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In late 2004, the Second Battle of Fallujah commenced. It was an American-led offensive during the Iraq War, with the operation involving the efforts of the United States, United Kingdom and Iraqi Interim Government in what is considered the war’s first major engagement against the Iraqi insurgency, as opposed to its military forces. The conflict resulted in as many as 2000
insurgent deaths and has been described as the single bloodiest battle of the entire war. This is the story of the Second Battle of Fallujah. Welcome to Wars of the World.

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Referred to by Vanity Fair as Hitler’s Doomed Angel, Geli Raubal was the fuhrer’s niece, whose demise at the age of 23 was swept under the carpet almost as quickly as it had come. Over the years, the pair’s relationship has come under intense scrutiny with rumours flying about what kind of relationship, exactly, the pair had and what circumstances led to her death. This is the story of Hitler’s strange fascination with his Niece, Geli Raubal.

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The First World War was the culmination of the age of empires meeting the industrial revolution of the late 19th century. The battlefield had become a machine of death, crushing out life from thousands of soldiers with an efficiency never before witnessed in recorded Human history. In this episode, we are going to examine how the Allies snatched victory from the German clutches and then began a one hundred day march towards defeating the forces of the Kaiser. This is the story of the 100 Days Offensive. Welcome to Wars of the World.

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The Second Boer War, also known as the Anglo-Boer War, raged between October 1899 and May 1902. Involved in the conflict were the British and the Boer residents in the South African Republic and the Orange Free State, both regions established in South Africa in the 1850s. This 31-month clash led to the deaths of almost 100,000 people, while more than 75,000 Brits were wounded and 24,000 Boer troops were captured and sent overseas. 

The war also led many, including the British public, to question the morality of the oppressive British Empire. Join us for this documentary as we examine the Second Boer War: Britain vs South Africa.. Welcome to Wars of the World.

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The Second Battle of Ramadi, fought in 2006 during the Iraq War, saw the US military and Iraqi Security Forces come together to drive insurgent groups out of the city of Ramadi. In a tense and difficult battle, coalition forces sought to capture key areas of the city, allowing them to take control. 

This 8-month conflict is considered one of the most decisive battles in the overarching Iraq War and many in the military believe it led to the formation of the Anbar Awakening, which saw Iraqi tribal groups reject al-Qaeda and cooperate with US forces. Join us for this documentary as we examine the Second Battle of Ramadi. Welcome to Wars of the World.

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September 1999. On the small south-east Asian island of Timor, demands for independence from Indonesia which had ruled over the population there since annexing it in 1976 had grown to such an extent as to spark open violence between those who wished to remain Indonesian and those who wanted the island to take control of its own future. This forced the United Nations to intervene, creating a peacekeeping force predominantly led by Australian defence forces to intervene and secure an open and fair referendum on independence. 

To assist with this difficult task, the Australian government turned to its two longest and most natural allies namely New Zealand and the United Kingdom for assistance. Dubbed the International Force for East Timor or INTERFET, it included a special operations detachment which arrived in theatre aboard a Royal Australian Air Force C-130 Hercules transport flying out of Darwin, Australia. Disembarking from the aircraft in their specially modified Land Rover Defenders was the small British contingent of around 20 troops who were captured briefly on camera by a news crew. 

For the British civilian population back home, this was one of the first real glimpses they’d had of arguably their country’s most secretive special forces units – the Special Boat Squadron or SBS. In this episode, we are going to examine the often-overlooked origins of the SBS and cast some light on this most shadowy of groups. Welcome to Wars of the World.

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The Great War – the First World War – had its own stories of Foo Fighters, again set against the paranoid backdrop of technology advancing seemingly out of control. The Airship Scare or Scareship phenomenon became a very real menace to the Allied powers in the years leading up to and during the First World War as the fear of German airship technology conjured up images of cities destroyed from the air, Allied defences being powerless to stop them.

Was this just mass hysteria as is generally accepted?  As we celebrate the month of October, in association with our UFO-themed sister channel Destination Declassified, we are going to examine how a world gripped with fear, began seeing mysterious airships and aircraft in the sky whether they were really there or not and how one of Britain’s most celebrated figures, was left egg-faced to explain them.  Welcome to Wars of the World.

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On the afternoon of May 14th, 1940, beleaguered citizens in the Dutch city of Rotterdam looked skyward as they heard the approaching drone of German bombers; through the thick, noxious smoke drifting upward from burning buildings, they could just make out the massed formations of Heinkel HE-111’s, the infamous black balkenkreuz insignia stark against their white undercarriages. For the next quarter of an hour, over a thousand high explosive bombs would smash the Dutch into submission, murdering over 700 civilians and devastating an entire city, callously shattering its short-lived defiance in the face of Nazi tyranny. When the dust had settled, questions arose about how this atrocity - which German field commanders claimed was accidental - happened? Worse, were the theories that it was a deliberate act intended to force Dutch capitulation...

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Jonathan Glazer's 2023 critically acclaimed film The Zone of Interest follows the life of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoss and his family as they go about their daily lives, right next to the infamous concentration camp. It shows the unsettling juxtaposition between the comfort felt by the well off Hoss family, and the atrocities committed just over the other side of the wall. 

In reality, this was very much the case: Nazi officials of all ranks simply went about their comfortable day to day lives whilst huge populations of people were being systematically murdered,  in some cases literally, on their doorstep. It can be argued that Adolf Hitler experienced this comfort more than most, as we will explore in today's video. When Hitler wasn't actively taking part in political action, he spent much of his time at the Berghof - a picturesque holiday home in the Bavarian Alps. In fact, with the exception of his headquarters in East Prussia, he spent more time at the Berghof than he would any other location during the course of his time as Fuhrer. Today, we will be exploring the history of the Berghof in detail, discovering how it was used, how the land it sat on came under the possession of one of History's most reprehensible figures.

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“I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.” These are the words of an extraordinary young girl whose words have provided light in one of the darkest chapters of Human history. These are the words of Annelies Marie Frank, more commonly known as Anne and her life has become one of those most in recent history as she recorded the events surrounding her family and their ultimately doomed effort to escape the persecution of the Nazis as they cast their shadow over Europe during the first half of the 1940s. It is a story of youthful hope, the ordinary struggles of everyday adolescent life against a far from ordinary backdrop of fear and persecution and of surviving those extraordinary events not just physically but mentally. This is the tragic tale of Anne Frank.

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