The WW2 Podcast

As many of you know I bang on about supporting me via Patreon at the start of each episode. These small donations pay for hosting, software and help me to find the time to dedicate to the show. After two years of plugging away I've finally reached my first funding goal on Patreon, $250 per month! Now I've reached this goal I'm going to upgrade my hosting package allowing me to potentially post more and longer podcasts. As a thank you to everyone for their support, and a very big thank you to all the Patrons who give a dollar or two each month, here is an extra podcast I recorded. I've chatted with Craig Moore before. He runs the website tank-hunter.com and contributes to tank-encyclopedia.com… Craig recently took part in a dig to recover one of the very few British Covenanter tanks which has been buried in Surry in the UK! "The Covenanter A13 Mark III Cruiser Mk V tank is regarded as one of the worst vehicles ever produced in Britain at a time when the country was desperate for tanks." more

In this episode we're going to be discussing Bill Cheall. Bill joined the Green Howard's in 1939, a regiment in the British army, and fought throughout the whole war. He was evacuated through Dunkirk, fought in the Desert, took part in the invasion of Sicily and in 1944 landed on Gold beach on D-Day… Bill wrote his memoirs which have been edited by his son Paul and publish as "Fighting Through from Dunkirk to Hamburg: A Green Howard's Wartime Memoir". [asa2 tplid="14" align="center" associate_id_set="WW2"]B00BM4SLO0[/asa2] For more information and pictures of Bill Cheall you can visit fightingthrough.co.uk and you can find Paul's podcast at fightingthroughpodcast.co.uk. The Green Howard's are of particular interest to me as they are my local regiment. I have two grandfathers who service in WW1 with them, and a great uncle who served in WW2. Uncle Jack. reputedly, like Bill was plucked from the beaches of Dunkirk, though he was later shipped to India and saw fighting in Burma.

In this episode we're looking at three brothers all in the US Navy at the start of the war, and their remarkable story. Today I'm joined by Sally Mott Freeman, her book "The Jersey Brothers: A Missing Naval Officer in the Pacific and His Family's Quest to Bring Him Home" follows her father and his two brothers through the war. Bill Mott would start the war in FDR's Whitehouse Map room, his brother Benny would be on the Carrier USS Enterprise and Barton was a supply officer based in the Philippines… Their experience brings out how difficult it must have been for families at war.

Last year I talked to Irish Historian Bernard Kelly about his book "Military Internees, Prisoners of War and the Irish State during the Second World War", thats episode 23 for those who haven't listened. We discussed how the Republic of Ireland walked the tightrope of neutrality and how it treated troops of belligerent nations who found themselves within its borders.. Chatting with Bernard after that recording I discovered his MA thesis looked at the Russia's Winter War with Finland. Yet another interesting WW2 topic and that's what we'll be discussing in this episode. In November 1939 Russia attacked Finland, Britain and France were already at war with Germany and were not keen on declaring war on Russia in the defence of Finland. More importantly a total collapse of Finland might mean a Russian threaten Sweden and Norway? Also throw into the mix that Swedish iron was vital to the German war effort it meant the Allies needed to do something, but what?

The role of the International Committee of the Red Cross during WWII is complicated. Closely bound to Switzerland the ICRC tried to remain neutral whilst at the same time operating with in the boundaries of the Geneva Conventions. Criticised for its failure to speak out during the holocaust as the war came to a close it went into overdrive to remain relevant in a post war world. I'm joined by Gerald Steinacher. Gerald is Associate Professor of History and Hymen Rosenberg Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, his latest book is Humanitarians at War: The Red Cross in the Shadow of the Holocaust.

In January I had an email from Bob Drury, if that name sounds familiar it's because I chatted to Bob in episode 30 talking about Old 666. He wondered what I had planned for the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea. As it happens I'd not actually thought about the Battle of the Coral Sea! Bob suggested that he and his writing partner of Lucky 666 Tom Calvin come on the podcast and have a chat. The naval clash at in the Coral sea was pivotal in the war against Japan. Since the attack on Pearl Harbor nothing had stood in the way of the Japanese typhoon that had swept across the pacific. Fortress Singapore, the Dutch East Indies there was nothing seemingly the Royal Navy or Americans could do to stop them. At the Coral Sea three Japanese Aircraft Carriers would face two US Carriers, this would be the first time a naval battle would take place without any belligerent ships seeing one another, it was a new war of carrier launched aircraft. Was it a draw? Both sides withdrew. History shows us it would be a tactical victory for the Japanese and a strategic victory for the Americans. Perhaps more importantly it was the first time the Japanese were stopped.

We're looking at amphibious operations during the war in this episode. Until I started researching I hadn't realised how many there were. We're all pretty familiar with the handful in the European Theatre but in the Pacific the list is long… In this episode I'm talking to Mike Walling. Mikes is the author of Bloodstained Sands, US amphibious operations in WWII, he is a veteran of the US navy coast guard and has spent the last forty years collecting stories from veterans.

I've been planning to look at some individual soldiers stories for some time, the first was going to be the story of a Green Howard who fought through from D-Day until the end of the war. As his story is similar to my great uncles everyone in my family was interested and the book has gone on it's travels passed from my mother to my sister to my brother… As of typing I haven't got it back... In the meantime when I was given the opportunity to talk to Frank Lavin about his father's war time experience I jumped at the chance. Frank has gathered together and organised his father letters he posted home during the war. Carl Lavin was a high school senior in Canton, Ohio, when Pearl Harbor was attacked. The Canton, Ohio, native was eighteen when he enlisted, a decision that would take him with the US Army from training across the United States and Britain to combat with the 84th Infantry Division in the Battle of the Bulge and through to the occupation of Germany. The book is Homefront to Battlefront: An Ohio Teenage in World War II there is a link on the website.

In this episode we're looking at a topic we touched up on in way back in episode 06 when we looked at the OSS. We're looking at the OSS station chief in Bern, Switzerland, Allen Dulles and his connections with the German resistance during the WWII. Dulles incredibly was approached by a number of Germans unhappy with the Nazi regime who fed him information from 1943 onward. I'm joined by Scott Miller. Scott's book Agent 110: An American Spymaster and the German Resistance in WWII, looks at Dulles operation in Switzerland and pieces together his connections with the German resistance.

Once the Allies had crossed the English Channel on D-Day the next large natural barrier would be the crossing of the Rhine into Germany. Toward the end of 1944 the fighting had been hard, the Americans had slogged through the Hürtgen Forest, everyone had reeled against the German counter attack in the Ardennes. The Rhine is a perfect natural border, the crossing of which would be symbolically crossing the last line of defence in to Germany from the West. The task was given to Montgomery's 21st Army. As ever Monty put together an enormous set piece battle (Plunder), he knew the war was close to the end, many of the Allied troops in his command had fought for years. He couldn't afford for the crossing to fail. 4,000 guns opened up on the 23rd March, in the American sector they fired 65,000 shells in one hour! Varsity, the airborne arm of the operation was the largest airborne operation in history, with over 16,000 troops flown in. To discuss this, and the crossings that beat Monty to it, I'm joined by Marc DeSantis. If that name sounds familiar that is because Marc is also regular guest on the Ancient Warfare Magazine Podcast. He is also a regular contributor to many history magazines on WWII topics.