Gary Lineker's grandfather was one of the 'D-Day Dodgers': men who fought in the Italian campaign, who were accused of missing the supposedly harder fighting in Normandy. Of course, this wasn't true. The Italian campaign was one of the hardest military campaigns of World War Two, and Dan talks to...

Dan Snow talks to acclaimed actor Gary Oldman about the challenge of taking on the role of Winston Churchill in 'Darkest Hour', and the role of art in interpreting history.

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 explores the birth and development of chemical warfare during the First World War.

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...

The Spitfire is the most famous piston engine fighter plane. It played a vital part in the summer of 1940, keeping the Luftwaffe from gaining air superiority over Britain. Now Dan Snow, whose lifelong dream is has been to fly in this beautiful plane, gets the chance to go up in a two-seater versi...

1984 is one of the greatest books ever written, and continues to both haunt and inform public perceptions of totalitarianism. Dan talks to Dorian Lynskey, who has written a biography of this critical text, discussing Orwell's reasons for writing and 1984's relevance to the present day, as well as...

In June 1940 Nazi Germany overran France and forced the British army to evacuate at Dunkirk. Severely lacking in military equipment, Britain and her empire now stood alone against Adolf Hitler's forces. Nevertheless Winston Churchill, Britain's new prime minister, refused to come to peace terms, ...

In the period 1915 to 1917, between 1 and 1.5 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire died in what is the regarded as one of the first cases of genocide in the 20th century.

We know the story of enigma, but what was the German Alan Turing doing in the heart of the Reich? German codebreakers had similar successes to the Allies, and in this episode, Dan chats to Christian Jennings about cracking codes, the Battle of the Atlantic, and how to use a Romanian Opera Program...

Dr Innes McCartney is a Nautical Archaeologist. He is Research Fellow at Bournemouth University and author of Jutland 1916: The Archaeology of a Naval Battlefield.

A new statue has just been unveiled in Saffron Walden, an unassuming town in Essex, England. Five children are held, with limbs outstretched or shoulders hunched, in life-size bronze. One carries a tattered lifejacket, which hangs uselessly below him. The statue, titled Unaccompanied Children of ...

No man knew Adolf Hitler as intimately as his trusted physician, Theodoor Morell. As part of Hitler's inner social circle, he assisted the leader in virtually everything for the entire war years. His unconventional treatments were famed in Germany, and Hitler so trusted the 'miracle' prescription...

On 15 September 1916 the battlefield changed forever. At Flers-Courcelette, during the brutal, bloody fighting on the Somme, the British army released a new weapon designed to combat the devastating power of the machine gun: the tank. Moving on caterpillar tracks and protected by plated armour, t...

Kate Summerscale has written one of the Sunday Time books of the year exploring the world of poltergeists and ghosts in the build up to the Second World War. She came on the podcast to tell us all about Nandor Fodor – a Jewish-Hungarian refugee and chief ghost hunter for the International Institu...

The Heinkel He 111 was the most numerous bomber which the Luftwaffe deployed during the Battle of Britain. It was capable of storing and delivering large bombs (250kg) and had state-of-the-art gyroscopic sights to improve its accuracy. The He 111 was protected armour plating and self-sealing fuel...

Hawker Hurricanes accounted for 60% of German losses in the battle of Britain. They were the most numerous fighter aircraft which the RAF deployed, partly owing to their rapid turn-around time (it took them only 9 minutes to be refuelled and re-armed). Dan Snow provides an overview of the 'workho...

Of all the air raids carried out during World War Two, none are as enduringly famous as the attack by Lancaster Bombers against the dams of Germany’s industrial heartland. Commemorated in literature and film throughout the decades, the mission – which was codenamed Operation ‘Chastise’ – has come...

Gross-Rosen concentration camp was a Nazi German network of Nazi concentration camps built and operated during World War 2. The main camp was located in the village of Gross-Rosen not far from the border with occupied Poland, in the modern-day Rogo?nica in Lower Silesia, Poland, directly on the r...

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Channel Islands. Dan went to meet four people who remember the war years on the islands and hear their experiences of occupation.

The Battle of Jutland was the decisive naval clash of the First World War, pitting the German High Seas Fleet against the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet in an all or nothing battle for supremacy and survival. At the end of the war, the defeated German fleet was scuttled at Scapa Flow. Or so we thought....

He is a German Luftwaffe ace with 81 confirmed victories on the Eastern front. Now a 95-year-old veteran, his talent and courage remain legendary throughout the world. It is the most iconic British fighter ever built. The hum of its Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, the wonderful elliptical wing, and th...

On 18th April, 1947, British forces set off the largest non-nuclear explosion in history. The target was a small island in the North Sea, thirty miles off the German coast, which for generations had stood as a symbol of Anglo-German conflict - Heligoland. Jan Rueger is Professor of History as Bir...

Dan Snow visits Coventry to tell the tale of the infamous bombing raid that struck the city on the evening of 14 November 1940, 80 years ago. Featuring Dr Kristopher Lovell and Victoria Taylor.