HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-12-01T14:38:05.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Think you know everything about ancient Rome? These 25 facts will prove otherwise
items: Who won the crusades? The causes, death toll, and number of medieval holy wars explained
items: After Franco: Spain's miraculous transition to democracy
items: It was Operation Unthinkable: Churchill's "impossible" plan to start World War 3
items: “I hope I would have defended the Nazis at Nuremberg”
items: Who was Hermann Göring? The truth about Hitler’s drug-fuelled enforcer who met his downfall at Nuremberg
items: The Nuremberg Trials: the real history behind the post-WW2 tribunal that brought Nazi leaders to justice
items: Was Henry V really DESTINED for greatness?
items: Terror in the deep: how Hitler's U-boats pushed Britain to the brink
items: Just how many Bayeux Tapestries were there?

Think you know everything about ancient Rome? These 25 facts will prove otherwise
type: item
date: 2025-11-28T13:02:32.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Death
subject: Gladiators
subject: Life in ancient Rome
subject: Roman rulers
description: Edward J Watts, author of The Romans: A 2,000-Year History, shares 25 things you need to know about one of the greatest civilisations of the ancient world – from their incredible feats of engineering to their sporting spectacles
encoded: 1. The Romans lived in an independent state for more than 2,200 years According to tradition, Rome was founded in 753 BC, shortly after the beginning of the Italian Iron Age. Its inhabitants were Latin-speaking pagans who lived along the river Tiber in what is now central Italy. The empire of Trebizond, the last independent Roman kingdom descended from that state, was captured in 1461 by an Ottoman army equipped with gunpowder weapons. The people living in Trebizond also called themselves ‘Roman’, but they were Christians who lived in a city on the Black Sea coast of modern Turkey and spoke a language they called Romeika (which translates as 'Roman', but which we now call Greek). 2. The Roman empire once included all, or part of, nearly 50 countries At the empire’s greatest extent in AD 117, Roman territory stretched from what is now the Atlantic coast of Portugal to the Persian Gulf beaches in Kuwait, from southern Egypt near the current Sudanese border to northern England, and from just south of Casablanca in Morocco to the Caspian Sea shores of Azerbaijan. The land area of the Roman empire was smaller than Australia, but if one included the territorial waters controlled by Rome (as is customary with modern states) the empire would rank as the fifth-largest country on earth if it existed today. 3. As much as one-third of the world’s population lived under Roman control Late during the reign of the emperor Trajan (ruled AD 98–117), it is thought that the Roman empire reached a population of 80 million, out of a total world population of around 230 million. In modern terms, Rome’s share of the world population at that moment would be nearly equivalent to a country with the combined populations of India and China. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/2GettyImages-1369193411-fa1bfb0-e1764241964618.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A yellow, blue and red map showing the Roman empire" title="The Roman empire reached its maximum…

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Who won the crusades? The causes, death toll, and number of medieval holy wars explained
type: item
date: 2025-11-24T17:30:10.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Crusades
subject: Historical people
description: Who won the crusades, how many were there, and what caused them? Medieval expert Rebecca Rist answers these major questions, exploring how centuries of religious conflict reshaped the medieval world
encoded: The crusades were a centuries-long sequence of era-defining medieval holy wars that transformed dynamics of power and religious ideas across Europe and the Middle East. But who won the crusades, and just how many crusades were there? Those are two of the questions answered by professor Rebecca Rist, an expert on the crusades and their broader medieval context. Speaking about the topic on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, Rist steps into the dust of medieval roads and the heat of besieged cities to explain why these campaigns erupted, what the major expeditions set out to accomplish, how those ambitions played out on the ground, and how the long arc of conflict finally came to an end. Who won the crusades? Overall, the Muslim forces won the crusades, and the Christians lost. However, as Rist explains, while that was the final state of play, the granular details were far from that simple. "The final bastions of the crusader states were lost in 1291 (having been founded originally in 1099) to Muslim forces. In that sense, obviously the Muslims won the crusades and the Christians were defeated. "However, the crusades span a very long period of time, starting with the First Crusade in 1095 and ending with the loss of Acre in 1291. There were many individual crusades within that period, some of which were won by the Christians – by the Western Franks, like the First Crusade – and others by Muslims. For example, the Muslim forces were successful in the Fifth Crusade in capturing Damietta." In other instances, Rist says there were greater degrees of complexity. "In some crusades, we have partial victories. If we take the Third Crusade, Richard the Lionheart was partially successful, in the sense that he was able to take and maintain Acre. But, of course, he didn't win back Jerusalem with a military victory." <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/06/GettyImages-1186332544-4f0a3d8-e1764009254971.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Th…

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After Franco: Spain's miraculous transition to democracy
type: item
date: 2025-11-20T09:00:32.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Fascism
subject: Historical events
subject: Historical people
description: The nation’s transition from dictatorship to democracy in the late 1970s surely counts as one of modern Europe’s most remarkable stories. On the 50th anniversary of General Franco’s death, Paul Preston explores how pluralism arose from the ashes of tyranny
encoded: When General Francisco Franco died on 20 November 1975 – 39 years after the start of the brutal civil war that brought him to power – the prospect of a bloodless transition to democracy in Spain appeared vanishingly small. Franco had prepared a rigid framework to guarantee the permanence of the dictatorship over which he had ruled with an iron fist for almost four decades. Spain teetered on the edge of bloodshed and chaos, with powerful groups at the political extremes ferociously opposed to compromise. And so, as El Caudillo (‘The Leader’) was buried in the vast Valley of the Fallen memorial just outside Madrid – acclaimed by tens of thousands of blue-shirted supporters – few commentators would have predicted a future of pluralism and relative peace. Yet that’s exactly what was achieved. That the Spanish people were, over the next 10 years, able to negotiate a perilous path towards democracy through the minefields laid by Franco himself – and the ambushes set by terrorists of both right and left – counts as an extraordinary achievement. Even from a distance of 50 years, it surely ranks among modern Europe’s most remarkable stories. So how did it happen? Blurring the past To answer that question we must rewind to the end of the Second World War. Terror had underpinned Franco’s regime from the moment he was propelled to power at the end of the 1930s. But defeat for the Axis powers in 1945 shattered his initial plans for a fascist future – one in which Europe was dominated by authoritarian regimes. Franco realised that he needed to end Spain’s international ostracism in the postwar period and be incorporated into the western community. To achieve that, a new approach was required. And so, to blur the Spanish dictator’s Axis past, a scheme was devised by his crony, naval captain Luis Carrero Blanco, to perpetuate the regime behind a monarchist facade. The Law of Succession of 26 July 1947 established Spain as a kingdom with Franco as its head of state. Franco would gov…

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It was Operation Unthinkable: Churchill's "impossible" plan to start World War 3
type: item
date: 2025-11-11T12:01:59.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: In 1945, as Europe celebrated peace, Winston Churchill quietly asked his generals to plan an attack on the Soviet Union. But how close was Britain to an immediate and consecutive war?
encoded: In the summer of 1945, Europe lay in ruins. But for the first time in close to a decade, the continent was contemplating the prospect of peace. Hitler was dead, the Nazi high command had collapsed, and while the war raged on in the Pacific, bombs had at least finished dropping across Europe. It was a fresh and uneasy peace – but it was still a peace. But even as celebrations were filling the streets of Europe’s great cities, British prime minister Winston Churchill was already considering another conflict. At Churchill’s request, the British chiefs of staff had drafted a proposal codenamed Operation Unthinkable. Its goal was immense: a plan to drive the Red Army out of eastern Europe and restore the independence of the nations that had now fallen under Soviet control. Within weeks of the Second World War ending, Britain was already assessing the possibility of a third. It was, as its name implied, almost inconceivable. And yet, Churchill insisted on seeing the plans. Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, historian Tim Bouverie explained how the idea developed. From WW2 allies to adversaries During the war, Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union had fought together against Nazi Germany. But their alliance was built on a pragmatic necessity rather than trust, or a sense of shared politics. By the time of the Yalta conference in February 1945, the cracks were already showing. Read more | The rise and fall of the Third Reich At Yalta, Churchill, US president Franklin D Roosevelt and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin agreed on a postwar settlement for Europe, including a promise that liberated countries would hold free elections. Yet, as Bouverie explains, those promises began to crumble almost immediately. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-2642765-1-b0480b2-e1762862505374.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="In the grounds of the Livadia Palace at Yalta, Winston Churchill, Franklin D Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin …

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“I hope I would have defended the Nazis at Nuremberg”
type: item
date: 2025-11-07T16:34:36.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Fascism
subject: Historical events
subject: Holocaust
subject: Trends-Entertainment
description: That’s what renowned barrister, and bestselling historian, Philippe Sands told us, but could you? With the 80th anniversary of the famous war trials upon us – and a new movie to boot – Dave Musgrove reflects on the perils of staging a trial the likes of which the world had never seen before
encoded: To have defended someone like Hans Frank, the governor-general of Nazi-occupied Poland during WW2, charged with the murder of four million human beings, is a tough thing to imagine. Nevertheless, when I asked Philippe Sands – lawyer and writer – whether he would have defended the Nazis in the dock at the Nuremberg Trials, he told me “I hope so! I'm a believer that everyone is entitled to have their lawyer to defend their rights and their interests, irrespective of who they are or what they've done.” That was my final question to Sands after we’d recorded four episodes of an upcoming HistoryExtra podcast series on the Nuremberg Trials at the conclusion of the Second World War. I wanted to know where he’d stand on that question, because our conversation had reminded me how complicated some of the moral, as well as legal, questions were around the decision by the Allies to put a selection of leading Nazis on trial in November 1945. As a UK barrister, Sands is subject to the ‘cab-rank rule’, which obliges members of his profession to “take on any case provided that it is within their competence and they are available and appropriately remunerated”, but the idea of having to defend a Nazi war criminal, quite understandably, gave him pause for thought. Read more | Hitler's downfall and the end of the war and the Third Reich The trial of the century We shall all be given pause to reflect on the Nuremberg Trials as they hove back into public consciousness on their 80th anniversary. The trials ran from November 1945 through to October 1946. Twenty-four leading Nazis were indicted, though only 21 of them eventually stood trial in the courtroom proceedings. Neither Adolf Hitler nor the SS leader Heinrich Himmler were among them, as both had already taken their own lives. That left the biggest name in the dock as Hitler’s successor Hermann Göring, along with Hans Frank, Rudolf Hess, Admiral Karl Donitz and others. As with many big anniversaries, there will be media depictions, …

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Who was Hermann Göring? The truth about Hitler’s drug-fuelled enforcer who met his downfall at Nuremberg
type: item
date: 2025-11-07T16:34:25.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Evergreen
subject: Fascism
subject: Historical people
subject: Holocaust
subject: Trends-Entertainment
description: Hermann Göring was once Hitler’s chosen successor, and the most powerful man in Nazi Germany after the Führer. He embodied the spirit of the Third Reich and later, at Nuremberg, he became the most prominent member of the regime to stand trial
encoded: Hermann Göring held a uniquely prominent position among the architects of Nazi Germany. As the founder of the Gestapo, commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, and Adolf Hitler’s chosen successor, his name became synonymous with the Third Reich at the height of its power – and while it collapsed. To the rest of the world, Göring often appeared as the public face of Nazi Germany during the 1930s as an example of the regime’s ambition and arrogance. And within Nazi Germany, he was Hitler’s closest ally, who served as a bridge between the Führer’s radicalism and the traditional elites. Read more | Hitler's downfall and the end of the war and the Third Reich When the Second World War ended, Göring was the most senior surviving Nazi official to stand trial at Nuremberg. There, his intelligence, arrogance and courtroom performances made him the defining symbol of the proceedings. But how did he get there? Who was Hermann Göring? Hermann Göring was a decorated First World War pilot who became Hitler’s second-in-command, head of Germany’s air force – the Luftwaffe – and the most prominent Nazi leader tried at Nuremberg for his central role in the crimes of the Third Reich. But before he reached the highest strata of the Nazi war machine, he had been an ambitious opportunist, whose charm and vanity had carried him from serving in a cockpit during the First World War to the heart of Hitler’s new Reich. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-1855434891-1e9cefa-e1762529704264.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Hermann Göring sits in the cockpit of a biplane during pilot training with the Imperial German Air Service at Freiburg, around September 1915. Years before rising to power under Hitler, Göring served as a decorated First World War fighter ace." title="World War One: War in the Air 1915 Hermann Goering" /> Hermann Göring’s early life and career Hermann Wilhelm Göring was born in January 1893 in Rosenheim, Bavaria, into a fami…

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The Nuremberg Trials: the real history behind the post-WW2 tribunal that brought Nazi leaders to justice
type: item
date: 2025-11-07T16:34:18.000Z
creator: Roger Moorhouse
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Evergreen
subject: Trends-Entertainment
description: A new film, starring Russell Crowe and Rami Malek, dramatises the Allies’ postwar quest to hold the surviving leaders of the German Reich to account at the Nuremberg Trials. Roger Moorhouse shares what really happened inside the courtroom where modern international justice was born
encoded: In the autumn of 1945, in a bombed-out Germany still reeling from defeat and occupation, the victorious Allies launched a remarkable experiment in international justice: the Nuremberg Trials. The first of these, conducted by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946, was convened by the four major Allied powers: the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union. It was established under the London Agreement and Charter of 8 August 1945, which created the IMT and defined its authority. What were the Nuremberg Trials? The purpose of the Nuremberg Trials was to hold the senior surviving leaders of the defeated German Reich accountable for their crimes: for aggressive war-making, gross violations of the laws of war (war crimes) and for what was then – in international law – a new category: “crimes against humanity”. In essence, the Nuremberg Trials represented a watershed in the history of international justice. Their significance lies not only in the punishment of high‐profile Nazi leaders but in the very idea that state actors and military commanders could be held to account before a tribunal created by victorious powers, under new international legal standards. Read more | Life in Nazi Germany They raised profound questions about justice, victors’ rights, legal innovation and moral precedent. They were not simple theatrical show trials, nor were they flawless, but they marked a deliberate choice by the Allies to pursue legality over vengeance, to document evil rather than simply bury it, and to assert that even leaders are not above the law. Their legacy is significant: they laid the foundation for international criminal law, inspired the later Genocide Convention (adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948), and provided a public accounting for the Third Reich’s atrocities. The trials, which opened in November 1945, are also the subject of a new film entitled Nuremberg, starring Rami Malek and …

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Was Henry V really DESTINED for greatness?
type: item
date: 2025-11-04T17:02:11.000Z
creator: Emily Briffett
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Dan Jones and Helen Castor focus in on the life of their third medieval monarch – the mighty warrior king, Henry V
encoded: Henry V may have only reigned for a short period of time, but his legacy looms large over the medieval landscape. Remembered as a heroic warrior king, who bested the French at Harfleur then marched his forces to victory at Agincourt, few monarchs could boast such a distinguished reputation. But 'Prince Hal' wasn't always destined for greatness. Was he really the gadabout youth Shakespeare would have us think? In the third episode of our three-part HistoryExtra podcast series 'Tyrant, Usurper, Hero', Helen Castor sits down with Dan Jones to uncover Henry's life beyond his most famous battles – and highlight what lessons he learned from the turbulent chaos caused by Richard II and Henry IV. Watch now, or listen to the ad-free podcast below: View Green Video on the source website (Ad) Helen Castor is the author of The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV (Penguin, 2024). Buy it now from Waterstones (Ad) Dan Jones is the author of Henry V: The Astonishing Rise of England's Greatest Warrior King (Bloomsbury, 2024). Buy it now from Waterstones

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Terror in the deep: how Hitler's U-boats pushed Britain to the brink
type: item
date: 2025-11-03T09:00:20.000Z
creator: Roger Moorhouse
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Historical events
subject: Naval battles
subject: Second World War battles
description: Did German U-boats conduct a ‘clean’ campaign during the Second World War? Or were they guilty of routinely murdering survivors in the water? Roger Moorhouse weighs the evidence
encoded: On the night of 13 March 1944, the Greek-registered steamship SS Peleus was en route from Freetown to Buenos Aires when she was hit amidships by two torpedoes, launched by a German U-boat, U-852. The twin-masted merchantman, of around 5,000 tons, swiftly began to sink, her internal bulkheads ruptured by the detonations. Within three minutes, the Peleus disappeared below the surface, leaving the surviving members of her 39-strong crew clinging to rafts and flotsam in the darkness. As sinkings go during the naval war, it was unremarkable, one might even say routine. But what followed would set it apart. Soon after, U-852 surfaced close to the debris field, hoping to identify her prey and glean some information. Her captain, 27-year-old Kapitänleutnant Heinz‑Wilhelm Eck, ordered one of his men – who spoke some English – to come up to the bow to question one of the survivors. After learning the identity of his target, Eck gave the order for U-852 to move away. But then he changed his mind. Eck was nervous. Prior to his departure from port, he had been given a lecture from his superiors on the perils of passing through the Atlantic Narrows, around Ascension, and was told that all four of the previous patrols undertaken by his predecessors had ended with the vessels being sunk. Due to the heightened risk of air attack he was urged to take every precaution to avoid being spotted by enemy aircraft. Even debris from a sinking, it was stressed, could give away his position. Calculating that he could be only some 200 miles away by daybreak, when the wreckage of the Peleus would doubtless be spotted, he made the decision to attempt to destroy the debris. He brought a party of his men up on deck and ordered them to open fire on the rafts and other debris with machine guns. In the moonless night, they were largely firing blind, but the operation continued for hours, with grenades being thrown and U-852’s anti-aircraft gun even being brought to bear. The number killed by these act…

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Just how many Bayeux Tapestries were there?
type: item
date: 2025-10-30T09:00:37.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Debate
subject: Medieval battles
description: As a new theory, put forward by Professor John Blair, questions whether the embroidery was unique, David Musgrove asks historians whether there could have been more than one ‘Bayeux Tapestry’
encoded: The Bayeux Tapestry is an amazing artefact – and it’s exceptional not least because of its very existence today. Precious few pieces of embroidery from the medieval period survive, let alone ones that are almost 70 metres long. And, of course, the story it tells – of the conquest of England by the Normans – is one of immense historical significance. So we rightly celebrate it, and excitement about its forthcoming loan from Bayeux to the British Museum is high. But what if this artefact wasn’t really so very exceptional at the time it was made? What if it was just one of several embroideries produced to commemorate the Norman victory over the English at the battle of Hastings in October 1066? Professor John Blair, an expert in the Anglo-Saxon period at the University of Oxford, believes that might be the case. “This is a reaction against the idea that the Tapestry had to be something extraordinary or unique, beyond the fact that it is an extraordinary and unique survival,” he says. “There are abundant references to decorative domestic hangings, but of course they had virtually zero chance of survival. The Tapestry is a wonderful piece of design, but the actual stitching isn’t particularly fine, and a big team of embroiderers in a workshop could have done it quite expeditiously.” Purported patron Why did the Tapestry survive when so few other embroideries did? Well, most scholars agree that it was probably made some time after the battle that it records, so in the mid-late 11th century, and likely on the orders of – or to curry favour with – Bishop Odo of Bayeux. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/Odo-blessing-the-feast4548webready-e50a4fb.jpg" width="1921" height="1281" alt="Bishop Odo, William’s half-brother, says grace before a feast. It’s thought that Odo commissioned the Tapestry to be displayed in his new cathedral in Bayeux (Image by Bayeux Museum)" title="Bishop Odo, William’s half-brother, says grace before a feast. I…

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