Dan Snow's History Hit

2 December is a special date for those fascinated by Napoleon Bonaparte. Not only is this the date he crowned himself Emperor of France in 1804, but also the date of his greatest victory a year later, the Battle of Austerlitz. James Rogers from the Warfare podcast is joined by world-leading historian Andrew Roberts to dissect the conditions, tactics and aftermath of Napoleon's greatest battle. If...

While the allies reeled from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and Hitler's declaration of war on the United States, a ferocious battle was also raging across the icy steppes of Russia in early December 1941. Hitler had launched his invasion of the Soviet Union in June of that year - Operation Barbarossa- the largest and deadliest in modern history. The German army was no match for the sheer nu...

With closed borders, a totalitarian regime, electricity blackouts and widespread poverty, North Korea is a brutal place to survive; even looking at a foreign media outlet can get a North Korean citizen sent to a concentration camp. So why, in 2011 did leader Kim Jong Il allow Jean Lee, a celebrated American journalist to set up a news bureau in Pyongyang? In today's episode, Jean is Dan's gui...

On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service launched a surprise military strike upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii. Just before 8 a.m., the base was attacked by 353 Imperial Japanese aircraft as fighters, level, dive bombers, and torpedo bombers descended on the base in two waves. More than 2,400 Americans died in the atta...

November 30 2021, Bridgetown, fifty-five years since Barbados’ 1966 Independence, the Royal Standard flag representing the Queen was lowered and Dame Sandra Mason was sworn in as the president of Barbados. The handover ceremony marked the birth of the world’s newest republic. The most easterly of the Caribbean Islands, Barbados was inhabited by its indigenous peoples prior to the European colonisa...

HBO's Band of Brothers remains one of the greatest mini-series ever made. 20 years after the award-winning series debuted, Dan speaks to Robin Laing who played Edward 'Babe' Heffron about life on set, how they created an entire frozen forest inside an air hanger during a sweltering August and his close relationship with the real Babe Heffron. They're joined by writer John Orloff who tell...

Over 100 years of conflict, two warring nations, five monarchs on either side and countless casualties in a dispute over claims to the throne: in this episode, Gone Medieval's Matt Lewis unravels the numbers. He takes us through the biggest turning points of the Hundred Years’ War chronologically and gives us some insight into the personalities involved on the English and French sides.  ...

In a special episode of the podcast, Dan and his team hit the road after receiving a call about the discovery of a hoard of rare Iron Age coins, at a secret location in the New Forest. At the St Barbe Museum in Lymington, Dan speaks to the detectorists who made the discovery of a lifetime and to Professor Emeritus Tony King about what these coins and their unusual imagery tell us about Britain's C...

Please note that this episode contains the use of explicit language right from the very beginning.   Ridley Scott, a prolific director and producer, is responsible for some of the most critically acclaimed films of all time. While "Alien" (1979) and "Blade Runner" (1982), are regarded as significantly influential sci-fi films, "Gladiator" (2000) and "Black Hawk Down" (2001), to name just...

Actor and former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger joins Dan in conversation on today's podcast about Winston Churchill, who was born on this day in 1874. They talk about Arnie's admiration for the former British Prime Minister as a leader and a thinker, how he modelled his own governorship on Churchill while in office from 2003-2011, and how he ended up in California in the first place...

Winston Churchill was many things a writer, politician, journalist, painter but the defining aspect of his career was as a war leader. Warfare infused his life from its very beginning due to his relation to the Duke of Marlborough and a childhood re-enacting the Battle of Waterloo in the ground of Blenheim Palace. As a young man, he saw conflict at first hand both as a soldier and a reporter in Cu...

The result of his complicated legacy, the death of South Africa's last apartheid president, F W de Klerk, on November 11 2021 generated a flood of differing assessments. De Klerk wrote himself into the history of South Africa on February 2 1990, when he announced the unbanning of the African National Party (ANC) and other liberation movements, as well as the release of Nelson Mandela from prison....

From Gladiator to Rome Total War to Star Wars, today the Praetorians are one of the most distinctive military units of Imperial Rome. It was their job to protect the Roman Emperor and his household, a task for which they hold a somewhat ‘chequered’ record (especially when we focus in on the Praetorian Prefects). But what do we know about this unit’s origins? How did this powerful force become prot...

Thomas Kendrick was at the very centre of British Intelligence operations throughout the first half of the twentieth century. He combined a public face of an English gentleman whilst privately masterminding MI6's spy networks throughout Europe. Perhaps his finest hour came in the run-up to the Second World War when stationed in Vienna as a British passport officer he issued thousands of visas and...

Over a million Indian soldiers served during the First World War, but many of the records of the soldiers who fought valiantly for the Allied cause had been lost - hiding their stories from history. Until now. Discovered in a basement of a museum in Lahore, Pakistan, where they had been left unread for 97 years, these newly recovered documents have allowed historians to put the men of the Indian A...

The British Monarchy is a thread that has run throughout the history of Britain but over the centuries it has been a constantly evolving institution. From the warrior kings of early England steeped in violence to the largely symbolic constitutional monarch of today, Tracy Borman helps Dan chart how the monarchy has changed and what roles it continues to play. They discuss the best and worst of Bri...

Everyone who was alive at the time remembers the day President John F. Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas, Texas on the 22 November 1963. On this anniversary Dan gives a moment-by-moment account of the day that shocked the world and speaks to Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post journalist and leading authority on the subject. They discuss the aftermath of the assassination and what the public...

When and why did we start keeping hamsters as pets? When was sign language first used in the UK? If you were planning a bank heist, which historical figures would you call on? These are just some of the burning historical questions that public historian and podcaster, Greg Jenner, is tackling in his new book,  Ask A Historian: 50 Surprising Answers to Things You Always Wanted to Know .In this...

At the end of the World War One, around one million citizens of the British Empire had been lost, and the whereabouts of about half of these was unknown. Families could be waiting weeks, months or years to hear whether their loved ones were imprisoned, wounded, missing or dead, if they heard at all. This was the task of the searchers. In the years following the war, these volunteer investigators c...

Hoaxes and magic were widespread in 18th century Britain. From a woman who claimed to birth rabbits, to a man who said he’d climb into a bottle in front of a live audience, many of the claims sound laughably unbelievable to us today. But at the time, these sorts of hoaxes were widely influential, even drawing in celebrities of the day such as Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Swift. This episode, Dan...

During World War One, Britain and its empire mobilised soldiers on a hitherto unprecedented scale. That required a huge logistical effort to feed, equip, house and train them. No place reflects these efforts better than Salisbury Plains. Now mainly sleepy villages and farmland, these plains were once home to tens of thousands of men and women who descended on the camps to prepare for war. In this...

This episode of the podcast comes from a show called ‘ We Didn’t Start The Fire ’ which is a modern history podcast inspired by the lyrics of the legend that is Billy Joel. In this episode, Dan chats with the wonderful Katie Puckrik and Tom Fordyce about the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, which took place in 1954 in Vietnam. If any place on Earth symbolises the end of the European Empire, it’s here. If...

From the great battles such as Dunkirk, historical titans such Alexander the Great and historical oddities such as Henry VIII's enemas Dan speaks to author and historian Dominic Sandbrook about what it is that sparks a passion for history. They also discuss the challenges of writing and podcasting about history and Dominic's new series of books Adventures in Time which aim to bring the past alive...

As the country remembers the sacrifice made by those men and women who have given their lives and health in serving the nation Dan is joined by Sir Max Hastings to examine the ever-changing face of warfare. His new book Soldiers: Great Stories of War and Peace examines not just the heroism of those who have fought wars over the centuries but also the suffering and squalor that conflict brings. Sir...

The Spanish infanta Catalina of Aragon was raised to be a Queen, betrothed at the age of three to the heir apparent of the English throne, Arthur Prince of Wales. Eight years after Arthur's death, she became the first of Henry VIII's six wives. Catalina's mother - Queen Isabella I of Castile - was the most influential person in her life. Witness at an early age the expulsion of Jews, the defeat of...