It's impossible to consider the Second World War without reaching for statistics. There are a multitude to choose from and the scale of the figures is often awesome and appalling in equal measure. Such as the overall death toll of the Soviet Union (at least 27 million and counting) or the 3 million who died in the Bengal famine of 1943 or the 2 million plus German and other women raped by Red Army soldiers as they advanced into central Europe in 1944-45. The point about these stats is that they are essentially guesstimates , usually rounded up or down to a manageable figure, because in any protracted war it's impossible, on a methodical basis, to keep an accurate tally of casualties and victims. Armies might reasonably be expected to tot up their losses, but in the confusion of battle even their calculations could and often did seriously err on the rough side. Of course, for civilian victims, many were never, and could not have been, officially acknowledged, their loss known only to their nearest and dearest - which brings to mind the dictum ascribed to Stalin that one death was a tragedy, a million deaths merely a statistic. Moreover, the fog of war produces so many victims in such diverse circumstances that the truth of numbers is very hard to pin down: how many women who were raped and survived, for example, hid the fact out of shame or even later committed suicide without telling? I n China, where the scale of loss and destruction in WW2 is always monumental, historians are necessarily reduced to talking of tens of millions of refugees - not least because the definition of displacement is rarely a scientific one. And, to add to the confusion, sometimes figures are plucked from the air to make a self-serving point. The post-war Polish authorities informed the Nuremberg tribunal that 4 million Jews had died in the death camp at Auschwitz, whereas modern estimates put the number at less than a quarter of that number. We now know that the projected estimate of a million American deaths if US forces had to invade the Japanese home islands in 1945 - the official excuse at the time for dropping the two atomic bombs on Japan instead - was merely a figment of the fevered imaginations of American pressmen: what MacArthur actually told Truman was that the invasion would likely incur 105,000 GIs killed and missing, a figure that plausibly squared with the over 82,000 US casualties suffered in the recent bloody battle for Okinawa. Given all this, it's hardly surprising that many stats for WW2 continue to be largely a work in progress: honest historians attempt ever greater accuracy (and that doesn't always mean that the tally gets smaller), but in some areas the real truth is unlikely ever to be known. On the other hand, what the figures, however rough, do tell us is that this was a war on an unprecedented scale that brought unimaginable suffering and destruction to our planet. In this sense alone, the numbers remain critical to the narrative. If you think you know about WW2, it's time to think again. www.unknownwarriorspod.co.uk An Understanding History Podcast

One of the more startling statistics to come out of the Pacific War of 1941-45 is this: of the 1.7 million Japanese soldiers recorded as dying in combat, it's estimated that some 60% of them died of starvation or associated malnutritional diseases. This is a staggering figure, showing (if nothing else) that lack of food could be a far greater killer in the Second World War than enemy firepower - and was certainly so among civilians in some theatres of the conflict, such as China and the Soviet Union, to mention only the two worst examples. One of the reasons why starvation played such a significant role in Japan's defeat was because its shipping failed, dramatically so, to evade the American blockade which, thanks mainly to the efficacy of US submarines, successfully choked off not just much needed imports to the Japanese home population (which was already experiencing serious malnutrition by the end of 1943), but also to their troops strung out across the Pacific on remote archipelagos. Even for an army that prided itself on living off the land as it advanced, Japanese soldiers found these islands impossible environments in which to cultivate enough of their own food, subsisting in places like Papua New Guinea on snails, snakes and sacsac grass . In protracted attritional warfare, troops living in such conditions could not possibly sustain their ability to fight, with dire results for the Japanese: 15,000 of their troops on Guadalcanal died of starvation, only 5000 in combat, while in the Philippines it's estimated that 400,000 of their 498,000 deaths were down to hunger. Combatant countries that had efficient agricultural sectors and adaptable diets before the war (most of them in western Europe) - and which, crucially, still managed to import the essential foodstuffs they required (such as Britain) - they could generally get by during the war without their populations starving. Japan was not one of these. To learn more about how food and its distribution affected the conduct and outcome of WW2, listen to the episode Food: A Matter of Life and Death in the new series of Unknown Warriors . If you think you know about WW2, it's time to think again. www.unknownwarriorspod.co.uk An Understanding History Podcast

On this day in 1948 US President Harry Truman signed off Executive Order 9981, directing the American armed services to desegregate by offering 'equality of treatment and opportunity' in the country's military. To the millions of African-Americans who had served in the Second World War against the Axis powers, this order came too late, and it would take years more for the US military to end discrimination in its ranks. For throughout WW2 most black US servicemen were employed as manual labour. In the south and west of the United States, where most military training bases were located, segregation was actually legal: typically, black recruits were banned from sharing stores, canteens, clubs, movie theatres, hospital wards, officers' quarters or sports facilities with their white counterparts - and many were confined to barracks when off duty. This caused festering bitterness, and protests broke out which led to ugly racial incidents in which white military police opened fire on black GIs, on occasions killing and wounding many. This racial discrimination moved overseas when the troops shipped out, only breaking down when the critical need for manpower in the last years of the war meant banning African-American soldiers from fighting on the front line became simply absurd. The blatant hypocrisy of the American war effort in this respect undoubtedly galvanised support for civil rights in the US, with black Americans and others getting behind the so-called 'Double V' campaign - victory against fascism and victory against racism. Truman's belated executive order of 1948 was one result of the campaign. This story, so unfamiliar on this side of the Atlantic, is told in America's 'Good War' , Episode 9 of the new WW2 series of Unknown Warriors . If you think you know about WW2, it's time to think again. www.unknownwarriorspod.co.uk An Understanding History Podcast

Over the summer months of 1939, a Soviet army commanded by General Zhukov (famous later for becoming the captor of Berlin in 1945) fought a critical campaign against the Kwantung Army , the crack Japanese force that had occupied Manchuria since seizing it from China in 1931. The fighting began as a border incident and expanded into what we now call the battle of Nomonhan or Kalkhan-Gol . Up to that date, this was the largest tank battle in history. The Red Army won a decisive victory, puncturing the Japanese myth that the elite Kwantung Army was 'invincible'. At the time such a defeat played a crucial part in what proved to be the countdown to Japan's attack on the United States at Pearl Harbour in December 1941. Until Nomonhan, Tokyo's avowed strategic goal of acquiring access to the raw materials it so badly needed had largely targeted northern China, with expansion into adjacent Soviet territory as a potential option. Defeat at Nomonhan dramatically closed down this possibility, persuading Japan increasingly to favour a southward expansion towards Indo-China and the Pacific - a move which sooner or later would bring it into confrontation with British, Dutch and American interests in the region. An intriguing counter-factual arises from this: if the Kwantung Army had beaten Zhukov at Nomonhan in 1939, would Tokyo have opted instead for a northward expansion into resource-rich Mongolia and Siberia? In such a case, there would have been no Pearl Harbour to trigger Hitler's declaration of war on the US, begging the question whether an isolationist America would have entered the Second World War even later than it did - or even at all . Listen to Episode 6 of Unknown Warriors , Series 2. If you think you know about WW2, it's time to think again. www.unknownwarriorspod.co.uk An Understanding History Podcast

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 scholarship and fresh perspectives have transformed the received narratives of this second global conflict of the 20th century . Our view of the past always starts from a present-day standpoint, and this is as true of the Second World War as of the First, with perceptions of these conflicts heavily influenced by our contemporary concerns and values. That said, over time both wars have acquired a received narrative or set of narratives, often high-flown and sentimental in tone , that emphasises national virtues of unity, courage, resistance, and justice. Today's historians, many decades after the end of these wars, now challenge these narratives as seriously outdated, being not just simplistic but sometimes deeply misleading about conflicts that had a unparalleled global reach and complexity . Most new books on the Second World War, as on the First, look at newly discovered individual stories or a fresh angle on some well-known episode or exploit. What Unknown Warriors seeks to do is examine the broader context to these smaller stories, to see how the bigger picture has changed over so many years . The new WW2 series will look at: Britain's much-misunderstood war how the global dimensions of the conflict affected winning and losing the often misrepresented Pacific War how the supply and shipping of food could be a matter of life and death the evolving complexity of the Holocaust China's largely forgotten contribution in the Asia-Pacific region the little known underground war fought across Europe by resistance cells, partisans, and defiant Jews the massive and decisive Soviet-German struggle on the eastern front America's so-called 'Good War' how the aftermath of WW2 played out in all its anarchy and violence. If you think you know about WW2, it's time to think again. www.unknownwarriorspod.co.uk An Understanding History podcast

Exactly 80 years ago today, during June and July 1944, while the Allies in Europe struggled to take back Normandy after D-Day, American ground forces invaded Saipan, one of the Mariana islands in the north Pacific. It proved to be the most costly US operation to date in the Pacific War, with almost 3000 American soldiers killed and over 10,000 wounded; on the Japanese side, virtually the entire garrison of 27,000 men died, while hundreds more Japanese civilians committed suicide by throwing themselves off cliffs onto the rocks below. The dramatic events on Saipan, as on other hard-fought islands in the Pacific conflict - Guadalacanal, Guam, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa - have always had a prominent place in American battle narratives, giving rise to the popular misconception that the Pacific War was principally a land war in which heroic GIs - typically, they were Marines - engaged in murderous combat with a fanatical Japanese enemy on a succession of rocky atolls. But all of these island campaigns were preceded by, and only achievable through, massive amphibious operations involving fleets of battleships and other vessels and, above all, squadrons of warplanes brought to battle on giant aircraft carriers. Without American air supremacy, the outcome of many of these island campaigns could have been even more costly, if also more doubtful. Indeed, in two of the greatest naval engagements of the Second World War - the 1942 battles of the Coral Sea and Midway - it was pilots rather than soldiers or sailors who determined events: in both battles, no American or Japanese surface vessel ever came in sight of an opposing ship because all the fighting was done by warplanes, with dive bombers playing a key role in the sinking of enemy carriers and battleships. And if you think General MacArthur was the hero of this Pacific war (as he was in the eyes of the wartime American press and public), historians are now much more sceptical of his reputation, won seemingly less by real achievement than skilful manipulation of the media. If you think you know about WW2, it's time to think again. www.unknownwarriorspod.co.uk An Understanding History Podcast

Today marks the 83rd anniversary of the launch of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The Eastern Front proved to be the largest, most murderous, and most decisive battlefield of the Second World War. The Germans expended far more lives and deployed much greater resources in this theatre than anywhere else during the years 1941-45. And yet, in Western narratives of WW2, the titanic Soviet-German struggle has commonly been eclipsed by the much smaller Anglo-American war effort against Nazi Germany. To put this in some perspective, before the end of 1941 the Germans had lost far more men on the eastern front than all American losses for the entire Second World War. Moreover, Soviet losses were even higher than the Germans' - roughly three times higher - something that Stalin's regime kept secret after the war. The ramification of this terrible bloodletting was that German defeat became inevitable - but Soviet victory was so costly that it amounted to a kind of defeat, with far-reaching consequences for Soviet citizens who had hoped for a relaxation of repression after the war. You can find out more in Episode 8 of the new series of Unknown Warriors focusing on the Second World War. If you think you know about WW2, it's time to think again. www.unknownwarriorspod.co.uk An Understanding History Podcast

Britain was on the winning side in both world wars. Yet it remembers them very differently. Partly perhaps because WW1 failed to 'finish the job', partly too because Hitler and the Nazis posed a more existential threat than Kaiser Bill, we characterise the Second World War as somehow more 'heroic' than the First - the 'Good War' as the Americans call it. This image of exceptionalism, on both sides of the Atlantic, has had an extraordinary shelf life, informing post-war international relations and domestic politics alike right up to the present day. However, historians now seriously question this undiluted image of World War Two as not just overly simplistic but in some way deeply misleading. In the first place, Britain in 1939 was the richest country in Europe and stood at the hub of a worldwide trading empire which could marshal massive resources, not least the largest merchant marine in the world as well as the biggest oil tanker fleet. By 1945, in terms of manpower alone, it could call on some 8 million servicemen from India, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Moreover, from Dunkirk onwards - that is, well before Lend Lease kicked in 1941 - the United States was a key exporter to Britain of food and materiel, so there was never any real danger, even allowing for the battle of the Atlantic, that the country would starve - unlike the Germans and many millions in occupied Europe and war-torn Asia. Much of contemporary politics in the UK, notably the Brexit debate, is still built around a David-and-Goliath narrative in which plucky little Britain stood alone in WW2 and survived against all the odds. This myth bears no relation to the reality of a country which, while clearly enduring hardships, was able to fight a resource-rich and technologically-innovative war alongside powerful allies. Listen to Episode 1 of the new series of Unknown Warriors about the Second World War. If you think you know about WW2, it's time to think again. www.unknownwarriorspod.co.uk An Understanding History Podcast

In the immediate post-war years, people desperately wanted to return to some kind of normality. In keeping with this spirit, the popular impression has grown up that the period after 1945 was about reconstruction, with Marshal Aid and other initiatives playing a key part in the rebuilding of Europe. It's true, this did happen, eventually, but the reality was that in 1945 the world literally lay in ruins: cities everywhere had been bombed into rubble, tens of millions of people were displaced, infrastructures were broken, and violence continued - not least against the surviving Jews, who were not welcomed back to the homelands from which the Nazis had expelled them: indeed, in places like Poland, they were again subjected to murderous pogroms. The devastated German Reich alone contained millions of liberated and resentful slave labourers, and had to accept millions more Germans who were now, as the defeated perpetrators, arbitrarily and brutally ejected from areas of Europe where they had lived for centuries. Lack of food and shelter was endemic in the post-war world, so stealing, looting, exploitation, racketeering and murder was widespread, reflecting a complete breakdown of morality and law and order. As for the German people, they seemed to regard themselves as much as victims as everybody else, blaming their leaders for their woes while forgetting their own part in the biggest calamity of all - the genocide of the European Jews. Find out more in Series 2, Episode 10 of Unknown Warriors. If you think you know about WW2, it's time to think again. www.unknownwarriorspod.co.uk An Understanding History Podcast

In the 1990s, at roughly the 50th anniversary point, American perceptions of the Second World War became highly nostalgic and sentimental: the US contribution was not just virtuous, it was claimed, but exceptional, confirming America's rightful position in the post-war world as one of the two great super-powers - indeed, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the one and only global super-power. Popular culture of the time reflected this sense of American exceptionalism with books, films and TV extolling the achievements of the 'Greatest Generation', as exemplified in Steven Spielberg's hugely successful series Band of Brothers and the movie Saving Private Ryan. In more recent years, however, American historians have begun to push back against what they see as the myth of America's 'Good War', seeing it as a self-congratulatory narrative which bears little relation to the more complex reality of the war years and which, some would say, has encouraged the US since 1945 to embark on many other military ventures around the world - most if not all of which have dismally failed to live up to the comparison with the more 'heroic' World War Two. The fact is that, far from spearheading the democratic West's resistance to Nazi totalitarianism (as was later claimed), the US came to the war late and only in response to direct attack - from Japan at Pearl Harbour in December 1941 and from Hitler's declaration of war on America a few days later. If you think you know about WW2, it's time to think again. www.unknownwarriorspod.co.uk An Understanding History Podcast

Present-day China is unthinkable without the Second World War. In 1937, the Communists led by Mao Tse Tung were confined to an area in northern China and controlled less than 0.3% of the Chinese population. Twelve years later, as the People's Republic of China, they were running the whole country, having won a bitter civil war against Chiang Kai Shek's Nationalists - the Kuomintang or KMT. What we now know, contrary to previous accounts, is that between 1937 and 1945 it was Chiang's forces, not the Communists, who bore the brunt of China's long and brutal war against the invading Japanese. This conflict exhausted the Nationalists, and in 1949, after Mao's victory in the civil war, they retreated to the island of Formosa, known today as Taiwan, which established itself as a separately recognised, rival Chinese state in the post-war years. So Beijing's current sabre-rattling claims to Taiwan, as well as Japan's protests against them, have their roots deep in the tangled outcome of WW2. The China story has, until fairly recently, been a neglected part of the Second World War's broader narrative in the West and is certainly unfamiliar to most of us. In Episode 6 of the new series of Unknown Warriors, Hans van de Ven puts this right, with a compelling account that corrects many misperceptions that have grown up around a subject often skewed by partisan prejudice and perspectives. If you think you know about WW2, it's time to think again. www.unknownwarriorspod.co.uk An Understanding History Podcast

What we might call the 'underground war' - secret agents, resistance cells and partisan activity - has always been a popular field to write about within the Second World War. But in the historiography written in English most of the focus has been very selective, centred on France and Italy, as well as on partisan warfare in the Balkans, all of them areas where Britain's Secret Operations Executive (SOE) played a significant (if underwhelming) role. The British-Polish historian Halik Kochanski has now written a Europe-wide study of resistance to Nazi occupation which reveals a much more complex picture of the underground war. In the first place, it's clear that many of the standard resistance narratives have been skewed by a post-war construct of courage and national unity that was often far from the case: in France, for example, the message put out was that the French resistance was united, which it wasn't, and that France had liberated itself, which it hadn't. In general, civilian resistance, even partisan operations, had little real effect on the outcome of the fighting on the major battle fronts. Secondly, only a broad view of underground activity across Europe as a whole enables us to understand that there was a wide difference between east and west: in the east, the racially-motivated barbarity of Nazi occupation meant defiance came at a far higher cost, especially for the Jews - whose resistance was existential but also highly constrained by vicious reprisals and the constant fear of betrayal. You can listen to Halik Kochanski talk about resistance across Nazi-occupied Europe in Episode 6 of the new series of Unknown Warriors, in which leading historians explore how modern scholarship and fresh perspectives challenge the received narratives of WW2. If you think you know about WW2, it's time to think again. www.unknownwarriorspod.co.uk An Understanding History podcast