The History Network

Many of you will be aware we have other military history podcasts, Angus's WW2 Podcats and the Ancient Warfare Podcast. Well we have a new one for you: Medieval Warfare hosted the Peter Konieczny. For those who have not already had a listen here is the first episode where Peter discusses why we should study Medieval Warfare. Dur: 40mins File: .mp3

In the early hours of the 9th of August, 1976, 84 Selous Scouts disguised as local soldiers crept across the Mozambique border into a terrorist training camp on the Nyadzonya River. In the few hours that followed, four Selous Scouts were lightly wounded, however, over 1,000 ZANLA recruits lay dead and twice as many were estimated as wounded. This raid was to go down in history as a textbook example of Special Forces employment in asymmetric warfare, showing how small teams of highly motivated and highly trained troops could inflict vastly disproportionate results. The Rhodesian military named the assignment Operation Eland, taking its name from the large African game antelope. It would however be remembered in history by another name; the Nyadzonya Raid. Dur: 29mins File: .mp3

The Battle of Antietam Creek as it was known to the Union, or the Battle of Sharpsburg as it was known to the Confederate States, was fought on the 17th of September 1862 and became the most costly one-day battle of the American Civil War. The battle claimed nearly 23,000 casualties including 6 generals, and in a protracted 4 year civil war would go on to cost over 600,000 lives. While the official death toll for the battle stands at nearly 4,000, in actual fact, the true death toll is closer to 9,000 as many men who were marked down as wounded on the field of battle would later die in hospitals, some even months after the battle. Dur: 25mins File: .mp3

Germany invaded Poland on September 1st 1939, and England, France, Australia and New Zealand declared war on Germany on September 3rd. The Netherlands, which had remained neutral in World War One, continued its policy of neutrality, along with Denmark and Norway. Belgium also decided to remain neutral - unlike the others it had been invaded by Germany in World War One. Dur: 19mins File: .mp3

There seems to be a whole plethora of reasons about how and why 'chat' has been associated in modern times with having a casual conversation with others. The term "Having a chat" is most commonly associated militarily with the first world war trenches and soldiers using lulls in the fighting to get together and de-louse each other while having casual conversations. Chat is often ascribed to the Hindi word for a parasite, 'chatt' (with 2 Ts), but is more possibly from an earlier medieval English word for idle gossip, "chateren". There are certainly references to it in 13th century english literature. But certainly Soldiers in the Napoleonic Wars referred to lice as 'chats'. Dur: 19mins File: .mp3

The fighting on the 7th of September 1812 would be the bloodiest day of the Napoleonic war. The French victory would open the road to Moscow, but the failure to finally smash the Russian's in the field would ultimately prove fatal for Napoleon's Grand Armee. Dur: 20mins File: .mp3

We've something different for you in this episode. I'm sure many of you are aware Angus does a number of podcasts other this one with Nick, one being Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy. Whilst putting the latest episode together he had a chat with military historian Murray Dahm about Friction. They chatted for 40 min on the topic but only needed 4min for the WSS podcast.

We thought you guys might like to hear the conversation it in full. So what you have here is the unabridged version of Murray and Angus talking Clausewitz and Friction… If you don't like this format for the podcast, don't worry normal service will resume in the next episode.

The Second World War came to Burma in December, 1941. In quick succession, the American Pacific fleet was devastated at Pearl Harbor, the American Far Eastern air forces destroyed in the Philippines. Hong Kong was threatened and Siam (Thailand) concluded a peace treaty with Tokyo. Burma was exposed. By May, 1942, it would be occupied from China in the north to Rangoon in the south. With amazing speed and minimal forces, Tokyo had cut the Burma Road supplying the Nationalist Chinese, set forces on the threshold of a restive India and added the Burmese oil fields to Japan's Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Dur: 23mins File: .mp3

We've always promised ourselves we would record some extra podcasts. As we've caught with the magazine release we thought it was time for such an episode… So we decided to look at the Chariot Race in Ben-Hur.

Essentially there are 3 main ways in which finances can be raised with which to use for war: Taxation, raising debt, or simply printing and creating new money. The Romans (among others of course) took a taxation route. It was from around 100 BCE that Roman Legions divided into 10 cohorts of around 400-500 men each. That's 4,000 to 5,000 men in a Legion. Let's assume it was the upper 5,000 figure as there were also some legions with 5,500 men, so we'll average at 5000. In 167 BCE there were 8 of these legions, but by 50 BCE this had almost doubled to 15 - a total of around 75,000 men... Dur: 21mins File: .mp3