Category: WW2 Podcast

In this episode we’ll be looking at two British soldiers in occupied Burma. Major Hugh Seagrim operated for two years behind the Japanese lines, organising Karen resistance before he was eventually forced to surrender. Seagrim crosses paths with Roy Pagani, trying to make his way back to British army in India, after escaping as a…

This episode is being released on the 15th of December, the eve of the Battle of the Bulge. It was the 16th of December 1944 that Hitler launched Operation Watch on the Rhine, the last great offensive in the West. Joining Angus is Walter Zapotoczny, author of The 110th Hold In The Ardennes: The Blunting…

In the classic narrative, the second world war starts with the invasion of Poland in 1939, though for the Chinese it started with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. Wikipedia solves the start date by stating ‘relate conflicts started earlier’, and that is what we’ll be looking at today the Italian invasion of Ethiopia…

Within a year of Belgium falling to the Germans in 1940, Belgian citizens were volunteering to join the Waffen SS to fight communism on the newly formed Eastern Front. Thousands volunteered, and the suffered heavy casualties. Angus is joined by Jonathan Trigg author of Voices of the Flemish Waffen SS. He has been gathering the…

One topic thats been skirted round in a number of episodes is the Bataan Death March, its been a topic Angus has been keen to look at. Angus is joined by Jay Wertz. Jay has authored a number of books in the War Stories: World War II Firsthand series, for these he collected eyewitness accounts.…

Last year Angus talked to Greg Lewis about the female agents in the British Special Operations Executive, SOE, who Churchill had tasked with “setting Europe ablaze”. In this episode we’ll be looking specifically at Diana Rowden who was flown into France in 1943. Diana spent her early years in the South of France before being…

Between 1943-45 Fernaufklärungsgruppe 5 “Atlantik” would fly missions of up to 18 hours at a time over the Atlantic. They acted as the eyes for the U-Boats. Equipped with big, four-engined Junkers Ju 290s fitted out with advanced search radar and other maritime ‘ELINT’ (electronic intelligence) devices, Fernaufklärungsgruppe (FAGr) 5 ‘Atlantik’ undertook a distant, isolated campaign far…

I [Angus] was reading the British Journal for Military History and an article caught my eye titled The Psychological Impact of Airborne Warfare & the British Response to the Airborne Threat by Dr Tim Jenkins. In 1940 the Germans achieved stunning successes with the use of airborne troops, the Fallschirmjäger.  The first recorded attack by parachutists…

In this episode Angus is looking at Operation Tonga, the British airborne element that led the way during the D-Day landings in 1944. Angus is joined by Stephen Wright. Stephen is keenly interested in the operation, an operation his uncle was killed taking part in. For the last twenty years he’s been researching the airborne,…

In this episode we’re looking at high ranking British POWs held by the Italians and their attempts at escape. The middle east was considered an Italian theatre, rather than prisoners be shipped to Germany high ranking officers such as Generals Richard O’Connor, Phillip Neame, Adrian Carton de Wiart or Air Marshal Owen Boyd were placed into…