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Send us a text 1942. Nazi tyranny has engulfed Europe, the western Soviet Union and North Africa. Against this backdrop, there seems to be only one force who can take the fight to the heart of Hitler’s Third Reich – RAF Bomber Command. But results have been poor, and the cost has been high. As a new commander takes charge, he brings with him a bold new plan that he believes will be the first knock out blow of the war, and to deliver it, he plans to send over 1000 bombers to hit a single German city. This is the story of Operation Millenium – the first 1,000 bomber raid. Welcome to Wars of the World. Support the show

Send us a text The Battle of Britain was one of the most unique and decisive battles in history. Fought almost entirely in the air, the defeat of Britain’s Royal Air Force would have opened the door to an invasion of Britain and the total subjugation of western Europe under the Swastika. Fortunately, the British defenders prevailed in what is remembered as their finest hour but while much is discussed about the battle for the skies, less is known about the efforts made to actually carry out the invasion had the German Luftwaffe won the Battle of Britain. This is the story of the trials and tribulations of the German preparations for Operation Sea Lion; the invasion of Britain. Welcome to Wars of the World. Support the show

Send us a text Few cities in the world can claim the same level of fame, of culture and possessing the level of prestige in the art world as Paris. It became known as ‘La Ville-Lumière’ or the City of Lights and it was one of the first true international cities, heavily influencing both European and world history for hundreds of years. Tyrants both ruled it and coveted it for themselves. During the early stages of the Great War, Kaiser Wilhelm II came frighteningly close to marching triumphantly through its streets, so much so that he would spend the next four years dreaming lecherously of standing atop the famous Eiffel Tower, looking down at the city below now draped in the German flag.  It would be a dream he would not realise but one he would share with a young Austrian-born corporal serving in his Army in the trenches of the Western front. In this episode, we will look at how Adolf Hitler would, nearly twenty-two years later, achieve in just a few weeks what the Kaiser failed to do in four years and turn out the city of lights. This is the story of the fall of Paris. Welcome to Wars of the World.  Support the show

Send us a text Smartly pressed and immaculately presented, the Nazis loved their uniforms. For the Nazi mindset, the uniform demonstrated discipline and status and was used as part of the propaganda effort to give their dream of a new, super-Germany a sense of fashion and style. Some embraced this more than others with perhaps the most notable connoisseur of fine clothing being Hermann Goering, the head of the Luftwaffe who was known to have specially tailored, flamboyant uniforms made for himself, but fashion played more of a role in Nazi culture than one might first believe. In this episode we are going to explore the importance and some of the history behind the Nazi obsession with uniforms. Welcome to Wars of the World.  Support the show

Send us a text Early October 1993, as Americans went about their daily business, many were stunned to hear of the dramatic events that had taken place thousands of miles away in the impoverished, war-torn country of Somalia involving their own troops in a city few of them had ever heard of. Fought on the streets of the Somali capital, the Battle of Mogadishu, as American history books refer to it, took place on the afternoon of October 3rd 1993, through the night and into the next morning. For American forces, it would prove one of the most intense urban battles since the Vietnam War two decades earlier. Consequently, they suffered more dead and wounded in a matter of hours than in recent years of operations combined, culminating in the shootdown of two US Army UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters.  Yet, despite these factors, the battle itself is considered a tactical success for the US forces involved, for despite daunting odds, political restrictions in the planning stage, and unforeseen mishaps, a force of less than 100 US troops held off more than 10 times their own number of heavily armed hostiles who poured streams of bullets and rocket-propelled grenades at their positions in an intense, coordinated ambush. In today’s episode, we will examine the events leading up to the battle, the battle itself and the fallout from the whole affair, known around the world as the Black Hawk Down Incident. Support the show

Send us a text War Thunder is a highly detailed vehicle combat game containing over 2000 playable tanks, aircrafts and ships spanning over 100 years of development. Immerse yourself completely in dynamic battles with unparalleled realism and approachability. Support the show

Send us a text By 1942, the war was no longer another great European conflict. It was now a firmly global affair enveloping all of the world’s great powers as the Allies squared off against the tyranny and aggression of the Axis nations. Against such colossal forces, no one country could stand alone and events that affected one combatant would ultimately have consequences for the other further down the road. To that end, while the western Allies and the Soviet Union were effectively fighting separate wars against the same enemy, there needed to be cooperation between the two fronts in order to squeeze the life out of Nazi Germany and insure victory against Fascism. However, the relationship was often a strained one as both Allied power blocks were suspicious of the other’s intentions once the war was over.  Thus, we come to the subject of today’s episode and a story of the war that is still the subject of much debate today. It was an operation with no specific military objective other than to experiment with conducting division-sized amphibious landings against a fortified beach and as a gesture to the Soviet Union who were starting to feel abandoned by their Allies. It is an operation that has become seared into the hearts and minds of the Canadian people for the sacrifice they were asked to make for it. Support the show

Send us a text The Wounded Knee Massacre was a massacre of nearly three hundred Lakota people by soldiers of the United States Army. This is their story. Support the show

Send us a text As the drive for equality between the sexes gathered unprecedented momentum in the 1950s and 60s, historians began to reassess the importance women have played in many of the most pivotal events. Who were some of the most important women alongside the men responsible for some of the most heinous acts recorded within the pages of the Human story? In the case of Nazi Germany, Eva Braun is often cited as being equivalent to the wives of Allied leaders and rightly so for she stood by Hitler until the very last moment of his life. However, she was by no means the only woman to occupy a significant place beside the Fuhrer. In this episode, we are going to look at the story of Magda Goebbels, wife of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, close and personal friend of the Fuhrer and the woman who was once labelled as the First Lady of the Third Reich. Support the show

Send us a text Dive into the gripping story of the Battle of Midway, a pivotal moment in World War II that changed the course of history. In this video, we'll explore the strategies, key players, and decisive moments that led to the stunning victory of the United States against the Japanese Empire. Witness how the bravery and determination of the Allied forces turned the tide of the war in the Pacific, and learn about the lasting impact of this monumental battle on the outcome of World War II. Join us here on 'Wars of The World' as we uncover the secrets, sacrifices, and heroism of the Battle of Midway.  Support the show

Send us a text It was a place few expected to be fighting in when war broke out in 1939. It was a conflict Hitler never wanted. It was a fight on terrain that at times was as hostile as the enemy. It was a battlefield that relied on chariots of steel and wings of vengeance and one that could only be won through cunning, ruthlessness and above all – an effective supply chain. For many, the battle for control of North Africa is seen as something of a side show to the war in Europe but this conceals the truth that if North Africa had fallen to the Axis powers of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy then the whole course of the war could have been completely changed. In this episode, we are going to explore the events surrounding the most pivotal battles for control of North Africa – the battles for El Alamein in Egypt – and examine the cost of both success and failure to both sides. Welcome to Wars of the World. Support the show

Send us a text It would be too simplified an explanation for the motivation of Adolf Hitler to merely state that he desired conquest and power. Nazi Germany, including the lands to which its power reached, was to be a society unlike any other. Purged of those with attributes deemed undesirable in his new order, the new German people would be pure and united in their goal of achieving their country’s destiny; to become the greatest nation on Earth. Technologically. Militarily. Scientifically. Germany was to be the envy of all, untouchable by the old foreign powers who would squabble for the scraps left in its wake as Hitler’s hand as leader - the Fuhrer - stretched across the globe to every continent. At the heart of this new Germany would be its capital.  Berlin, which was to be renamed Germania, would become the most developed and prosperous city not just in the world but in all of history, its magnificence leaving the famed capitals of empires of old such as Rome and Athens a mere shadow in comparison. And dominating this new supercity would be the immense Grand Hall or Hall of the People. Conceived of by Hitler and designed by Albert Speer, this immense, domed structure would dwarf any that was in existence at that time, aptly demonstrating Nazi Germany’s power and capability. Being able to seat 180,000 Nazi German citizens, it would be 16 times larger than St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome whose design it aped and would be filled with devoted followers all of whom would come to see the Fuhrer in person and hear him speak of the bright future for the Third Reich, a reich which Hitler promised would last a thousand years.  And yet just twelve years after Hitler came to power, that dream of the greatest city in history was smashed under the tracks of Soviet T-34 tanks, the Nazi leadership having to recruit children and the elderly to try and stave off the Red Army that had encircled the city which already had been battered by Allied bombing raids for five years, looking to deliver the death blow to the Nazi tyranny.  Support the show

Send us a text No war – won or lost – is ever waged without sacrifice. Those sacrifices can be material in the loss of equipment or infrastructure, monetary in the cost to a nation’s economy of waging a war but always it is in blood. Death is at the very nature of war and while armies going back to antiquity have sought to limit their own casualties whenever they could, the threat of death is forever present. However, death is not always a matter of the unfortunate circumstance a combatant may find themselves in during their final moments. Throughout history, there are those who have engaged the enemy knowing that while they will almost certainly die, their sacrifice may have meaning for their comrades for as it is written in the Holy Bible in John Chapter 15 verse 13, “No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.” Often the decision to make such sacrifices are made in the heat of battle however as the Second World War entered its final phase, the demand for sacrifice in order to help turn the tide against an increasingly hopeless situation led to an almost industrial scale undertaking to throw Human lives at the enemy in the hope of deflecting the inevitable. This is the story of the Divine Wind, Japan’s Kamikazes. Welcome to Wars of the World. Support the show

Send us a text In 1916, France was a nation cut in two by a string of trenches cut into the Earth running from north to south, separating two vast opposing military forces who fielded weapons that seemed the stuff of science fiction just a generation earlier. So confident in these weapons were both sides that they expected the fighting to be a short and sharp affair, both expecting victory but, in the end, it was nothing more than bloody, senseless stalemate. Britain had gone to war in honour of a treaty it had signed with Belgium which German Kaiser Wilhelm II disregarded when his troops invaded the small neutral country, looking to bypass the main French line. At the time the British Empire was the most powerful in history, but that strength largely lay in its navy. On the continent, professional troops used to putting down uprisings by tribesmen in remote parts of the Empire, struggled to get to grips with the realities of modern warfare. The result was a bloodbath and would eventually lead to the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army, the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Welcome to Wars of the World. Support the show

Send us a text The Vietnam War would see the realisation of the Vietnamese dream of a single unified, independent country taking its place in the world free of outside oppression and rule. It is the type of story that has been told throughout history and had it occurred at any other point in history then it would have likely been largely forgotten outside of the small South East Asian country as so many wars of independence are. But because of events elsewhere in the world, the battlefields of Vietnam became one of the most important in the world at that time for it was here that two ideological superpowers, the democratic west and the communist east, would throw their weight in. Not being able to fight one another directly because they would destroy themselves in a nuclear fire, they instead fought through the Vietnamese people. This is the story of the Vietnam War.  Support the show