For You The War Is Over

Regular host, Dave Robertson, takes a look at the fascinating life, service, and escape of Bernard Scheidhauer, the escape partner to the 'Big X', Roger Bushell, with whom he was recaptured and murdered by the Gestapo. For You The War Is Over is a podcast that looks at the real life stories of Prisoner-of-War escapes from the the Second World War. Hosted by Dave Robertson and Tony Hoskins, each ep...

Simon Pearson, the official biographer and author of "The Great Escaper: The Life and Death of Roger Bushell" joins us to tell the story of the 'Big X' himself, Roger Bushell. For You The War Is Over is a podcast that looks at the real life stories of Prisoner-of-War escapes from the the Second World War. Hosted by Dave Robertson and Tony Hoskins, each episode looks at a new escape.  If you w...

Will Butler, Head of Modern Collections at The National Archives, joins us to tell us about the life and escape of Arnost Valenta. Valenta was head of the X Committee's Intelligence Department, and played a hugely important role in the preparation for the Great Escape, leading to him being the third man out of the tunnel. For You The War Is Over is a podcast that looks at the real life stories of...

Henry 'Johnny' Marshall, the second man out of tunnel Harry, was an RAF veteran having served for nearly twenty years by the time he was shot down. We were joined by Onor Crummay , a historian with the Spitfire AA810 Project , a project dedicated to the memory of all the men of the Photographic Reconnaissance Unit, for which Marshall flew during the Second World War as a Spitfire pilot. For You Th...

Tom Whipple, science editor at The Times, and author of "The Battle of the Beams", joins us to look at Leslie 'Johnny' Bull, chief tunneller on Harry and the first man out of the tunnel in the Great Escape. His book looked at the science behind RADAR and the battle of the air waves during the Second World War, a battle in which Bull was engaged before being shot down, and becoming a Prisoner of Wa...

Robert Laplander, historian and author of "The True Story of the Wooden Horse", has done extensive research on prisoners of war and escapers from Stalag Luft III, and revealed an unexpected penchant for tunnelling. He joins us for our final technical episode looking at the works of the forgery department, what it is they produced, and how they produced it. For You The War Is Over is a podcast that...

An often and easily overlooked, but crucially important, aspect of escaping is the provision of food. In the Great Escape, the X Committee had an entire department dedicated to providing food rations for the escapers. Our regular host, Dave Robertson, himself a former professional chef, looks into the challenges the POWs faced regarding food provision, and how they managed to overcome those challe...

Dianne Rutherford joined us to look at the need, function, and production of the escape maps for the Great Escape. While working as a curator at the Australian War Memorial, Dianne studied and cared for the Memorial's map collection, including several POW made maps, and has even tried her hand at some of the techniques used by the POWs in the camp to mass reproduce their maps. For You The War Is O...

In this episode we were joined Peter Wood and Mike Jackson, from The Great Escape Project. They have spent a number of years first looking at what it was the POWs in the Great Escape produced, and then working out how they managed to make them given the limited resources available within the camp. We were therefore delighted to be joined by Peter and Mike to talk about the tailoring and manufactur...

Marc Stevens, whose father, Peter Stevens, was head scrounger in the East Compound at Stalag Luft III, joins us for this episode in which he tells his father's incredible story, before discussing the role of the scroungers, what it entailed, and what skills they required to fulfil their role. For You The War Is Over is a podcast that looks at the real life stories of Prisoner-of-War escapes from t...

In this episode we were joined by Professor Hugh Hunt, professor of Engineering at Trinity College, Cambridge to talk about tunnelling. Professor Hunt has recorded a number of documentaries on the Great Escape, including "Digging the Great Escape", and he looks at both the experience of tunnelling, but also the challenges and engineering solutions the POWs came up with to overcome those obstacles....

We were delighted to be joined by Mark Kozak-Holland, author of the "Lessons From History" series, including the book, "Project Lessons from the Great Escape". Mark is an academic in Project Management, and he joins us to look at the Great Escape and the X Committee from a 'project management' perspective, from conception to implementation, and discusses what was done well and also what could have...

In this episode we were joined not just by the family of Herbert Martin Massey, the Senior British Officer in Stalag Luft III, but also his official biographer, Andrew White. In the first of our biographical episodes we look at the life of Massey, but also discuss his role in The Great Escape and how there would have been no Great Escape without his sign off on the plan. For You The War Is Over is...

In the second episode of the Great Escape Series, we are joined by Derek Mallett, an Associate Professor at the US Army Command and General Staff College. Derek joined us to tell us all about those in charge of German security in Stalag Luft III, from the Commandant to the ferrets, as the Great Escapers engaged in a battle of wits against them to get out of the camp before Tom, Dick and Harry were...

For the first episode of our series on the Great Escape we are delighted to be joined by Professor Peter Doyle, who has done a great deal of work in, and on, Stalag Luft III, having been part of the team which first excavated Tunnel Dick. He joined us to set the scene for the series by sharing with us the history of the camp, what the camp was like, and just as crucially what camp life was like fo...

We are hugely excited, after seven series, to finally be bringing you an entire series looking exclusively at... The Great Escape! In an extended series we will be joined by historians, academics, experts, authors, curators, archivists, interested individuals, and families - as well as covering a number of episodes ourselves - to tell not just the in-depth story of The Great Escape itself, but the...

To coincide with the recent release of his book, "Blighty or Bust", we are joined in this bonus episode by David Wilkins to tell us about the escape of Private Raymond Bailey, who was captured in 1940 during the retreat through northern France. Like Basil Embry in Episode 5 of Series 3, Raymond Bailey escaped from a marching column of Prisoners-of-War making its way back to Germany, before making...

For so many of us the movies of escapes are how we first come to love POW escape stories. We were therefore delighted to be joined by Steve Summers, director of the " War Movie " documentary, to provide you with the movie reviews you need of both the good and the bad 'escapes on film'! For You The War Is Over is a podcast, hosted by Dave Robertson and Tony Hoskins, which looks at the real life sto...

In this the 80th anniversary of D-Day we are looking at an incredible joint escape by three POWs, Shannon, Dow and Helme, all of whom were Glider pilots who were captured on D-Day. We were also trialling a new online recording, which will allow us to expand our offering, so please bear with us while we work out the early sound teething problems! For You The War Is Over is a podcast that looks at t...

The second part of the second double header of the series, Sgt. Piotr Bakalarski intersected with Raginis' own escape on a number of occasions, but this episode covers the escape from Bakalarski's perspective. For You The War Is Over is a podcast that looks at the real life stories of Prisoner-of-War escapes from the the Second World War. Hosted by Dave Robertson and Tony Hoskins, each episode loo...

Still just a teenager at the time of his escape, Sgt. Witold Raginis travelled thousands of miles from Poland to Gibraltar, by train and on foot, all while his family were under threat from the Nazi occupiers of his native Lithuania. For You The War Is Over is a podcast that looks at the real life stories of Prisoner-of-War escapes from the the Second World War. Hosted by Dave Robertson and Tony H...

One of the most meticulously well planned and executed escapes we have come across, Leading Seaman Penny was a submariner who escaped from a camp in Italy and made his way to the Vatican City - a full year before Sam Derry established the Rome Escape Line! For You The War Is Over is a podcast that looks at the real life stories of Prisoner-of-War escapes from the the Second World War. Hosted by Da...

Captured in Northern France in 1940, Coe was the very first to escape from a POW camp, escaping from a satellite camp in Danzig, from where he made the short escape to the port, and stowed away on a ship to Sweden. For You The War Is Over is a podcast that looks at the real life stories of Prisoner-of-War escapes from the the Second World War. Hosted by Dave Robertson and Tony Hoskins, each episod...

Sgt. John Prendergast was an Irishman serving in the British Army, and was identified by his captors as a potential collaborator. Instead he escaped back to the UK, travelling to France by train, before making his way to Gibraltar with the help of an escape line. For You The War Is Over is a podcast that looks at the real life stories of Prisoner-of-War escapes from the the Second World War. Hoste...

Captured at Tobruk, they escaped from Campo 21 at Chieti in the aftermath of the Italian Armistice, before making their way through Italian, with help from locals, to the Allied Lines. For You The War Is Over is a podcast that looks at the real life stories of Prisoner-of-War escapes from the the Second World War. Hosted by Dave Robertson and Tony Hoskins, each episode looks at a new escape.  If y...