The WW2 Podcast

Tobruk was one of the greatest Allied victories – and one of the worst Allied defeats – of the Second World War. Almost from the start of producing the podcast I've wanted to do an episode looking at Tobruk. I think it probably first gets a mention in episode 11 when we looked at Richard O'Connor, since then the town has come up in numerous episodes. I'm joined by David Mitchellhill Green David is...

We are back in the Pacific, this time looking at the air war primarily over Guadalcanal. US Marine aviators landed on the island shortly after the Marine ground forces. As Japanese troops held out on Guadalcanal, the skies over the island were heavily contested. In this episode, we are focusing on the top-scoring marine pilots over Guadalcanal.   Joining me is aviation historian Bill Yenne.   Bill...

At the end WWII 473 men had been honoured by the United States for their bravery and sacrifice by receiving the Medal of Honor. The Medal was awarded to men of all ranks - from Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright at the top all the way down to 18-year-old Private Joseph Merrell. Although 1 million African Americans served in the military during the war, not one was awarded the Medal of Honor, t...

When we think of the allied war effort it is all too easy to overlook some of the junior partners. In this episode, we are going to be looking at Mexico's commitment to the Second World War. The Mexican Expeditionary Airforce would serve in the Philippines as the 201st Fighter Squadron known as the 'Aztec Eagles'. I'm Joined by Walter Zapotoczny whose new book is The Aztec Eagles: The Forgotten Al...

In September 1944 a young Marine name Eugene Sledge landed on the Pacific Island of Peleliu. As a mortarman, stretcher-bearer and rifleman Sledge would fight his way across Peleliu then the Japanese island of Okinawa, arguably two of the fiercest and filthiest battles of the Pacific campaign. After the war, Eugene Sledge became a professor at Montevallo University and turned his diary notes from t...

George S Patton Junior starred as an Olympic athlete in the 1912 Stockholm games. In 1916 under John J. Pershing Patton joined the Mexican Expedition against the paramilitary forces of Mexican revolutionary Francisco "Pancho" Villa. When the US entered the First World War Patton joined the new Tank Corps and commanded the U.S. tank school in France. Leading tanks into combat he would be wounded ne...

From his earliest days, Winston Churchill was a risk-taker. As a young Lieutenant in the army he charged with the cavalry at the battle of Omdurman, he saw action on the North-West Frontier and took a trip to Cuba to observe the war there. As a journalist, he covered the Boer War putting himself in harm's way on numerous occasions.  Aged 25 he entered the house of commons and held many of the grea...

7th December 2021 marks the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the United States of America into the Second World War. On the morning of 7th December 1941, just before 8am the Japanese launched their attack on the US naval base of Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii. The Japanese planned the attack as a first strike to cripple the US fleet in the Pacific and prevent America f...

In this episode we are discussing chemical weapons. It might seem like an odd topic, unlike the First World War which saw the deployment of gas, chemical weapons were not used on the battlefield of Europe in WWII. But there was a fear of them being used; everyone carried a gas mask and the belligerent nations had huge chemical weapons industries working throughout the war. I'm Joined by Brett Edwa...

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 the civilians they encountered. The remit for the Civil Affairs units was...

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, I'm joined by Donald Mitchener to discuss the doctrine and how it developed from those initial assault lan...

I've an incredible story for you in this episode of Shanghai born John Robin Greaves, 'Jack', who 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 articl...

I 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 1944 the war in the European Theatre of Operations mi...

Since starting the podcast, I've looked at the aspects of the war from the point of view of various countries. But, one glaring omission has been any Australian narrative of the war. 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 territo...

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 drawing board, while others not only und...

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 1939, Stalin was taken by surprise. The opening weeks of the offensive we...

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. They hoped these static defences would hold up any German advance long enough for th...

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 and press the button to release the bombs at the right time. In actual fact, their job i...

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 man' and would stand up to Churchill. The two might argue, but...

When France capitulated in 1940 and the Vichy government came to power many of the French colonial possessions remained loyal to the new regime. The same was true for the Island of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. In this episode I'm joined by Russell Phillips. Russell's book A Strange Campaign narrates the story of the battle for Madagascar, where British troops would fight the French for possessi...

Everyone remembers the role of Churchill and Roosevelt throughout the war, but there was a third man key to their relationship and of the three of them the only one to remain in power at the end of the war in August 1945. Mackenzie King was the Prime Minister of Canada, the largest British Dominion and America's closest neighbour. By the start of the war, King knew both FDR and he'd been friends w...

looking at the British Army in North Africa, its tactics and training in an effort to explain the difficulties the 8th Army had fighting the Afrika Korps. Jame's book was released last year but I've only recently managed to find the time to read his book 8th Army vs Rommel . And what a cracking book it is… 

It's a simple question, how do you knock out a Panther tank? When the 'boffins' in Britain got hold of a Panther it's the question they were tasked with finding an answer for. Using official reports and documents, Craig Moore has been through the archives piecing together all the faults that the British saw in the German Panther during WWII. In this episode, I discuss with him the chinks that were...

'In the years after World War I, the defeated and much-reduced German Army developed new clothing and personal equipment that drew upon the lessons learned in the trenches. In place of the wide variety of uniforms and insignia that had been worn by the Imperial German Army, a standardized approach was followed, culminating in the uniform items introduced in the 1930s as the Nazi Party came to shap...

Since the HBO WWII miniseries Band of Brothers aired in 2001, Major Dick Winters of the 101st Airborne has garnered international acclaim. His exploits hit key moments of the North Western European campaign in 1944-45 as Winter's took part in D-Day, Operation Market Garden and Battle of the Bulge. A modest hero, he epitomizes the notion of dignified leadership. Winters was a fairly prolific letter...