Warfare

2022 marks the 80 year anniversary of the White Rose resistance against Nazism. The White Rose was made up of 5 students and an academic in Munich, who saw the atrocities of the Nazi regime and knew that somebody had to stand up against it. At great personal risk, they typed up anti-nazi rhetoric and disseminated it across universities in the hopes of stopping World War 2, and preventing the Nazi...

With 300,000 US troops stationed in Northern Ireland between 1942 and 1945 - Northern Ireland soon became overrun. Known as the 'Friendly Invasion', why was Northern Ireland chosen as the site of the first US deployment in Europe during WW2? Poitín, information pamphlets, and lasting social impacts - what happened when the Americans came to stay? For more Warfare content, subscribe to our Warfare...

The Cold War wasn’t just limited to nuclear tensions and competition between the great powers.  What’s often overlooked is that major transformations took place in the 1950s and 60s across West Africa, as power transferred from colonial powers such as Britain & France to independent African nations. In this episode, James is joined by Professor Marco Wyss from Lancaster University to discuss...

It's easy to forget there was a time before the special relationship, when the United States might never have gotten involved in the First World War. Three figures, two presidents and a social reformer - Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jane Addams - were key in shaping American foreign policy as the Great War commenced. In this episode James is joined by Neil Lanctot to find out why the US...

Russia has been accused of using food as a weapon of war in Ukraine, pushing up to 49 million people into famine. Further afield, Putin's war has affected food supply and prices around the world - as the 'breadbasket' region is vitally important to global grain production in particular. Sadly this is nothing new, as our guest knows all too well. Today James is joined by Oxfam's Marc Cohen to explo...

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. For this ep...

There was only one Victoria Cross awarded on the 6th June 1944, D-Day. It went to Company Sergeant Major Stanley Hollis of the 6th Battalion of the Green Howards. Alongside the 7th Battalion of the same regiment, the 6th were to advance 7 miles inland on the first day of Operation Overlord, the furthest of any other forces from Britain and the United States. To explore the actions of the individua...

Happy Platinum Jubilee! As Queen Elizabeth II becomes the first British monarch to mark 70 years on the throne - as well as commander-in-chief of Her Majesty's Armed Forces - we trace the origins of the House of Windsor's close-knit links to the British military. Why are the two so seemingly inseparable? The story begins in the First World War, when the dynasty changed its name from the House of S...

On a winter day in 1903, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the Wright Brothers changed history when they took the world's first engine-powered flight. It didn't take long for countries around the world to realise that the Wright flying machine had the potential to revolutionise warfare and soon everybody wanted flying machines of their own. But the US didn't have the advantage; Historian and T...

The US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan marked the beginning of the longest wars in US history - but how were they funded for upwards of two decades? James is joined by Professor Sarah Kreps to talk about how warfare has changed over the course of American history, and how that's allowed for a change in funding. From buying bonds and loved ones being sent off to war in their millions, to often un...

He was nicknamed ‘the man with the iron heart’ by Hitler, and was tipped to be his successor. But on the 27th May 1942, Reinhard Heydrich was mortally injured in Prague by Czechoslovak resistance operatives Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš. They were part of Operation Anthropoid, and today George Bearfield is back with James to talk about the decision to target Heydrich, the plan and its execution, and...

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 n...

What if we could take people completely out of the equation when planning military strikes? ‘Lethal autonomous weapons systems’ use artificial intelligence to identify, select and kill human targets without human intervention. Whilst with unmanned military drones, the decision to strike is made remotely by a human operator, in the case of lethal autonomous weapons the decision is made by algo...

Siegfried Sassoon is one of the most famous poets of the 20th century. But he is also famous as a soldier, decorated for his bravery on the battlefield of World War One, who then became a vocal critic of the war upon his return. After acclaimed premiere screenings at TIFF, San Sebastian and the BFI London Film Festival, two BIFA nominations and a long-list for BAFTA for Outstanding British Film, B...

We’re shaking things up today and sharing a preview from Car Show!, a new podcast from our friends at Pushkin Industries. Longtime Car and Driver editor Eddie Alterman tells the stories of the vital cars — the ones that have changed how we drive and live, whose significance lies outside the scope of horsepower or miles per gallon. In this episode, Eddie talks about the military backgroun...

Robert ‘Bob’ Binzer wanted to be a pilot from a young age, and during the Second World War he got his wish. Bob was an aviator with the United States Air Force in the China, Burma and India (CBI) theatre of the war; carrying critical supplies, weapons and even soldiers over the Himalayan mountains on a daily basis. His daughter, Rainy Horvath, joins James for this episode of the Warfare podcast to...

Whether talking about shell shock, war neurosis, combat trauma or PTSD; the impacts of war zones on those who fight in them or encounter them have long been discussed. With increasing understanding, however, definitions and treatments continue to change. James is joined for this episode by Dr Heather Venable from the Department of Airpower at the United States Air Force Air Command and Staff Colle...

By the summer of 1942 Malta had been under siege by Axis forces for over a year and the situation on the island was bleak with food and fuel almost exhausted. This vital allied foothold in the Mediterranean had to be held at all cost in order to prevent the collapse of the allied effort in North Africa where Rommel's forces were finding much success. In a desperate bid to prevent the loss of Malta...

Enrique ‘Ric’ Prado found himself in his first firefight at age seven. The son of a middle-class Cuban family caught in the midst of the Castro Revolution, his family fled Cuba and their home for the hope of a better life in America. Ric joins James for today's episode - retired from the Central Intelligence Agency as the CIA equivalent of a two star general - to talk about his legendary career in...

As the Cold War came to an end, US President George H.W. Bush defined his 1992 election bid in terms of the War on Drugs. It was said that there was no longer a Soviet foe to grapple with and that, instead, illegal narcotics now posed an existential threat to the American people. Yet as it turns out, the War on Drugs actually began much longer ago than this, back to the founding of the Federal Bur...

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941 remains etched in public memory as the turning point of WW2. But in fact, it was Hitler’s declaration of war on the United States – four days later on December 11, 1941 – that changed everything. In this episode, Professor of International Relations at Cambridge University Brendan Simms tells Dan the story of those five unsettling days. Church...

Stalin, the 'Man of Steel' and supreme ruler of the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century, is readily associated with his ruthless regime inside the USSR, and with his fierce opposition to Western Europe and the United States during the Cold War. Commonly, however, this is set aside for narratives of the Second World War, from which he emerged victorious with his Western Allies. Sean McMeekin ha...

As the reality of atrocities in Ukraine continues to be uncovered, we look back at a massacre of Polish officers in the Second World War, the truth of which is still being exposed to this day. Under the orders of Stalin, in 1940 the NKVD carried out a secret operational order. However, for almost fifty years, the Soviet regime's fiction of Katyn being a Nazi atrocity was unchallenged. In this epis...

Over six decades John Simpson has been on the frontline of reporting bringing news from some of the most dangerous places on the planet to the television screens of millions of people. His work has opened the public's eyes to the terrible cost of conflict across the globe. Along the way, John has been arrested, harassed, beaten up, threatened and nearly killed on a number of occasions. He joins Da...

In September 2001, Al-Qaeda had struck and America was aghast. Eight brave CIA officers set the pace, being the first Americans to step foot on enemy lines in Afghanistan after 9/11. Under the codename Team Alpha, they were on a mission to protect America.  In this episode, James is joined by Toby Harnden. A former foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times of London, and the Daily Telegraph,...