higher at 60%.

Even among those who have heard of Auschwitz, 70% felt that they did not know a great deal about the subject.

Most of them (76%) were unaware of its roots as a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners; the majority (74%) did not know that people other than Jews were killed there and only a few recognised the name of the camp commandant or knew who finally liberated the camp at the end of the war.