Best Podcasts on the Second World War
The Second World War was the defining catastrophe of the twentieth century. Fought across six continents and every ocean between 1939 and 1945, it cost between 70 and 85 million lives — the majority of them civilians. It produced the Holocaust, the atomic bomb, and the Cold War. It ended the European empires and remade the world order. And it left a legacy of memory, myth, and unresolved moral questions that we are still grappling with today.
Explaining History has built the most comprehensive podcast archive on the Second World War available anywhere, with over 50 episodes covering every major theatre and dimension of the conflict. This page is your guide to the whole collection — use the links below to explore by topic, or browse the sub-collections for in-depth coverage of each campaign and theme.
Explore by Topic
The Eastern Front & Operation Barbarossa
13 episodes — Barbarossa (6 parts), Stalingrad (3 parts), the Caucasus campaign, Lend-Lease, and Soviet memory of the war.
Britain’s War 1939–45
15 episodes — Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the Atlantic, RAF Bomber Command, and the road to victory.
France: The Fall, Vichy and the Occupation
6 episodes — the collapse of 1940, collaboration under Vichy, and post-war reckoning with France’s civil war.
The Pacific War and Asia 1941–45
5 episodes — the fall of Singapore and Malaya, the Philippines, and the 140 days that led to Hiroshima.
North Africa and the End of the War
8 episodes — Rommel and the desert war, Berlin 1945, displaced persons, and the rebuilding of Europe.
The Holocaust
13 episodes — persecution, the death camps, Auschwitz, the role of ordinary Germans, and the long shadow of memory.
Related Collections
The Second World War did not begin in 1939, and did not end in 1945. To understand it fully, explore these connected collections:
- Weimar Germany and the Rise of Nazism — the ideology and political collapse that made Hitler possible
- Stalin and the Soviet Union — the Soviet state that bore the heaviest burden of the war
- The First World War — the unresolved conflict whose legacy directly caused the second
- India: Partition and Independence — how the war transformed India’s relationship with Britain
- The British Empire and Decolonisation — how the war accelerated the end of empire
- Browse all topics — the full Explaining History podcast collection
Subscribe to Explaining History
New episodes on modern history every week — the Eastern Front, the Holocaust, decolonisation, the Cold War and beyond.
Further Reading
These articles from the Explaining History archive go deeper on the history behind these episodes:
- The Nazi Camps and the ‘Workshy’ — The Nazi camp system and its victims beyond the Holocaust.
- The Italian Civil War — The partisan and Allied struggle for Italy in the final phase of the war.
- The Great Disruption: WW2 and the Refugee System — How the Second World War permanently transformed how the world handles mass displacement.
