Best Podcasts on North Africa, Italy, and the End of the Second World War
The war in North Africa opened a new theatre in June 1940 when Italy invaded British Egypt, drawing in Rommel’s Afrika Korps and turning the desert into one of the war’s most dramatic campaigns. The eventual Allied victory in North Africa opened the route into Italy, where some of the hardest fighting of the Western war unfolded. And in 1945, the war came to its climax — Berlin fell, Hitler was dead, and a continent lay in ruins. These episodes cover the Mediterranean campaign and the extraordinary, disorienting months that followed Germany’s surrender.
Part One: The North Africa Campaign 1940–43
The desert war was a campaign of rapid advance and sudden reversal, fought across thousands of miles of Libyan and Egyptian desert. Britain faced Rommel’s Afrika Korps in a series of battles — from the early Italian defeat through the fall of Tobruk to the decisive victory at El Alamein in October 1942 — that tied down significant Axis resources and eventually opened the door to the invasion of southern Europe. The island of Malta, subjected to the heaviest bombing of any territory in the war, played a crucial strategic role in keeping the supply lines to North Africa open.
Part Two: The End of the War and Its Aftermath 1945
The final months of the Second World War in Europe were among the most violent of the entire conflict. As Allied armies converged on Berlin from east and west, the Nazi regime fought to the last. The aftermath brought no clean resolution — liberated Europe was a continent of rubble, displaced persons, reprisals, and profound moral reckoning. These episodes examine Berlin in its final days, the fate of millions of displaced persons, the trials of Europe’s collaborators, and the vast project of rebuilding a shattered Germany.
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- World War Two — Full Collection — the complete guide to the Second World War
- The Eastern Front and Operation Barbarossa — Germany’s war of annihilation in the Soviet Union
- Britain’s War 1939–45 — the Blitz, the Atlantic, and the air war over Germany
- France, Vichy and the Occupation — collaborationCollaboration
Full Description:The cooperation of local governments, police forces, and citizens in German-occupied countries with the Nazi regime. The Holocaust was a continental crime, reliant on French police, Dutch civil servants, and Ukrainian militias to identify and deport victims. Collaboration challenges the narrative that the Holocaust was solely a German crime. across Europe, local administrations assisted the Nazis for various reasons: ideological agreement (antisemitism), political opportunism, or bureaucratic obedience. In many cases, local police rounded up Jews before German forces even arrived.
Critical Perspective:This term reveals the fragility of social solidarity. When their Jewish neighbors were targeted, many European societies chose to protect their own national sovereignty or administrative autonomy by sacrificing the minority. It complicates the post-war myths of “national resistance” that many European countries adopted to hide their complicity.
Read more, resistance, and liberation - The Holocaust — the genocide at the heart of the Second World War
