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In the long story of the Crusades, it's often the battles between Richard I and Saladin that absorb much of the attention.

But in this episode of the History Extra podcast, Alex Plaskowski traces the story of the Baltic Crusades,

a series of conflicts that often go overlooked, despite their transformative impact on the religious and political context of central and eastern Europe.

Today I'm joined by Alex Plaskowski, and we're here to talk about the Baltic Crusades,

which are perhaps the lesser-known sibling of the Crusades that take place down in the Southern Levant.

This is the topic of your book, The Black Cross, and I do want to begin with some context here.

Obviously, the clue is partly in the name, but can you give us the top-line summary of the Baltic Crusades

to orient us before we get into the details?

So the Baltic Crusades to orient us before we get into the details.

So the Baltic Crusades were a series of wars where Catholic armies conquered pagan societies around the Baltic Sea region. So particularly in what is today northern Germany, northern Poland,

...