Wars That Shaped The World
Wars That Shaped The World, the stories of conflicts that defined history. From the air and amphibious assaults of the D-Day landings, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait bringing about the first Gulf War, to the split of Korea… these stories of war are brought to life via epic storytelling based on real life accounts.
Episodes
November 2, 2023 • 1 min
Wars That Shaped The World, the stories of conflicts that defined history.
From the air and amphibious assaults of the D-Day landings, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait bringing about the first Gulf War, to the split of Korea… these stories of war are brought to life via epic storytelling based on real life accounts.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mark as Played
November 8, 2023 • 52 mins
Tuesday, 6 June 1944 was barely an hour old when Major John Howard and the men of D Company, Ox and Bucks Light Infantry, hurtled out of the night sky above Normandy. Behind them the largest invasion force ever to set sail was approaching the French coast. After four long and brutal years of Nazi occupation, the liberation of mainland Europe was underway – D-Day had begun.
Narrated by Paul Waggott
Written by Robin Scott Elliot
Pro...
Mark as Played
November 8, 2023 • 49 mins
”I was sitting in on the greatest show ever staged!” As the brave men and women of the Resistance hurried through the pre-dawn darkness, risking lives to sabotage the Germans, off the Normandy coast the first landing craft were ferrying Captain Moose Schroeder and his men towards Utah Beach – the Americans were coming. And just in time for their airborne compatriots, fighting desperately to survive inland.
Narrated by Paul Waggott...
Mark as Played
November 15, 2023 • 46 mins
“As our boat touched sand and the ramp went down, I became a visitor to hell.” Death was coming to Omaha beach, only few on the Allied side expected it to be directed their way with such devastating consequences. The Americans presumed they’d brush aside meagre German defences; instead they found themselves plunged into hell and history.
Narrated by Paul Waggott
Written by Robin Scott Elliot
Production and Sound Design by Holy Smo...
Mark as Played
November 22, 2023 • 50 mins
“I know the longest day and all that stuff, but this really was a hell of a long day.” The first 24 hours of D-Day were make or break – on Gold, Juno and Sword beaches the British and Canadian forces had to get inland and dig in before the panzers arrived. Fail and they faced being thrown back into the sea.
Narrated by Paul Waggott
Written by Robin Scott Elliot
Production and Sound Design by Holy Smokes Audio
Executive Producers ...
Mark as Played
November 29, 2023 • 61 mins
August 2, 1990. They came out of the darkness… tanks, column after column of the Republican Guard, Iraq’s feared and battle-hardened elite. Kuwait’s small and under-prepared army had no answer - within hours their country was under the brutal control of Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s feared dictator, and his army. How would the world respond?
Narrated by Paul Waggott
Written by Robin Scott Elliot
Production and Sound Design by Holy Smokes...
Mark as Played
December 6, 2023 • 57 mins
Welcome to the first 24-hour news war. Saddam called it the ‘mother of all battles’. American jets, he proclaimed, would be blasted from Iraqi skies. The world was glued to rolling news channels as a very different conflict unfolded. Missiles and smart bombs rained down on Baghdad. In response Saddam launched Scud missiles at Israel, trying to explode the conflict into a Middle East-wide war. The world watched, and held its breath....
Mark as Played
December 13, 2023 • 58 mins
In the early hours of Sunday, 24 February, 1991, the still of the desert night was disturbed by the sound of helicopters, packed with paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division, rising into the dark. The land war to free Kuwait from the Iraqi invaders had begun. It was to last a matter of days, but for the men who fought it Operation Desert Storm would stay with them for the rest of theirs.
Narrated by Paul Waggott
Written by Rob...
Mark as Played
December 20, 2023 • 55 mins
‘It looked like what you’d always imagine hell would.’ General Norman Schwarzkopf masterminded the US-led coalition’s crushing victory. Afterwards Stormin Norman flew along the Highway of Death, the road out of Kuwait, looking down on what his troops had done. Schwarzkopf’s men freed Kuwait and shattered the Iraqi army, its charred remains littering the highway – but did the outcome make further conflict inevitable?
Narrated by Pa...
Mark as Played
December 27, 2023 • 41 mins
At 4am on June 25th, 1950, the Land of the Morning Calm was shattered by the sound of artillery firing across the 38th parallel dividing Korea into north and south. Soon the growl of tank engines, Soviet-made T-34s, confirmed what was coming. Invasion. North Korea’s surprise attack on their ill-prepared southern neighbours began the first major conflict of the Cold War, a war of sweeping advance and hurried retreat whose consequenc...
Mark as Played
January 3, 2024 • 44 mins
Douglas MacArthur had no military equal, at least in his own mind. The veteran and hero of the victory over Japan believed he could do the same in Korea and with an audacious amphibious landing at Inchon turned the war on its head. The Reds were on the run, victory for the US, British and rest of the United Nations forces seemed inevitable. Could anything stop General MacArthur’s final triumph?
Narrated by Paul Waggott
Written by ...
Mark as Played
January 10, 2024 • 43 mins
They came out of the gloom of the Manchurian winter, bugles blowing, and swept all before them – the Chinese had arrived and once again the Korean War took a dramatic turn. The threat of China’s Red Army had been dismissed by General MacArthur, but it proved a catastrophic mistake. The United Nations force was swept out of North Korea, a humbling for MacArthur as his forces endured the worst retreat in US military history.
Narrate...
Mark as Played
January 17, 2024 • 49 mins
After being stunned by China’s Red Army, Douglas MacArthur wanted payback – MacArthur demanded President Truman allow him to use the US military’s deadliest weapon, the nuclear bomb. MacArthur wanted to drop 50. The president thought it over; and decided against it. It was the end for MacArthur but not the war. A bloody stalemate settled over the Korean peninsula.
Narrated by Paul Waggott
Written by Robin Scott Elliot
Production...
Mark as Played
January 24, 2024 • 45 mins
A death at police hands is the final ingredient added to a toxic brew of British grievances against their Afrikaner rulers. For the Boers the British are little more than foreigners, and both see the tens of thousands of black Africans worthy of no rights whatsoever.
The debate is simply over which white men will rule.
Narrated by Paul Waggott
Written by David Thomas
Production and Sound Design by Holy Smokes Audio
Executive Pr...
Mark as Played
January 31, 2024 • 45 mins
The conflict had now begun and was expected to result in a swift decisive victory for the British, the world’s most powerful Empire. The butchery of Spion Kop to the resistance of Mafeking however were stops on a journey to a series of humiliating military reverses and devastating sieges.
Narrated by Paul Waggott
Written by David Thomas
Production and Sound Design by Holy Smokes Audio
Executive Producers Tony Pastor + Neil Fearn
...
Mark as Played
February 7, 2024 • 42 mins
Kimberley, the diamond mining capital of South Africa and the heart of the De Beers diamond empire is surrounded by the Boers. Cecil John Rhodes - politician, businessman, imperialist and believer implicitly in white domination, lobbies Britain help to free ‘his’ town.
Narrated by Paul Waggott
Written by David Thomas
Production and Sound Design by Holy Smokes Audio
Executive Producers Tony Pastor + Neil Fearn
A Goalhanger Podcasts...
Mark as Played
February 14, 2024 • 57 mins
The war is at a tipping point. Retreats, secret meetings, religious reasoning… conventional warfare develops into vicious guerilla warfare tactics and struggle. British reprisals will utterly change the face of South Africa in the twentieth century.
Narrated by Paul Waggott
Written by David Thomas
Production and Sound Design by Holy Smokes Audio
Executive Producers Tony Pastor + Neil Fearn
A Goalhanger Podcasts Production
Cast;
...
Mark as Played
February 21, 2024 • 33 mins
The Crimean War began in 1854 and changed the course of European history. This gruelling conflict, with the British and French alarmed by the rising threat of Russia, marked the changing face of war – the beginning of the end of the cavalry, the beginning of trench warfare and the development of lethal weaponry and technologies that would forever alter how wars would be fought – and how their stories would be told.
Narrated by Pa...
Mark as Played
February 28, 2024 • 33 mins
’Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die…’ Few moments in Britain’s long history have been celebrated and mythologised like the Charge of the Light Brigade, six hundred and sixty one men riding gloriously into the pages of history, their heroism recorded forever by Tennyson’s words. But what really happened on that autumn day? Was there any glory found on the stony ground of the Crimean peninsula? Who was to blame for the...
Mark as Played
March 6, 2024 • 37 mins
As winter swept over the Russians in Sevastopol and their French and British besiegers huddled on the surrounding heights, the Crimean War settled into a deadly pattern – this was modern warfare, trenches, artillery and death rates as high as anything later found in the First World War. The toll was taken far beyond Crimea too – the Tsar, worn down by war, died, Britain’s Prime Minister was forced out. But the fighting went on.
Na...
Mark as Played
Popular Podcasts
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.