After winning back France and Belgium, the Allied forces met unexpected resistance in the Netherlands in September 1944. Following nine days of fighting, they withdrew. In this podcast, Dan spoke to Antony Beevor about what was possibly one of the greatest Allied failures of the Second World War, and the intelligence failures and vanities which caused it. Antony is one of the best selling military historians of all time, and author of ‘Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges 1944’.

On the outbreak of World War Two, young men from across the Empire volunteered to risk their lives in the fight against Nazi Germany. For this podcast, Peter Devitt from the RAF museum spoke with Dan about the often-neglected histories of African-Caribbean RAF pilots and their contribution to the Allied war effort.

When studying the causes of war we can often be distracted by actions, but in many cases, including the World Wars, a study of the history of ideas is just as enlightening. In this episode, James spoke to inter-disciplinary scholar Dr. Pablo de Orellana about ethnonationalism and its role in both of the World Wars, as well as in the rise of far-right ideas today.

On the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Arnhem, Dan Snow was joined by veterans and dignitaries to follow in the footprints of those who took part in the bold attempt to outflank the Germans in 1944. As Dan prepares to jump out of an aircraft to relive the events of the 1944 landings, we hear from the UK and US ambassadors to the Netherlands, from the Mayor of Arnhem, and from veterans who lived through the battle.

He is arguably the 20th century's most notorious head of state and the results of his leadership are spread far and wide. But did Hitler shoot himself in the Führerbunker, or did he slip past the Soviets and escape to South America? In this podcast with Dan Snow, Luke Daly Groves takes on the conspiracy theorists using recently declassified MI5 files, previously unpublished sketches of Hitler's bunker and eyewitness accounts of intelligence officers.

In 1941, Nazi Germany turned on its former ally, the Soviet Union. One of the strategic objectives of this operation, Barbarossa, was to conquer Leningrad. To discuss the German turn on the Soviet Union and perhaps the most brutal siege of the Second World War, James Rogers is joined by Chris Bellamy, author of Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War. Chris is Professor Emeritus of Maritime Security at the University of Greenwich and Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Maritime Crime and Security.

In the spring of 1945, the Allies liberated territory from Axis occupation. Whilst the British advanced into most of Denmark, Stalin’s Soviet forces occupied the small island of Bornholm. They remained there for 11 months, but then withdrew with little fanfare. Caroline Kennedy-Pipe is a professor of International Relations and International Security at Loughborough University. She spoke to James about her research into the Soviet occupation of Bornholm and its mysterious end.

In considerations of the First World War, the roles of female scientists in supporting the war effort have been shockingly under acknowledged. Dan was joined in this podcast by Patricia Fara, a historian of science at the University of Cambridge, to talk about the women who worked as scientific researchers during the First World War.

The First World War is most commonly portrayed using records of young white Europeans, silencing the stories of the 4 million non-white non-Europeans who fought in and laboured for it. For this History Hit podcast, Dan spoke with John Akomfra about the untold experiences of African soldiers, carriers and labourers during the First World War. John is an artist and filmmaker whose work investigates, amongst other things, memory, post-colonialism and the experiences of migrant diasporas. When this podcast was recorded in 2018, John was running an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum to commemorate those Africans who fought, served and died during the war.

The First World War is one of the great turning points of the last couple of centuries. Debates surrounding its origins, however, remain endless. In this podcast Margaret MacMillan, Professor of International History at Oxford, discusses the circumstances which led to the declarations of war in 1914 with Dan Snow. They consider our enduring fascination with this moment in history, in which so many of the modern world's problems have their roots.