Category: WW2 Podcast

The Parachute Regiment was formed in June 1940 and eventually raised 17 battalions. It would see service in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy, Arnhem and would cross the Rhine as part of the largest airborne assault ever undertaken. To discuss the formation of the regiment and its history through WWII, Angus is joined by historian…

During WWII, the whole of Britain’s coastline was involved in the struggle against the Nazis. In 1940-41 invasion was the main threat. Many towns and cities around the coast, such as Plymouth, Portsmouth, Hull and Great Yarmouth, were the targets of devastating air raids. The East Coast was pivotal to North Sea operations against enemy…

In this episode, we’re going to be looking at US Navy combat divers. The Combat Demolition Unit would land on D-Day with the first wave of troops. It was their job to clear coastal defences that might get in the way of landing craft. In the Pacific, Underwater Demolition Teams were carrying out similar tasks…

In late 1944, as a precursor to the invasion of the Philippines, U.S. military analysts decided to seize the small island of Peleliu to ensure that the Japanese airfield could not threaten the invasion forces. It was estimated that the island would fall in a week or so. In fact, the fighting on Peleliu would…

After the failure to take Moscow in the autumn of 1941, the Germans were left with a large salient bulging into the Russian lines, extending to the town of Rzhev. The battles around Rzhev were some of the bloodiest battles of the war for the Russians. Though millions of men would fight and die in…

We seem to have had a good run of episodes this year looking at operations from the German perspective. In this episode, we are off to the Pacific to look at the Japanese perspective of the war. Angus is joined by Peter Williams. Peter lived in Japan for four years. Whilst he was there, he interviewed…

At the outbreak of WWII, the ancient gothic castle of Colditz was converted into a prisoner-of-war camp. Its location on a rocky spur overlooking a river made it the ideal location for a high-security prison, or so the Germans thought. Sent to Colditz were some of the most difficult allied prisoners-of-war. Made famous after the…

The evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk in 1940 is one of the iconic moments of the Second World War. The miracle of the ‘little ships’ plucking soldiers off the beaches is regularly played out in the popular media, including the 1958 and 2017 films ‘Dunkirk’. But, this is very much the British…

In this episode, Angus is looking at the closing weeks of the war in 1945. August would see the Russians enter the war with Japan, the atomic bombs dropped, and an attempted coup in Japan. The culmination of which would be the final declaration of surrender by Japan’s Emporer Hirohito on the 15th of August,…

In this episode of the podcast, we shine a light on the naval conflict in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. This proved to be a prolonged conflict, waged at differing times against the combined forces of Italy, Germany and Vichy France over a wide area stretching from the coastal waters of Southern Europe in…