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.

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.