War Stories
War Stories is a narrative show that takes the broad arcs of warfare and shares the stories behind crucial points their development. In each season, the show revolves around a single topic and traces a path from before its invention to the modern-day with a focus on the people who made it happen.
Episodes
In Northern France on July 14th, 1916, a cavalry unit from Hyderabad made what most consider to be the final cavalry charge of World War I before the invention of tanks. The unit, Deccan Horse, represented the last gasp of the old way of battle — a way upended by the grinding slog of the Great War. This is their story.
Near the end of 1917, a young captain by the name of George S. Patton received orders from the chief of the newly created U.S. Tank Corps, Colonel Samuel Rockenbach. His task was to launch the light tank school of the U.S. Army. However, it wasn't long before he had to take his lessons from the classroom and test them on the battlefield of the Saint-Mihiel Salient.
Well before the threat of World War II entered societies' collective minds, smaller regional conflicts gradually simmered away across Europe. One of these, the Spanish Civil War, might not have drawn much notice from leaders in the United States, but the same could not be said for those who ruled Germany and the Soviet Union. In it, they found the perfect testing ground for the future weapons that would come to define the 1940s and...
The 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion, the first of its kind, was stood up in 1941. The theory governing their use had yet to be tested on the field of battle. In November of the following year, Lieutenant Colonel Hershel Baker and the men of the 601st found themselves on the Queen Mary departing for that ultimate of testing grounds. Only a few months later, they found themselves along Gabès Road in Tunisia with the 10th Panzer Divisi...
Nazi Germany fielded a military with many components designed to amaze as much as to destroy. While this philosophy meant that many designs never left the drawing board, one that did was the Tiger Tank—a relatively beastly model whose gun could rip through nearly every form of enemy armor before the ill-fated tank even had a chance to strike. The units comprised of these Tigers, heavy panzer battalions, saw some of their fiercest c...
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) of the 1970s emphasized a number of qualities: proactive leadership, heroism, and a recognition of the young life of their country that rose in the wake of great tragedy. These qualities weren't just given lip service, but imbued within enlisted service members and officers of all levels. So when their country was under attack in late 1973, it should come as no surprise that Zvi Greengold and the me...
The battles of 73 Easting, Medina Ridge, and Norfolk. Were they the pinnacle of the near century of tank warfare we've covered in season one, or the last gasp?
Over the past seven episodes, we've traced the development of armored warfare through the end of traditional, horse-driven cavalry to the armored warfare of Desert Storm. But as military planners and politicians face asymmetric threats and limited conflicts around the globe, how should we look at the role of tanks?
In the first of our interseason episodes, Adin tells the story of the encrypted messages received by the United States on the 13th and 14th of April 1943 and arguably the most important decapitation mission of history that followed.
In our second interseason episode, Angry Staff Officer and Adin look at the tragic decline of armor in the Star Wars universe and explore why it might have occurred.
While the world watched Cuba as it became a potential nuclear missile launch site, another threat lay off the east coast in the Sargasso Sea. Four Soviet submarines waited for the outbreak of hostilities, and each carried the power to start World War III.
Next week, Season Two of War Stories launches, but for those of you who can't wait to figure out the subject we're covering, we've got a shot trailer for you. Enjoy.
What is it that makes a good marksman? Is it their training? Their weapon? Maybe they’re just born that way, or raised with a rifle in their hands. In our Season Two premiere, we take a look at the shift to the modern rifle and the individuals who sometimes had the power to change the course of an entire battle with their weapon.
After hearing the news about the discovery of the Indianapolis wreck, we thought we should unlock this Patreon episode that we recorded over the course of the summer. Make sure you sign up if you'd like more of them hitting your download queue in the future!
From the time of the French and Indian War, Daniel Morgan had a bone to pick with the British Army. Over the following decades, he and the riflemen he led would do their best to even the score.
While Napoleon swept through Europe, the rifle took up a central location on the battlefield with the 95th Rifles of the British Army. The impact of their weapon would reach far and wide beyond technological platforms.
On a scraggly hill in Pennsylvania, a unit of sharpshooters took part in some of the most fierce, if not frequently discussed, fighting of Gettysburg. Many only know them from the accessories riding atop their heads: bucktails.
We know World War I for a number of things: trenches, poison gas, the ever-present thrum of artillery. But it also served as the birthplace of the sniper. And one of the best couldn't be found on the Western, or even Eastern Front. Instead, Billy Sing fought on the shores of Gallipoli.
When the Soviet Union invaded Finland in late 1939—the action that kicked off the Winter War—they expected an easy fight, if there was one at all. Instead, they found a military with an intimate knowledge of Finland's terrain, and one that was willing to fight. Among them was a man who very nearly became one with the freezing environment in an effort to take a stand against the invading nation.
By the time Lyudmila Pavlichenko joined the rest of her peers at the International Student Assembly at American University in Washington, DC, much of the country knew her name. As well as the Nazis who despised her for the deadly aim she took with her rifle.
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