Revisiting World War Two (WW2)

VE Day (Victory in Europe) falls on 8 May, the date on which the Nazi regime formally and unconditionally surrendered to the Allies in Berlin in 1945. It was an apposite date in 2024 on which to launch a new series of Unknown Warriors, this time about the Second World War (WW2), as a follow-up to my earlier series on the First World War (WW1). The new series comprises 10 fresh episodes, each up to an hour or more in length, in which leading historians explain how modern scholarship and fresh perspectives have transformed the received narratives of this second global conflict of the 20th century. Our view of the past always starts from a present-day standpoint, and this is as true of the Second World War as of the First, with perceptions of these conflicts heavily influenced by our contemporary concerns and values. That said, over time both wars have acquired a received narrative or set of narratives, often high-flown and sentimental in tone, that emphasises national virtues of unity, courage, resistance, and justice. Today’s historians, many decades after the end of these wars, now challenge these narratives as seriously outdated, being not just simplistic but sometimes deeply misleading about conflicts that had a unparalleled global reach and complexity. Most new books on the Second World War, as on the First, look at newly discovered individual stories or a fresh angle on some well-known episode or exploit. What Unknown Warriors seeks to do is examine the broader context to these smaller stories, to see how the bigger picture has changed over so many years.

The new WW2 series will look at:

Britain’s much-misunderstood war