After the Great War of 1914-18, European powers were desperate to avoid another conflict of that scale. But just 20 years later, they found themselves plunged into catastrophe on an even greater scale. The outbreak of World War Two has been blamed on the policy of 'appeasement' - with the Great Powers of Europe failing to stand up to German leader Adolf Hitler's aggressive foreign policy until it was too late. Tim Bouverie, author of Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the Road to War, comments on the gathering storm of the 1930s, unleashed in September 1939.
Operation Market Garden was the Allied operation to end the Second World War by Christmas 1944. The brainchild of Bernard Montgomery, it involved the combined use of airborne and armoured divisions carving a path through the Netherlands, securing several vital bridges, bypassing the formidable Si...
At his graduation from the Annapolis Naval Academy, Minter Dial was presented with a ring. When he shipped out to the Far East, shortly before America's entry into the Second World War, the ring went with him. He kept it throughout his harrowing experiences fighting in the Philippines and as a PO...
75 years ago, in the spring of 1945, the aerial assault on Germany was reaching a crescendo as city after city was devastated by British and American bomber fleets. James Holland, leading World War Two historian and bestselling author, joins Dan Snow on the podcast to talk about why and how the b...
