Call of Duty: WW2's Historical Advisor M...

Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists famously described the First Amendment as building a "wall of separation between church and State." This line has been the gold standard for those who point to the secular origins of America and the threat of funding any sort ... Show More

There’s an argument to be made that every technology advance in communication – from cave paintings to fake AI movie trailers – is at its root an attempt to tell stories. Our first night-fires created the earliest audiences for spoken stories. In time, the development of rhyme, s ... Show More

During the Holocaust, Josef Mengele discarded every medical ethic to perform horrific human experiments at Auschwitz, including non-consensual vivisections, limb transplants, and agonizing surgeries conducted without anesthesia. Japan had its own program that is less known but eq ... Show More

The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects (Cornell University Press) uses everyday objects to tell the story of the Great Patriotic War as never before. Brandon Schechter attends to a diverse array of things―from spoons to tanks―to show how ... Show More

In his second book, author Terrance J. Finnegan describes America’s early experience fighting the Germans during World War I. Finnegan’s A Delicate Affair on the Western Front: America Learns How to Fight a Modern War in the Woevre Trenches (The History Press, 2015) provides in ... Show More

<p>Dan explores his great-grandfather's part in the First World War. Lieutenant-General Thomas Snow was a senior officer in the British Army who commanded troops on the first day of the Somme. It was a disaster; thousands of men died for almost no strategic gains, and his legacy ... Show More

Known as the Desert Fox, Erwin Rommel was one of Germany's greatest military leaders. Having soared through the ranks after numerous victories during the First World War, he became an integral part of the Axis command, and he was one of the few who held Hitler's ear. But how did ... Show More

The story of the United States Marine Corps in the Pacific Theatre in the Second World War is no doubt quite familiar to our listeners. Less well known, however, is the story of how the Marine Corps readied itself for the challenges of amphibious warfare during the interwar perio ... Show More

What was it actually like to operate a tank during the Second World War?In this episode, we explore the iron belly of tank warfare through the eyes of Private Arthur Ibbotson, who enlisted in the war as a young lad in 1942, first joining the Grenadier Guards in London and who end ... Show More

<p>From the First World War to the Cold War, conflict in the 20th century has been crucial in shaping England as we know it. This is the final episode of Dan’s epic adventure, taking him deep inside the famous White Cliffs of Dover with Gavin Wright, into the complex warren of tu ... Show More

The story of the battlefield in the 20th century was dominated by a handful of developments. Foremost of these was the introduction and refinement of tanks. In Tank Warfare (Indiana UP, 2020), prominent military historian Professor Jeremy Black offers a comprehensive global accou ... Show More

In accounts of the Second World War, the role Navy's played is often overlooked. But the Navy's of both the Allied and Axis forces engaged in some of the biggest maritime campaigns in history. From near total elimination of forces, to epic sea battles, the Second World War change ... Show More

<p>It’s 1943. The Allies are determined to break Hitler’s grip on occupied Europe and plan an all-out assault on Sicily, but they face an impossible challenge - how to protect a massive invasion force from a potential massacre. It falls to two remarkable intelligence officers, Ew ... Show More