The History Network
The military history podcast specialists, looking at all aspects of war through the ages.

Just before his 31st birthday in September 1939, Charles Upham volunteered as a private in the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force (2NZEF). He had been in the Territorials but refused to join at any higher rank. He was soon singled out for his natural leadership qualities and made temporary lance corporal, but refused to attend the Officer Cadet Training Unit since he feared that such training would delay his departure for Europe. Dur: 18mins File: .mp3

Direct download: 3301_Charles_Upham_VC.mp3
Category:military -- posted at: 7:00am UTC

Simo Häyhä tormented Soviet forces invading his native Finland between December 1939 and March 1940, killing 542 enemy soldiers in only 98 days. In the hostile, minus forty degree conditions of the Finnish winter of 1939-40, a man clad all in white lay with packed snow mounded in front of him as he awaited his enemy. The man was Simo Häyhä and he was armed with only a regulation, bolt action rifle – he preferred the standard sight as it could not fog over or catch the light and was less conspicuous than a telescopic sight. Next to him lay his sub-machinegun and he was no less deadly with that weapon. During the Winter War, Häyhä accurate sniper fire would account for almost an entire battalion of Russian soldiers. Dur: 24mins File: .mp3

Direct download: 3210_The_White_Death_-_Finnish_Marksman_Simo_Hayha.mp3
Category:military -- posted at: 10:00am UTC

A bitter war between legitimate and illegitimate heirs was fought for the throne of fourteenth century Castile. The ensuing conflict pulled in many powers, large and small, including both the kingdoms of England and France. Dur: 17mins File: .mp3

Direct download: 3209_The_Castilian_Civil_War.mp3
Category:military -- posted at: 12:01pm UTC

At the battle of Issus, fought in early November 333 BC, Alexander faced the Persian King Darius in person for the first time. Massively outnumbered, the Macedonian army faced the numberless might of the Persian military machine. The outcome would decide the future of both the Persian and the Macedonian empire. Dur: 20mins File: .mp3

Direct download: 3208_The_Battle_of_Issus.mp3
Category:military -- posted at: 12:01pm UTC

The Legion of the United States was America's first attempt to establish a permanent military capable of defending its new borders, from hostile Native Americans, as a reaction to the defeats of the hastily raised regular and militia units during the Harmar Campaign and St. Clair’s Defeat. Dur: 18mins File: .mp3

Direct download: 3207_The_Northwest_Indian_War_Part2.mp3
Category:military -- posted at: 12:01pm UTC

In late 1791, during the Battle of the Wabash, also known as St. Clair's Defeat, saw the largest defeat of the American military at the hands of the Native Americans. Out of a force of about 1,000 men, the American suffered a 97% casualty rate: including 632 killed and 264 wounded. In addition, 200 camp followers, women and children included, were also killed against around 60 causalities on the Native American side. In a single morning, almost one quarter of the total United States Army was wiped out and the Western frontier left wide open for further Native American raids. Dur: 18mins File: .mp3

Direct download: 3206_The_Northwest_Indian_War_Part1.mp3
Category:military -- posted at: 8:20pm UTC

On 4 July 1187, the Sultan of Egypt and Syria, An-Nasir Yusuf Salah ad-Din ibn Ayyub - better known to us as Saladin - won a tremendous victory, one of the most famous of the Middle Ages. Beneath the Horns of Hattin, the twin peaks of an extinct volcano, his forces destroyed the largest army that the Crusader states ever fielded, killing or capturing the great majority of knights and foot soldiers. Dur: 26mins File: .mp3
Direct download: 3205_Saladin.mp3
Category:military -- posted at: 12:01pm UTC

We saw in Season 31 Episode 4 and Season 30 Episode 7 that due to the remarkable actions of several civilians who took up arms under military orders during the Indian Mutiny in 1857 and 1858 that the newly instituted Victoria Cross was altered to allow such acts of bravery to be recognised. Although Thomas Henry Kavanagh was recognised as the 'first' civilian Victoria Cross for his action during the relief of Lucknow in November 1857, his actions were not the first. Dur: 22mins File: .mp3
Direct download: 3204_Mangles_and_McDonell_at_the_Siege_of_Arrah.mp3
Category:military -- posted at: 2:06pm UTC

On the death of King Charles IV of France in 1328, Edward III of England was his closest male heir and therefore the legitimate successor to the throne of the childless Charles. This was due to the ancient Salian (or Salic) law which prevented female succession (it had, however, only been enacted in 1316). Despite Edward's legitimate claim, the French crowned Philip, Count of Valois, King Philip VI of France and the slighted Edward refused to pay him homage. In revenge, Philip confiscated Edward’s lands in Aquitaine (held as a vasal Duchy to the crown of France). Edward therefore declared war against France and plunged England and France into a war that would last, on and off, for the next one hundred and sixteen years, a war we know as the Hundred Years War. Dur: 18mins  File: .mp3
Direct download: 3203_The_Battle_of_Poitiers.mp3
Category:military -- posted at: 12:01pm UTC

In the year AD 378, the Eastern Roman Emperor Valens left Antioch to return via Constantinople to deal with the Gothic threat which had been ravaging Thrace and the surrounding provinces since 376. He also sought help from his nephew and the Western Roman Emperor, Gratian. Dur: 18mins File: .mp3

Direct download: 3202_The_Gothic_Genius_of_Fritigern_Pt2.mp3
Category:military -- posted at: 1:04pm UTC

The Gothic leader Fritigern (possibly based on the Gothic Frithugairns) is, perhaps, one of the most under-appreciated commanders in the ancient world. At the head of a complex confederation of Gothic tribes, he imposed a devastating defeat on the forces of the Western Roman empire at the battle of Adrianople (or Hadrianople) on August 9th, AD 378. Dur: 21mins  File: .mp3

Direct download: 3201_The_Gothic_Genius_of_Fritigern_Pt1.mp3
Category:military -- posted at: 12:00pm UTC

The Allied landings at Normandy on June 6, 1944 were the largest amphibious operation ever undertaken in military history. Across five separate beaches, over 150,000 men made up the landing forces from the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. To protect the men on the beaches, a massive bombardment of naval gunfire and aerial bombs struck German fortified defences, troop concentrations, and artillery positions. Dur: 18mins File: .mp3

Direct download: 3110_D-Day__The_American_Airborne_Landings.mp3
Category:military -- posted at: 12:30am UTC

At the end of the Seven Years War, the Proclamation of 1763 was issued by the British, which granted any lands west of the Appalachian Mountains in the Ohio Valley of North America to the Native Americans. American colonists could not settle any of these lands and would be forcibly removed by British forces if necessary. Dur: 18mins File: mp3

Direct download: 3109_Lord_Dunmores_War.mp3
Category:military -- posted at: 12:00pm UTC

In his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, Raphael Lemkin says that "genocide is composite and manifold, and that it signifies a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of the essential foundations of life of a [specific] group." Collective dispossession, including plunder and spoliation, is only one of the many crimes that accompany and even fortify genocidal policies—or perhaps better said, expropriation and pillaging are important aspects of the political economy of genocide. Dur: 15mins File: .mp3

Direct download: 3108_The_Armenian_Massacre_Pt2.mp3
Category:military -- posted at: 12:00pm UTC