Category: WW2 Podcast
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Canadian Army Civil Affairs Units
One lesson the allies learned from the fall of France in 1940 was that civilian populations needed managing, to keep them away from military operations. As the allied troops came-a-shore after D-Day in June 1944, with them would be Civil Affairs units. These units were to act as liaisons between the allied combat troops and…
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U.S. Naval Gunfire Support in the Pacific
Before the outbreak of war, the US Navy and the Marines had put considerable effort into developing a doctrine to support amphibious operations from ship to shore gunfire. When the marines landed on Tarawa in November 1943, it would be the first serious test of this doctrine. In this episode, Angus is joined by Donald…
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Escape from Greece
Shanghai born John Robin Greaves, ‘Jack’, emigrated to Australia in 1939 and volunteered for the Australian Imperial Force to serve overseas. The army would send Jack to the Middle East then to Greece, where he would be captured Germans. Australian ABC journalist Stephen Hucheon has researched his uncle’s story and produced a fantastic article for ABC available on…
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Eisenhower’s Broad Front Strategy
Angus recently read David Colley’s The Folly of Generals: How Eisenhower’s Broad Front Strategy Lengthened World War II.David has analysed some of the missed opportunities the allies had in 1944-45 in Europe. He argues that had Eisenhower been more adept at taking advantage of several potential breakthroughs in the Siegfried Line in the autmun of…
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Australia’s war with France
The Australians fought across the world on the land, sea and in the air air; notably in the Pacific and the Middle East, which is what we’ll be discussing in this episode. With the fall of France, her overseas territories predominantly remained loyal to the French Vichy regime. This was true for Syria and Lebanon.…
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Luftwaffe Special Weapons
As the course of the second world war turned against the Third Reich some radical proposals and inventive designs, were put forward by armaments manufacturers, scientists, technicians, aircrew and even private individuals to the German Air Ministry for consideration as weapons to be utilised by the Luftwaffe. Some proposals were destined never to leave the…
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Operation Barbarossa
Buoyed by their victories over Poland and France, on the 22 June 1941 the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa, and over 3 millions men advanced over the border to attack Russia. The opening of the Eastern Front would be one of Hilter’s most momentous decisions of WWII. Having only signed a nonaggression pact with German in…
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Stop Lines
In Britain, after the fall of France, there was the fear that the Germans may attempt a channel crossing and invade in 1940. If the Wehrmacht got shore in the south of England, facing them would have been a series of ‘Stop Lines’. These were defensives which comprised a series of pillboxes and anti-tank obstacles.…
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Bomb Aimers
On the heavy bombers the role of the crew members was symbiotic. The pilot needed the flight engineer to fly; the navigator got the plane to the target, and it was the bomb aimer that delivered the ordinance. Wartime films give the impression of the bomb aimer’s job being simply to look through the bombsight…
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Alan Brooke: Churchill’s Right-Hand Critic
Alan Brooke would take over as the British Chief of the Imperial General Staff in December 1941. For the rest of the war Brooke would organise and coordinate the British military effort, in such a role acted as Winston Churchill’s senior military advisor. Brooke’s relationship with Churchill could be tempestuous. Brooke was not a ‘yes…