Bitesize Battles

6 months after the infamous Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, Admiral Yamamoto aimed to lure the American carriers to Midway and destroy them once and for all.  Midway would have been taken, and perhaps even Hawaii. Along with a string of other  islands it would have created a Pacific wall over which the Americans would have to bloodily clamber if they ever wanted to win the war. But the repercuss...

The Battle of Jutland was the shuddering earthquake that released the seismic tension of the Anglo-German naval arms race of the last decade. What was at stake was the blockade and starvation of the vanquished. The German High Seas Fleet aimed to destroy a large enough part of the British Grand Fleet to allow it to break out to the Atlantic where it would effectively blockade the commerce and supp...

If there was one battle the world might have wished had never happened, it might be Tsushima in 1905. This one clash set dominos falling which would see Russia become the Soviet Union, World War I erupt, and the Pacific theatre of World War 2 explode at Pearl Harbour in 1941. In its own right it was a colossal clash of 16 battleships, 32 cruisers, 29 destroyers and multiple other warships. It anno...

This is the battle more than any other which confirmed that Britannia rules the waves, and set in stone the reputation of Admiral Horatio Nelson, even at the moment of his own death. In October 1805, 27 British ships of the line took on 33 of the French and Spanish Empires. Waiting for the outcome was Napoleon, desperate to be rid of the Royal Navy so he could invade Britain and take out the peren...

As the Ottoman Empire spread inexorably across Arabia, Persia, North Africa and the Levant, it seemed nothing could stop it. It even shook Europe to the core when Ottoman cannon blasted holes through Constantinople's previously impregnable walls, causing the final collapse of the 1000-year Byzantine Empire. Now, in 1571, with Venetian Cyprus on the brink of falling, Pope Pius V calls together a Ho...

The rising might of the Roman Republic was about to clash with the centuries-old power of Carthage, the greatest naval power the western Mediterranean had ever known. The Battle of Cape Ecnomus in 256 BC remains the largest naval battle in history, by the number of men involved. 300,000 fought in 680 ships for dominance. Part of the First Punic War, the battle would eventually lead to the rise of...

September 480 BC. Up to 500,000 Persians were rampaging through Greece, having overwhelmed Leonidas and his Spartans at Thermopylae the month before. Several major cities had been taken and destroyed, including - unthinkably - Athens. The Greeks had just one chance left to save southern Greece. Hold the Isthmus of Corinth where the narrow neck of land connecting the Peloponnese offered the only ho...

Why do everyday people risk life and limb by going to fight in deadly combat? To put your body and mind in the midst of flying arrows or shrapnel, to risk the hacking of axes or the sights of a sniper, to sail on an ancient bireme or WW2-era battleship when there's a good chance you won't be coming out of it alive, is mortally terrifying. We explore the motivations of the men and women who often g...

The relationship between nations and their geography has shaped warfare for thousands of years, from the borders of the Roman Empire to modern day Russia.  Keeping enemies behind natural defensive frontiers, ensuring access to vital resources, and controlling the vital land routes and waterways - all these and more have caused and continue to cause savage conflict. We cover the Greco-Persian Wars,...

Revenge is one of the most formidable causes of war around. It has sparked bitter conflicts over thousands of years, and thousands of miles. From Boudicca's anti-Roman raising of the British tribes to the modern-day War on Terror, and the merry-go-round of Franco-German revenge relations to Genghis Khan obliterating an entire Empire which killed some of his traders, revenge has caused and continue...

It has fired imaginations and inspired epic poetry. It's also brought down nations and empires. In this episode we cover one of the most primal causes of human conflict - men's fight over women. Its older than history itself, and we take a look at everything from the destruction of the Huron, Troy and the Ming Dynasty of China, to Mark Antony and Cleopatra and the Sabine women of early Rome. Men's...

Fighting for freedom is one of the supremely powerful motivators behind conflict. Whether it’s slaves rising up, as they did under Spartacus in the Roman Republic and Toussaint L'Ouverture in Haiti, American and French revolutionaries throwing out the established order, or Geronimo in a heroic fight for the liberty of his people, freedom has galvanised and enthused the oppressed. And we explore wh...

Whether it's for living space, resources, religion, culture, power, wealth or simply protecting your home, humans like to fight over land. From the largest invasion in history, Operation Barbarossa, to the ongoing Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, we explore history's lessons on why land has always been one of major causes of Why We Fight.   Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast...

In their power to spark wars, ideologies can be just as powerful as religions. Once the Scientific Revolution and the European Enlightenment began a societal awakening about human existence and our relationship with our rulers, political revolutions swept much of the world - usually violently. Come with us as we discuss ideology's impact on war and conflict, in national revolutions and internation...

Religious rivalry is behind some of history's most intractable and bitter conflicts. Join us as we explore some of them, and why religion looks set to continue to create hotbed's of conflict for years to come.   Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, and follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bitesizebattles

From farmland to gold mines, and spices to oil, competition over resources has been one of the single greatest sources of human conflict for millennia. And it looks set to continue to be. We'll explore the motivations behind why resources create conflict and some of the empires, wars and tragedies this competition has created.   Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, leave us good...

Why do we fight? Why go to war? This series looks at 9 of history's biggest motivations and causes for conflict, and a final episode on the psychology of the individual and what drives people to risk life and limb by going to war. In this first episode we look at the power of Ego, and how time and again it has propelled leaders, and the men and women who follow them, to cause nations and empires t...

William Wallace's victory at Stirling Bridge had shattered the English psyche, but Bannockburn was the turning point. Now Scotland had to push a final time to win the independence she had been fighting for, for so long. But Edward II's England was riven with dissent, and powerful factions were about to rise up and demand firmer action against the Scots. The die was cast and Scotland's freedom was...

After Longshanks' used the world's largest ever trebuchet, War Wolf, to batter Stirling Castle into submission, he had captured William Wallace and had him brutally executed in London in 1305. Once again, it seemed that Scotland's destiny as an independent Kingdom was doomed. But inspired by Wallace's stand and appalled by Longshanks' brutality, there rose a new and even greater leader - Robert th...

Longshanks seems in control of Scotland - he has the towns and cities, he has the castles, and he even has the King. But soon to rise would be a Scottish Knight, William Wallace, for whom living under English domination was unbearable. He and other leaders, like Andrew de Moray, roused the country to rebellion and gathered an army with which he fought the English at Stirling Bridge and Falkirk. Th...

The opening episode of the rollercoaster ride of the Scottish Wars of Independence. On a pitch-dark night, Scotland's King Alexander III urged his horse to ever-greater speeds, galloping across vales and glens in a wind-driven storm. He was hurrying to see his young and beautiful Queen, Yolande of Dreux. Alexander was 44, she just 22. It was her birthday the next day, and it's likely that Alexande...

This is the season finale, the climactic finish to this epic story of the Fall of the Roman Empire. While the West was hanging from a thread after the Vandals had taken North Africa, the Eastern Roman Empire wasn't so quick to let it fade away. The Eastern Emperor, Leo, spend 100,000 pounds of gold putting together an immense armada, and sent it straight to Vandal Africa. At the Battle of Cape Bon...

Now comes the body-blow that would rock the Western Roman Empire on its heels. The Vandals, part of the original Rhine invasion of 406, now surged out of Spain and made a beeline for Roman North Africa. North Africa was Rome's bread basket and money-maker - any threat to it would create a food and financial crisis from which it would be nearly impossible to recover. Find out what happened and how...

Part 2 of our epic episode on Attila the Hun and his titanic showdown with the Western Roman Empire on the Catalaunian Plains in 451. The fate of both the Hunnic and Roman Empires rested on its outcome. Come and join the action here at Bitesize Battles.   Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, and follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bitesizebattles

Part 1 of our epic episode on Attila the Hun and his titanic showdown with the Western Roman Empire on the Catalaunian Plains in 451. The fate of both the Hunnic and Roman Empires rested on its outcome. Come and join the action here at Bitesize Battles.   Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, and follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bitesizebattles