House of History: the Podcast: Recent Episodes
House of History
House of History is the podcast where tales of fascinating historical events, periods and people are shared with the world. History, the real thing, tends to be more amazing than a great film or terrific novel.
The House of History Podcast will be published three times per week: Monday, Wednesday and Saturday at 12:00 GMT.
Barbed wire is something we all know, and perhaps use on a regular basis. the history behind this 'devil's rope' is an interesting one. It certainly changed the world.
One of the most interesting Prisoners of War taken by the Allied powers was a Korean soldier that served in the German Wehrmacht. He had only recently fought on the side of the Germans, however. Before that, he fought in the Japanese Imperial Army in Mongolia and the Soviet Union's Red Army in Ukraine.
Some people consider the unexplained Wow! signal as proof of extraterrestrial life. Although this strong multi-band signal from outer space occurred decades ago, there still isn't a commonly accepted conclusion about what caused it, or how it originated.
When the Wehrmacht rolled into Austria in 1938 during the Anschluss, there was one officer commanding a Panzer regiment that stood out. He wasn't a German, and frankly, wasn't even European. Chiang Wei-kuo was the son of China's generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, received military education in Bavaria, and even commanded a Panzer regiment as Germany annexed their southern neighbour.
Wilhelm Voigt was a petty criminal, in-and-out of prison, destined to be forgotten after his death. Yet in 1906 he pulled off a heist that not just made international headlines, but news even reacher Kaiser Wilhelm II. The Kaiser was so amused by the way Voigt conducted his robbery, he decided to pardon him not too soon after his arrest.
During the Second World War, nearly 50.000 United States soldiers and 100.000 British soldiers deserted. But even though these numbers are quite staggering, and desertion tends to lead to a court-martial and harsh sentence, there was only one United States soldier throughout the entire war that was to be executed for that exact crime. His name was Eddie Slovik, and he was well aware he was the only one.
In August 1944, after multiple devastating losses by the Wehrmacht, the Long Range Signal Intelligence Company (FAK 103) received a message from one of their Soviet spies. This spy, named Alexandr, stated there was a Wehrmacht unit, around 2500 men strong, trapped behind enemy lines trying to reach the German frontlines again. What followed was one of the longest-lasting, most costly, and most successful deception operations of the Second World War.
In early February 1948, a strange and urgent morse-code SOS, three dots, three dashes and three dots again, came from a Dutch cargo ship, the S.S. Ourang Medan that sailed through the Strait of Malacca.
When deciphered, they spelt: “... All officers, including Captain dead, lying in the chartroom and on Bridge …. Probably whole crew dead…” A series of frenzied gibberish dots and lines followed, before the closing message came in, simply stating “I die.” And then nothing more. Upon investigation of the ship, indeed, the entire crew was found deceased, supposedly with shocked expressions on their face. But the rescue parties could not identify anything that could have caused it.
When a Berlin Wall Border Guard defected in 1961, little did he know the images taken of his escape would become some of the most iconic pictures of the Cold War. Yet the story behind this man is much lesser-known.
As war broke out in the Pacific Theatre, on the United States mainland measures were taken against supposedly potentially hostile Japanese as well. In February 1942 President Roosevelt authorised Executive Order 9066, an executive that in practice was used to relocate Japanese Americans to internment camps forcibly. The Nisei, a term to describe Japanese that were born and raised in the United States, were forcibly relocated into internment camps. The treatment of Japanese-American citizens during the second world war is pretty well known, even outside of the United States. But what’s so curious is that although Japanese Americans were viewed as a potentially hostile threat by mere reason of their ancestry, the 442nd Infantry Regiment fought as part of the United States Army in the European theatre. This regiment consisted entirely of Nisei soldiers, Americans with Japanese ancestry. And what is more, it became the most decorated unit in U.S. military history.
Gregory "Pappy" Boyington was a troubled, but excellent American combat pilot. He was a USMC fighter ace during the Second World War, and according to his own account, he was the top ace of the entire USMC. Crashed and captured by the Japanese during his record-breaking flying mission, he was presumed dead for over a year, until the war ended and he turned up in a POW camp.
On April 23rd 1918, the French newspaper Le Matin published an article. Its headline read “Manfred von Richthofen has been shot down in the vicinity of Amiens. There is no certainty yet as to what exactly happened, though it is certain this will be a huge blow for the German morale. We see this as righteous vengeance.” This French newspaper wasn’t too wrong: von Richthofen’s death indeed was a massive blow to German morale. Because over 100 years after his death, many still know him by his alias: the Red Baron. He was the ace of aces, with eighty aerial victories during the First World War credited to his name. During his life, the Red Baron was already a living legend. Yet he didn’t see the end of the First World War, but after his death, the legend around him only expanded.
Although Australia and the United States formally were Allied during the Second World War, there were some fundamental differences between their servicemen stationed on the island.
This led to the infamous Battle of Brisbane between American and Australian service troops. But aside from this battle, an even weirder event led to… well I’d say horrible PR for the Americans. Among their troops stationed in Australia was a serial killer. In contrast to his fellow soldiers preparing an attack on the Japanese Empire, this soldier waged attacks on Australian women. Dubbed the ‘Singing Strangler’, Eddie Leonski was an American serial killer, stationed in Australia during the Second World War.
Japanese snipers during the Second World War have, surprisingly enough, not been subject to a lot of research and writing. The Japanese army began deploying snipers much later than any other major participant of the Second World War. Japanese snipers used tactics that generally were dissuaded by other armies because of their high lethality ratio.
As the end of the Second World War was coming closer, the Allied powers made preparations for the inevitable stream of German prisoners of war that had to be housed. In total, 1026 prisoner of war camps were established in Britain. They accommodated a bit over 400.000 German PoWs that were shipped there. Among these camps was Camp 198, also known as Island Farm. The camp was situated on the outskirts of Bridgend, South Wales. The majority of the camp was demolished in 1993, but there is one cabin, Hut 9, that has been preserved. And it has been preserved for a pretty good reason: it is the last remaining building that stood central in the plot of one of the largest escape attempts by German PoWs during the Second World War.
The Edelweiß Pirates were youth gangs that opposed the ever-increasing totalitarian grip of the Nazi regime. Their actions ranged from passive resistance to robbing munitions depots and even murder. Curiously enough, after the Second World War came to an end, a group of post-war Nazi resistance cells coopted their name and carried out a series of bombings and attacks against the occupying Allied powers.
The German Hanna Reitsch was one of the best test-pilots ever. She attended the 1936 Berlin Olympics and participated in the Air Sports discipline; she broke multiple endurance and altitude records and has flown nearly every German aircraft during her career. She flew bombers, fighters, and even the Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet-rocket plane. She was one of the first test pilots to fly the Focke-Achgelis Fa 61, world’s first operable helicopter. There was a dark side to Hanna, though. She was a fanatical Nazi, loyal to Hitler and very involved in Luftwaffe operations. In fact, she stood at the forefront of the notorious German V-1 human-glider bomb project. This was a last-ditch attempt by the Germans to turn the tide of the war, by utilising suicide pilots against Allied troops. She survived the war and wrote several books about her life, giving us a very candid look at the life of the woman Hitler referred to as his favourite pilot.
On December 7, 1941, the 'battle' of Ni'ihau commenced. For obvious reasons this incident is usually overshadowed by the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Ni'ihau incident was a deadly incident on an island that was assumed to be deserted, but was inhabited by a few Hawaiians. What followed was part of the population siding with the Japanese pilot, and part of the population siding with the United States once they realised an attack on Pearl Harbor had taken place.
The May 1943 secret operation by Britain's Bomber Command to destroy several German dams located in its industrial heartland, the Ruhr Area, was a groundbreaking mission. Not just because of the risk involved, but because a new weapon would be used for the first time: the so-called 'Bouncing Bomb'.
During the Second World War there were multiple people from Allied countries that deserted to the Axis powers. Actually, there are too many to name them all. Some of them ended up working propaganda jobs, and the ‘American-Germans that travelled to Germany to defend the Reich’ was of course immortalised by the (fictional) scene in Band of Brothers. But all these people generally deserted before there was a full-fledged war between the United States and Germany. Let alone when it became obvious that Germany was going to lose the war. Well, not Martin James Monti.
Playing a bit of bluff he ended up in German-held territory in Europe, joined the SS propaganda unit and even fought on the German side. But what makes the case perhaps even more strange is that all this happened in late October 1944, when it was evident to nearly everyone that Germany would lose the war.
Oddly enough although many speeches given by Adolf Hitler have been preserved, there is no audio footage of his normal conversational voice. Well, except one tape, recorded in secret by a Finnish sound engineer and released to the public only decades after the war ended.
Article with transcripts: https://houseofhistory.co/2020/11/29/the-only-secret-recording-with-hitlers-normal-voice/
Video with transcripts: https://youtu.be/WE6mnPmztoQ
Lauri Törni was a warrior. There's no way around it. Taking up arms in 1939 against the Soviet Union invading his Finland, he ended up fighting alongside the German Waffen-SS during the final days of the Second World War. After the war he fled to the United States, where he joined the U.S. Army Special Forces. He met his end the way he lived: on deployment in Vietnam, fighting against communism.
After the German Empire lost the First World War and the Kaiser abdicated, the newly established Weimar Republic lingered in an incredibly unstable and chaotic situation. Both the far left and far right rejected parliamentary democracy.
One of the most infamous events must have been the Kapp Putsch. During the night of March 12 1920, an elite paramilitary unit entered Berlin. It aimed to overthrow the democratically elected government and install an autocratic military regime. Surprisingly enough, these paramilitary troops enjoyed support from the actual army and a considerable number of civil servants. For a moment, it looked like the young Weimar Republic already came to an end, before it really had begun.
Image source:
By Bundesarchiv, Bild 119-1983-0007 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5415957
It is well known that European royal families tend to marry among each other to either maintain or expand their power-base. Yet the Danish King Christian IX managed to take it to a whole new level. Disregarding a lousy start of his reign, namely losing a war and nearly half of Denmark's territory, the marriage politics of his children made up for it all.
His children married into incredibly powerful royal houses in Europe, and often times had children of their own that in their turn too married into prominent royalty. Because of his cunning marriage politics, King Christian IX of Denmark is remembered as the ‘father in law of Europe’, and rightfully so, might I add.
The last days of the Second World War were incredibly chaotic. To nearly every German soldier it became clear the war had been lost, both in the Wehrmacht and even among some ideological diehard Waffen-SS. Europe was filled with large groups of refugees, displaced persons and bands of soldiers that either were looking for another front to fight at or tried to reach the western allied powers before the Soviets caught them. A very curious event happened during this chaotic time: in Tyrol, Austria, a centuries-old castle housed prominent French political prisoners. When a fanatical SS division attempted to take the castle, a German Wehrmacht unit ended up fighting side-by-side with a United States army unit to defend these prisoners. It was the only time during the entire war that the Germans and Americans fought side-by-side, and it is often described as the ‘strangest battle of the entire war.'
Germany's Last Kaiser Wilhelm II lived for another 23 years after he abdicated and was forced into exile following Germany's defeat during the First World War. He lived in exile in the Netherlands and passed away only in June 1941. To give you an idea: that is well after Hitler had been in power, and two years after the Second World War broke out. Knowing this, it begs the inevitable question: what was the life of the Last German Kaiser like, in exile, with all those turbulent changes going on in the Empire he once ruled?
It was the early morning on the 9th of September 1987. A 45-year-old unemployed engineer drives a stolen Fiat from his home to Bloemendaal, a town 35 minutes away known for its villas. After all, Bloemendaal is the wealthiest place in the Netherlands. He wears a fake moustache, glasses and a beret. His coat is draped over a sawed-off gun that rests on his lap. When he reaches his destination, one of the villas in Bloemendaal, he parks his car on a nearby parking lot and takes up a position near the entrance of the estate. His target, Gerrit Jan Heijn own this villa. Nobody realises it yet, but one of the longest, most shocking and sensational abductions and murders in the history of the Netherlands is about to commence.
There were some surprisingly decent-looking tank designs before the First World War broke out. Yet because there wasn't any direct necessity for these expensive machines, real development didn't start until the war had already progressed. Both the British and French developed several models of tanks during the last years of the First World War, in the hopes of breaking the stagnant trench warfare on the Western front.
When the Confederacy captured the Ironclad USS Indianola during the American Civil War, the Union's Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter thought up a ruse to make sure it wouldn't be salvaged and used against them.
The Belgian fortress Eben-Emael was considered impenetrable, with its heavy defences and a 1200 strong garrison. Yet on May 10th 1940, with the invasion of Belgium, the Netherlands and France, it merely took several dozen German paratroopers (Fallschirmjäger) to capture the fort.
Amelia Earhart was the first woman that successfully completed an intercontinental solo-flight. She established many speed- and distance records and the world still sees her as a pioneer in aviation. She disappeared during a flight over the Pacific Ocean. Official investigations concluded she died in a plane crash over the ocean, a simple crash-and-sink. Yet, the disappearance has been shrouded in mystery and has been fruitful ground for theories about her actual whereabouts.
Martin Bormann was one of the highest-ranking members of Nazi Germany. He disappeared during the final days of the Second World War, amidst the Battle of Berlin. What happened to him? In this video Bormann's life, career and expansion of power are discussed. It also gives a very detailed account of his disappearance after World War 2 and the subsequent manhunt that lasted for decades.
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In 1959 in the Soviet Union, a group of 10 explorers decided to set out on a challenging hiking expedition in a freezing and mountainous area of Russia. When the expedition group fails to touch base after several weeks, a rescue mission is set up to try and find them. When the mission finally discovers what happened to the explorers, they are horrified. Although the weather reached sub-zero degrees, the members of the expedition were found, far apart in a secluded forest, near entirely unclothed, with severe internal fractures and no obvious cause of death...
Charles II was born into one of Europe's most powerful families. After his father's death he became King of Spain at the age of 4, with his mother doubling as his regent. Yet his life certainly wasn't over roses. King Charles II was nicknamed 'the Bewitched' and suffered from a long list of physical deformities as a direct result of the Habsburg's... lack of 'diversity' in marriage.
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At the beginning of 1944 six divisions of the German Army Group South, some 56.000 men, were encircled by the Russian Army. They were stuck in a pocket of around 48 kilometres wide and 20 kilometres deep around the Ukrainian town of Korsun, in the South-West. What followed was a desperate fight of the Germans, fighting against the encirclement of Soviet forces outnumbering them. Eventually, the situation got so bad German General Wilhelm Stemmermann decided to group all the German combat troops inside the pocket, arrange them into two columns, and force a break-out of the Cherkassy pocket, straight through the surrounding Soviet lines.
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One of the greatest mysteries of both Imperial Russia and the subsequent Soviet Union was the disappearance of Tsar Nicholas II's youngest daughter, Anastasia. Following the execution of the imperial Romanov family, rumours quickly spread around Europe... Anastasia may have survived the execution.
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On the 27th of October 1962, the B-59 submarine was trapped under an American fleet and, in their perception, was under attack by depth charges exploding around them. The submarine had embarked on a mission from the Soviet Union nearly four weeks earlier, in order to guard Soviet weapon transports to Cuba. Onboard were 70 crewmen. The three most senior officers were Captain Valentin Savitsky, the political officer Semonovich Maslennikov and the 2nd Lieutenant Vasily Arkhipov.
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When the Nazis invaded France, the Duke of Windsor, former King of England Edward VIII, fled to Spain together with his wife Wallis Simpson. Among both the German and British intelligence services, there was uncertainty about his allegiance and political convictions. When the Duke of Windsor moved to Portugal, the German Sicherheitsdienst decided to set up an operation to abduct him and twist his arm into declaring himself King of Germany-dominated Britain. The British SIS found out, resulting in a race against the clock for both intelligence services over control of the Duke of Windsor.
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