Sasha Colby, "The Matryoshka Memoirs: A Story of Ukrainian Forced Labour, the Leica Camera Factory, and Nazi Resistance" (ECW Press, 2023)
Irina Nikifortchuk was 19 years old and a Ukrainian schoolteacher when she was abducted to be a forced laborer in the Leica camera factory in Nazi Germany. Eventually pulled from the camp hospital to ...
19 Apr 20251h 22min
Richard Overy, "Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima and the Surrender of Japan" (Norton, 2025)
September 2 will mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s formal surrender to the United States aboard the USS. Missouri, ending the Second World War. The U.S. decision to drop two atomic bombs on the Jap...
17 Apr 202537min
Serhiy Kudelia, "Seize the City, Undo the State: The Inception of Russia's War on Ukraine" (Oxford UP, 2015)
How do separatist conflicts arise and spread? When does separatism become a cover for a foreign aggression? How do local communities respond when state institutions collapse, and militants take over? ...
16 Apr 202557min
Georgina Banks, "Back to Bangka: Searching for the Truth about a Wartime Massacre" (Viking Australia, 2023)
Georgina Banks searches for the truth of what happened to her Great Aunt ‘Bud’, killed in the Second World War. Bangka Strait, Indonesia, 1942. Allied ships are evacuating thousands in flight from Sin...
14 Apr 202547min
David G. Williamson, "Poland Betrayed: The Nazi-Soviet Invasions of 1939" (Pen & Sword, 2011)
After staging a mock attack at Gleiwitz, Germany unleashed its blitzkrieg on Poland on September 1, 1939. Two week later, Soviet forces streamed into the beleaguered country from the east. By early Oc...
11 Apr 202527min
Margaret Urwin, "A State in Denial: British Collaboration with Loyalist Paramilitaries" (Mercier Press, 2016)
A State in Denial: British Collaboration with Loyalist Paramilitaries (Mercier Press, 2016) uses previously secret official documents to explore the tangled web of relationships between the top echelo...
10 Apr 202559min
Lesley J. Gordon, "Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Those who fought in the Civil War were expected to overcome their fear of injury or death as they charged into a hail of bullets. Soldiers could expect erupting artillery shells or Minié balls to mai...
9 Apr 202539min
Paddy Walker, "War Without Oversight: Why We Need Humans on the Battlefield" (Howgate, 2025)
Amid the fanfare around AI and autonomous weapons, decision-makers - both military and political - are imagining an augmented future for warfare that minimises human influence and connection. But in t...
7 Apr 20251h 32min
