Warfare

In 1942 the British launched a 12 man raid and reconnaissance mission to the Channel Island of Sark. On the night of the 3 October, a cast of characters who gave their colleague Ian Fleming ideas for a secret agent character, James Bond, crept ashore. They escaped hours later with one German prisoner, a further two having been killed in a scuffle. That might have been the end of it. When Hitler heard the news, however, he went ballistic and very shortly after he issued his infamous Commando Order: henceforth they were to be shot on sight. Operation Basalt signalled another ratcheting up of the ferocity and criminality of the Nazi war effort. To find out more and retrace the steps of the raid, Dan visited the Channel Islands and met local experts.

Six years of exile on a remote island blighted with unpleasant weather conditions, in lodgings far inferior to those enjoyed whilst leader of France, hardly seems fitting for the final years of Napoleon Bonaparte. Yet, in this second episode with Zack White, we hear about how this remarkable military commander came to fall so far from the top. Zack takes us through Napoleon’s loss of power, his representation in British propaganda, his two exiles and his eventual death, including the debates around the real cause of his demise. Zack specialises in crime and punishment in the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars at the University of Southampton, and is the creator of the online hub TheNapoleonicWars.net.

He is widely remembered as one of the most exceptional military commanders that the world has ever seen, a man whose influence was so pervasive that an entire era of European history is referred to in his name. Napoleon is just as divisive in death as he was in life, and for this first of two episodes with Zack White, we are discussing the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and his impact on France. Zack specialises in crime and punishment in the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars at the University of Southampton, and is the creator of the online hub TheNapoleonicWars.net.

Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union on Sunday 22 June 1941 was one of the bloodiest military campaigns mankind has ever known. Now, BAFTA winning producer and author Stewart Binns is telling the story of this catastrophic campaign from the perspective of the Soviet people. Listen as he and James explore the different perspectives on how Nazi Germany’s turn on its former ally occurred, and uncover the often overlooked stories of the civilians and soldiers of Eastern Europe. Stewart’s book, ‘Barbarossa: And the Bloodiest War in History’ is out now.

In the dying days of the Second World War, a group of Georgians rose up against their German overlords on the Dutch island of Texel. Thousands of Georgians served in the Soviet forces during World War II and when captured and given the choice to “starve or fight”, some took up the German offer to don Wehrmacht uniforms.When the opportunity arose in April 1945, these Georgians rose up and slaughtered their German captors, seizing control of the island. In just a few hours, they massacred some 400 German officers using knives and bayonets to avoid raising the alarm. Dan is joined by author Eric Lee to hear how he uncovered this little known story, about the retaliation ordered by Hitler and about the end to the slaughter when Canadian forces landed on the island 12 days later.

The use of nerve agents is synonymous with Russian espionage for those of us who remember the recent poisonings of Alexei Navalny, Sergei and Yulia Skripal and the residents of Salisbury caught up in the latters’ attempted murders. The origins of this weapon, however, remain shrouded in mystery. Sergei Lebedev is a Russian novelist, currently based in Berlin. He has come onto Warfare to discuss the little known conception of Novichok in the closed town of Shikhany, 600 miles south of Moscow. Sergei explores the cooperation between the Soviets and Weimar Republic Germany from the 1920s until 1932, and delves into the moral responsibilities of making scientific discoveries with the capacity for destruction.Sergei's new book, Untraceable, follows a ruthless chemist in his search for a new nerve agent, and is available in the UK from Head of Zeus (https://headofzeus.com/books/9781800246591) and in the US by New Vessel Press (https://newvesselpress.com/books/untraceable/).

97 year old Jim Burrows OAM served as a Coastwatcher in the South Pacific during the Second World War. The Coastwatchers were an intelligence arm of the Allied Intelligence Bureau, and were set up to alert Australia of any military threat from the north. Jim was a radio operator, and spent 10 months in occupied Japanese territory. Over the last few years he has compiled the story of the Coastwatchers, and in this episode he shares this, along with his own experiences, with James. This is a very little known, secretive, part of Second World War history, and Jim outlines in particular the role played by indigenous groups in the Allied forces. His website can be found here: https://thelastcoastwatcher.wordpress.com/

In this episode from the archives, Dan sits down with James Holland to talk about Operation Argument. Taking place in February 1944, this was the biggest air battle of World War Two, and part of the US Army Air Force and RAF strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany.

Thousands of houses, 26 schools, 8 cinemas and 41 churches destroyed; 640 separate air raid sirens and almost 1180 killed. Plymouth is not the first city to come to mind when you mention the Blitz, and probably not the second or third, either. But, eighty years after this southwestern port city faced 59 separate air attacks, Dr Harry Bennett from the University of Plymouth is on Warfare to tell us about them. Harry explains how the bombing attacks of March and April 1941 impacted on Plymouth, and how they fit into the Luftwaffe’s broader campaign on Britain.Check out the University of Plymouth’s commemoration of the destruction of Plymouth here: https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/whats-on/plymouth-blitz-80th-anniversary© Plymouth Herald

The last major confrontation of the Second World War, and the largest amphibious assault of the Pacific theatre, the Battle of Okinawa ended in Allied victory but with massive casualties on both sides. To take us through the battle and explore the use of kamikaze pilots by the Japanese and the Atomic bomb by the United States, James welcomed Saul David onto Warfare. Saul is a professor of Military History at the Univ of Buckingham and author of Crucible of Hell.