Hunting the Bismarck
In May 1941, the Royal Navy pursued Nazi Germany's largest battleship, the Bismarck, in the greatest chase story in the history of naval warfare. Bismarck represented the single most important threat ...
20 Jan 202045min
The Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz
In 1940 the Polish resistance decided it needed to send an agent to Auschwitz concentration camp. They were desperate to find out what was going on in a place that even by that stage of the war had an...
19 Jan 202034min
'Seducing and Killing Nazis'
During the Second World War the Netherlands fell to advancing German forces in just a few hours. The Dutch found themselves under Nazi occupation. Many men and women resisted, which took many differen...
15 Jan 202021min
How History Inspires Environmental Activism
The world faces a unique environmental challenge. The scale of response to this looming catastrophe can be overwhelming. But economist and activist Andrew Simms believes that history provides us with ...
14 Jan 202023min
The Commando Raid that Changed the Course of WW2
In October 1942 the British launched a small raid on the Channel Island of Sark. A cast of characters who gave their colleague Ian Fleming ideas for a new secret agent character, James Bond, crept ash...
12 Jan 202020min
Sam Mendes on 1917
In this podcast Dan talks to Golden Globe winning film maker Sam Mendes about his new World War One film 1917.Based in part on an account told to Mendes by his paternal grandfather, Alfred Mendes, it ...
9 Jan 202025min
The Persian War
In the 5th century BC the world's first super power, the Persian Empire, went to war against a ragtag collection of cities and statelets on its western frontier. It was the start of the Persian War. T...
8 Jan 202038min
Interwar Germany’s Secret Ally: The USSR
After the First World War the German Army was in crisis. Limited in the size and its equipment by the Versailles Treaty which ended the war, it was a shadow of the mighty force it had been in 1914. He...
6 Jan 202024min
