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Wars of The World
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Send us Fan Mail For hundreds of years prior to the 20th century, war had changed very little with the improvements in weapon technology that did arise being incremental and slow to establish themselves. However, with the industrial revolution of the mid-to-late 19th century and the meteoric advances in science and technology that came with it, in the span of a few decades, warfare was changed beyond recognition. New weapons that were once the stuff of science fiction from the likes of Jules ...
Send us Fan Mail Picture the scene. It is the Eastern Front in 1943 and you are a German soldier on the frontline. In the distance, you can see and hear a line of T-34 tanks trundling and clacking towards your position but more than that, riding on the back of them behind their turrets are swarms of Soviet troops all clutching a small but distinctive weapon. You’ve come to know this weapon very well and with the knowledge of what it can do, you begin firing your MG42 machine gun hoping to kil...
Send us Fan Mail We are all familiar with the Nazi practices of sending Jews to concentration camps, carrying out mass executions and instilling fear into German citizens through their paramilitary organisations like the SS. But one practice that tends to go under the radar concerning Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party was their rampant abuse of medicinal substances, which in today’s world, would be considered as illicit drugs. What you need to consider, however, is that at the time, these drugs...
Send us Fan Mail Looking back through history, it’s often difficult to see passed events that have so shaped our modern world. The story of Japan in World War II for example has often left those in the west with an impression that prior to 1945, Japan was always an enemy of freedom, when in fact while we associate Imperial Japan as Hitler’s ally, just twenty years earlier, Japan fought against the Kaiser and that particular tyrant’s quest for power. In this episode, we are going to explore J...
Send us Fan Mail August 1964. US President Lyndon B. Johnson has inherited an ongoing crisis in the south-east Asian nation of Vietnam from his predecessor, John F. Kennedy. The crisis involves the spreading of communism from North Vietnam into the south and potentially beyond, threatening the US position in the region against the Soviet Union in the Cold War. At first, he adopts the policy of training and equipping the South Vietnamese Army to fight the war themselves but when a US warship i...
Send us Fan Mail The unseen enemy is always the most feared for how does one engage an enemy if you do not know their location? Throughout history, the art of camouflage has often been the key to success in battle, greatly increasing an enemy force’s response time as they try to locate just who it is that is shooting them. Mother nature has often provided the best camouflage for armies, concealing them away from the prying eyes of an enemy force moving nearby. Mother nature has also pr...
Send us Fan Mail In this documentary, we are going to examine the events surrounding probably the most significant sinking of a ship by a U-boat during the entire conflict. It is an event that would have far reaching consequences for the war, and beyond which wouldn’t be fully realised until a generation later. This is the story of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania and how it lit the path to war for the United States of America. Welcome to Wars of the World. Support the show
Send us Fan Mail On October 15th 2016, the 43,000 ton Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuzentsov slipped out of the Kola Bay fjord in the Barents Sea. Escorted by a small flotilla of warships including the powerful Pyotr Velikiy battlecruiser, the carrier sailed through the North Sea and down the English Channel in to the Atlantic before rounding the Iberian Peninsula and entering the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas. A month after leaving Kola Bay, aircraft of the Kuznetsov began operati...
Send us Fan Mail Given the horror that Hitler unleashed on the world, it seems unfathomable that he could show any kind of warmth and affection to any living thing. Yet quite the contrary for he was an avid lover of dogs, but this love only serves to remind us of his evil for he could treat animals infinitely better than he treated many people. In this episode, we are going to examine the Fuhrer’s love for dogs, examine the role they played in the Fuhrer’s day-to-day life and how they were ev...
Send us Fan Mail Throughout history, war has often been characterised as being an elaborate game of chess played by the Generals commanding the armies on the chessboard that is the battlefield. This characterisation has led to the perception of many of history’s great duels being between two key, opposing players and in 1942 on the deserts of North Africa – a land described as being ideal for the game of war – there seemed no greater player than German Field Marshall Erwin Rommell. Com...
Send us Fan Mail For every nation, there are battles whose names for one reason or another mean more to their people than most. For Americans, its Gettysburg. For Australians and New Zealanders, its Gallipoli. For the British and Canadians, it’s the Somme. For France, perhaps one of the most important battles in its recent history was the Battle of Verdun. Fought almost throughout the entirety of 1916, the battle was instigated by the German Army in an effort to destroy France and achieve vic...
Send us Fan Mail In this, episode, we are going to take a look at the real wartime service of UB-65 and then investigate the legend to establish if there is any truth in the story of the supposedly haunted U-boat or whether it was as some believe the result of an elaborate plan by the Allies to combat the underwater menace. Welcome to Wars of the World. Support the show
Send us Fan Mail The opening of the air war over the Pacific was brutal. Allied pilots found themselves facing an enemy whose fighters appeared to be able to run rings around their own. The most notable of these Japanese fighters was the Mitsubishi A6M more commonly known to Allied pilots as the Zero. Designed by a team headed by Jiro Honkoshi, the A6M was designed for the Imperial Japanese Navy and as such could be operated from carriers. At the time, most carrier-based fighters had to sacri...
Send us Fan Mail The streets of Berlin were devastated beyond recognition in some areas as 33-year-old photographer William Vandivert was led to the location of the former German chancellery buildings. Just days before, these streets had been the subject of a two-week long bloody and bitter battle between the Soviet Union’s Red Army and the last of the German Wehrmacht whose numbers had been propped up by old men and young boys recruited from the city’s population. Now that battle was over an...
Send us Fan Mail Hỏa Lò Prison was first built during the French Colonial era between 1886 and 1901 in the French Quarter of Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital city. During this time, Vietnam was part of French Indochina, a group of French colonial territories in Southeast Asia which was eventually dissolved in the 1950s. As well as various Vietnamese regions, French Indochina consisted of Cambodia, Laos and Guangzhouwan. The city of Hanoi remained the area’s capital between 1902 and 1945. Upon first ...
Send us Fan Mail When discussing the Axis powers of World War II, history tends to focus on Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and Mussolini’s Italy however this is only part of the story. Fascism and antisemitism were by no means limited to Hitler and his closest allies in Tokyo and Rome. Indeed, far-right extremist ideologies had taken hold in several European countries that made them potential allies for Berlin particularly with the natural hostility such policies attracted from the communist su...
Send us Fan Mail In one specific section of his book, Tomlinson details that to qualify for the Increment, a certain amount of time must be served with MI6: “...SAS and SBS personnel must have served for at least five years and have reached the rank of sergeant. They are security vetted by MI6 and given a short induction course into the function and objectives of the service. If they have not already learnt surveillance skills, they take a three-week course at the Fort. Back at their bases in...
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we are going to examine the evolution of the Panzer series from the humble Panzer I up to the excellent Panzer IV before German armoured doctrine switched to newer, often heavier and more powerful tanks to help compensate for their increasing numerical inferiority in the face of the Allied armies. Support the show
Send us Fan Mail The SAS operation known as Bravo Two Zero left three men killed and four men captured to be tortured by Iraqi soldiers during the 1990s. This horrific and deadly exercise is infamous today, having been discussed in various books - some of which were written by the operation’s survivors - and is even the subject of a film starring Sean Bean. But certain accounts of the Bravo Two Zero operation have also come under scrutiny in the last three decades, leading it to become one of...
Send us Fan Mail 1942. Nazi tyranny has engulfed Europe, the western Soviet Union and North Africa. Against this backdrop, there seems to be only one force who can take the fight to the heart of Hitler’s Third Reich – RAF Bomber Command. But results have been poor, and the cost has been high. As a new commander takes charge, he brings with him a bold new plan that he believes will be the first knock out blow of the war, and to deliver it, he plans to send over 1000 bombers to hit a single Ger...



