In Britain's Darkest Hour, a new force of crack troops was founded. Trained for combat behind enemy lines, they descended from the skies to take part in some of the most daring raids of the Second World War.

From the deadly deserts of North Africa to a heroic stand at Arnhem, they established t...

Re-join Leutnant Friedrich Sander, a Panzer officer in the German Wehrmacht as he continues his journey into the heart of the Soviet Union as part of Operation Barbarossa.

In Part two, we pick up with Sander as the Russian weather starts to turns, the German advance begins to stutter and the So...

In 1945, as the Red Army arrived at the edge of Warsaw, it was confronted by a sea of destruction, rubble, ash and misery. Arriving as "liberators", the shadow of the Soviet Union would soon loom large over a population brutalised by five long years of Nazi occupation - a population that had los...

During the Second World War, one US Army Infantry Division repeatedly proved itself as America's finest. Leading the way into action in Africa, Italy and on to bloody Omaha Beach, lightly armed G.I.s who stood their ground against Hitler's best SS Panzers.

They are the 1st Infantry Division - t...

It was the war to end all wars. In 1914, catastrophe struck Europe as great power diplomacy failed and alliance systems mobilised vast armies against one another in a conflict that dragged on in bloody stalemate for four long years. Nations geared their entire economies towards victory and called...

Follow the path of Leutnant Friedrich Sander, a Panzer officer in the German Wehrmacht during Operation Barbarossa, the attack on the Soviet Union.

In the first part of a two-part film, we follow Leutnant Sander on the strenuous, and costly race towards Leningrad and learn about the murderous a...

In August 1941, the Allies launched Operation Dervish. This was the first of the Arctic Convoys, ships which sailed from the United Kingdom, Iceland and North America, and brought essential supplies to the Soviet Union.

After the successful launch of Operation Barbarossa, the USSR was in despe...

Between 1919 and 1921, Ireland played host to a long and bloody guerrilla conflict between British state forces and Irish republican guerrillas, in the form of Irish Volunteers or the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The conflict would completely transform the political landscape in Ireland.

In this...

After the country's occupation in 1939, the people of Poland were brutally oppressed by the Nazi SS and Geheime Staatspolizei. Yet, they never gave up the fight. Throughout the Second World War, a Polish Underground State was established - the largest underground resistance movement in all of occ...

In this poignant interview, Lord Saye and Sele shares his unique story from the Second World War, which began on D-Day, 6 June 1944.

Launched on 14 February 1939, the German flagship and pride of the Kriegsmarine, Bismarck was launched. In the darkness of the early morning of the 19 May 1941, Bismarck slipped out of harbour on the Baltic coast and started making its way through the Baltic Sea on its maiden voyage, Operation Rh...

The Battle of the Somme, which began on 1 July 1916, is remembered as one of the bloodiest events of the First World War. On the first day of the offensive, one man was killed every 4.4 seconds, making it the bloodiest single day in the history of the British Army. There were over a million casua...

After their country was invaded in 1939 on two fronts, by both German and Soviet forces, those who lived in occupied Poland throughout the Second World War endured some of the most appalling living conditions and became the victims of the most horrific war crimes of the Holocaust. From the ghetto...

20 miles north-east of Warsaw lies the small Polish town of Radzymin. Forgotten by history, this region is home to Jaktory House, a small manor house or dwór which has been at the centre of some of the most remarkable and violent history of the twentieth century. Napoleon was here, Lenin was here...

The creation of man-made underground tunnels played a huge role in the outcome of the First World War. They were first dug to mine under enemy positions and detonate bombs or attack in desperate and fierce fights. As the war dragged on, nevertheless, they developed another purpose: providing sold...

100 years ago today, the Unknown Warrior, a common soldier and an unidentified casualty of war, was buried in Westminster Abbey with all the pomp and ceremony of an empire at its zenith. King George V looked on as 100 Victoria Cross bearers formed a guard of honour and the unknown solider was lai...

In the winter of 1941 an alien-seeming object was spotted by an RAF reconnaissance pilot flying a lone unarmed Spitfire across the French coast. Balanced upon the cliffs near Le Havre was what appeared to be a giant convex dish, directed across the Channel at the war-torn British coastline. With ...

Just after midnight on 30th 1945, the USS Indianapolis was sailing alone in the Philippine Sea when she was struck by two Japanese torpedoes, almost three hundred miles from land. She sank in 12 minutes. For the next five nights, nearly nine hundred men struggled with battle injuries, shark attac...

Francine Hirsch joined me on the pod to discuss the full story of the Nuremberg Trials, one in which the Soviet Union was a defining player.

At the end of World War One, the Allies seized the German fleet and held it at Scapa Flow, in Orkney, until the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were announced. At least, that was the plan. The German navy covertly scuttled their own boats under the noses of their captors, rendering the fleet us...

Jill Lepore joined me on the podcast to discuss The Simulmatics Corporation. Founded in 1959, it mined data, targeted voters, accelerated news, manipulated consumers, destabilized politics, and disordered knowledge—decades before Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Cambridge Analytica.

James Hawes @jameshawes2 is a former professional archaeologist and university lecturer in German, Doctor of German literature in the lead-up to WW1, novelist and Kafka biographer.

Jean and Patricia Owtram were teenagers when the Second World War broke out. They both served in secret roles, one on the coast intercepting German naval signals, the other running intelligence agents from Cairo. Neither told the other what they had been up to until the 1970s! Now, in their late ...

The 1960s were an exciting time. The pill was invented in 1961, and for women everywhere it meant a newfound set of sexual freedoms;no longer did sex have to remain within the confines of marriage. However, the 1960s have for too long been characterised wrongfully by a surface layer of glamour an...