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It's obvious that the Second World War was a global conflict, even more so than WW1, yet we still tend to look at it from a national perspective, which creates false assumptions and skewed parameters. But, equally, these national narratives are very diverse, spread as they are across Europe, the Middle East, the USSR and the Asia-Pacific region, and representing big and small countries, winners and losers, the free and the occupied. To take one tiny detail: VE Day on 8 May

VE Day (Victory in Europe) falls on 8 May, the date on which the Nazi regime formally and unconditionally surrendered to the Allies in Berlin in 1945. It was an apposite date in 2024 on which to launch a new series of Unknown Warriors , this time about the Second World War (WW2) , as a follow-up to my earlier series on the First World War (WW1). The new series comprises 10 fresh episodes , each up to an hour or more in length, in which leading historians explain how modern s

The Real First World War 10 Episodes - Leading Historians - New Perspectives www.unknownwarriorspod.co.uk

Was WW1 a 'just' war? Big wars have a habit of changing what warfare means. If your enemy can find a means to best you, however heinous,...

As we approach the 104th anniversary of the Armistice on November 11, 1918, it's an opportune moment to get away from the myths and...

Exactly 105 years ago today, the 11th Battalion of the Border Regiment, nicknamed the Lonsdales (after their patron the Earl of Lonsdale), embarked from Folkestone for France and the Western Front. On 1 July, 1915 - the first day of the battle of the Somme - the battalion lost 490 other ranks and 25 officers out of a total of 850 men. 8 days later, after retrieving what was left of their dead comrades, members of the battalion were ordered on a trench raid. It never happene

Total War The idea of total war - which has come back into use during the worldwide battle against Covid - is usually associated with the...

Would Brexit have ever happened if we weren't an island? The idea of European unity is very appealing if, for centuries, your country has...

Fritz Haber, the German chemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1918, was quite a contradiction. By helping develop industrial...

We tend to define the First World War as 1914-18, but for most of central/eastern Europe and the Middle East 1918 had no meaning. As huge...

Why, over 100 years later, do we still believe that the outbreak of the First World War was greeted with universal enthusiasm in the...

The Real First World War If you want to read about this unusual WW1 podcast series and the ideas behind it, you can go to the online...

Understanding The First World War Memory and remembrance have played a key part in the way we interpret the First World War. But memory...

Understanding The First World War Until recently, most general histories of the First World War either were narrative accounts or told...

Understanding The First World War We think of the First World War as a well defined time span 1914-18, almost as if it took place in some...

Understanding The First World War In the popular British narrative, 1918 is the ‘forgotten year’ of the First World War. Instead, all the...

Understanding the First World War 1.5 million Indians volunteered to fight for the Allied cause during the First World War. And yet the...

Understanding The First World War Shell shock was unknown before the First World War, but rapidly grew to prominence during the conflict. In 1916 it reached epidemic levels at the five-month long battle of the Somme, with traumatised casualties rising fourfold in number. This divided the medics and terrified the military, who feared that troop morale and effectiveness would suffer. As the British Army saw it, it was a problem that had to be got rid of fast. Their brutal sol

Understanding The First World War Despite the fact that in the years before 1914 international conferences had agreed a set of rules to...

Understanding The First World War: Historians of WW1 now view the conflict through trans-national and global perspectives, not simply the...