Unknown Warriors

The historian Keith Lowe, author of the best-selling The Savage Continent , discusses what happened in the aftermath of the Second World War, which left a world in ruins, tens of millions of refugees, and a slide into anarchy and chaos. As the world was slowly rebuilt, this aspect of the war was forgotten - but it had a lasting impact. The music in this episode is from Ida Pinkert's 'Four Songs',...

Professor John Bodnar, author of The 'Good War' in American Memory , discusses America's World War Two. The United States came out of the conflict as a victorious superpower. But this has encouraged a narrative of American exceptionalism which has not lived up to critical scrutiny, with historians revealing a divided and often violent country during the war years. The music in this episode is from...

Professor Geoffrey Roberts explains why the Soviet-German conflict on the Eastern front was the decisive theatre of the Second World War: without it, Nazi Germany would certainly have taken much longer to defeat. Despite this, outside military accounts, the Red Army's struggle has been overshadowed in Western narratives by the Anglo-American war effort. Professor Roberts corrects the balance. The...

HALIK KOCHANSKI is the author of the award-winning Resistance , a sweeping account of the underground war across Nazi-occupied Europe. She tells a much more complex story than usual of subversion, SOE, partisans and civil war, as well as desperate Jewish defiance. The music in this episode is from Ida Pinkert's 'Four Songs', played by the Nimrod Ensemble of Berlin as part of the Lebensmelodien pro...

PROFESSOR HANS VAN DE VEN reveals a WW2 narrative that will be unfamiliar to most of us - China's epic war of resistance against Japan in the years 1937-45 and how it created the Communist giant that has become the global superpower of today. The music in this episode is from Ida Pinkert's 'Four Songs', played by the Nimrod Ensemble of Berlin as part of the Lebensmelodien project, which seeks to r...

PROFESSOR CHRISTIAN GERLACH, author of The Extermination of the European Jews , revises the dominant narrative of the Holocaust to explain a phenomenon that was far more complex and far-reaching than has been previously understood. The music in this episode is from Ida Pinkert's 'Four Songs', played by the Nimrod Ensemble of Berlin as part of the Lebensmelodien project, which seeks to rediscover t...

Social historian LIZZIE COLLINGHAM, author of the ground-breaking The Taste of War, explains how food and its delivery was critical to the conduct of WW2 - and could be a matter of life or death. The music in this episode is from Ida Pinkert's 'Four Songs', played by the Nimrod Ensemble of Berlin as part of the Lebensmelodien project, which seeks to rediscover the lost music of composers affected...

The American historian IAN W. TOLL, author of the monumental Pacific War Trilogy , offers new insights into the conflict in the Pacific, which has too often been mis-remembered as an army-led narrative when the real victories were won at sea and in the air. The music in this episode is from Ida Pinkert's 'Four Songs', played by the Nimrod Ensemble of Berlin as part of the Lebensmelodien project, w...

PROFESSOR RICHARD OVERY explores the global context of WW2 to show how it transforms our understanding of the conflict - in particular, how it was lost and won. The music in this episode is from Ida Pinkert's 'Four Songs', played by the Nimrod Ensemble of Berlin as part of the Lebensmelodien project, which seeks to rediscover the lost music of composers affected by the Holocaust ( www.lebensmelodi...

PROFESSOR DAVID EDGERTON shows how the traditional narrative of Britain's Second World War is seriously misleading. Britain was the richest nation in Europe in 1939 and lay at the centre of a huge global empire. It also, despite appeasement in the 1930s, maintained a thriving military-industrial-scientific complex throughout the inter-war period. These advantages would enable the nation to fight a...

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