Join James for this special episode as we take an exclusive look at an astonishing discovery made at the Waterloo battlefield in Belgium. Watch History Hit's exclusive documentary on the Waterloo Uncovered discovery here . This episode was edited by Aidan Lonergan. For more Warfare content, subscribe to our Warfare Wednesday newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to...
Jul 13, 2022•41 min
NATO is expanding and enlarging. With the number of rapid response troops set to increase to 300,000, and Sweden & Finland in line to gain membership, the organisation has truly awoken to the evolving threat posed by Russia. In this episode James is joined by Dr Sten Rynning from the University of Southern Denmark to examine the full history of NATO to see when it has expanded and enlarged before. Follow Sten on Twitter at @stenrynning and keep an eye out for his book in late 2022/early 2023. Th...
Jul 11, 2022•27 min
With the range to sail anywhere in the world and the supplies to facilitate it, HMS Belfast served a crucial role in the Korean War. Once again aboard HMS Belfast, in the second episode of Warfare's miniseries on the Korean War, James is joined by the director of Belfast, Rob Rumble, to answer this question. With post-war Britain on the brink of financial collapse - and the once pre-eminent Royal Navy overtaken by the US amidst the Cold War - the UK had to find its place in the new world order. ...
Jul 08, 2022•23 min
It's exactly 80 years since Anne Frank and her family went into hiding in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. Perhaps the most well-known Jewish victim of the Holocaust, Anne achieved posthumous fame with the 1947 publication of The Diary of a Young Girl , the journal in which she documented her life in hiding from 1942-1944. But fewer of us know much about what the Netherlands was like under German occupation, the brave people who hid the Franks and others in the Secret Annex, or indeed the numerous fates...
Jul 04, 2022•41 min
Millions dead. A higher proportion of civilian casualties than in World War Two. America, Britain, Russia & China all involved in a conflict that—technically—remains active to this day. So why is the Korean War of 1950-53 nicknamed The Forgotten War? In this first episode of Warfare’s miniseries on the Korean War, James is joined by Dr Ian Johnson onboard the HMS Belfast—one of six Royal Navy vessels that provided fire support in the summer of 1950—to find out why the mighty British ship was the...
Jul 01, 2022•38 min
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 party from further bloodshed. Eventually giving their lives, this important story is being shared by...
Jun 27, 2022•34 min
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 Wednesday newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history docum...
Jun 24, 2022•35 min
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 the fascinating postcolonial story behind West Africa’s Cold War. Marco's book Postcolonial Security...
Jun 20, 2022•39 min
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 entered the European theatre of WW1 when so many of its citizens were against the idea back in the ...
Jun 17, 2022•33 min
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 explore the evolving yet ever present relationship between food, famine and warfare. For more Warfare con...
Jun 13, 2022•33 min
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 episode we're digging into our Warfare archives to hear Dr Harry Bennett from the University of Plymou...
Jun 10, 2022•41 min
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 individuals from the Green Howards who made this advance, including the 180 who lost their lives in doing so,...
Jun 06, 2022•23 min
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 Saxe-Coburg & Gotha to distance itself from its German roots. Rather than suffer due to its kinship w...
Jun 03, 2022•31 min
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 TV Consultant Gavin Mortimer tells Dan Snow that after that first flight, the Wright Brothers spent m...
Jun 01, 2022•27 min
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 unnoticed taxes and drone led warfare in the present - is there now a lack of transparency and account...
May 30, 2022•26 min
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 the final stand and reprisals. George provides the definitive story of Czechoslovakia's role in the ...
May 27, 2022•39 min
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 number of soldiers sent by Stalin or the brutal conditions of a Russian winter. By the time Hitl...
May 25, 2022•31 min
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 algorithms. But how does this work, and what are the dangers of the proliferation of these weapons? Jame...
May 23, 2022•37 min
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, Benediction is out now in the UK and Ireland. James spoke to writer and director Terence Davies about...
May 20, 2022•30 min
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 background of the Jeep, a vehicle made for the battlefields of World War II, and its lasting popularity in Am...
May 18, 2022•35 min
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 explore this CBI theatre of war, and to give us a glimpse into Bob’s experiences there. Rainy’s boo...
May 16, 2022•27 min
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 College Montgomery, Alabama. Together, they question the definition of Post Traumatic Stress as a disorde...
May 13, 2022•43 min
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, Winston Churchill ordered that a convoy like no other be dispatched to run the air and sea gauntle...
May 11, 2022•32 min
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 the shadowy world of assassins, terrorists, spies and revolutionaries. Operating in the shadows dur...
May 09, 2022•43 min
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 Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) in 1930. In this episode, James is joined by Matthew Pembleton from the Ameri...
May 06, 2022•42 min
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. Churchill did not sleep “the sleep of the saved and thankful” after the attack, as he later claimed. Japan...
May 04, 2022•23 min
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 has been taking a closer look at this. Was Stalin partially to blame for the beginning of the Second W...
May 02, 2022•31 min
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 episode, writer and filmmaker Jane Rogoyska joins James once again on Warfare. As the author of Survivin...
Apr 29, 2022•33 min
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 Dan on this podcast to talk about his life, his career, the therapy of writing, why he keeps working a...
Apr 27, 2022•27 min
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, Toby specializes in terrorism and war. As the author of First Casualty: The Untold Story of the CIA...
Apr 25, 2022•49 min
