Episodes
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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
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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.
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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
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The Wounded Knee Massacre was a massacre of nearly three hundred Lakota people by soldiers of the United States Army. This is their story.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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On the morning of August 9th 1945, air raid sirens began to ring out in the Japanese city of Nagasaki. However, a short while later the sirens rang out again indicating that there was no danger and people began to climb out of their shelters to carry on about their daily business. Japanese spotters had only identified two United States Army Air Force B-29 bombers and they had previously flown to the city of Kokura without dropping any weapons so Japanese authorities presumed they were merely on a reconnaissance mission.
Six days after the attack, Japan surrendered to the Allies bringing to a close the most destructive conflict in recorded history that ended with the first two – and so far, only - nuclear attacks in history. It was the Second World War. In this, the first of a two-part special, we are going to examine some of the key elements and incidents of what is probably the single most influential conflict in the course of Human history. Welcome to Wars of the World.Support the show
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With the onset of Spring 1942, the war in the east was ready to begin again but the problem of supplies particularly of oil was forever a worry for the German High Command and so they planned for an offensive that if successful would not only alleviate their fuel shortage but also deny the Soviets their own fuel stocks. Part of that plan involved a city on the edge of the Volga River in eastern Ukraine. This city formerly known as Volgagrad had since been bestowed with the name of the Soviet leader himself and while few people before the war knew it even existed, in the decades since its name has adorned almost every history book as an example of what occurs when two powerful forces clash and refuse to submit to the other. This is the story of the Battle for Stalingrad. Welcome to Wars of the World.
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In part 2 of our Battle of Britain documentary, we explored how after Germany had swept over continental Europe, Britain under Prime Minister Winston Churchill refused to give in to Hitler’s will but while the British have spirit to spare, fighters and pilots to fly them were becoming increasingly scarce and unless things changed dramatically, Fighter Command would be whittled down into defeat. It was just a matter of time. In this episode we are going to explore the climax of the Battle of Britain and how Fighter Command was able to bounce back seemingly from the dead to achieve victory. Welcome to Wars of the World.
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Fuelled by the euphoria of his successes thus far, Hitler was certain that the recently appointed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill would have no choice but to sue for peace. He was wrong. Churchill made it abundantly clear that Great Britain would never surrender to the Nazi tyranny. That Hitler’s troops were going to have to fight for every square inch of the British Isles for in Churchill’s mind and the free world itself, surrender was simply not an option. In this, the first of a two-part special we are going to examine the story of the Battle of Britain.
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"The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time" So remarked the British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, as the European continent geared up for war in the summer of 1914. Although at first glance his words appear somewhat fatalistic the fact is that what would transpire over the following four years would so dramatically change the world that the consequences of which would not be fully resolved until the end of the century when all the key figures involved had long died including Grey. Even today the consequences of that summer are still being felt in some way and we all live in the shadow of the aptly named Great War. The First World War. Welcome to Wars of the World.
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At 8:46am on September 11th, 2001 - the world changed forever...
A hijacked airliner was flown deliberately into the north tower of the World Trade Center followed seventeen minutes later by another plane which hit the south tower. A third airliner was flown into the Pentagon from where the US directed its global military operations while a fourth was brought down by courageous passengers who wrestled for control of the aircraft with the hijackers.
For decades, the US had believed that it existed behind an armoured shield comprised of its enormous military might. That belief was now shattered. With so many people killed not just from the United States but from across the globe, it was truly an attack on the free world and the cry went out for justice. For revenge.
Very quickly, it was concluded that the attack was authorized by Osama Bin Laden, the head of the al-Qaeda terrorist network who had long dreamed of a spectacular attack on the US mainland. Known to be hiding out in Afghanistan under the umbrella of the ideologically driven Taliban regime, the US and its Allies geared up for war. On September 10th, only a small proportion of Americans knew where Afghanistan was on a map. On September 12th, nearly the entire population were focused on this rural, landlocked country as the hunt for the most wanted man on Earth began.
In this, the second episode of a two-part special on the violent history of Afghanistan, we are going to examine the American-led invasion of Afghanistan; America’s longest war.Support the show
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The United States of America was born out of the yearning of the many people who had traveled there from the old world of Europe to be free of the imperial powers that had dominated them for centuries. To have democracy, liberty, justice for all and to take command of their own destiny.
The birth of the American nation was a painful one, first by having to fight against the forces of the British and then against the indigenous people of North America, within and from outside of the new borders they had declared. In between the many conflicts, the new nation had to establish its own laws, political system and even its own culture none of which developed overnight.
Obviously, there would not always be a consensus. Over the century after 1776 when the United States of America was born, while growing under a political union of the states that it was composed of, it also saw the widening of a cultural divide between the industrious northern states and the agricultural southern states. Perhaps more than anything else, the two sides of this divide found themselves at odds over the question of slavery.
The ethics of owning a person as property became a legal battle between those in support of the practice and those opposed in American courts and halls of power. Eventually, the dispute of course became a real battlefield. More Americans died in the American Civil War that raged on the North American continent between 1861 and 1865 than in any other war in which Americans have fought throughout its history.
And while the battles have long ended, the ramifications of the civil war continue to be felt to this very day in America over issues such as culture and of course race. So, let us delve into the history of this dark chapter of American history.Support the show
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On a sleepy Sunday morning in 1941, the Hawaiian island of Oahu couldn’t have looked anymore idyllic. Even with the fairly recent arrival of the United States Pacific Fleet which had deployed to the island from San Diego to their new main base at Pearl Harbor only seemed to harbinger nothing more than a display of US naval prestige. Arranged off Ford Island in a line were seven of America’s mightiest battleships. This part of the harbor had become known appropriately as Battleship Row and the sight of these seemingly invulnerable battlewagons must have convinced all that America’s might was unquestionable.
And yet the sun was rising literally and figuratively, shining a spotlight on a vast fleet of aircraft that buzzed through the morning sky and into history. This is the story of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Welcome to Wars of the World.Support the show
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On Sunday 15th August 2021, after an almost 20 year-long absence, the Taliban recaptured the Afghan capital city of Kabul. As the US-led coalition withdrew, the Taliban regrouped and began expanding outward once again. Facing little opposition from the Afghan National Army that had been trained and equipped by western forces, they only grew bolder and began an almost Blitzkrieg-style campaign to retake villages, towns, cities and then entire provinces until they were once again in near-total control of a land that has seemingly only known bloodshed for the better part of fifty years.
The story of the Taliban is the story of Afghanistan in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Cloaked in Islamic ideology that even many of the most prominent Muslim countries have largely moved on from, Afghanistan under the Taliban was always a land that resisted the influence of outsiders with tenacity, ferocity and always in blood. The attempts by the great powers of the world to bring Afghanistan more in-line culturally with the wider world perspective particularly concerning the treatment of women and the application of science and technology has presented an arena where the tools of the modern world have waged battles with the determination of the old. Yet almost every foreign power that has gotten involved with Afghanistan has ultimately failed in its mission there hence, Afghanistan becoming known as the graveyard of empires.
In this the first part of a two-part special, we are going to examine the modern history of Afghanistan, investigate the origins and ideology of the Taliban and chart their rise and fall and then return to power. This is the Taliban’s Story. Welcome to Wars of the World.Support the show
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