The WW2 Podcast

Fought between 8 March and 18 July 1944, the battles of Imphal and Kohima were the turning point of one of the most gruelling campaigns of the Second World War (1939-45). The decisive Japanese defeat ...

In public life, Canadian Dr Winthrop Bell was a Harvard philosophy professor and wealthy businessman. As MI6 secret agent A12, he evaded gunfire and shook off pursuers to break open the emerging Nazi ...

With the Second World War slipping from living memory, the University of Oxford has launched Their Finest Hour. The project aims to empower local communities to digitally preserve these stories and ob...

The battle of Leyte Gulf was the largest naval battle of WWII, it consisted of four separate actions near the Philippines between the US Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy. The Japanese plan was to ...

As attacks on London by the Luftwaffe became a reality in the summer of 1940, Londoners needed somewhere to shelter from the air raids. And so during the Blitz and through to the end of the war, deep-...

When we think of airborne operations in WWII, the historiography is dominated by operations in the European Theatre. Parachute drops on Sicily, the Normandy coast for D-Day and into the Netherlands fo...

The US glider pilots in WWII were all volunteers. Playing a pivotal role in delivering thousands of troops, including logistical support, these pilots landed their gliders ahead of the ground forces i...

In April 1945, with the Allies closing in, the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, with his German bodyguards, decided to flee Milan. The convoy was later joined by a Luftwaffe column retreating towar...

Stalingrad ranks as one of the most infamous, savage and emotive battles of the 20th century. To supply the trapped and exhausted German Sixth Army, the Luftwaffe mounted an airlift in the winter of 1...

Following episode 187, when I talk to Forczyk about the war in North Africa, I thought it might be interesting to see how that fighting is interpreted and simulated as a computer game. And look at the...