Warfare

In the shadows of Montgomery, Alexander and Eisenhower, Field Marshal Alan Brooke’s extraordinary contributions as a strategist and leader have been largely forgotten over time. His experiences stretching across the First and Second World War, he held an incredible list of accolades and was one of Churchill’s key advisors leading Britain to victory over the Nazis. In this episode, former paratroop...

158 years ago, the Unionist and Confederate armies were on their second day of fighting at the town of Gettysburg. The battle was arguably the tipping point for the American Civil War and involved an artillery bombardment which may have been the loudest man-made event until the detonation of the first atomic bomb at Alamogordo. But what actually happened at Gettysburg? To take us through the event...

105 years ago, it was the eve of the Battle of the Somme. This is regularly remembered as an Anglo-French offensive, and the contributions of Irish soldiers are often overlooked. In this episode, Dan Snow was joined by Heather Jones to discuss the experience of Irish soldiers at one of the bloodiest battles in history. Heather is Professor in Modern and Contemporary European History at UCL. © IWM...

War! Something so ruinous has the power to both bring communities together whilst conversely ripping them apart. Many have taken place, but why are some remembered more than others? From The Battle of Culloden to The Second World War, we examine the legacies and myths that fire our understanding of war. In this episode, James is joined by Beatrice Heuser, Professor of International Relations at th...

After 6 years of war, countries around the world were in a state of ruin in 1945, not least the losing side. The people of Germany had been under the rule of the Nazi party since 1933, and now they sought a way forward under the watchful eyes of the Allies. In this episode, hear Harald Jähner exploring the transformational decade after the Second World War in Germany. Harald and James discuss the...

Lyn Macdonald is revered as the great chronicler of the human experience of the Western Front. She recorded interviews with more veterans of the First World War than any other. In this talk at Chalke Valley Hitory Festival in 2017, Lyn returned to the subject of her first book, the Battle of Passchendaele. She brings us stories of the battle of July until November 1917, bringing rare insights and...

Beginning with his birth in 1915 in Sierra Leone, the life of John Henry Smythe OBE MBE is almost unbelievable. From becoming a navigator in the RAF during the Second World War, to being held captive in a German POW camp, to being the Senior Officer making key decisions about the futures of the people aboard HMT Empire Windrush and becoming Attorney General for Sierra Leone; the twists and turns i...

After 12 years of battles against the French Republic’s various neighbours, this was Napoleon’s final stand. Although many associate its name with a Eurovision winning hit from 1974, the Battle of Waterloo was in fact devastating to the Republic and its Allied opposition. 24 thousand French and 19 thousand Allied soldiers died on this battlefield. On the 206 anniversary of the battle, Zack White r...

Twenty years after it first aired, Band of Brothers continues to be remembered as a remarkably accurate portrayal of a US parachute infantry company in the European Theater during the Second World War. Damian Lewis is an English actor and producer who played U.S. Army Major Richard Winters in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. At the Chalke Valley History Festival in 2016, he discussed the makin...

Erwin Rommel, the ‘Desert Fox’, known as such because from 1940 until the end of 1942, he led his troops across the deserts of North Africa and towards the Middle East with an often uncanny sense of his enemies' plans and weaknesses. In this episode, we uncover the secret to this success. Gershom Gorenberg has been investigating the Nazi’s use of intelligence, and how codebreaking was eventually u...

As the Allies advanced through Europe in early 1945, the Nazis embarked on one final escalation of the Holocaust. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners, already weak and starving from their treatment in the camp system, were forcibly marched away from the possibility of liberation. For this episode, James welcomes the curators of the Wiener Holocaust Library’s new exhibition, ‘Death Marches: Evidence...

Charlie Higson and Ben McIntyre talk about the facts and fictions of working in espionage. Having both encountered the recruitment process for the British Intelligence Services, they discuss the process of getting recruited or, as in both of their cases, not getting recruited. They go on to explore the history and traditions of this institution, which holds the position of a household name despite...

Few days hold such a strong position in history as D-Day. However, as David O'Keefe tells us in this episode, 6 June 1944 was followed by 76 days of continued advances into Normandy. Hear about the position of the Allies after D-Day, and how they proceeded into France and towards victory. David is a leading military historian. He has released a new book, Seven Days in Hell, about the Canadian Blac...

It’s 77 years since D-Day but it might never have happened at all without one very specific piece of new technology; the resonant cavity magnetron. Atomic bombs or the Colossus supercomputer may come to mind when thinking about innovations which changed the course of WW2, but without this technological breakthrough, history would have been very different. Historian Norm Fine talks to James about t...

The D-Day landings of June 6 1944 were the largest amphibious landing in the history of warfare, and are famed as a major turning point towards Allied victory. But they weren’t without planning and practice. In late April 1944, the Allies launched one of their trial runs, Exercise Tiger, off Slapton Sands in Devon. The aim was a closely choreographed landing, the result was a disaster. Hear Dr Har...

There are many theories for when the Second World War was lost by the Axis powers. In this episode, Digital historian Alwyn Collinson shares the reasons why 1943 can be seen as this turning point. Digital Projects Manager at the University of Oxford, Alwyn runs the twitter account @RealTimeWWII and during this episode, he and James also explore whether video games can be an accurate or useful repr...

How is it possible to avoid disasters when they are inherently unpredictable? Niall Ferguson, renowned historian, senior fellow at Stanford University, senior faculty fellow at Harvard and visiting professor at Tsinghua University, has been studying historical responses to catastrophes. In this episode of Warfare, he draws upon the World Wars, Spanish Influenza and the HIV/AIDS epidemic to discuss...

With battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, and then defeat and public criticism for the United States in 1975, the Vietnam War became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict. In this episode, Dan Snow speaks to Max Hastings about the Domino theory, whether it was possible for the US to win the war and the effect the war had on those who fought in it. Using the testimony of war...

When the self-propelled torpedo was invented in the late 19th century, it threatened to revolutionize naval warfare. The weapon was instrumental in the wars of the 20th century, but also within the spheres of the global marketplace, government control and intellectual property. In this episode, Katherine Epstein, author of ‘Torpedo: Inventing the Military-Industrial Complex in the United States an...

With the role of coordinating resistance overseas, the task of a member of the Special Operations Executive could be extremely influential, but also perilous. Kate Vigurs has been investigating the lives of the 39 female members of the Special Operations Executive for her book Mission France: The True History of the Women of SOE. In this episode, she tells James how women came to be recruited for...

It was the world's first long-range guided ballistic missile, developed to avenge the bombings of German cities during the Second World War. For this episode, novelist, former journalist and BBC television reporter, Robert Harris, joined Dan on the podcast to talk about Nazi Germany and the story of the V2 rocket. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It was not until 1956 that the Soviet Union repatriated the last of their German prisoners of war. To find out more about the experience of these men, Susan Grunewald has been mapping the locations of the camps where they were kept. Listen as Susan and James explore why the Germans were detained for so long and how they were treated, from building Soviet cities to facing re-education programmes. S...

From 1914 until 1917, submariners from Britain and Russia fought against the German Imperial Navy for control of the sea lanes in the icy Baltic. Their endeavors have been buried beneath the stories of Second World War U-boats, but with a serendipitous mistake in Kew Archives, a water damaged, blood stained submarine log landed in front of Dr Ian Johnson. Thus began a mission to uncover the story...

On 10 May 1940, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain and his calamitous handling of the Norway campaign. On the same day, Adolf Hitler launched a monumental assault on Western Europe. It was the toughest first week in office a Prime Minister has ever faced. In this podcast, Dan visited the house of Churchill's biographer, An...

A suave secret agent and fictional character turned household name and multi-billion dollar franchise: we all know James Bond. But what about the man behind him? In this episode, hear about the people and places that inspired Ian Fleming as he wrote the stories of 007. Professor Klaus Dodds researches geopolitics and security, ice studies and the international governance of the Antarctic and the A...