Fantastic colour footage of the Battle of Midway, the turning point of the Pacific War. Shot by the US Navy, and edited with dramatic flair and an eye for propaganda value, it includes exhilarating footage both on the island and aboard US warships. Watch out for the snap shot of the sailors' face...

Submarine veteran Commodore Eric Thompson gives Dan Snow a tour of HMS Alliance, now preserved at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Portsmouth.

On 29 December 1940 London experienced one of its worst nights of the Blitz. German bombers dropped tens of thousands of bombs, destroying more of London than the city's famous Great Fire of 1666. The following morning, a photographer took a picture through the smoke and fire of Saint Paul’s Cath...

On Christmas Eve 1914 many sectors of the Western Front in France and Belgium fell silent. Troops from all sides put down their weapons and sang carols, exchanged gifts and buried their dead in No Man's Land. The following day the truce continued in many, but not all areas, and troops gathered in...

80 years ago Wing Commander Joseph Watts was killed when his RAF Hampden Bomber crashed, as it returned from a bombing raid in Occupied Europe. He left behind a daughter, and also an unborn son. John Watts, born 8 months later, would never meet his father. But recently he discovered that at the R...

Charles Emmerson thinks the crucible of the modern world was not the 1960s but the tumultuous years at the end of the First World War and those that followed. This was when Communism and Fascism became mainstream movements. This was when the borders of the Middle East, and Eastern Europe were dra...

Just before dawn on 10 May 1940 the largest concentration of motorised vehicles in history roared into action. After months of quiet it was the start of Hitler’s invasion of the West. What followed was a stunning combination of new tactics and new technologies that left Britain and France – two w...

Richard van Emden talks to Dan about his new book - Missing: the need for closure after the Great War. The backbone of the book is based on the best single story of World War One that he has found in 35 years of research. It is the story of one woman’s relentless search for her missing son’s body...

Professor Frank McDonough has just written a monumental history of the Third Reich. He is a world leading expert on the domestic side of Hitler's Germany. In this filmed podcast Dan asks Frank why and how Hitler was able to establish and sustain his rule within Germany.

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 ...

Last summer, we were lucky enough to interview Wing Commander Tom Neil, one of the last of 'the Few' who fought in the Battle of Britain. During the Battle he shot down at least 13 enemy aircraft; he saw over half his squadron shot down within 5 minutes; he is also credited with the longest fligh...

Dan sat down with Angela Saini to talk about the history behind race and the history of interactions between civilisations.

In January 1968, the start of the Tet Offensive by North Vietnamese communist troops sent waves of anger and anguish across the home front and sparked the most intense period of anti-war protests seen in the ‘60s. By this time, anti-war protesters were joined by members of Vietnam Veterans Agains...

The Palace of Westminster is one of the world's most famous buildings: 'the mother of parliaments'. Since the days of Simon de Montfort parliaments having been meeting at this location in the heart of London. Though plagued by controversy and destruction over its long history the site's significa...

On the 73rd anniversary of the firebombing of Dresden, Dan Snow accompanies British veteran Victor Gregg, a POW in Dresden during the raid, as he returns to the city for a historic meeting with Irene Uhlendorf, who was just 4 years old on the night of the bombing. Together they are able to talk a...

State archives in Britain are thought of as being a pristine area in which we preserve, conserve and utilise the nation’s history. The Public Records acts of 1958 and 1967 require government departments to conserve any information that tells us about our shared past, and how we came to know it. M...

At the end of May and the beginning of June 1940, over 370,000 Allied soldiers found themselves at great risk, surrounded by German forces on all sides & with their backs to the Channel. The eyes of the World fixed their gaze on the small Allied perimeter that remained, around the beaches of Dunk...

Dan sat down with Julie McDowall to talk about Britain's plans in case of nuclear Armageddon during the Cold War. They also discuss the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl and its infamous legacy.

Most history is hierarchical: it’s about popes, presidents and prime ministers. A very small section of society has wielded very great power. But what if that’s simply because they are responsible for creating the historical archives? What if we are missing out on understanding equally powerful b...

It was a moment of mortal peril. Britain reeled from a series of devastating military defeats. Its politicians faced one of the most monumental decisions in 20th century history. Faced with a rampant Germany on the continent led by the fascist dictator Adolf Hitler, should Britain fight? Or make ...

Max Eisen was only 15 when he and his family were taken from their Hungarian home to the infamous Auschwitz Concentration Camp during the Second World War. All of his relatives were killed; only Max survived to see VE Day and eventual liberation. 74 years on from being liberated, he talks about t...

During the years of World War Two, a short lived, but remarkable, organisation existed. The Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) was a civilian service that was tasked with the delivery of aircraft from factories to the squadrons of the RAF and Royal Navy, and the delivery of supplies. Featuring pilots ...

German forces seized control of the Channel Islands on 30 June 1940. By-passed by the Allies as they pushed east they remained under Nazi rule for almost 5 years, until the end of World War Two. This is the story of the British men and women who lived under the German occupation.

Of all the clubs in the world, perhaps the most extraordinary is the Guinea Pig Club, a group of Second World War veterans that suffered terrible injuries and were then treated by pioneering surgeon Archibald McIndoe. Today there are only a handful left. Dan visits Jan Stangreciuk, one of the few...