The Danger Zone (DZ): Recent Episodes
Paul Fordyce
Humans have spent most of their history fighting wars. All of that would have been a terrible waste except for the great things it has done for us. Fantastic music, great movies, mind expanding literature, technically incredible cars, flying that took us in just 60 years from the Wright brothers travelling just 37 metres to going to the moon and back (that’s the important part) 60 years later, faster and safer ships, life saving medicines and medical procedures, great video games, the internet. So much to cover and so many interesting stories to tell and music to play. You’ll never be bored.
True or false. Montgomery penned a pamphlet called Notes on High Command in War which he provided to King George VI, General Marshall as well as to leaders and commanders all over the world, often accompanied with a photograph of himself, and a request for a return photograph of the recipient.
Tag words: Montgomery; Monty; Bedell Smith; Eisenhower; Bradley; Nigel Hamilton; Monty: The Battles of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery; Rommel; the "Desert Fox"; General Brooke; Churchill; 8th Army; Claude Auchinleck; General Alexander; Edgar “Bill” Williams; Operation Husky; General Patton; Operation Goodwood;
To some it was a stupid thing that Monty did. But by God did it inspire the men he lead?
Tag words: Monty; Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery; Betty Carver; Major General Sir Percy Hobart; 79th Armoured Division; Hobart’s Funnies; Nigel Hamilton; Monty: The Battles of Field Marshal Montgomery; 8th Army; Basil Liddell Hart; German Army; Bedell Smith; 9th Australian Division; Denis Johnson; Battle of El Alamein; de Guingand; Omaha Beach;
The very first time Monty came across the name Eisenhower was in circumstances that caused him to doubt that man’s suitability as a commander-in-chief.
Tag words: Montgomery; Monty; Dwight D. Eisenhower; Bedell Smith; Nigel Hamilton; Monty: The Battles of Field Marshal Montgomery; Alan Brooke; Chief of the Imperial General Staff; CIGS; Bradley; Patton; Mons; Distinguished Service Order; Field Marshal Haig; Polygon Wood; Menin Road; Broodseinde; Lord Gort; British Expeditionary Force; BEF; Schlieffen Plan; Erich von Manstein; Sichelschnitt; Dunkirk; General Sir John Dill; British Army; Churchill; Auchinleck; Palestine; Operation Torch; Erwin Rommel; El Alamein; 8th Army; Hitler;
Your imagination is far better than anything that Hollywood can throw up on the screen. Steven Spielberg created the terror of the insane semi driver who harassed the driver in his first movie Duel. In Jaws the greatest terror from the shark came when you didn’t see it. So what imaginary thing paralysed the Allied High Command during the Battle of the Bulge.
Tag words: Bradley; Montgomery; General Marshall; Eisenhower; David Irving; The War Between the Generals; Nigel Hamilton; Monty: The Battles of Field Marshal Montgomery; Admiral Ramsay; Brooke; Chief of the Imperial General Staff; CIGS; Patton; Battle of the Bulge; Stephen Ambrose; Mrs. Summersby; Carlo d’Este; SHAEF; Hasselt station; Major General Kenneth Strong; Major General John Whiteley;
There have been some great teams of commanders. A great team makes all the difference. Take Robert E Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia with Stonewall Jackson, Longstreet, and JEB Stuart. Or Napoleon and his Marshalls, Ney, Murat, Davout. So how did Generals Eisenhower, Montgomery, Bradley and Patton get along once the Battle for France became fluid after the totally unexpected Operation Cobra breakout followed by the total German collapse? Could the Allied team have been rearranged to give a better outcome? What one historian has offered as his answer to that question should come as surprise to you!
Tag words: General Dwight D. Eisenhower; Montgomery; Omar Bradley; Patton; Carlo d’Este; ETO;Eurpopean Theatre of Operations; Lieutenant General Jacob L. Devers; General George Marshall; Bedell Smith; 12th Army Group; Russell F. Weigley; Major General J. Lawton "Lightning Joe" Collins; Major General Charles H. "Pete" Corlett; Nigel Hamilton; Monty: The Battles of Bernard Montgomery; Salerno; Operation Avalanche; General Maxwell Taylor; Anzio; Operation Anvil; Operation Shingle; Operation Dragoon; Churchill; Operation Overlord; Operation Cobra; Brooke; Chief of the Imperial General Staff; CIGS;
Do you remember Tubthumping? It was a popular song by Chumbawamba released in 1997. If you can’t remember it, let me give you the chorus, then I’m sure you’ll remember the song – I get knocked down, but I get up again. You’re never going to keep me down. I think Eisenhower and his lieutenants were about to find out that that song was the song for Hitler’s Germany of 1944 in the West. And then some. Hitler’s Germany was a phoenix that rose from the ashes on the Western front in 1944 after it had been pounded into impotence after the Allied breakout from Normandy in July/August 1944.
Tag words: Tubthumping; Chumbawamba; Hitler; phoenix; Eastern Front; Carlo d’Este; Eisenhower; Field Marshal Walter Model; Russell Weigley; Eisenhower’s Lieutenants; Volksgrenadier divisions; General der Panzertruppen Otto von Knobelsdorff; Patton; US Third Army; A Genius for War; Daniel Yergin; Napoleon; unforgiving minute; David Irving; The War Between the Generals; Bradley; Roosevelt; Morgenthau; Montgomery; Marshall; Kay Summersby; D-Day; 21st Army Group; Lieutenant General Morgan; COSSAC; Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander; Normandy; Nigel Hamilton; Monty: The Battles of Field Marshal Montgomery; Operation Cobra; General Devers; 6th US Army Group; US 12th Army Group; Shellburst; SHAEF; Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force; Martin Creveld; Supplying War; Chester Wilmot;
For over 50 days the Allies had been bottled up in their bridgeheads at Normandy. And then, suddenly, they weren’t. The road to Germany was open. All they had to do was drive into the Third Reich, seize Berlin, and bring about the downfall of Adolf Hitler and his gang – and all of this in 1944 – or so it seemed. What was the feeling at the top when the entirely unexpected breakout happened in July when Operation Cobra burst out of the bridgehead?
Tag words: Normandy; Third Reich; Adolf Hitler; Operation Cobra; Mortain; Chief of the Imperial General Staff; CIGS; Sir Alan Brooke; War Between the Generals; David Irving; Carlo d’Este; Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life; Eisenhower; Russell Weigley; Eisenhower’s Lieutenants; Nigel Hamilton; Monty: The Battles of Field Marshal Montgomery; General Devers; General Bradley; Major General Kenneth Strong; SHAEF; Patton; Colonel Oscar Koch; Westwall; Siegfried Line; Churchill; Lieutenant General Brehon Somervell; Robert P. Patterson; General Marshall; General Bedell Smith;
World War 2 in Europe ended with the surrender of Nazi Germany to the Western Allies on 7 May 1945 and to the Soviet Union on 8 May 1945. In the last year of the war, 1945, about 2.6 million military personnel died in Europe. The number of civilian casualties were also considerable. After the Allied breakout from Normandy in August 1944 there seemed to have been a chance to end the war in Europe before Christmas – that often heard refrain in World War I and World War II, although after the war this one isn’t brought to mind as much as it should be. Was there any truth to that rumour about World War II in Europe ending in 1944? I’m going to explore that in this series of programmes.
Tag words: World War 2; Nazi Germany; Normandy; Lieutenant-General JCH Lee; General Eisenhower; General Montgomery; Field Marshall Montgomery; General Omar N Bradley; General George S Patton Jr; 21st Army Group; 12th Army Group; 3rd US Army; Shellburst; Anvil; General Marshall; D-Day; Nigel Hamilton; Monty – The Battles of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery; Operation Cobra; Carlo d’Este; Overlord; US Army; Flavius Renatus Vegetius; De Re Militari; Scipio; golden bridge; Argentan; Falaise Gap; Hitler; Mortain; Seventh Army; Fifth Panzer Army; Carlo d’Este; Eisenhower: Decision in Normandy; 12th SS Panzer Division; Martin Blumenson; Breakout and Pursuit;
Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all inhabitants thereof – what was it that made the West great and enriched the entire world as a consequence? It was freedom. Out of the failed attempt by the mighty Persian Empire, to conquer the impoverished farming land of Greece, the Greeks gave the world a lasting gift. The abstract idea of freedom – which a successful Persian invasion of Greece would have crushed.
A quarter million of Xerxes' troops perished in his vain attempt to take away this mysterious abstract thing called freedom which was enjoyed uniquely in all of the world by this tiny Balkan country of less than 130,000 square kilometres.
Tag words: Persian Empire; Xerxes; Persians; Achaemenid; Persian Wars; God; Hebrews; Pharoah; Herodotus; The Histories; Victor Davis Hanson; Carnage and Culture; Freedom; hoplite; landowners; Demaratus; Divine Salamis; the rise of the West; Aeschylus; Hellenic civilization; Themistocles; Eurybiades; Athenians; free citizens; Marathon; Battle of Plataea; free men; Athens; Thermopylae; Spartans; Georg Hegel; democracy; Aristotle; Plato; Alexander the Great; Abraham Lincoln; Gettysburg Address; decisive battles of the Western world;
What was the secret ingredient that made the Greeks so formidable a foe that the greatest empire in the world failed to come even close to defeating them?
Tag words: Herodotus; The Histories; Battle of Plataea; Greeks; Pausanias; Xerxes; Mardonius; Sparta; Leonidas; Thermopylae; Vassily Grossman; A Writer at War; Great Patriotic War; Krasnaya Zvezda; Red Star; John Gould; Richard Cohen; Making History; Victor Davis Hanson; Carnage and Culture; Persians; Marathon; Battle of Salamis; Artemisium; Cyrus the Younger;
All the Spartans acknowledged that he was the most courageous Spartan who fought at the Battle of Plataea, but he was unanimously disqualified by them from receiving any honours. Why?
Tag words: Spartans; Battle of Plataea; Victor Davis Hanson; The Western Way of War; Persians; Greek phalanx; Plutarch; Herodotus; The Histories; Lacedaemonians; Pausanias; Mardonius; Athenians; Tegeans; JFC Fuller; Decisive Battles of the Western World; Boeotians; Richard Nelson; Armies of the Greek and Persian Wars; Artabazus; Aeschylus;
The Persian pursuit of the retreating Spartans looked as if it might be very promising. It was the main weight of the Persian army that was brought to bear against the Spartans. It looked likely to break them with their overwhelming missile fire. Well that was until Mardonius made his big mistake.
Tag words: Persians; Spartans; Herodotus; The Histories; The Battle of Plataea; Pausanias; Lacedaemonians; Mardonius; JFC Fuller; Decisive Battles of the Western World; Richard Nelson; Armies of the Greek and Persian Wars;
From what was happening on the Greek side it was apparent to Mardonius that the legendary Spartans weren’t the fearless battlefield warriors that everyone believed. In the face of the Persians they were quire cowardly – knowing what I’m about to tell you, you are bound to agree. Right?
Tag words: Mardonius; Spartans; Persians; Battle of Plataea; JFC Fuller; Decisive Battles of the Western World; Herodotus; The Histories; Artabazus; Asopus River; Alexander of Macedon; Pausanias; Boeotians; Peloponnesian Wars; Athenians;
One of the important figures in the Persian Army had found himself in a life threatening situation. Cunningly he had cut part of his foot off with a knife. Saved his life, and was now standing beside Mardonius influencing the course of the battle for the Persians. What was his name?
Tag words: Persians; Mardonius; Boetians; Athenians; Spartans; Lacedaemonians; Masistius; JFC Fuller; Decisive Battles of the Western World; Richard Nelson; Armies of the Greek and Persian Wars; Tegeans; Pausanius; Herodotus; The Histories; Plataea; Medes;
True or false: the ancients had some knowledge of treating pleurisy and collapsed lungs using syringes and bladders?
Tag words: Pleurisy; collapsed lungs; breastplates; Roman commander Lucullus; Victor Davis Hanson; The Western Way of War; Alexander the Great; Spartans; dog tags; hoplites; Herodotus; antibiotics; James Jones; The Thin Red Line; Battle of Cannae; hemorrhaging; edema;
The ground ran red with blood. At the Battle of Pydna, in 168 BC, how much blood was spilled on the battlefield?
15,000 litres?
30,000 litres?
45,000 litres?
Tag words: Battle of Pydna; Leo Tolstoy; War and Peace; Napoleon; Xerxes; Ten Thousand; Theban Sacred Band; Battle of Leuktra; Thermopylae; Plataea;
One great general was reported as coming off the field of battle "covered with the blood" of his enemies, "carried away by the pleasure"…. ; the commander had nearly become "blood drunk" from the killing Who was the general?
Tag words: Phalanx; panic flight; Socrates; Clive James; Keith Douglas; Anthony Kellett; Combat Motivation: The Behaviour of Soldiers in Battle; Victor Davis Hanson; Battle of Leuktra; king Kleombrotos; Epameinondas; Xenophon; S. L. A. Marshall; Men Against Fire; Battle of Cannae; Hannibal;
A truly fearsome and courageous Greek hoplite and also one of the greatest philosopher’s of all time, was described in a song as a lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he’s pissed? Who was he?
Tag words: Greek hoplite; phalanx; Anthony Kellett; Combat Motivation: The Behaviour of Soldiers in Battle; Victor Davis Hanson; The Western Way of War; Xenophon; pike; Alexander the Great; Imperial Roman legions; Agincourt; Thucydides; othismos aspidon; the push of shields; Spartans; Swiss pikemen; rout; The Philosopher’s Song – Monty Python
Which ancient battle, between Greek hoplites, was won by wrestling, and which city-state was it that won because of their wrestling skill?
Tag words: Greek hoplites; phalanx; Victor Davis Hanson; The Western Way of War; sowing disorder; Spartans; Thucydides; Diodorus; Battle of Mantineia; Battle of Plataea; Thermopylae; Plutarch; Battle of Leuktra; Xenophon;
What caused the sudden collapse of the attack by the French armoured knights, on foot, at Agincourt?
Tag words: French knights; Battle of Agincourt; John Keegan; The Face of Battle; killing zone; wall of dead;
At the Battle of Agincourt, the French knights were reluctant to fight the English longbowmen. Were the longbowmen such amazing soldiers? For a modern reader the reason, when I tell you later in this programme, might be hard to understand?
Tag words: Battle of Agincourt; English longbowmen; Battle of Plataea; Greeks, Persians; John Keegan; The Face of Battle; Richard Cohen; Making History; Sandhurst Military Academy; Max Hastings; French knights; English knights; Victor Davis Hanson;
Only 15% of American soldiers in World War II, when being attacked by Japanese troops in a suicidal banzai charge, actually fired their weapons at the enemy. True or false?
Tag words: banzai charge; phalanx; Victor Davis Hanson; The Western Way of War; John Keegan; Greeks; hoplites; SLA Marshall; Men Against Fire; Professor Roger Spiller; Vasily Grossman; A Writer at War; blood up; German Landsknecht; Swiss pikemen; Battle of Agincourt; charge;
As the two heavily armed and armoured phalanxes of Greeks finally collided to begin the decisive struggle to determine the victor, the sound made by that collision wasn’t the sound you would have expected. Very far from it. More of that later in the programme.
Tag words: Phalanx; charge; hoplite army; Victor Davis Hanson; The Western Way of War; Plutarch; Corinthian helmet; trot; Spartans; Thebans; Thucydides; History of the Peloponnesian War; Xenophon; Battle of Plataea; Persian troops; wicker shields; javelins; bows; slings; Tyrtaios;
Herodotus tells us that no Greek could hear even the word Persian without terror. But then Greece found itself in a battle for survival against this power. How was it possible for the Greeks to face and defeat this all powerful empire?
Tag words: Persians; hoplites; Herodotus; Histories; Victor Davis Hanson; The Western Way of War; Spartans; skirmishers; cavalry; Greek warfare; phalanx; Thucydides; History of the Peloponnesian Wars; Battle of Mantineia; Battle of Leuktra;
Fill in the blank: Had it not been for the SOMETHING I do not think that we should have won the war. I’ll give you the answer later in the programme.
Victor Davis Hanson. Les Carylon. William Manchester. Larry Siedentop. John Keegan.
Tag words: CS Lewis; chronological snobbery; Greek phalanx; Victor Davis Hanson; The Western Way of War; Les Carylon; The Great War; William Manchester; Goodbye to Darkness; Larry Siedentop; Inventing the Individual; Persian empire; Australian Imperial Force; Prime Minister Billy Hughes; General Monash; Pompey Elliott; Kenneth Macksey; Panzer Division; Onasander; Plutarch; John Keegan; The Face of Battle; Homer; The Iliad; Xenophon; Battle of Leuktra; Spartans;
Who issued this legendary order: All privates will retreat, all commanders will cover their withdrawal.
Victor Davis Hanson
Tag words: Phalanx; Persians; Aemilius Paulus; Battle of Pydna; Victor Davis Hanson; The Western Way of War; Spartans; Battle of Plataea; Thucididyes; History of the Peloponnesian War; hoplites; Aratos; Aristophanies; god Phobos; god Pan; Nelson Mandela; Guderian; Rommel; Israeli Defence Force; IDF; The Israeli Army; Edward Luttwak; Dan Horowitz; Palmach; operation Nachson; Harel Brigade; Corinthian helmet;
True or false? You could grab a Greek’s spear and break its head off with your bare hands.
Victor Davis Hanson.
Tag words: Victor Davis Hanson; The Western Way of War; hoplite; thrusting spear; Persians; Aeschylus; The Persians; Marathon; Salamis; Plataea; Darius; Battle of Thermopylae Pass; Homer;
The Greek phalanx was normally eight ranks deep. Which rank did the Greeks place their best troops in? This is a trick question. I’ll give you the answer during the programme.
Victor Davis Hanson
Tag words: Victor Davis Hanson; The Western Way of War; Shield; Helmet; Greaves; Breastplate; phalanx; hoplite; Spartans; Romans; killing zone; Persians; Persian Wars; Corinthian helmet; coif; phalangites; Missiles; spears, swords, javelins, arrows, stones; bullets;
The men of Patton’s Third Army had a boast andt the Greeks, who had been at Marathon, had theirs too, that they said to their dying day. What was it?
Victor Davis Hanson.
Tag words: Patton’s Third Army; Battle of Marathon; phalanx; Herodotus; Persian Army; Victor Davis Hanson; The Western Way of War; Aeschylus; Battle of Salamis; greaves; a shield; breastplate; helmet; spear; sword; shield; Spartans; Plutarch; Death Road; Highway of Death; Gulf War
Just after Mardonius had reached Thebes, where he intended to give battle to the Greeks on ground of his own choosing, he was invited by a wealthy Theban man, together with 50 of his most distinguished nobles, to a sumptuous banquet. 50 of Thebans great nobles also attended this feast.
One of the Persian nobles there told the Theban that he was seated next to, a remarkable thing.
Tag words: Mardonius; Herodotus; JFC Fuller; Xerxes; Thermopylae; Salamis; Spartans; Athenians; Argos; Argives; Pausanias; John Marincola; Lacedaemonian; Thersander;
We didn’t start the fire. It was always burning since the world’s been turning. We didn’t light it but we tried to fight it. Hear all about our fight in the Danger Zone - amazing stories, incredible music about military history. I’m Paul. Sit back and relax – if you can. If you’re driving don’t even think of changing stations – you know how dangerous it is to take your hands off the wheel and your eyes off the road.
Tag words: Xerxes; Artabanus; Greece; Darius; Magi;
Let’s pretend that you are Xerxes, in charge of the greatest empire the world has ever seen. Your dad, Darius, had suffered a humiliating defeat, in 490 B.C. at the hands of the Athenians, losing the Battle of Marathon and having to flee back to Persia with his tail between his legs. Pretty embarrassing – very embarrassing in fact. Your dad decided to revenge himself on the Greeks. He started the preparations for the rematch with the Greeks, but died just 4 years later before he could launch his invasion. The big decision for Xerxes was whether he would go ahead with these plans of his father. But then his uncle, Artabanus, said that he thought that wouldn’t be a good idea. Pretty gutsy of Artabanus – which often in such an environment means that he was put to death. So how did Artabanus go after telling the most powerful man on earth, and I’m not talking about Joe Biden, in front of all of the Persian empires greatest noblemen, who Xerxes had just told that he had decided to invade Greece, that he might want to re-think that.Tag words: Xerxes; Darius; Artabanus; Herodotus; The Histories; Mardonius; Datis; Artaphernes; Battle of Marathon;
In 480 BC a battle took place at the Thermopylae Pass, essentially between 300 Spartan warriors and the massive army of Xerxes, the mighty ruler of the mightiest empire that the world had ever seen, with 1,700,000 men at his command, so we are told. Although at another point we’re told that his forces numbered 5,283,220 men - pretty precise eh!
Now you may think that ancient history isn’t your thing. Modern warfare is what really gets your interest. But this was, in fact, a modern war. It was, if you like, a battle between the Chinese Communist Party seeking to become the ruler of our world, or the United Nations trying to achieve its dream, our nightmare, world government ambitions, or the corporate socialism ambitions of the multi-nationals, or the big governments of the West trying (who am I kidding – trying) to socialise our Western democratic nations that were built on the principles that these Greeks found themselves fighting for to prevent the end of their, and our individuality, because that was what we would have lost if these Greeks had lost their struggle 2,500 years ago. Because in this story the men of Greece, especially of Athens and Sparta, were fighting for their individual freedom. Like many people today, they refused to give up that freedom and to go into slavery, even though victory seemed impossible. They fought for their rights to be and remain individuals – and they won. Their struggle, crowned with success, offers hope for us today. It’s a story that we can learn from, a story that can give us hope.
We must make the frightening words of Dennis Prager, in his interview in May 2024, with former Australian Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, the truth of which is a possibility that we’re facing today, one that will not happen:
When you think of the many Aussies who died in World War II fighting for freedom and fighting for the West and Americans, of course, and other, I never thought I would ever say this, maybe they died in vain, because whatever they died for is no longer revered by the elites of the countries they fought for.
And to make this story of the struggle between the Greeks and the Persians even more interesting, the account that this programme is based on, is told by the very first historian in the world – Herodotus. The man who invented history. And Herodotus, because I don’t want to exaggerate his writing skill, is the best teller of history that has ever lived and will ever live.
Please join me for this story of the thrilling struggle that many of us today are fighting afresh for our right to be individuals and not to be slaves.
Tag words: Battle of Thermopylae Pass; Spartans; Sparta; Athens; Xerxes; Chinese Communist Party; People’s Liberation Army; United Nations; world government; Dennis Prager; John Anderson; Herodotus; The Histories; Darius; Battle of Marathon; Aristodemus; Battle of Salamis; Battle of Platea; Book of Esther; The Bible; Candaules; John Dickson; Is Jesus History?; Alexander the Great; Arrian; Anabasis of Alexander; Ptolemy; Aristobulus; Callisthenes; Aristotle; Persian War; Gospels; New Testament; Jesus; Tacitus; Annals; Tiberius; Pontius Pilate; Paul the Apostle; road to Damascus; 1 Thessalonians; memory; substantia nigra; Plato; Silvia Ferrara; The Greatest Invention; Themistocles; Delphi Oracle; Joshua Foer; Moonwalking with Einstein; Greek Enlightenment; Richard Cohen; Making History;
For the past few parts I’ve been like a dog with a bone. Looking at animals in war. In this programme I’m going to tell you about atomic bats, under cover pussies, tank destroying dogs and fighting chickens.
Tag words: Smoky the Yorkshire Terrier; General Douglas MacArthur; I Shall Return; the bat bomb; Lyle S. Adams; National Research Defense Committee; Donald Griffin; Project X-Ray; CIA; Project Acoustic Kitty; Great Patriotic War; anti-tank dogs; First Gulf War; Operation Desert Storm; Poultry Chemical Confirmation Devices; Operation Kuwaiti Field Chicken; KFC; grave of The Unknown Chicken;
Animal heroes in war. Today I’m going to talk about a great Australian dog, a navy cat, parachuting turkeys, flaming pigs and did we do something disgusting to the horses that did so much for us in World War I and a whole lot more? Hang around for a surprising answer.
Tag words: animal heroes; Avenue of Remembrance Yungaburra; Merlin; Razz; Andy; Nova; Herbie; Corporal Mark Donaldson; Taliban; Quake; Lieutenant General Harry Chauvel; Australian Mounted Division; Simon the cat; the HMS Amethyst; Dickin Medal; Spanish Civil War; turkeys; ancient Rome; war pigs; elephants in war; Alexander the Great; Pliny the Elder; bottlenose dolphins; Notty; Tanker War; Marine Mammal Program; SEAL; Brandon Webb;
Animals make great friends – but in wartime, they can and do save lives. Animal heroism even has it’s own Victoria Cross – so let’s look at what animals, including slugs, have done for us in war. And let’s look at the Victoria Cross for animals.
Tag words: Animals; Victoria Cross; Red Baron; Charles Schulz; Snoopy; Manfred von Richthofen; Gunner Cedric Popkin; Dickin Medal; For Gallantry; We Also Serve; Australian Defence Forces; Canine Operational Service Medal; Military Working Dogs; Steven Spielberg; War Horse; First World War; Horses; war chariots; Crimean war; pigeon; Angus Trumble; National Portrait Gallery; Royal Flying Corps; Tom Trumble; the Waler horse; Australian Light Horsemen; charge at Beersheba; Brigadier General Grant; 4th Light Horse Brigade; Lt. General Chauvel; Johnny Turk; Gallipoli; Slugs; mustard gas attacks;
The African campaign’s one of the most exciting of World War 2, even though it was just a side-show. It was on a small scale. So it’s easy to know the geography and the personalities. When you get to Russia the numbers and distances are so vast that it is nowhere as easy to get your heads around.
In Rommel’s diary, of his experiences in World War 2, he gave his account about why he had failed in North Africa, particularly at El Alamein. Perhaps also why the Axis had failed, and even more to the point why Germany had failed. But at the end of it, the failure of this campaign can mostly be laid at Rommel’s doorstep – not that Rommel admits that.
Martin van Creveldt, in his book Supplying War,gave his analysis of why the North African campaign failed – from a logistics point of view. I’m going to start with Rommel’s own account. Because he was forced to commit suicide on 14 October 1944, he never got to learn more about what had happened during the war, after the war had ended, from his enemies on the other side of the hill. His analysis was made during the war. So in some ways its more honest, although not many of us can be as honest about ourselves as we like to think. So here's what Rommel has to say – as I said mainly focussing on the climactic defensive battle of El Alamein.
Tag words: Field Marshal Erwin Rommel; North African Campaign; El Alamein; Martin van Creveldt; Supplying War; The Rommel Papers; Panzerarmee Afrika; Operation Torch; Vichy France; Malta; Tobruk; Tripoli; RAF; David Irving; The Trail of the Fox; Enigma machine; Ultra; General Enno von Rintelen; Adolf Hitler;
Do you want to hear about the time when Adolf Hitler, the Führer, apologised to one of his generals?
Tag words: Paul Carell; Foxes of the Desert; Field Marshall Erwin Rommel; Battle of El Alamein; Adolf Hitler; Führer; Panzerarmee Afrika; Field-Marshal Kesselring; James S Corum; Wolfram von Richthofen; Malta; Tobruk; Benghazi; Crete; General Auchinleck; Afrika Korps; General Jodl; Wolfsschanze; Winston Churchill; North African Campaign;
Now I’ll tell you something that you might find hard to believe. Anti-Italian prejudices about their fighting spirit in North Africa abound, for people that know about the North African campaign, but it was the dogged fighting determination of the Ariete Division in early November 1942 that saved the Panzerarmee Africa possibly from annihilation.
And this is a good time to tell you about Hitler’s stand fast order of 3 November – what timing!
Tag words: Field Marshal Erwin Rommel; North African campaign; Panzerarmee Africa; Adolf Hitler; Italian Ariete Armoured Division; El Alamein; Italian XX Corps; General Francesco Arena; will to power; Deutsche Afrika Korp; Wolfschanze; 22nd Armoured Brigade; Italian M14/41 tanks; 90th Light Division; Paul Carell; Foxes of the Desert; Allgemeine SS; Reserve Captain Ingmar Berndt; Colonel Westphal; Victory or Death; British 4th Light Armoured Brigade;
By the time of the battles around El Alamein, July to August 1942, the best and newest Italian tanks, were woefully under gunned and under armoured compared to the new American made tanks that the British were getting. The Lee/Grant tanks first came into service in May 1942. By the time of the British Alamein offensive, those brand new 300 Sherman tanks that Marshall and Roosevelt had despatched to the Middle East by fast convoy, after the fall of Tobruk had been announced at the meeting that was underway in the White House between Churchill, Roosevelt, Alan Brooke and Marshall, had arrived and were at the front.
Were the Italian armoured divisions cowardly in the fight they showed in their last battles in Egypt in facing the British attack at El Alamein?
Tag words: El Alamein; Lee/Grant tanks; Sherman tanks; General Marshall; President Theodore Roosevelt; fall of Tobruk; General Alan Brooke; Winston Churchill; Italian Littorio Armoured Division; Semovente self-propelled gun; M14 tanks; Field Marshall Erwin Rommel; Adolf Hitler; Ariete Armoured Division; Deutsche Afrika Korp; Trieste Motorised Division; British 7th Armoured Division;
The fall of Tobruk to Rommel’s Panzerarmee Afrika was Rommel’s last absolute victory of the war. Certainly he would have great success in smashing the green American army at Kasserine Pass in 1943, but the split German command in Tunisia denied Rommel command of the 10th Panzer Division which might have allowed him to have delivered a major victory to the Axis.
So Tobruk was Rommel’s last undisputed victory. The fruits of that victory turned out to be poison for him. The loss of Tobruk proved to be enormously rewarding for Winston Churchill. It played out having a decisive effect on the shape of the Allied war effort that led to victory on May 1945. Meanwhile Rommel had been given more than enough rope to hang himself, which he now proceeded to do.
Tag words: fall of Tobruk; General Rommel; Panzerarmee Afrika; Winston Churchill; General Claude Auchinleck; El Alamein; Siegfried Westphal; Andrew Roberts; Masters and Commanders – How Roosevelt, Churchill, Marshall and Alanbrooke Won the War in the West; Theordore Roosevelt; George Marshall; Allan Brooke; Ismay; Operation Sledgehammer; Operation Roundup; Operation Bolero; Operation Gymnast; Dr. Moran ; Harry Hopkins; Stimson; Clement Attlee; Malta; Grand Harbour; Afrika Korp; Kasserine Pass; Sherman tanks; General George S. Patton Jr;
The big question now was, could Panzerarmée Afrika take Tobruk, that was something they had failed to do in 1941, and then, given its perilous petrol supplies and the distances that had to be covered to reach the Nile delta, how was it going to be possible to seize Cairo, Alexandria and the Suez Canal?
From May 1942 things changed dramatically, and irreversibly, for the Italian armoured divisions in supporting Rommel. Their M13, and the slightly improved M14 tanks, had been OK up till then, but after May 1942 the British started to be equipped at first by the weird and ungainly looking American Lee/Grant tanks, and a few months later with the much superior Sherman tanks that would serve the Allies through to the end of the war in Europe. These Italian tanks were no match for those new tanks with armour that couldn’t be penetrated by the Italian 47mm guns and carrying a gun that could easily destroy the Italian tanks. The Italians had complete the designs for their new Carro Armato P40, carrying a 75mm gun that stood comparison with the latest German and Allied tanks and armour that was equally as good, but that tank never went into production.
So let’s look at the last hurrah for the Italian armoured divisions as they bravely fought on in what the tanks, that they nicknamed “iron coffins”.
Tag words: Panzerarmee Afrika; Tobruk; M14/41 tanks; Lee/Grant tanks; Sherman tanks; Carro Armato P40; Winston Churchill; Field Marshall Erwin Rommel; Ariete; Treiste; Littorio; Ian Walker; Iron Hulls, Iron Hearts; El Alamein; Deutsche Afrika Korp; General Giuseppe De Stefanis; General Ettore Baldassarre; 2nd New Zealand Division; 90th Light Division; Italian XX Corps; 4th Armoured Brigade; Bersaglieri; General Francesco Arena; Mersa Matruh; General De Stefanis; Colonel Fellers;
Rommel was now ready to launch his 1942 summer offensive.
The climax of the Third Reich was rapidly approaching. The Germans were fighting in the city of Stalingrad, its fall couldn’t be too far off. The Germans were advancing in the Caucasus with the Russian oil fields within reach. Maybe the German advance could continue through the Caucasus and link up with Rommel. He was about to unleash his troops but in a drive that would, in the end come short, stopped at El Alamein, and not Cairo/Alexandria and the Suez Canal, as he’d hoped.
The Japanese had, in the twinkling of an eye, conjured up an empire of vast size throughout the South Pacific, China, and South East Asia, they were even closing in on India – to Hitler’s deep regret. He liked and admired the British Empire and its passing would be something to be mourned.
The Italian armoured division Ariete was about to be given its chance to shine. But would it? Could it?
Third Reich; El Alamein; Cairo; Alexandria; Suez Canal; Stalingrad; Caucasus; Ariete Armoured Division; Gazala Line; Bir Hakeim; Field Marshall Erwin Rommel; 15th Panzer Division; 21st Panzer Division; Trieste Motorised Division; M14/41 tank; General Giuseppe De Stefanis; 2nd Royal Lancers; Bersaglieri; Panzerarmée Afrika; Deutsche Afrika Korp; Africa Corp; 90th Light Division; 'The Cauldron'; Littorio Armoured Division; General Gervasio Bitossi; General Emilio Becuzzi;
Italian battle honours in World War II. A contradiction in terms? Italian bravery. Italian tanks had 6 gears – 1 forward and 5 reverse. The Italian battle flag - a white lion rampant on a white background.
But in this programme and a few of the following maybe, like me, you’re going to have second thoughts about these jokes that were and still are widely made at the expense of the Italians. In English speaking countries their story simply isn’t told. If it is, it’s written by the major players who were more interested in telling their own puffed up story, rather than giving the Italians credit where credit was due. I’m just going to tell you the facts – and you decide. I’m starting off with a great story that I started in the last programme. What happened next, is, I think very revealing.
Operation Crusader; British 22nd Armoured Brigade; Bir-el-Gubi; Ariete Armoured Division; 1st South African Division; 1st South African Brigade; British 7th Armoured Division; Sidi Rezegh; British 7thArmoured Brigade; General Gastone Gambara; General Mario Balotta; The Lozenge; M13/40 tanks; Field Marshall Erwin Rommel; General Cruwell; British 4th Armoured Brigade; Trieste Motorised Division; Deutsche Afrika Korp;
When I grew up in the 50s and 60s, and even today, the contribution of the Italian armed forces in North Africa were/are the butt of many jokes. Nothing’s changed today as far as I can tell. But let me surprise you now with some of the remarkable feats of arms performed by the Italian armoured divisions serving under Rommel.
Although it’s not part of the story of the supply nightmare that confronted the Axis forces in North Africa, it’s a story that has been mostly neglected and misunderstood. So I thought I should slip something in this series about the underrated/ignored performance of these Italian armoured divisions in North Africa.
Tag words: Field Marshall Erwin Rommel; Ian Walker; Iron Hulls, Iron Hearts; Ariete Division; General Gambier-Parry; 7th British Armoured Division; General Bastico; 22nd British Armoured Brigade; Bir el Gubi; Sidi Rezegh; General Gastone Gambara; General Mario Balotta; The Lozenge; M13/40 tanks; Bersaglieri; Crusader tanks; 25pdr guns; 2nd Royal Gloucestershire Hussars; 3rd County of London Yeomanry; Deutsche Afrika Korp
Rommel’s advance into Cyrenaica again in 1942 had once more stretched the ability of his quartermasters to keep him supplied.
Martin Creveld, in his book, Supplying War says:
On 9 February, 100 per cent supplies could no longer be guaranteed to the troops, and by the next day tactical developments had overtaken logistical possibilities to such an extent that, because of the enormous distances and chronic lack of vehicles, no more ammunition was reaching the forward troops. On 12 February the DAK quartermaster angrily demanded an urgent interview with Rommel. On 13 February it was announced that the advance would stop at El Gazala, 900 miles from Tripoli.
Rommel’s halt at El Gazala meant that his supply lines were 900 miles, about 1450 kilometres. Compare that to the distance from the German jump off points for Operation Barbarossa, the Invasion of Russia, to Moscow was only 965 kilometres – roughly the distance to Benghazi. Benghazi was half way to El Alamein.
Would taking Malta solve Rommel’s problems? You might be surprised at the answer to that question?
Tag words: Field Marshall Erwin Rommel; Martin Creveld; Supplying War; Deutsches Afrika Korp; German Africa Corp; Malta; North African campaign; Tripoli; Ian Walker; Iron Hulls, Iron Hearts; Admiral Raedar; Mein Kampf; Mussolini; Tobruk; Bir Hakeim; Albert Kesselring; Panzerarmee Africa; General Claude Auchinleck; Battle of Alam Halfa; Cavallero; El Alamein;
Rommel’s silent preparations for an offensive had again caught the British completely by surprise. His new attack began on 21 January 1942.
David Irving, in his book, The Trail of the Fox wrote:
His enemy lacked battle experience. Rommel outwitted, outmaneuvered and outgunned them. "Our opponents have taken to their heels as if stung by a tarantula," he said in triumph. And Armbruster echoed this: "The Tommies don't stand and fight. They have just turned and fled."
Rommel was now in full pursuit with his recently renamed, on 22nd January, Panzergruppe Afrika. Rommel’s force was now given the status of an army and Rommel was now rightfully able to use the title of an Oberbefehlshaber, a title that had accidentally been mentioned wrongly in connection with his name before he took up his African command (as I discussed in Part 3 of this series), which was a title that he’d kept even though, until now, he was strictly just a Kommandierender General, the commander of a corps. Now he really was a commander-in-chief. But how long could Rommel’s latest offensive last before his supplied brought him to a halt?
Tag words: Field Marshall Erwin Rommel; David Irving; The Trail of the Fox; Panzergruppe Afrika; General Cavallero; General Kesselring; Sir Basil Liddell Hart; The Rommel Papers; Hitler’s Table Talk; Martin Bormann; Rotkopf hollow charge; Red Head hollow charge;
An Italian convoy to Tripoli to supply Rommel consisted of four merchant ships, escorted by four battleships, three light cruisers and twenty destroyers. That was 100,000 tons of warships escorting 20,000 tons of merchant ships. That’s what Rommel’s shipping supply lifeline needed. You have to ask the question: Was this sort of convoy escort sustainable?
Tag words: Field Marshall Erwin Rommel; Deutsche Afrika Korp; Ian Walker; Iron Hulls, Iron Hearts; North Africa; David Irving; Trail of the Fox; Colonel Bonner Fellers; The Rommel Papers; Regia Aeronautica; Regia Marina; Adolf Hitler;
Despite the apparent wisdom of the very limited scope of Rommel’s original role in North Africa, of stopping the British from conquering the Italian North African provinces, Rommel was the classic early war panzer commander. Nothing could tether him – nothing but the inevitable limitation of his logistics. They caught up with Guderian. And they caught up with Rommel.
Tag words: Brendan Simms; Charlie Laderman; Hitler’s American Gamble; Field Marshall Erwin Rommel; Deutsche Afrika Korp; Basil Liddell Hart; The Rommel Papers; David Irving; The Trail of the Fox; Tripartite Pact; John Kenneth Galbraith; President Roosevelt; Adolf Hitler;
If the Axis had taken Malta, would that have made it possible to Rommel to conquer Egypt and seize the Suez Canal? The answer will surprise you.
What about Tobruk? If Rommel had taken it on his first offensive – would that have delivered the ultimate victory that he was seeking? Again, the answer’s not going to be what you expect.
Tag words: Field Marshal Erwin Rommel; Malta; Tobruk; Martin Creveld; Supplying War; Ian Walker; Iron Hulls, Iron Hearts; Panzerarmee Afrika; David Irving; The Trail of the Fox; Rats of Tobruk; 9thAustralian Division; Deutsches Afrika Korp; General Franz von Halder;
Rommel had performed remarkably during the campaign in the West when the 7th Panzer Division that he led, moved at such lightning speed that the French called it the Ghost Division. They never knew where it would appear next.
The campaign in North Africa was actually uniquely different to anywhere that the Germans had waged war before. Rommel conducted himself with his usual drive and energy, but when what happened is closely analysed, the results weren’t there.
This is what happened at the beginning of 1941, Rommel’s first offensive.
Tag words: Field Marshall Erwin Rommel; 7th Panzer Division; the Ghost Division; North Africa Campaign; Franz Halder; Afrika Korp; Cyrenaica; Martin Creveld; Supplying War; Malta; David Irving; The Trail of the Fox; Ian Walker; Iron Hulls, Iron Hearts;
Rommel arrived for the first time in North Africa when his plane touched down at noon on 12 February, 1941. At that time the Italians were still in full retreat toward Tripoli - the British hard on their heels. Rommel found the senior Italian officers and bureaucrats in Tripoli busy packing to catch whatever ship they could to get back to Italy and safety before the British arrived. There was definitely no fight left in the Italians.General Graziani had led the pathetic invasion of Egypt that began on 13 September 1940. After an advance of a miserable 80 kilometres into Egypt he halted at Sidi Barani – destined never to resume his march. To be fair he commanded purely infantry forces in terrain where only motorised forces would do. On top of that his infantry were poorly trained, and badly led conscripts for the most part. Britain was supposed to have surrendered after France fell, or at the latest when it lost the Battle of Britain. But it didn’t lose the Battle of Britain, and their leader Winston Churchill was not in a frame of mind to surrender.On 7 December 1940, the brilliant British general Wavell launched Operation Compass, attacking the Italians. The outcome of that battle was that the Italians had been unceremoniously driven not only out of Egypt, but out of most of their own province of Cyrenaica in Libya. By the time Rommel arrived, General Graziani had been replaced as field commander by General Italo Gariboldi. David Irving describes Gariboldi:[He] was a burly North Italian with a white moustache and not much more tact than the average noncommissioned officer.But with Rommel things were going to change – it couldn’t have been otherwise.Tag words: Ian Walker; Iron Hulls, Iron Hearts; Field Marshall Erwin Rommel; General Graziani; Operation Compass; General Italo Gariboldi; Mario Roatta; Pour le Mérite; Battle of Caporetto; Deutsche Afrika Korps;
Two of the great British military visionaries who contributed to the creation of modern armoured forces in World War II, were JFC Fuller and Sir Basil Liddell Hart. Traditional conservative military types, not like the flamboyant, Hitler admiring David Irving. But both David Irving and Sir Basil Liddell Hart had spectacular falls – which I’ll talk about before Rommel fatally fired the starter gun in North Africa that will begin his own fall.Tag words: JFC Fuller; Sir Basil Liddell Hart; David Irving; Field Marshall Erwin Rommel; Panzer Leader; Field Marshall Heinz Guderian; Panzer General; Kenneth Macksey; Oswald Moseley; British Union of Fascists; General Alan Brooke; General Edmund Ironsides; The Rommel Papers; Achtung! Panzer!; Julius Caesar; Professor John Mearsheimer; Liddell Hart and the Weight of History;
Telling a real life story, like the story of Rommel and his campaigns in Libya and Egypt, is like a painting. What we the readers get to see depends on what the painter saw and how the painter interpreted what he saw – and whether the painter had an agenda. So the court painters of the 18thCentury were required to deliver portraits that their patrons wanted to see - flattering. The painter’s eye is shaped by the life they’ve lead and their political and philosophical views. One of the remarkable men who painted Rommel in words for us was the British historian David Irving. And his is a remarkable life – with the dramatic climax being a defamation case that he brought in the Supreme Court of England against American historian Deborah Lipstadt, and her publishers, Penguin Books, for Lipstadt’s claim that David Irving was a holocaust denier.Tag words: David Irving; Field Marshall Erwin Rommel; Deborah Lipstadt; Penguin Books; Denial; Holocaust; Professor Richard Evans; Richard Cohen; Making History; Kell Richards; Truth-Telling; Myall Creek massacre; Linda Burney; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Grand Mufti; Adolf Hitler; Hitler’s War; Trail of the Fox; The Destruction of Dresden; Winston Churchill; Condor Legion;
Rommel’s nickname, picked up at some time during the desert campaigns he conducted, was the Desert Fox. But his first African offensive, begun in March 1941, he appeared to be more the hound than the fox.
Rommel was quite the remarkable man. A good place to get a feel for Rommel is the opening chapter of David Irving’s biography of him - The Trail of the Fox.
Tag words: David Irving; The Trail of the Fox; Field Marshall Erwin Rommel; Desert Fox; Infantry Attacks; Bernard Montgomery; Dwight Eisenhower; General Sir Claude Auchinleck; General Enno von Rintelen; General Gerhard von Schwerin; Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt; General Heinz Guderian;
Saving Mussolini from the consequences of the loss of the last remaining Italian colonies in Africa was the purpose of the despatch of Rommel with a single division, the 5th Light Division, in early 1941.
The logistical consequences of Rommel launching a major offensive would be to overstretch the capacity of the Italians to be able to supply their forces and the German forces through the main port of Tripoli. Benghazi and Tobruk also had some capacity too. If they were available, they would enable the supply of the Axis armed forces in North Africa to be improved, but both of those ports were vulnerable to air attack by the Royal Air Force – more vulnerable than Tripoli.
What follows is what Adolf Hitler and the German High Command at first expected of Rommel – which grew into something bigger than the German High Command liked.
Tag words: Benito Mussolini; 5th Light Division; Field Marshall Erwin Rommel; Royal Air Force; Adolf Hitler; Operation Felix; Operation Sealion; Operation Attila; Operation Marita; David Irving; The Trail of the Fox; War Directive 22; Afrika Korps; 15th Panzer Division; Erich von Manstein; X Luftwaffe Korps; Marshal Graziani; General Gariboldi;
Despite the fact that modern armies are maintained by sophisticated logistic support, that should be delivering everything to them that they needed to fight, to advance, if they were the army on the offensive, or to hold their ground or retreat, if they were on the defensive, even modern armies still live off the land to some extent.
But not the armies fighting in North Africa (in Cyrenaica and Egypt). The only thing that was found in abundance there was camel dung. A modern mobile army can fight for a short time without food or water, but its virtually useless without fuel and ammunition. Logistics are vital.
The distances to be travelled in North Africa made even the distances on the Russian front look small.
Tag words: North Africa; Cyrenaica; Lilli Marlen; Rommel; Malta; Via Balbia; General Ritter von Thoma; Ariete armoured division; General Archibald Wavell; Fascists; Adolf Hitler; Führer; BenitoMussolini; Tripoli; Benghazi; Tobruk; General Enno von Rintelen; 5th Light Division; 15th Panzer Division; Deutsches Afrika Korps; Africa Corp; Vichy France; Admiral Darlan; Mers-el-Kébir; War Directive No.22;
In 2012 a movie called Iron Sky was released. It tells the true story, well the complete fiction, of how, in the dying days of World War 2, the Nazis fled to the far side of the moon and established a base there where they could safely stay until the time was ripe to bring the Fourth Reich back to earth - this time succeed where the Third Reich had failed before.
The landscape on the moon, funnily enough, was perhaps an easier landscape than what General (Later Field Marshall) Rommel was to find himself fighting over for about 2 years between 1941 and 1943 – the desert of North Africa.
Rommel had proven himself a remarkably bold panzer commander, a natural master of the new style of war known as Blitzkrieg when in France in 1940 he commanded the 7th Panzer Division, named by his French adversaries the Ghost Division because they never knew where or when it would appear. Season 59, Parts 10 to 13 on my Danger Zone podcast tells that story.
But the challenges of fighting in the desert of North Africa proved much more akin to fighting on the moon – only worse. Well not worse, but challenging. In fact, in this series of programmes I look at whether it was even going to be possible for Rommel to win his North African campaign with his legendary Deutsche Afrika Korp and his much, and often unfairly maligned Italian allies.
Tag words: Martin van Creveld; Supplying War; Dick Taylor; The Second World War Tank Crisis; Iron Sky; General Rommel; Field Marshall Rommel; North Africa; Libya; Cyrenaica; Western Desert; 7thPanzer Division; Deutsche Afrika Korp; Africa Corp; Blitzkrieg; Qattara Depression; Ice Cold in Alex; Mungo Melvin; Hannibal; Cannae; Franz von Halder; Graziani; Sidi Barani;
In Antony Beevor’s book, The Battle for Spain, he writes of Germany’s, perhaps the world’s, top tactical air force commander, Wolfram von Richthofen in these terms:
Richthofen, a cousin of the famous Red Baron air ace, was a hard, arrogant man, disliked by German and Spanish officers alike. He was to become infamous as the destroyer of many towns and cities: Durango and Guernica in Spain, then Rotterdam, Belgrade, Canea and Heraklion in Crete, followed by many cities in the Soviet Union, most notably of all, Stalingrad, where 40,000 civilians were killed.
I get the feeling that Antony Beevor almost has a personal hatred of Wolfram von Richthofen – perhaps because he sees him as the man who came up with the concept of terror bombing. Beevor left out of his list one of von Richthofen’s most famous city bombing raids, Warsaw, perhaps the first raid described as a terror bombing in World War II. At the time, the bombing of Warsaw was classified as a terror bombing.
Were these attacks terror bombings or were they something else?
Tag words: Antony Beevor; The Battle for Spain; Wolfram von Richthofen; Warsaw Uprising; James S. Corum; Junkers Ju 52; Douglas C-47; Douglas DC 3; Communism; Nazism; Stalingrad; Bombing of Dresden; Bombingof Hamburg; Josef Goebbels; Vasily Grossman; A Writer at War;
The lies told by the Republican forces to the media after the bombing of Guernica on 26 April 1938 caused World War II in Europe. Proving the old saying Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.
And now I’ll tell you why that happened.
Tag words: Guernica; Malcolm Gladwell; World War II; Antony Beevor; Wolfram von Richthofen; David & Goliath – Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants; HG Wells; The Shape of Things to Come; Things to Come; Basque; James Corum; Condor Legion; Bombing of Hamburg; bombing of Dresden; Munich Crisis; Herman Göring; Adolf Hitler; Pablo Picasso;
When von Richthofen ordered, and had carried out, the bombing of Guernica, he knew what he wanted from the bombing. It wasn’t to terrorise his opponents, the Republicans, or the people of Basque, or even just the people of Guernica. What he wanted to do was to block the roads through the town so that when the Nationalist Army attacked, soon after the bombing raid, the 23 Basque battalions, whose only escape route was through Guernica and over its bridge, would be destroyed. Did he get what he wanted?
The world wrongly came to believe that his aim was to inflict mind numbing terror on his opponents. Why did the world think that?
Tag words: Antony Beevor; Wolfram von Richthofen; Basque; Guernica; Condor Legion; Spanish Civil War; Eric Blair; George Orwell; Animal Farm; Nineteen Eighty Four; Homage to Catalonia; Victor Gollancz; Graham Greene; The Quiet American; José Antonio Aguirre;
The bombing of Guernica in Spain by the German Condor Legion, on 26 April 1937, was one of the first uses of modern aircraft to bomb a town. The bombing of Guernica captured the world’s imagination.
The headline of The New York Times the next day clumsily covered what had happened. Perhaps there were no words then for what the German Condor Legion had done. Journalist G.L. Steer struggled to do the impossible, to describe to his readers something that no one had ever seen before and perhaps their imaginations would run riot. His headline, in many ways tells it all.
Historic Basque Town Wiped Out; Rebel Fliers Machine-Gun Civilians
Waves of German-Type Planes Fling Thousands of Bombs and Incendiary Projectiles on Guernica, BehindLines, as Priests Bless Peasants Filling Town on Market Day
G.L. Steer saw, arriving the day after the air raid, had the events described to him by the survivors, and clearly people from the Republican propaganda ministry, judging from the whoppers that were contained in his news report. Luckily, or probably not, I live in a world where those sites are common place. Let me tell you what happened leading up to that day, and on that day.
Tag words: Antony Beevor; James S Corum; Pablo Picasso; Condor Legion; Guernica; Spanish Civil War; Wolfram von Richthofen; Nationalists; Republicans; Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land; Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War;Heinkel 111; Francisco Franco; Savoia Marchetti SM-79 bombers;
26 April 1937 is a fateful day for the Spanish Republicans, the Spanish Nationalists. The Germans and the whole world really.
The German Condor Legion was the away team of the Luftwaffe (Hitler didn’t want to be seen as getting involved in a war in Europe). It led by Hugo Sperrle and his chief of staff was Wolfram von Richthofen. Von Richthofen was the highly controversial cousin of the most famous World War I ace, Baron Manfred von Richthofen – the Red Baron.
On 26 April 1937, von Richthofen was in command of launching the controversial bombing attack on the Spanish town of Guernica in the Basque region in the North of Spain. At that time, the Basque region was controlled by the elected socialist/Communist Republican government. The Nationalists rebels, commanded by General Francisco Franco, were in the process of prosecuting a campaign against the Republican forces to conquer that area. The Nationalists were supported by the Nazi government of Adolf Hitler and very substantially, only in terms of numbers, by military personnel of the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini. Their performance was mostly abysmal, which was something that wouldn’t change in the coming World War.
The air-raid on Guernica was reported on by the journalist on the spot (well he arrived there the day after the attack) George Steer. His article about the attack was published in both the Times of London, and the New York Times. Steer’s newspaper report read, in part:
The object of the bombardment seemingly was demoralisation of the civil population and destruction of the cradle of the Basque race.
That is, George Steer was calling this air raid a terror raid against a civilian population.
Pablo Picasso, the world famous ex-pat Spanish painter, was living in Paris at the time of that air raid. He was immediately commissioned by the Republican government to produce a painting about the bombing of Guernica. Picasso completed his painting just a few months after the attack, in June 1937. Picasso never returned to Spain to live.
Picasso’s finished painting was displayed at the International Exhibition of Arts in Paris in 1937. It’s the world’s most famous painting of war. Painted in blue, black and white, measuring 3.5 metres high by 7.8 metres wide, it is a powerful, and physically imposing, condemnation of the German terror raid on Guernica. The only problem with that description is that, well maybe it wan’t a terror raid. If it wasn’t, the left who were behind promoting it as that, rendered an enormous service to Adolf Hitler which I would say guaranteed the second world war in Europe. This series of programmes will reveal all.
Tag words: Antony Beevor; Pablo Picasso; James C CorumGuernica; Spanish Civil War; Wolfram von Richthofen; Hugo Sperrle; Baron Manfred von Richthofen; Red Barron; Francisco Franco; Adolf Hitler; Benito Mussolini; Condor Legion; General Wilhelm Wimmer; Herman Göring; Hans Udet; General Helmuth Wilberg; Nazi Germany; Carl von Clausewitz; On War; Hans Jeschonnek; Curtis Le May;
That well known left newspaper, the Guardian, used a word normally forbidden in its pages. The word’s a Christian word. Especially known to be associated with Jesus Christ. That word is miracle. But the story of what happened at Dunkirk forced the hand of the reviewer Mark Kermode, in his review of Christopher Nolan’s 2017 movie Dunkirk. The reviewer tells us:
Intertitles tell us that British and French troops are “hoping for deliverance… for a miracle”, while the Bergman-esque spectre of death haunts the beach. Entitled “The Mole” (after the jutting stone and wood structure from which marine evacuation beckons),
The actual unspoken words that appear on the screen are:
The enemy have driven the British and the French Armies to the Sea.
Trapped at Dunkirk, they await their fate.
Hoping for Deliverance.
For a Miracle.
As I told you at the beginning of the last programme, the Cambridge Dictionary defines a miracle in these terms:
An unusual and mysteriousevent that is thought to have been caused by a god because it does not followthe usuallaws of nature.
Was the escape of the British Army and a significant part of the French Army trapped at Dunkirk, a miracle from God? I’ll tell you the facts and you decide for yourself.
Tag words: Christopher Nolan; Dunkirk; Blitzkrieg; Operation Dynamo; British Expeditionary Force;Jesus Christ; General Sir Edmund Ironsides; Chief of the Imperial General Staff; CIGS; King George VI; Exodus; Parting of the Red Sea; Quran; Koran; Captain William Tennant; Vice-Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay; Stuka; Ju 87; Captain E.F. Wharton; the Little Boats; Walter Lord; The Miracle of Dunkirk; Douglas Bader; Karl Heinz-Frieser; The Blitzkrieg Legend; Hermann Göring; Albert Kesslring; Wolfram von Richthofen; General Harold Alexander; Admiral Sir Dudley Pound; Winston Churchill; General von Bock;
Over the previous 22 programmes I’ve covered the amazing campaign launched by Germany against France. It produced Germany’s most spectacular victory of World War II. From my analysis it could have led to Hitler winning World War II, as William Shakespeare put it, as surely as night follows day.
Karl-Heinz Freiser, at the end of the previous part, took the view that Germany could never have won World War II because, in this industrial age, there was no way that Hitler could have beaten the combined industrial might of the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, Canada, and all of the other Allies. But I disagree. The brilliance of Manstein’s 1940 Operation Sichelschnitt (Sickle Cut) did make that a possible outcome – if it had been exploited to the full.
The only thing that robbed Hitler of victory in World War II, in my opinion, was the escape of the British, and many many French and other Allied troops, at Dunkirk.
The escape of so many British and allied soldiers at Dunkirk is most commonly described as a miracle. The Cambridge Dictionary defines a miracle in these terms:
An unusual and mysteriousevent that is thought to have been caused by a god because it does not followthe usuallaws of nature.
So was what happened at Dunkirk a miracle according to this definition? Let’s look closely at what happened. You make up your own mind on this – just make sure that you keep your mind open.
Tag words: James S Corum; Karl-Heinz Freiser; Adolf Hitler; Miracle of Dunkirk; Luftwaffe; Hermann Göring; Spanish Civil War; Condor Legion; Wolfram von Richthofen; Me 109; He 111; Do 17; Ju 87 Stuka dive bomber; He 59 seaplane; Royal Navy; Battle of Britain;
It had been 786 days from the time of Guderian’s meeting with Erich von Manstein in October 1939 about Manstein’s incredible plan of how to exploit to the full the potential of the panzers, to the Fall of France, with the greatest military power in the world smashed in a matter of days, using the unplanned tactics for fighting the blitzkrieg that Manstein had conceived, which succeeded brilliantly to the invasion of Russia and the failure of the blitzkrieg before the gates of Moscow and finally the sacking of Guderian on Christmas Day 1941, when the first planned blitzkrieg had catastrophically failed, dooming the Third Reich.It's now time to see what happened leading up to Guderian’s dismissal and the shape that Germany was then in on the Eastern Front to resume the offensive in 1942.Tag words: Tag words: Karl-Heinz Frieser; Blitzkrieg Legend; David Stahel; Retreat from Moscow;Erich von Manstein; Heinz Guderian; Eastern Front; Adolf Hitler; Von Kluge; Franz Halder; Second Panzer Army; Albert Speer;
On 20th December 1941, at the Wolfschanze, the 5 hour meeting between Hitler and Guderian began. The belief at all times in the Third Reich, when things were going badly, was almost always put down to decisions or actions taken by people surrounding Hitler. If only Hitler knew truth he would put things right.
Guderian in his memoirs repeats this view, while taking a dig at the creature comforts enjoyed at Hitler’s headquarters, compared to life at the front of Army Group Centre. Guderian wrote:
At that time, however, I still believed that our Supreme Command would listen to sensible propositions when they were laid before it by a general who knew the front. This belief I retained while making the long flight from the ice-bound battle area north of Orel to the well-appointed and well-heated Supreme Headquarters far away in East Prussia.
If only Hitler knew.
Tag words: David Stahel; Retreat from Moscow; Wolfschanze; Adolf Hitler; Heinz Guderian; Third Reich; Army Group Centre; Field Marhsall von Brauchitsch; Friederich Nietzsche; Nazi ideology; Thus Sprake Zarathustra; Übermensch; The Will to Power; Mein Kampf; 'Lords of the Earth; Erich von Manstein; Lost Victories; General von Kluge; National Socialist; Ostheer;
Guderian had been headstrong as a victorious panzer commander leading the charge across France from the Ardennes to the English Channel. The next year he had been the same in leading the charge into Russia. But was Guderian, now having failed to bring the Russian blitzkrieg to a successful conclusion, still that same man?
The failure to take Moscow in December, partly caused because the Germans were then vastly overstretched, with supply lines that weren’t coping, with the final nail in the coffin of their attempt to take Moscow being the surprise launching by the thoroughly defeated Russian Army, as the Germans saw it, of the Russian Winter Offensive. How good that offensive was has been grossly exaggerated in most minds. It was a pitiful affair that damaged the Russians more than it did the Germans. Then came Hitler’s halt order, his haltbefehl, of 18 December 1941. Was that going to save the German Army or destroy it? Generals from the new Army Group Centre commander, von Kluge down, handled it with subtelty. But subtelty wasn’t schneller Heinz (Swift Heinz) way of doing things. Ultimately what would be left of the Ostheer – the German Army in the east - for the next fateful year, 1942 and would the German Army in that year be able to win the war on the eastern front, or was Germany then doomed to a slow agonizing death by a thousand cuts?
Tag words: David Stahel; Retreat from Moscow; halt order; haltbefehl; Heinz Guderian; schneller Heinz;Panzer Leader; Adolf Hitler; Army Group Centre; Ostheer; Nicholas von Below; At Hitler’s Side; von Kluge; Wolfram von Richthofen; Bock; Winter Offensive; Rastenburg; Wolf’s Lair;
Adolf Hitler said to his generals of the invasion of Russia:
We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.
When I first heard that I thought what a boastful little dick. But now that I’ve looked closely at what happened during the Blitzkrieg invasion of France, maybe he wasn’t. So let’s join Hitler’s top panzer general, one of the geniuses behind the cataclysmic Fall of France, Heinz Guderian, as he’s circling in behind Moscow to bring about the fall of the Soviet Union and victory in World War II for Germany. Pushing his men forward like only a German panzer general of World War II could do.
Tag words: David Stahel; Retreat from Moscow; Adolf Hitler; Heinz Guderian; Panzer Leader; Wolfram von Richthofen; James S. Corum; VIIIth Air Corps; Franz Halder; Mungo Melvin; Manstein; Dr Abraham Twerski; Winter Offensive;
Assuming that Britain had come to terms with Germany in May or June 1940, after the loss of its Army, failing to escape from Dunkirk, and wondering if America would have continued to provide lend lease aid to the Soviet Union alone, and if it did, could the Soviet Union have survived the German Blitzkrieg unleashed on it on 22 June 1941 or more likely earlier.
Let’s have a look at the evidence.
Tag words: Dunkirk; Blitzkrieg; Soviet Union; Luftwaffe; Red Army; Molotov; Joseph Stalin; US Ambassador Steinhardt; AY Vishinsky; Winston Churchill; Theodore Roosevelt; Viktor Naidenko; Lend Lease; David Stahel; Retreat from Moscow; Communists; Georgi Zhukov; Pearl Harbour; Anastas Mikoyan; Edward Stettinius; ColonelHenry Aurand; Henry Morgenthau; Harry Dexter White; Andrei Gromyko; Litvinov; Adolf Hitler; Harry Hopkins; Volkischer Beobachter; rasputitsa;
In my last programme I looked at what Britain would do if the miracle of Dunkirk hadn’t happened. I concluded that Britain would most likely have come to terms with Hitler. Probably some time in June 1940.
In just 12 months time, at the latest on 22 June, 1941, although probably much earlier without England involved in the war any longer, Hitler would turn on Russia.
British Historian, Alistair Horne, in his book To Lose a Battle wrote:
Had the BEF had been wiped out in northern France, it is difficult to see how Britain could have continued to fight; and with Britain out of the battle, it is even more difficult to see what combination of circumstances could have aligned America and Stalin's Russia to challenge Hitler.
In this programme I’m going to look at what might have happened to Russia when as Churchill had said of the looming Battle of Britain: The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Now that meant the Soviet Union.
Would Stalin have survived then? With the Panzers starting their engines lined up along the borders with Stalin’s Russia, and Guderian and the Panzer forces knowing how to fight a lightning war this time, base on their experience in France.
Tag words: Blitzkrieg; Lend Lease; Harry Hopkins; Alistair Horne; To Lose a Battle; Winston Churchill; Joseph Stalin; Heinz Guderian; Norman Gelb; Dunkirk: The Complete Story of the First Step in the Defeat of Hitler; Adolf Hitler; Theodore Roosevelt; fireside chat; Cordell Hull; Operation Barbarossa; Harry Truman; president Herbert Hoover; Colonel Yeaton; Ambassador Steinhardt; Maxim Litvinov;
The question for this programme is, if the Panzers had reached and taken Dunkirk before the British had gotten there, would Germany have won World War II in Europe?
Tag words: Len Deighton; Blood, Sweat and Toil; Dunkirk; Alistair Horne; To Lose a Battle; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Blitzkrieg Legend; Winston Churchill; Adolf Hitler; Lord Halifax; Paul Reynaud; Mussolini; Neville Chamberlain; Admiral Keyes; Lord Gort; King George VI; Marshall Pétain; Lloyd George; as Edward VIII; The Duke of Windsor; Mrs Wallis Simpson
It would have been the decisive moment for the Panzer generals to ignore Hitler’s halt orders and to keep on thrusting forward to take Dunkirk. But that didn’t happen. Circumstances were different now to just a few days before. Then they were lost somewhere in the French countryside and fairly free to do what they wanted, but now they were close together and operating in a very combined space at the Channel, with Hitler and Runstedt nearby.
The real kicker was why Hitler halted the Panzers – only a leader like Hitler could be motivated to do what he did, and why he did. Let’s cover a bit more background first as to how the halt order, when first made, went down, before getting to Hitler’s unique motivation for ordering the halt.
Tag words: Dunkirk; Blitzkrieg; Gerd von Runstedt; Adolf Hitler; von Bock; von Brauchitsch; Franz Halder; von Kluge; von Kleist; Heinz Guderian; Gravelines; Sepp Dietrich; Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler; Erich von Manstein; Sickle Cut Plan; Alfred Jodl; Wilhelm Keitel; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Blitzkrieg Legend; Göring; David Stahel; Retreat from Moscow;
On 23/24 May 1940 a final stop order was imposed on the panzers – the last one for the Operation Sickle Cut campaign before it was concluded. Time would reveal that the consequences of the various stop orders were disastrous for Adolf Hitler. But there’s always a silver lining in every cloud as they say and that was that the miracle at Dunkirk that these allowed were a blessing for Germany and the rest of the world.
One of the most intriguing questions about the very last halt order is, what was the motivation. Is it the extraordinary reason that Karl-Heinz Freiser suggests in his book Blitzkrieg Legend?
I believe that Hitler was such an extraordinary personality that Frieser’s idea about why Hitler did what he did in the last days of Operation Sickle Cut, can’t be ruled out.
Whatever else, the conduct of Hitler during the last few days of the Sickle Cut campaign set the tone for what was to come in all German military operations until his death in the final act of suicide in the Berlin bunker in April 1945.
Tag words: Karl-Heinz Freiser; Blitzkrieg Legend; Blitzkrieg; Operation Sickle Cut; Adolf Hitler; Dunkirk; Halt Order; Chief of the Imperial General Staff, CIGS; General Sir Edmund Ironside; Gerd von Runstedt; General Georg von Sodenstern; Franz Halder; Erich von Manstein; General Edvard von Kleist; British counter-attack at Arras; Hinez Guderian; von Kluge; aufschließen; close up; General Bock; Reinhardt; von Brauchitsch;
The British attack at Arras on 21 May, which had been completely seen off that same night, was then all done and dusted in the minds of the panzer commanders, including Rommel. But the view from the front, looked very different to the view at the headquarters.
The consequences of this hopelessly executed British attack, that ended in failure, and was easily brushed aside by Rommel, was to win the Allies World War II – with a little help from Rommel.
Tag words: Arras Counter-attack; Erwin Rommel; Adolf Hitler; Rudolf Schmundt; Wilhelm Keitel; General Wernher von Blomberg; Franz Halder; Heinz Guderian; Dunkirk; Kenneth Macksey; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Blitzkrieg Legend; Von Kleist; Von Kluge; Gerd von Rundstedt; Lorette Heights; Sickle Cut Plan; Erich von Manstein; Panzer Corp Reinhardt; Winston Churchill;
The Germans had crossed the Meuse River on 13 May. On 14th May Guderian had ordered the Panzers to wheel westward to the Channel. The only thing slowing their dash were was Army Group commander Runstedt and the Corp commanders. Then, of course, there was the great panic by the Führer on 16 May – waiting for the counter-attack by the French Army into the flank of the Panzers – the 1940 version of the Miracle on the Marne that had robbed the Germans of victory in 1914. But that never came. It was not ever coming – or was it?
But on 21 May, 11 days after the opening of the German offensive, 8 days after the crossing of the Meuse, and 7 days after Guderian unleashed the panzers against his orders, finally the British Army struck into that long exposed Panzer flank at Arras. Was this the beginning of their end? The long awaited Miracle on the Marne?
Tag words: Blitzkrieg; Erwin Rommel; Miracle on the Marne; Sir Basil Liddell Hart; the Rommel Papers; 4th RTR; 7th RTR; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Blitkrieg Legend; Matilda Tanks; Oberleutnant Most; Hauptman Schraepler; SS Totenkopf; 88; Arras; Luftwaffe; Rommel-Album;
The French began calling Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division la division fantôme (the ghost division), because it moved with such incredible speed that the French never knew where it would turn up. The German high command probably agreed with the name because Rommel never hesitated to go off the grid, mainly so that they couldn’t rein him in.
Like Julius Caesar’s exciting diary of his conquests in Gaul, Rommel kept his own diary – which is all the more interesting because he died before the war ended, so it wasn’t revised to suit the facts after the war. His diary’s a thrilling account of Rommel’s World War II, as fast paced as his exploits, with an excellent accompanying commentary by Sir Basil Liddell Hart.
Here's a brief extract about how Rommel’s division was a ghost division not only to the French but also to his own side. This is taken from his diary immediately after this fight in Avesnes:
Meanwhile, I had sent repeated signals to Corps through the divisional staff asking whether, in view of the success of our break-through of the Maginot Line, we should not now continue our advance over the Sambre. Receiving no reply — wireless contact had not been established — I decided to continue the attack at dawn with the object of seizing the Sambre crossing at Landrecies and holding it open. I issued orders by wireless to all other units to follow up the Panzer Regiment's advance to Landrecies [11 miles west of Avesnes].
Tag words: Blitzkrieg; Erwin Rommel; 7th Panzer Division; la division fantôme; the ghost division; Sir Basil Liddell Hart; Julius Caesar; Major i.G. Heidkämper; Oberst Karl Rothenburg; David Irving; The Trail of the Fox; The Rommel Papers; Sickle Cut Plan; Erich von Manstein; Von Bock; Panzer Corps Hoepner; General Graf von Kielmansegg; Fritz von Halder; Adolf Hitler; Joseph Goebbels
Rommel is one of the most exciting and inspiring military leaders of all times. His exploits from World War I, recorded in his 1936 book Infantry Attacks, telling about his actions as a junior officer in World War I. His actions in the Battle of Caporetto in 1917 gives the first insights into Rommel’s unique gifts as a commander, and especially how he was going to wage war in France in 1940 and in North Africa between 1941 and 1942.
Luckily for Rommel he never served on the Eastern Front. He was a Nazi, as so many of the top generals of his age were during the Third Reich, and he would most likely have become involved in war crime activity against the Jews and the Russian partisans. But thankfully that never happened.
This tribute to Rommel’s chivalry was delivered by Winston Churchill on the news of Rommel’s forced suicide after the attempt on Hitler’s life on 20 July 1944. Part of that tribute is a reference back to this praise, surprisingly from Winston Churchill in the House of Commons, in January 1942 when he said of Rommel:
We have a very daring and skilful opponent against us, and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great general.
Rommel’s most astounding accomplishments happened over his few days in the dash to the English Channel in 1940 at the head of the 7th Panzer Division. The time has come to tell you about how Rommel disobeyed Hitler and the senior generals in his dash to the Channel, as they were trying to slow things down to a pace that they could understand, but not win the campaign.
Tag words: Blitzkrieg; Erwin Rommel; Infantry Attacks; Winston Churchill; 7th Panzer Division; Adolf Hitler; Erich von Manstein; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Bltizkrieg Legend; World War 2; General Georg von Sodenstern; General von Brauchitsch; Ardennes; Meuse River; von Kluge;
The wargames that had been conducted by Manstein on 7 February 1940, at the headquarters of Army Group A, and then subsequently other wargames by other people, were all about getting through the Ardennes and then over the Meuse River. I can’t imagine that Manstein would have left his plans up in the air after that point, but Halder had gotten rid of him to command a new Corp that didn’t yet exist and no more forward planning happened.
On 13th May Guderian got across the Meuse, and then everyone at the various Army, Army Group and the Führer’s headquarters scratched their heads. What now? Incredible! The most respected General Staff in the world and they had no idea what to do once they were over the Meuse. The only two people that had the exact plan were Manstein and Guderian – and now Manstein was gone from where he could have helped everything to run smoothly.
So we now have Panzer Corp Guderian and Panzer Corp Reinhardt charging off to the Channel as Manstein wanted, and we have the higher echelons of the German field armies all the way up to the Führer himself all in a flap about this.
Soon the greatest military genius of all times (größte Feldherr aller Zeiten), and I mean Adolf Hitler of course, was going to go into meltdown.
Tag words: Blitzkrieg; Adolf Hitler; Erich von Manstein; Ardennes; Meuse River; Franz Halder; Heinz Guderian; Kleist; Panzer Leader; Winston Churchill; Gerd von Runstedt; Col-Gen. von Brauchitsch; Major Henning von Tresckow; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Blitzkrieg Legend; Dunkirk; Operation Sickle Cut;miracle on the Marne; Benito Mussolini
Although Guderian didn’t know it, once he began disobeying orders from above in the race to the English Channel there was a first and a second prize awaiting.
The second prize was trapping the Allied armies that had advanced into Belgium against the coast. That would be the bulk of the Allied armies and would effectively end the Battle of France.
The glittering first prize, though, was to take Dunkirk before 24 May, 1940, beating the British there, so that the entire British Army would be captured and Hitler would win the war.
So let’s start the race.
Tag words: Blitzkrieg; Heinz Guderian; Dunkirk; Adolf Hitler; Sedan; Meuse River; Panzer Group Kleist; Panzer Corp Guderian; Panzer Corp Reinhardt; Generalmajor Werner Kempf; Erich von Manstein; General Gerd von Runstedt; Sickle Cut; Franz Halder; General Georg von Sodenstern; Sickle Cut plan; 6th Panzer Division; Army Group A; Colonel Freiherr Baron von Esebeck; Oberst (General Staff) Count von Stauffenberg; Pursuit Detachment von Esebeck;
What the German Panzer Divisions did in May 1940 was not in their training and operational manuals. What they did had never been practised. It was all made up as they went. Improvised.
Karl-Heinz Frieser in his book Blitzkrieg Legend says:
As earlier emphasized, the operations plan of the army high command was only a half-hearted and inconsistent implementation of Manstein's bold Sickle Cut idea. The decisive breach point was at Sedan. Manstein and Guderian had assumed that after crossing the Meuse River the Panzer formations would immediately have to push to the Channel coast, disregarding their exposed flanks, or otherwise lose the race against the Allies. All of the higher-ranking generals from the army high command and all the way down to Army Group A and von Kleist had discarded precisely this requirement as being too risky.
So now the panzers were across the Meuse – what next?
Tag words: Blitzkrieg; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Blitzkrieg Legend; Erich von Manstein; Heinz Guderian; Sickle Cut; Fritz Halder; General Georg von Sodenstern; Meuse River; Great War; 1st Panzer Division; 2nd Panzer Division; un pépin assez sérieux; a rather serious pin prick; General Georges; größte Feldherr aller Zeiten; greatest military genius of all times; Führer; Adolf Hitler; Walther Wenck; Klotzen, nicht kleckern!; Hit with the fist, don't feel with the fingers!; 10th Panzer Division; Infanterieregiment Großdeutschland; Infantry Regiment Großdeutschland; Winston Churchill; Pierre Le Goyet; Le mystère Gamelin; The Mystery of Gamelin; Oberleutnant Günther Korthals; major Philip Gribble; Oberst i.G. Kurt Zeitzler; Graf von Kielmansegg; Dunkirk;
From the moment of the first German attack in the north, the air forces of both sides had been deployed in the skies over the northern sector where the main German attack was expected.
At noon on the 13th May, the Luftwaffe suddenly vanished from the skies in the North. Soon the Allies would learn why.
Tag words: Sir Basil Liddell Hart; Colonel Bourguignon; General Gamelin; General André Prételat; General Heinz Guderian; Meuse River; Ardennes; Deuxième Bureau; Panzer Group Kleist; General Francois d'Astier de la Vigerie; Marshal Henri Philippe Petain; World War I; Dyle Line; General Franz Halder; General Charles Huntziger; Generalleutenant Bruno Loerzer; General Sperrle; Rolling Raid;
On 15 March 1940, less than two months before the launching of the German offensive in the West, Hitler summoned a meeting of General von Runstedt, the commander of Army Group A, the commanders of the individual armies under his command, and the commanders of the panzer forces, Heinrich von Kleist and Heinz Guderian.
The purpose of the meeting was for each of the generals to present their plan for the first phase of the looming offensive. Guderian was the last to speak. He began explaining what he’d do once he‘d crossed the Meuse.
As Guderian was speaking, General Ernst Busch, the commander in chief of the Sixteenth Army, interrupted him saying:
Well, I don't think you'll cross the river in the first place!
Hitler was silent. It was a disturbing suggestion. He looked to Guderian to – hopefully - firmly rebut this comment. Guderian turned to Busch and said:
There's no need for you to do so, in any case.
Long after everything had gone better than anyone of those doubting generals at that meeting had imagined, Guderian spoke of a
hard task ahead, in whose successful outcome nobody at that time actually believed, with the exception of Hitler, Manstein and myself.
Hitler honestly had no idea of the breathtaking operations that Guderian was intending to unleash, as he lost it on more than one occasion when things were under way and going unbelievably as expected. Hitler wasn’t the sort of ally that Guderian was going to need when his panzers were racing ahead of the infantry – no one protecting the flanks or rear of the panzers.
Manstein had been gotten out of the way by Franz Halder the German Army chief of staff who detested the man on the personal level and hadn’t wanted Hitler to hear about Manstein’s ridiculous idea of attacking out of the Ardennes, something Hitler himself was keen to do. Until February 1940 Halder had, managed to keep Hitler in his cage – that was when Hitler’s Army adjutant, Schmundt, had brought the two together – and that plan became THE plan.
The only people who were involved with the execution of the Sichelschnitt (Sickle Cut) Plan, who believed in what Guderian was going to do, who were on the spot, were a few of his younger subordinate generals who increasingly believed in this insane plan. Realising what, until then, had been the largely unsuspected possibilities that slumbered in the German Panzer force. Luckily, commanding one of the panzer divisions, the 7th Panzer Division, was its new commander, Erwin Rommel. Rommel had in fact conducted a blitzkrieg in World War I, commanding infantry, not tanks, in what was going to be the style of the panzer blitzkrieg, exhilaratingly recounted by him in his 1936 book, Infantry Attacks describing his operations during the Battle of Caporetto in north Italy in 1918. His leadership of that Panzer Division resulted in his enemy calling it the ghost division, because no one knew where it was, advancing so swiftly once it was thrown into the fight.
In this programme I’m going to look at the disbelief of the German officer corp, with a few exceptions, at this wild scheme that Manstein and Hitler had cooked up.
Tag words: Blitzkrieg; Meuse River; General von Runstedt; Adolf hitler; General Heinrich von Kleist; Heinz Guderian; General Ernst Busch; Erich von Manstein; Franz Halder; Sichelschnitt Plan; Sickle Cut Plan; Erwin Rommel; 7th Panzer Division; Infantry Attacks; General Alfred Jodl; General Georg von Sodenstern; General Water von Brauchitsch; Schlieffen Plan; Bock; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Blitzkrieg Legend; Oberst i.G. Kurt Zeitzler;
The deception measures that the Germans put in place for their surprise attack out of the Ardennes forests, and then heading to Sedan, were remarkable and they never get much attention.
The German high command, and many officers, were worried that Manstein’s plans was a repeat of the massive gamble of the Schlieffen Plan that had been badly executed in World War I and had lost Germany the war.
In the Schlieffen Plan the German Army attacked through Belgium and then wheeled to the south. At the same time the French attacked into Alsace-Lorraine. The original Schlieffen Plans were to defend that Alsace-Lorraine area with weak German forces that the French would be able to drive back. It was, broadly, a repetition of the tactics used by Hannibal’s great victory over the Romans at Cannae in 216 BC. where the Roman Army, commanded by Gaius Terentius Varro, was lured into attacking the deliberately weak Carthaginian centre. As his legions plunged deeper into the centre, the Carthaginian cavalry enveloped both flanks and encircled and totally destroyed the Roman Army.
By the time the Schlieffen Plan was launched in 1914, over the years since it had first been planned, important aspects of the plan had changed. The Germans kept adding more forces to their southern wing. For reasons of German nationalistic pride, they couldn’t bear the French to succeed – which was the whole point of the Schlieffen Plan. The result was that the Germans defeated the French attack in the south which defeated their whole concept of luring the French armies forward there so that the German armies in the north could then wheel to the left, trapping all of the French armies.
In 1940 the German high command worried that Manstein’s plan involved the same sort of gamble that the Germans had made in 1914 which had failed. Everything staked on one throw of the dice. How could they be sure that the French, British and Belgians would advance forward into Belgium. The whole of Manstein’s plan depended on them doing just that. But then, remember the two German officers, one Major Helmuth Reinberger, who bungled their flight in appalling weather and bungled their way over the border of Belgium where they crash landed in January 1940, carrying some of the German plans to repeat the Schlieffen Plan.
The Germans weren’t happy about this situation. They didn’t know whether the enemy had captured all, some or none of their plans. But they didn’t scrap their plans. They just changed the way that they were going to execute them, that is until that fateful meeting between Hitler and Manstein in February 1940.
But that crash landing accident almost guaranteed that if the German Army went with Manstein’s Sichelschnitt (Sickle Cut), they knew for sure and certain that the French were going to walk into his trap. How was revealed in a book published in 1941 by a French man, André Maurois, during the war, called The Tragedy of France. He wrote this:
The Germans knew exactly what movements we would make in case of an invasion of Belgium because we were kind enough to stage a "dress rehearsal" for that, before their very eyes. Here is how that happened. One fine day, a German aircraft landed in Belgium. Its passengers were general staff officers who carried with them a. . . plan for the invasion of Belgium ...
....
This the Germans did magnificently as the campaign opened and before their hand had finally been shown and understood by the enemy – to their total horror.
Tag words: Blitzkrieg Legend; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Von Kielmansegg; Operation Sichelschnitt; Operation Sickle Cut; Erich von Manstein; Heinz Guderian; Schlieffen Plan; Cannae; Hannibal; Gaius Terentius Varro; Roman Army; Carthaginian cavalry; Major Helmuth Reinberger; Adolf Hitler; André Maurois; The Tragedy of France; the Dyle Line; Bernhard von Loßberg; Admiral Canaris; Abwehr; Army Group A; Army Group B; Maginot Line; Wehrmacht; Fort Eben Emael; Schwerpunkt; Gamelin; General Pierre Jacomet; Ardennes; Sedan
I probably shouldn’t be mentioning George Washington and Adolf Hitler in the same sentence, but I’m going to. George Washington said:
Success has many fathers. Failure is an orphan.
So the brilliant Operation Sichelschnitt (Sickle Cut) was claimed by Erich von Manstein, Adolf Hitler and Franz Halder as its father. If it had failed I think Manstein would have been given the credit by Hitler and Halder. Maybe I should have given a spoiler alert before I said that.
So let’s first look at Adolf Hitler, the man proclaimed to be the greatest military genius of all times (größte Feldherr aller Zeiten).
Tag words: Operation Sichelschnitt; Operation Sickle Cut; George Washington; Adolf Hitler; Erich von Manstein; greatest military genius of all times; größte Feldherr aller Zeiten; Nicholas von Below; von Rundstedt; General Jodl; Karl-Heinz Frieser; The Blitzkrieg Legend; Blitzkrieg; Heinz Guderian; Luftwaffe; Graf von Kielmansegg; Franz Halder; 4th Deployment Directive;
Manstein had seen the army high command’s hopeless, unimaginative plan, for the attack on France. He’d come up with a better idea – an attack through the impenetrable Ardennes Forest in Belgium in the centre using the new, and really untested, panzer divisions.
As fate would have it, the father of Germany’s panzer forces, Heinz Guderian was in the town of Koblenz where Manstein was also based as the chief of staff of Army Group A. Manstein should have been Chief of Staff of the German Army but that’s another story. That job had ended up with General Franz Halder. A remarkably capable and brilliant general but, to be honest, not in the class of Manstein.
Manstein and Guderian got together in Koblenz. Manstein revealed his plan for what would come to be known as Operation Sichelschnitt (Sickle Cut). The German Army manuals contained nothing about how to fight the war that Manstein so clearly so in his head, which he shared with Guderian. Together they were going to have to work out how to make this new way of war work. Together they ticked all of the boxes.
Selling it to the German High Command was now Manstein’s job. He needed to put a plan together on paper. That sounded like a plan!
Tag words: Erich von Manstein; Blitzkrieg; Ardennes Forest; Heinz Guderian; General Franz Halder; Operation Sichelschnitt; Operation Sickle Cut; Adolf Hitler; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Schwerpunkt; Major Helmuth Reinberger; General Gerd von Runstedt; Luftwaffe; War Directive No.6; Teilsieg; Matador’s Cloak; Sir Basil Liddell Hart; General von Brauchitsch; Leibstandarte; Grossdeutschland; Kriegsspiel; Oberst Gunther Blumentritt; Major Henning von Tresckow; Rudolf Schmundt; Major Gerhard Engel; General Alfred Jodl; Fall Gelb; Case Yellow; Rommel;
In May 1940 the German Army won the greatest military victory in the history of the world. In just six weeks, in reality in a couple of days, the greatest army in the world, the French Army, and their ally, the British, had been completely and utterly defeated.
The win was stunning. A new technique to fight this new war in Europe had been developed. The French were taken by surprise, so were the British, but the most surprised of all were the Germans themselves.
The secret to win this war, that Hitler had accidentally dragged Germany into prematurely was clear, after it had actually been done – not before then. Replicating the technique used in France, in Russia would quickly bring of all Europe under German control, bring about the surrender of Britain, or at least make sure that no landing from England would be possible because it would be facing the entire German Army – not a German Army mostly tied down fighting on the eastern front as happened on D-Day.
But the finer point of what had happened in France, in that heady summer, had been lost. That finer point was that Hitler should have decisively won World War II in that single campaign – at least have set up the springboard to make sure of victory when he invaded Russia the next year. But that prize of winning the war had irretrievably slipped from his hands by the time France had surrendered. And the reason why it slipped from his hands, was going to be the reason he was destined to lose the war. It was, as Cassius said in Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2 –
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves
Hitler tried to reproduce what the elite panzer forces had done in France when he invaded Russia in 1941 – but the lightning war ran out of puff. Why is for another programme in this series.
Blitzkrieg, a rapid war waged by fast moving armoured columns, mostly fought by tanks had been born on 10 May 1940. It died on about 19th December in the snow close to the Russian town of Tula which was near Moscow.
In this series of programmes, I’ll tell you the incredible story that you probably haven’t heard before, of how the Blitzkrieg was born, against the wishes of the majority of the top people in the German Army and how it died 19 months later.
Karl-Heinz Frieser, German historian, wrote this summary of the history of these two blitzkriegs:
To boil it down to a simple formula, the difference between the campaign in the west and the campaign in the east was that the 1940 campaign in the west was an unplanned but successful blitzkrieg, whereas the 1941 campaign in the east was a planned but unsuccessful blitzkrieg.
Let me explain.
Tag words: Blitkrieg; May 1940; French Army; British Army; World War II; Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar; The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves; Adolf Hitler; Tula; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Karl May; Old Shatterhand; Winnetou; Christa Schroeder; Major Helmuth Reinberger; German General Staff; Clausewitz; Wild West frontier; General Weygand; Patrick Turnbull; Dunkirk: Anatomy of Disaster; Treaty of Versailles; Maginot Line; Sedan; General Heinz Guderian; Herman Göring; Table Talks; Obersalzberg; Josef Goebbels; Wilhelm Weiß; Völkischer Beobachter; National Socialist; Nazi; Konstantin Hierl; Schlieffen Plan; Erich von Manstein; Gerd von Runstedt; Schwehrpunkt; Ardennes; Kurfürstliches Schloss; XIX Corps; Panzer Corp Guderian; Reims offensives; Klotzen, nicht Kleckern; Clout, don't dribble; Franz Halder; David Irving; Hitler’s War;
To be very British, and understated about it, the Arab Revolt between 1936 and 1939, had turned out very badly for the Muslims, discussed in Parts 32 and following.
But there’s always a silver lining in every cloud, and the silver lining in the Grand Mufti’s cloud was World War 2. And best of all Hitler offered the glittering prospect of a Final Solution to both of their Jewish problems.
And as lawyers say, Hitler and the Grand Mufti were ad idem on this topic – at one. This was one problem that Hitler really wanted to help permanently fix.
Tag words: Arab Revolt; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin al-Husseini; World War 2; Holocaust; Genocide; The Final Solution; Adolf Hitler; American Christian Palestine Committee; Glubb Pasha; Herbert Hagen; Adolf Eichmann; Nazism; Führer; Joachim von Ribbentrop; Major General Erwin La Housen; Abwehr; National Socialism; Waffen-SS; Fawzi al-Qawuqji; General Erwin Rommel; Afrika Korps; Suez Canal; SS Einsatzkommando Afrika; SS Obersturmbannführer Walter Rauff; Wilhelm Melchers; Dieter Wisliceny; SS General Oskar Dirlewanger; Dr. Heinrich Willerman; Alois Brünner;
British collective punishment, increasing British military deployments to Palestine, especially after the British did the disgraceful Munich deal with Hitler in 1938 which freed up considerable military forces, and the impact of combined British and Jewish intelligence, made fighting and beating the Arab Revolt so much easier.
As I have demonstrated over many programmes, the Muslim population in Palestine, were overwhelmingly citizens of other countries and not people who were born in the land area comprising the British Mandate of Palestine.
That naturally lent itself to gaining considerable intelligence from the Muslims. Instead of fighting the British, the Muslims in the British Mandate were more naturally inclined to fight each other. Disciplined guerrilla organisations avoid that pitfall, but the Muslim revolt was not remotely a disciplined organisation.
This one story tells just how outclassed the Muslims were in this fight with the British, with the aid of Jewish intelligence. The Jews were bugging conversations in the Grand Mufti’s ultra secure, impregnable, residence that the British Army was reluctant to attack because of the strength of the position.
Tag words: collective punishment; Adolf Hitler; Muslim; Jews; Palestine; British Mandate; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin al-Husseini; Nashashibi clan; Michael Hughes; Britain’s Pacification of Palestine; al-Qawuqji; al-Mua`rada forces; Ngo Dinh Diem; South Vietnam; effendi; fellahin; Mao Zedong; Guerilla Warfare; General Sir Robert Haining; Colonel Gilbert MacKereth; Sûreté; General Sir John Dill; Arab Revolt; Vietnam War; Viet Cong; Walid Khalidi; Lewis Andrews; Walter Moffatt; Peel Report; Chaim Weizmann; Balfour Declaration; Colonial Secretary, Malcolm MacDonald; Zionist Congress; Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact; Arab Higher Committee; Irish Free State; Michael Collin; Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921; Vietminh; Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement 1998; North Vietnamese; battle of Dien Bien Phu;
The Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 had consequences that are still being felt and lived to this day. One good thing came out of it, if you’re a Muslim – not if you’re an Israeli though – and a really bad thing came out of it, if you’re a Muslim, not an Israeli which, I would say on balance, outweighs the good that the Muslims got.
To be fair, the good thing was an accident so let me tell you about it.
Tag words: Arab Revolt of 1936; Muslim; Israeli; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin al-Husseini; Arab Higher Committee; Nashashibi Clan; effendi; notables; King Abdullah; League of Nations; Palestine; League’s Mandate Commission; Fawzi al-Qawuqji; Michael Hughes; Britain’s Pacification of Palestine; Oren Kessler; Palestine 1936; Qassamite gunmen; Zvi Danenberg; Israel Chazan; The Bible; Genesis 16:12;
Captain Ord Wingate was one of the more remarkable British officers of the 20th Century, which is saying a lot. He thought entirely, almost entirely, out of the box. The British seemed to produce these remarkable people with remarkable ideas in the quantities that they needed, when they needed them.
One of the unmissable things about the British administration in Palestine was how pro-Muslim it was.
On 12 January 1937 Wingate wrote a letter to his much admired cousin Rex, who had been a General in the British Army in many Muslim countries with quite the reputation for his work there. Wingate wrote to him:
I am not ignorant of Arabic or the Arabs, not prejudiced either for or against them, but the [British]officials were to a man, anti-Jew and pro-Arab.. . . They hate the Jew and like the Arab who, although he shoots at them, toadies to them and takes care to flatter their sense of importance.
Now for Wingate’s idea about how to fight the Arab Revolt.
Tag words: Captain Ord Wingate; Palestine; Muslim; the Bible; Charterhouse; Zionist; David Hacohen; Histadrut; The Quran; Chaim Weizmann; Earl Peel; Jewish State Defense Force; JSDF; Royal Navy; Iraq Petroleum Company; IPC; notrim; Gideon; Judges 6 to 8; Jezreel Valley; spring of Ein Harod; Midianites; Midianites; Kibbutz Ein Harod; Chaim Sturman; Special Night Services; SNS; General Haining; Haganah; Beth She'an Valley; Zvi Brenner; Brigadier Evett; Lieutenant Mike Grove; Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment; Lieutenant Robert 'Rex' King-Clark; Manchester Regiment;, Lieutenant H. E. N. 'Bala' Bredin; Royal Ulster Rifles; Israelis; Jews;
This programme is about how the Muslims, remarkably, and unwittingly, created the Israeli Defence Forces that would, at least so far, allow Israel to survive the fury of its overwhelming numerous and powerful enemies attempts to crush it. Of course Israel has to win every war. If it loses one it will all be over for it, in a massive blood bath.
Maybe this programme could be called how the Muslims shot themselves in both feet.
Tag words: Muslims; Israeli Defence Force; Arab Higher Committee; Rebel fighters; mujahid; Michael Hughes; Britain’s Pacification of Palestine; Wing Commander Ritchie; Palestine; havlagah; Jews; British Mandate; Yishuv; General Officer Commanding, Archibald Wavell; Special Night Squads; SNS; Sir Harold MacMichael; High Commissioner of Palestine; Colonial Office; Arab Revolt; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin Al-Husseini; Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshall Sir Cyril John Deverell; Moshe Shertok; Ben Zvi; Haganah; Palmach; Frank Kitson; Captain Ord Wingate; Laurence of Judea; Iraq Petroleum Company; IPC; Palestine Electricity Corporation; police; supernumeraries; ghaffirs; notrim; temporary additional constables; special constables; private police officers; auxiliary port police force; temporary additional police; a special frontier protection unit; Jewish settlement police; Jewish supernumerary police; special auxiliary police; railway protection police; night watchmen; special policemen; Iraq Petroleum Company TAPline protection force; Army special night and Q units; T E. Lawrence; Lawrence of Arabia; Plymouth Brethren; Charterhouse school; General Reginald Wingate; Hejaz; London's School of Oriental Studies; John Bunyan; He Who Would Valiant Be; To be a Pilgrim; Jerusalem; Trevor-Royle;
On 19 April 1936 the Muslims gave the Jews the gift of their homeland, promised by the British in the Balfour Declaration, then by the League of Nations when it created the British Mandate on 24 July 1922 – far bigger than was looking likely at that time – if they were to get one at all.
What the Jewish homeland would eventually look like was tricky. The Muslims had fought against it ever being created, they had fought against Jewish immigration, they had fought against the British Mandate. But thanks to the Arab Revolt that began on 19 April 1936, they gave the Jews what they had been trying to block - their homeland.
They gave the Jews pretty well everything they had wanted (if you ignore Churchill giving away 83% of their promised homeland to King Abdullah in Transjordan) and much much more than the pittance that the British had ended up promising the Muslims in the 1936 Peel Report, nothing in the 1939 White Paper and the land that the United Nations offered them with their Resolution 181 for the partition of the rump of the Jewish homeland on 29 November 1947.
The Muslims had wanted it all – and they ended up with close to nothing.
The Jews paid a price for what happened during the Arab Revolt, a price that they’re sill paying today, but overall, they could never have hoped for a better outcome at the time that Arab Revolt started.
In my last two programmes I looked at the early days of the Arab Revolt. Now it’s time to look at the big picture – starting with the unplanned and runaway strike and revolt, that started by itself, and never really found anyone to lead it.
Tag words: Muslims; Arabs; Balfour Declaration; League of Nations; British Mandate; Arab Revolt; Churchill; King Abdullah; 1936 Peel Report; 1939 White Paper; United Nations; Resolution 181; Easter Riots; Nabi Musa; Adolf Hitler; Nuremberg Laws; Palestine; US Immigration Act 1924; anti-semitism; Quran; Mohammad; Istiqlal Party; Arab Higher Committee; Izz al-Din al-Qassam; Fawzi al-Qawuqji; Chaim Weizmann; David Ben-Gurion; Golda Meyerson; histadrut; Grand Mufti; havlagah; Ze’ev Jabotinsky;
The murders of the Jews living in Palestine on 15 April 1936, Israel Hazan, Zvi Danenburg and the wounding of Nafchi, was typical of what the Muslim leadership wanted for Palestine – no Jewish homeland. A goal that they single mindedly pursue, even down to this day. Stop more Jews coming in. Create a new country out of at least Syria and Palestine combined, like it was under the Ottomans. The fact that there was never a country called Palestine in the 1300 years of Ottoman Rule is now lost in the myths that the Muslims have successfully told since the Six Day Arab Israeli war.
After this torch had been lit by these Muslims on 15 April 1936, who seemed to be acting on their own, a massive popular eruption followed. The Muslim leadership, mostly under the control of the Grand Mufti through the Arab Higher Council, scrambled to get on board and then to lead what had started spontaneously as a popular movement that these leaders had no idea was coming.
Many more Jews were going to be murdered, but the response of the Jewish leadership to that was happening was far-sighted and brilliant. The modern state of Israel, that was born from the bloodbath, and the total defeat of the Muslims in the 1948 civil war between the Jews and the Muslims and the survival of the state of Israel in the 1948 war when the adjoining Arab nations tried and failed to crush Israel, had been guaranteed because of what had happened from 15 April 1936 until the Revolt had petered out by about 1939. The Nakba, the Palestinian Catastrophe, as the 1948 wars are known, had had its roots firmly laid over a decade before in the Arab Revolt. This is the beginning of that story.
Tag words: , Israel Hazan; Zvi Danenburg; Nafchi; Arab Higher Committee; Nakba; Palestinian Catastrophe; the Arab Revolt; Salim al-Musri; Hassan Abu Rass; Jews, Muslims; Arabs; National Muslim Committees; League of Nations; British Mandate; Grand Mufti; Hajj Amin al-Husseini; Eliezer Bichutsky; Haim Pashigoda; Kornfeld; Kupermintz; Yosef Lieberman; Hauranis; Al-Jamia al-Islamiya; Davar newspaper; Palestine Post; Muhammad Abu Zeid; Abed Ali; Al-Difiz; Filastin; The Nation; Selig Levinson; Shlomo Marsum; General Sir Arthur Wauchope; Palestine (Defence) Order in Council 1931; Emergency Regulations 1936;
History tells us that between 800 and 1100 AD was the Golden Age of Arabic science. Well it isn’t history that I’m getting this from. It’s from Hassan Hassan, a columnist for The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi, the UAE., He’s also a contributor for The Guardian, Foreign Policy and the Carnegie Endowment. He graduated from the University of Nottingham, the UK, with a Master of Arts in International Relations.
During that period, Hassan says, the Muslim world was the beacon of innovation that triggered Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment periods. But after that time, he tells his readers, Islam turned its back on science. If you’re a Muslim, most likely a devoutly religious one, who is happy about this state of affairs, well that’s your choice. Whose to blame, or to take the credit for that rejection of science? It seems that most people hold Abu Hamid Al Ghazali responsible for this state of affairs. He lived between 1055-1111AD. But Hassan Hassan says that’s not true and he is innocent of any responsibility for that change. Hassan says that the one man force, driving Muslims away from science, was actually Abu Ali al-Hassan al-Tusi, better known as Nizam al-Mulk, the grand vizier of the Seljuq dynasty between 1018–1092.
For the first time in Islamic history, religious studies became institutionalised. Because of the new winds that were blowing through the palaces of Baghdad, the smart Muslim dropped science like a hot potato, and did the smart thing. Religious studies were seen as a more lucrative career path – that was where the big bucks were. Up until then science and Islam were intertwined – liked the strands in DNA’s double helix.
Century on century then passed. Islam that had been such a dominant and feared force in the world at first started to hit the hard defensive walls of Christian Europe which brought what had up until then been the irresistible advance of Islam to a grinding halt. Defensive resistance of the Christians to Islam, with the advances in science driven technology, hastened the decline of Islam. The West began to advance into Islamic countries. Stalemate turned to defeat. The first of many great insults was the arrival of Napoleon with a small force of French soldiers, and scientists to add insult to injury, thrashed the Mamluks and then marched on the Promised Land. It was other European powers, mainly the Royal Navy, that ended Napoleon’s successes in the Middle East. The Ottoman Empire went into a slow decline and eventually died the death at the end of the First World War.
But then, a little bit at a time, slow at first, but gathering pace much more swiftly then, change did start to sweep through just one country in the Middle East. It was the British Mandate of Palestine – the promised new Jewish homeland. This is what happened.
Tag words: Golden Age of Arabic science; Hassan Hassan; Abu Hamid Al Ghazali; Abu Ali al-Hassan al-Tusi; Nizam al-Mulk; Ottoman Empire; Passfield White Paper; effendi; the notables; fellahin; the peasant farmers; W. B. Fisher; Middle East; goats; Akira Kurosawa; Seven Samurai; Sam Peckinpah; The Magnificent Seven; Aaron Aaronsohn; Baron Rothschild; Atlit; Roderique Davison; Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1876; Cevdet Efendi; Balfour Declaration; Chaim Weizmann; General Allenby; Mount Scopus; Hebrew University; Emir Feisal; Albert Einstein; Lord Balfour; Sigmund Freud; Pan-Islamic Congress 1931; Zionists; Jaffa; British Mandate; Haifa; Palestine Railways; Nesher Cement Works; Maya Seikaly; Haifa: Transformation of an Arab Society 1918-1939; Kalandia; airport; Atarot; David Ben-Gurion; Iraq Petroleum Company pipeline; Iraq Petroleum Company; IPC; Mediterranean Fleet; Arab Revolt; Israel Hazan; Florentin; Salonica; Zvi Danenberg; Haganah; Nablus; Tulkarem; keffiyah; Yasser Arafat; Izza Din El Kassam; Nafchi; Knoll;
The 9th of Av in Jewish calendars is Friday on steroids. Nerves must be jangling as that day of the calendar approaches.
The worst high points in the history of the Jews happen on this day.
On that day in 586 BC, the Babylonians demolished the First Temple in Jerusalem built by the legendary Jewish king, Solomon. In the year 70AD, the Romans almost completely demolished the Second Temple built by King Herod the Great. What survived were the retaining walls, particularly sacred to the Jews is the wall on the west side. It's known as either the Wailing Wall or the Western Wall.
Continuing the Jews incredible run of bad luck, on that same date in the year 135 AD, Rome brought to an end the Bar-Kochba revolt. Ending Jewish dreams of independence. After that revolt the province of Judaea was renamed Palestina harkening back to the previous occupants of that land in the long distant past, before the Jews arrived, the Philistines. The Philistines had lived in and around Gaza.
Then moving closer to our own times, on that same day, England expelled its Jews in the thirteenth century, France expelled its Jews in the fourteenth, and Spain, after Ferdinand and Isabella had reconquered all of their country from the Muslims, expelled their Jews in the fifteenth century.
You won’t be surprised to hear that in Jerusalem, on the 9th of Av, in 1929, one of the bloodiest riots so far against the Jews started, the triggering factor was the Grand Mufti. The object of the riot was over what the Jews call the Wailing Wall, or the Western Wall.
That riot was significant – it marked the beginning of a swelling violence against the Jews in Palestine, that would culminate in the Arab Revolt that broke out in 1936, all of which trouble saw the Jews having various rights of immigrating into Palestine, limited or ended, and likewise their entitlement to acquire land. This programme’s about the 1929 riots – and you’re not going to believe what happened.
Tag words: 9th of Av; Babylonians; Destruction of the First Temple; Romans; destruction of the Second Temple; King Solomon; King Herod the Great; Wailing Wall; Western Wall; Bar-Kochba revolt; Palestina; Philistines; Ferdinand and Isabella; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin al-Husseini; Arab Revolt 1936; Mohammad; Buraq; Night Journey to Jerusalem; British Mandate; Abu Maidan waqf; Saladin; Afdal; Yom Kippur; Torah; Balfour Declaration; Ottoman Empire; Star of David; the Dome of the Rock; Buraq Campaign; Al-Aqsa Mosque; Zionists; Joseph Klausner; Jabotinsky; Superintendent Raymond Cafferata; Ahron Bernzweig; God; Abu Mahmoud al-Kurdiya; North Vietnamese Tet offensive; Thawrat al-Buraq; the Buraq Uprising; British High Commissioner to the Palestinian Mandate; Sir John Chancellor; Cairo's Al-Ahram newspaper; Evening Star; Pan-Islamic Congress; Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Shawkat Ali; Muhammed Ali; Abraham; Shakib Arslam; Arab Party for Independence; Adolf Hitler; White Paper; Hope Simpson Report; Chaim Weitzman; World Zionist Organisation; Ramsay MacDonald; David Ben-Gurion;
Ok – enough of the Palestinian refugees already. Nuff said in Parts 25 to 27 of this series.
The issue of illegal Muslim immigration into Palestine is huge when looking at what happened before the state of Israel was created in 1948.
The worst part of it was that a lot of bad hats came in. That was what Colonel MacKereth called them in Part 19. He used that term to mean any of the Muslims that were entering Palestine to commit acts of violence to very extreme violence. They were criminals, thugs, soldiers of fortune, whose very existence was about bringing violence to whoever their employer wanted harmed or killed. Their targets covered a wide range of people from moderate Muslims, who were able to live with the incoming Jews, to the Jews themselves of course. The moderate Muslims and the Jews were all fit to be killed.
The categories of Muslims coming in to Palestine did so for a wide variety of motives apart from the hired killers that I just spoke about. The Grand Mufti was pretty much single mindedly interested in doing violence, to moderate Muslims and all Jews, hence his association is with the bad hats.
But a lot of Muslims were drawn to Palestine for the prosperity that followed in the wake of the Jewish immigrants, and the money that was coming into the country that was creating jobs. The Muslim migrants coming into Palestine were coming in in very large numbers. They were taking up all of the jobs. The British, whose administration’s leanings had over the years from when Balfour first had the vision of creating a Jewish homeland, to the 1920’s when that attitude began to do a backflip, changed from pro-Zionist to anti-Zionist. These Arabist British administration officials developed an extreme interest in making sure that Jewish immigrants coming into the country, weren’t taking the jobs that they were creating. These British officials didn’t see it that way. But the truth was that the Muslim illegal immigrants were coming in in such large numbers, that some of the Muslims couldn’t get a job. When the British felt that there was a shortage of jobs for Muslims, legal or illegal – mostly they couldn’t tell, they would slow or stop Jewish immigration. That would in turn probably slow down the creation of jobs for everyone. Since the Jewish money that was coming into the country from wealthy Jews was intended to create jobs for Jews.
The common thread throughout the British administration of Palestine, was that they held what seemed like a never ending series of commissions that issued endless papers – mostly white in colour.
And so in 1930 the British convened yet another commission, to look into the situation with Jewish immigration. As I said right at the beginning of this series, apart from the Easter Riots of 1920, which the Grand Mufti was very much behind, but those riots backfired on the Muslims, almost every other outbreak of Muslim violence saw the British crack down on the Jewish immigration, land purchases etc.
The latest commission was the Hope-Simpson Report. In it’s findings, it didn’t give the Jews much hope.
Tag words: Palestinian refugees; Muslim immigration; Colonel MacKereth; Jews; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin al-Husseini; Hope-Simpson Report; Report on Immigration, Land Settlement, and Development, 1930; the League of Nations British Mandate; Immigration of Other Than Jewish Labour; The White Paper; Lewis Yelland Andrews; Lewis Andrews; Arab Revolt; Passfield White Paper of 1933; Musa Alami; David Ben-Gurion; Chaim Wiezmann; Winston Churchill; Herbert Samuel; Lloyd George; Ramsay MacDonald; the Black Letter; Balfour Declaration; Ottoman Turks; Islamic Golden Age; Bar Kochba; Ezekiel 33:28; Peel Report 1937; Shaw Commissions Report; Palestine Mandate; 1948 Arab Israeli war;
In 1939, Stalin did a deal with Hitler. He would get half of Poland, and other countries which aren’t important just now, although it was important for them, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and other countries, because he was also swiping parts of those other countries too.
Anyway Hitler attacked Russia in 1941, before Russia could attack Germany, and then all hell broke loose for the next 4 years in a titanic struggle between the Nazis and the Communists. Things didn’t go well for Hitler in that war, he ended up placing second, which isn’t a good place to end up in in a war.
By the end of World War II, Stalin had swept through all of eastern Europe and half of Germany. Stalin wanted to keep his ill-gotten gains in Poland from his deal with Hitler. So he kept the half of Poland that Hitler had promised him, and kicked out those unpleasant Poles. But Stalin was nothing if not a fair man, and so he helped the Poles by kicking the Germans of a equally large slab of their country, forcing them to leave land that they had lived on for hundreds of years.
Six million ethnic Germans were expelled from their homes – most of them women, children and elderly people. The Russians had killed all of the military age males, or sent them to their labour camps, where many were worked to death. Another six million Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia.
During all of these massive population movements maybe 500,000, possibly 1.5 million, Germans died. Lots of other Europeans died too in those horrific, apocalyptic times.
Stalin never had any problems brutally expelling people from lands they had lived on for hundreds of year. He also expelled all of the Tatars from their homelands in the Crimea. They had preferred the Nazis to the Communists, who had been brutal to them before the German invasion. The Russians also expelled enormous numbers of Germans who had been invited to permanently move to Russia by Catherine the Great in the 1700s – so they had lived in the Caucasus, on land given to them by Catherine 200 years before their expulsion. Most of the kulak peasants from Ukraine were expelled, millions of them died before they could be expelled and died in the godforsaken places they were sent to by Stalin. Greeks from the Russian side of the Russian border were also forcibly relocated. Stalin had no problems shifting millions of people from their homes to others parts of Russia, mostly Siberia.
You may be shocked to hear that if those many millions of people had a right to return where they originally came from Stalin never did anything about it.
But hypocrisy in the left is their standard stock in trade. And so it came to pass that on 11 December 1948 the United Nations passed the resolution acknowledging the right of return of the so-called Palestinian refugees to return to where they’d come from in what was now Israel, even if they’d only lived there for less than two years. I’ll discuss later than no North African or Middle Eastern Muslim country voted in favour of this resolution ....
Tag words: Stalin; Hitler; Nazis; Communists; World War II; Catherine the Great; United Nations; Muslims; Jews; World War I; British Empire; Indian Independence; Pakistan; 1948 Arab Israel War; Joan Peters; From Time Immemorial; Al Nahar; Sabri Jiryis; Palestinian National Council; 1982 World Refugee Survey; Philip Hauser, former United States Census Director; United Nations' Population Commission; World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries; WOJAC; American Sephardi Federation; Dr. Elfan Rees; World Council of Churches; Century of the Homeless Man; Kurt René Radley; United Nations Resolution 194; British Mandate; General Assembly Resolution 393 of 2 December 1950; United Nations, Resolution 394 of 14 December 1950; UN Resolution 513 of 26 January, 1952; Egyptian Foreign Minister, Muhammad Salah al-Din; Cairo newspaper Al-Misri; Neue Zuercher Zeitung; Terence Prittie; The Palestinians: People History, Politics;
Remember that a person didn‘t have to be a Palestinian, or a refugee to be classified as a Palestinian refugee.
Accurately counting the number of refugees that there were in 1948 has become much more important, and relevant today, when the Palestinian refugees include the children of a male Palestinian refugee, or the children that such a male Palestinian refugee adopted. In the roughly 75 years of increase in the number of Palestinian refugees, from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, UNRWA, count of 750,000 in the beginning, to today’s count of 5.9 million, means getting an accurate number of people at the start, has something of an exponential effect on the number today if the count included many people who shouldn’t have been included. Any error in counting the number of refugees results in a significant increase when the children, grandchildren, great grandchildren etc of people who should not have have been counted as Palestinian refugees are included. And looking back at what happened in the beginning, there are good reasons to think that this has happened.
For example, on 1 November, 1950, UNRWA Director Howard Kennedy, reported to the United Nations Ad Hoc Political Committee, 5th Session that:
a large group of indigent people totalling over 100,000. .. could not be called refugees, but . . . have lost their means of livelihood because of the war and post-war conditions . . . The Agency felt their need was even more acute than that of the refugees who were fed and housed.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
In November 1950, Kennedy referred to
the 600,000 [Muslim] refugees,
although he had reported in May 1950 that UNRWA had distributed 860,000 rations, citing the hundreds of thousands of "hungry Arabs" who were not bona fide refugees but who claimed need.
The count of Palestinian refugees, as you’ll soon hear, was inflated for all sorts of reasons which I’ll now discuss.
Tag words: Palestinian refugee; United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees; UNRWA; UNRWA Director Howard Kennedy; United Nations Ad Hoc Political Committee, 5thSession; 1948 Arab Israeli War; Statistical Abstract of Palestine in 1944-45; Walter Pinner; How Many Arab Refugees: A Critical Study of UNRWA's Statistics and Reports; Disaster Relief Organization; Rony Gabay; A Political Study of the Arab-Jewish Conflict: The Arab Refugee Problem; The Arab League; Joan Peters; From Time Immemorial – the Origins of the Arab Jewish Conflict over Palestine; Director of Field Operations for the United Nations Disaster Relief Project, W de St. Aubin; US Senator Gale McGee; US Senator Albert Gore; President Eisenhower; Secretary of State Christian Herter; Mideast Mirror; Arab News Agency of Cairo; Palestinian Mandate; King Abdullah; Eliyahu Kanovsky; Jordan, People and Politics in the Middle East; Prime Minister Hazza al-Majali; Saddam Hussein; the Gulf War; UNHCR;
Let me tell you a story.
Mohammad was a Muslim. He was born in Syria on 23 June 1926. He was a citizen of Syria. There was fabulously well paid work for farm hands on the Jewish farms, which he heard about from one of his friends who, even now, was at the Jewish farm settlement at Petah Tikva. Ever since Mohammad heard about the ridiculous money they were paying, he wanted to go. He got his friend to get him a job there, and organise somewhere for him to live, as his home. Then he set out to illegally enter the British Mandate of Palestine. The easiest way to get into the British Mandate, as an illegal immigrant, was to go through Transjordan.
That was how his friend had gotten into Palestine. His friend told him who to contact to organise this for him.
Early on 31 May 1946 Mohammad arrived at Petah Tikva and began work there that same day. He was one lucky boy. If the British had found him, although they never bothered with illegal Muslim immigrants, in theory he could have been deported back to Syria at any time.
Things went well there for him until 14 May 1948 when the state of Israel was declared. Muslims in Israel were then urged, by some of their fellow Muslims, to leave the new state of Israel while the invading Muslim armies pf the Arab League, from Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Yemen purged the land of the Jews. Then they said Mohammad, and all of those Muslims who had acted on the advice of the Muslims who were supporting the invasion of Israel, could return and pick up their lives where they had left off. Except I guess the Jewish farms, and the Jews who were giving Mohammad his job, would then have been killed by the invading Muslim armies, or forced to flee for their lives and never return, because like Transjordan banned Jews living there, the Muslims invading Israel would have done the same, or what was the point of their invasion.
Mohammad decided to take their advice, that he should leave the country. He’d acquired some possessions by them, but it wasn’t practical to take them with him so he left them behind. They all said he would soon be back and he could get them then. That was obvious – there was no way the Israelis could defeat the armed might of the invading Muslim nations.
Mohammad headed to Gaza on 16 May 1948. Soon the Egyptian Army was advancing there, unstoppably into Israel.
But things didn’t turn out well for the Muslims in this 1948/1949 Arab Jewish war. Mohammad ended up as a Palestinian refugee – and I’ll tell you all about that in this programme and the following ones. He’d been illegally in Palestine for just under 2 years. Because of that now he was entitled to all of the benefits offered by United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, UNRWA, to Palestinian refugees for the rest of his life – and so were his children – ....
I’ll continue the story of the illegal Muslim immigrants in Palestine in the first programme after I’ve covered this story – so you can fully appreciate the importance of illegal immigrants in today’s Palestinian refugee situation that I’m about to tell you about.
It’s important to realise that to be a Palestinian refugee under the UNRWA definition you never had to be either a Palestinian or a refugee. Let that sink in.
Tag words: Mohammad; Petah Tikva; British Mandate of Palestine; Transjordan; Arab League; Egypt;Transjordan; Iraq; Syria; Lebanon; Saudi Arabia; Yemen; United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East; UNRWA; Palestinian refugees; UNHCR; UN Refugee Agency; 1951 Refugee Convention; 1948 Arab Israeli War; Peter Dodd; Halim Barakat; River Without Bridges: A Study of the Exodus of the 1967 Arab Palestinian Refugees; Arab National Committee of Haifa; Near East Arabic Radio; Khaled Al-Azm; Jewish Haifa Workers' Council; Paper Filastin;Azzam Pasha; secretary general of the Arab League; New York Lebanese daily Al-Hoda; Jordanian daily Al-Difaa; Cairo Akhbar al-Yom;
In Chapter 12 verse 3 of the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, part of the Torah, which makes up the most sacred first 5 books of the Bible to the Jews, God makes a promise to Abraham, the first Jew, about the Jewish race.
He promised this to Abraham:
And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee.
The British were the people who came up with the idea of re-storing the Jewish homeland once the Ottoman Empire had fallen. It was the perfect time to do it. The land was barren and desolate, as I’ve talked about in previous programmes. Done properly it would be fairly easy. They drove the idea through the League of Nations, and when their plans were about to be realised, they made a 180 degree turn and started to vigorously advocate for the Muslim side. After that the steps taken to bring the Jewish homeland into existence were done with enormous reluctance by the British who had the job of making it happen. By 1922 the key people administering the creation of a Jewish homeland didn’t want it to happen.
Looking to please the Muslims, and almost always doing everything they could to frustrate Jews from returning to their homeland, I believe with the fundamental hope of preventing the Jewish homeland from coming into existence it took far longer than it should have for the Jewish homeland to come into existence. If it had happened before World War 2 how many of the Western European Jews would have survived I wonder. The Jews in Poland and the Soviet Union were in a different category and probably couldn’t have been saved.
In the lead up to, during and after World War 2, the full horror of what the British did to the Jews came to light. I’ll talk about all of that in later programmes. In this programme I’m going to talk about how the British turned a blind eye, looked the other way, to a massive immigration of Muslims from around the Muslim Middle East and North Africa, coming in to the future state of Israel. Often the British authorities passed off these newly arriving Muslims as being the indigenous people of Palestine. People who had lived there from time immemorial. That was a lie, and that lie is still repeatedly being told to us today.
From about the time that the Jewish state of Israel came into existence, the British Empire started to go out of existence. As I said at the beginning of this programme, God told Abraham:
And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee
So His will was done it would seem- the British Empire was rapidly extinguished.
Tag words: Genesis 12:3; Torah; Bible; Abraham; Ottoman Empire; League of Nations; Muslims; Jews; World War 2; the British Empire; Joan Peters; From Time Immemorial; Civil Rights movement; Ku Klux Klan; Yom Kippur War; Palestine Liberation Organisation; CBS free-lance writer; British Mandate; Public Records Office; Kew Gardens; Samakh; G. Farley, the Southern Deputy Commissioner; Deportation of Persons in Palestine Without Permission; Albert M. Hyamson; British High Commissioner Arthur Wauchope; 1936 Arab Revolt; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin al-Husseini; Lawrence of Arabia; Ernest Main; Palestine at the Crossroads;
With the Muslim population numbers in Western Palestine, modern Israel, stable for over 200 years it’s hard to see how they suddenly had a massive surge in numbers. Unless … large numbers of Muslims came from other Muslim countries, and the Muslims living in the British Mandate, who had for hundreds of years gone anywhere else because that country was a barren wasteland – that is until the Jews started up their farms – God’s promised re-birth of that country when the Jews returned in numbers.
From what I’ve seen I can only assume that vast numbers of Muslim natives to the land in what were now new countries, that had not really existed before, carved out of the Ottoman Empire by the victorious European powers. Muslims from those countries, attracted by the thriving Jewish farms, just dropped in to the British Mandate to say hello and didn’t go home. Well until the 1948 Arab Israel War, that I’ll talk about in a much later programme, when a lot of them moved onto the borders of Israel and, for mostly bad reasons, have stayed there ever since.
And now it’s time to get serious and tell you what happened and where the Muslims in the British Mandate, especially the ones crowing into the areas of the new Jewish farms, came from.
Tag words: Muslim; Western Palestine; Ottoman Empire; British Mandate; 1948 Arab Israel War; Colonel MacKereth; Jews; Winston Churchill; British Governor of the Sinai; Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations; Tewfik Bey El-Hurani; Hauranis; Palestine High Commissioner; The Hope Simpson Report of 1930; The White Paper; Sherif Hussein; Yasser Arafat; Palestine is Jordan and Jordan is Palestine; Black September; TransJordan; Kemal Karpat; Rishon l'Tsion; Riad Tabbarah; Population; Saddam Hussein; Colonel Conder; Heth and Moab;
In my last programme I ended with the rather depressing note that the Jordanians, even though they‘d conquered a part of the lands that formed the British Mandate of Palestine in 1948 didn’t hand them over to the proud Muslim Palestinian people for their homeland. They clung onto those lands for 18 years until the Israelis retook them in the 1967 Six Day War. What’s more no voice was raised anywhere in protest by or on behalf of the Palestinian people to return this land to them.
In fact the Jordanians stripped the West Bank bare of anything and everything that it had that was worth taking. When 18 years later the Israelis took it back in the 1967 Six Day War the entire Arab world, as if woken from a dream, realised that this was part of that precious ancient Muslim country of Palestine whose peoples were again being denied their birthright by those vile Jews.
I also mentioned that Egypt had conquered another sacred part of the country of Palestine, Gaza. I left you wondering whether the Egyptians had honourably given that land to the poor Muslim Palestinians as a down payment on their homeland. Well I ran out of time and couldn’t answer that for you – not then anyway.
To be honest I could have told you that the Egyptians clung tenaciously to it, just like the Jordanians had to the West Bank, and only parted with it when it was taken off them by the Israelis in the Six Day War. Again, as for the West Bank, the Palestinians didn’t mind that their sacred country, well a part of it, hadn’t been handed over to them. In fact the Palestinians Muslims don’t mind who else has their country unless they’re Jews. So this claim to a Palestinian state looks a bit dodgy to me.
While the Jordanians stripped the West Bank bare, the Egyptians certainly had their moment in their treatment of the Muslim Palestinians too. I’ll tell you about that and then I’m going to start on the investigation to find out where these Muslim Palestinians came from, if they hadn’t lived there from time immemorial as they all claim to have.
Tag words: British Mandate; Palestine; Muslim Palestinian; 1967 Six Day War; West Bank; Gaza; First Arab Israeli War; World War II; Nazism; Adolf Hitler; David Pryce-Jones; The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs; Grand Mufti; anti-semitism; Abed al-Kader al-Husseini; Fawzi Qawukji; Nazi Army; King Abdullah; Transjordan; Arab Conquest; Yasser Arafat; Gamal; Neil C Livingstone; David Halevy; Inside the PLO: Covert Units, Secrets Funds, and the War Against Israel and the United States; Conor Cruise O’Brien; Siege: The Saga of Israel and Zionism; Western Palestine; British Consul James Finn; Lord John Russell; Earl of Clarendon; AJ Sussnitzki; Ottoman Empire; Malcolm McDonald; Chamberlain-McDonald White Paper of 1939;
When did Muslim Palestinians, that we hear so much about today, come into existence?
The Arab Conquest of the Holy Land happened in 635AD. So maybe you’re thinking over 1300 years ago. You’d be wrong if you thought that.
Muslims who call themselves Palestinians only began to happen after the Muslims, Egypt, Syria, Jordan were decisively defeated by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War. Not because any Muslim before then had thought of themselves as Palestinians but for the reasons I’ll tell you about shortly. Up until 1967, if you made the mistake of calling a Muslim a Palestinian, you’d probably have been punched in the face. Up until then the only people called Palestinians, were the people whose land this had been going back to 1406 BC – the Jews. That should be the beginning and the ending of the argument that there was, or is now, such a thing as a Muslim Palestinian people. So let’s see what the Muslims had been saying up unril the Six Day War about who they were.
Tag words: Muslims; Palestinians; Arab Conquest; Holy Land; Six Day War; Allah; Emile Ghoury; Secretary of the Arab Higher Command; Musa Alami; Zuheir Muhsin; Palestinian Liberation Organisation; Paris Peace Conference; Arabs; Arab Conquests; Dennis Prager; British Palestinian Mandate; Ba’ath Party; Saddam Hussein; Umma; Greater Syria; Ottoman Empire; Fertile Crescent; George Antonius; Marie Syrkin; Palestinian Nationalism: Its Development and Goal; Haj Amin al-Husseini; President Assad; Sir George Adam Smith; The Historical Geography of the Holy Land; Yasser Arafat; Zionist Organization; Felix Frankfurter; San Remo Conference; Gaza Strip; the West Bank; Winston Churchill; Balfour Declaration; PJ Vatikiotis; Nasser and his Generation; Transjordan; King Hussein; Benjamin Netanyahu; A Durable Peace;
Now many of my listeners will not be religious Jews or Christians. So they may not believe anything that I’m about to say, but I promise you that at the very least I’m going to tell you a good yarn And the facts of what have happened must make even those doubters, doubt.
In 1995 the prime minister of Israel was Yitzak Rabin. On 5 October, he signed the Oslo Peace Agreement with the Palestinians. It gave up lands that made up part of the lands that God had promised to Abraham in Chapter 15:17 of the very first book of the Bible, the very first book of the Jewish Torah, that we know as the Book of Genesis.
Yitzak Rabin boldly pointed out at the time of signing the Peace Accords, contradicting God’s promise of the land that he gave to the Jews that:
The Bible is not Israel’s title deed.
On 4th November 1995 Rabin was assassinated. As fate would have it on that day, in accordance with Jewish tradition, in synagogues all over the world, read from the same verses in the Torah. The verse for that day was Genesis 15.
For the creation of modern day Israel, and the history of the British Mandate, it’s useful to look back at what God’s promise to Israel was about the Promised Land, because it seems to have been faithfully fulfilled in the history of Palestine so far – up to this very day.
Like everything in the Bible, God’s arrangements with the Jews were very specific. They are nothing like you would find in any other religion of the day. They had a number of very specific purposes and provisions. God told Moses what the deal was just before the Jews entered the Promised Land in about 1406BC. And now I’m going to tell you what He said.
Tag words: Yitzak Rabin; Oslo Peace Agreement; Abraham; Genesis 15:17; British Mandate; Moses; Promised Land; Leviticus 18:26-28; Torah; Exodus 29:46; Deuteronomy 7:6-8; Amos 3:2; Boney M; By the Rivers of Babylon; Deuteronomy 28:63-67; Ezekiel 33:28; Muslim; Dennis Prager; Arab Conquest;Muslims; Count Volney; James William Parkes; Whose Land? A History of the People of Palestine; Encyclopaedia Britannica;
The British Mandate over Palestine didn’t give England the same control as they had over one of their colonies or Dominions of the British Empire. The British, who had conquered the Middle East from the Ottoman Empire, and whose Lord Balfour had come up with the inspired idea of creating a homeland for the Jews in their traditional home, the Promised Land that God had given them, were put in charge of running Palestine. The Ottoman rulers were gone - forever. Someone had to run Palestine. That someone was the English.
They were put in charge of Palestine by the League of Nations. The job of the British was to make it easy for Jews to migrate there. To stop Muslims and other peoples from anywhere else in the world moving in there. The end-game was to see the Jews make up the majority of the people living in Palestine, and then to give them their independence.
Palestine, when England was given the Mandate, was mostly a run down uninhabited country. It was a wasteland. But that had begun to change from about the 1880s but only because Jewish immigrants had started to arrive and set up farming estates. These Jews were very successful in transforming the land. The Muslims were largely a nomadic people, looking for opportunities where they could make a living. The Muslims weren’t entrepreneurs they were just labourers. The Jews paid their farm workers really well. So the more Jews who arrived in Palestine and set up farms, the more Muslims came too.
Muslim countries entirely surrounded the British Mandate and every other country within cooee of Palestine was Muslim too. In these programmes I’ve used the word Muslim and not Arab. Arabs are a particular race and there aren’t that many of them in the area of Palestine. Of Muslims there are many, but they’re made up of all sorts of other races, including Persians in Iran and the Asiatic Turks in Turkey. Mostly everyone calls them Arabs, but that’s misleading.
So ideally Jews were supposed to be able to rock up to Palestine and walk straight in, and Muslims, who were not living in Palestine ideally might be allowed in temporarily to help with harvests etc, but then were supposed to return home. Most ideally of all no more Muslims from other countries should have been allowed into Palestine from the time the British mandate started in July 1922.
But that wasn’t how it was working out. Increasingly the British were dramatically slowing down legal Jewish immigration. Totally stopping illegal Jewish immigration. At the same time they did nothing to prevent all, except the most outrageous examples of Muslims entering Palestine from other countries, staying there. This has given the Muslims so much chance to cause so much trouble ever since making claims about having lived on the land from time immemorial – that aren’t true.
Generally far more Muslims entered Palestine illegally than Jews who entered legally or illegally. Since there were more Muslims there to start with than Jews, if this kept up there would never be a Jewish homeland. That actually seems to have been the goal of the British Middle East Department that had been given the job of bringing the Jewish state into existence. So I’d better talk about Colonel MacKereth because he should have been a giant of a figure in establishing the Jewish homeland – and that before World War 2. So many of the Jews who perished in the holocaust, would have been able to escape to Palestine if the British had done their job the way Colonel MacKereth was urging them to.
Tag words: British Mandate; Palestine; British Empire; Ottoman Empire; Lord Balfour; League of Nations; Muslims; Arabs; British Middle East Department; Colonel MacKereth; Anthony Eden; WD Battershill; Grand Mufti; George W Rendel; Head of the Eastern Department; Chaim Weizmann; Lord Ormsby-Gore; Palestine Royal Commission;
The Muslims who were willing to negotiate a settlement of their disputes were either dead or didn’t want to be dead so were never going to speak up in favour of a settlement with the Jews ever again. The Grand Mufti had done such a good job, that even today there are no so-called Palestinian Muslims that will speak up in favour of some amicable solution with the Jews over anything.
The British had appointed Earl Peel to investigate where the Jewish homeland was heading and how to deal with the angry Muslims who seemed to be constantly revolting after the latest revolt in 1921.
So what was the Grand Mufti’s position going to be when he appeared before the Peel Commission.
Tag words: Muslims; Arabs; Grand Mufti; Palestinian Muslims; Earl Peel; Peel Commission; Balfour Declaration; Jews; Adolf Hitler; Transjordan; Nashahsibis; Sheikh Kassab; Lewis Yelland Andrews;Colonial Secretary Ormsby-Gore; Round Table Conference of Middle Eastern leaders; Britain; Husseini clan; Ottoman Empire; British Mandate; Jewish immigration; League of Nations Mandate; anti-semitic; Jewish nation; Feisal; Felix Frankfurter; Zionist Organization; Churchill; Neville Chamberlain; Abdullah; Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen; Middle East Diary, 1917-1965; Herbert Samuel; Ronald Storrs; General W. N. Congreve; Ernest Richmond; Haj Amin al-Husseini;
When you hear Muslims, especially the new type of Muslims called Palestinians, speaking about Israel, all you ever hear is blind hatred directed at that nation and the Jews. Well the Zionists. In the last programme I told you about the subtle distinction that had grown up. It was supposedly not anti-semitic to say that you hated Zionists. It was anti-semitic to say that you hate Jews.
But since a Zionist is a person who wants a Jewish homeland, that doesn’t leave many Jews out. All of the problems that the Jews have suffered in the world since the conquest of their land by the Arabs in 635AD, could have been avoided to a great extent if they had had a separate country of their own to go to for sanctuary. The country that has been theirs 2500 years before the Arab Conquest armies arrived.
Largely since then, and especially from 1900 onwards, the Muslim regime and influential people, had been doing everything possible to stop Jews from other parts of the world going back to their homeland in Palestine. Anyone else could go there but not Jews. Because it was their homeland. I talked about this in Parts 9 and 10 of this series.
And as far as I can see, and have seen for the whole of my long life, is that all Muslims, with very few exceptions, feel exactly the same way about Israel and the Jews. They really want the nation of Israel wiped from the map and all of the Jews driven into the sea.
Except that isn’t actually how a lot of the Muslims feel, and when you think about it, that’s not surprising. There are always people of goodwill and who want to peaceably resolve differences, especially differences that end in war.
So why don’t we ever hear from those Muslims? Well the answer is disturbing. I’m going to look at what happened from the time of the British Mandate until the start of the Second World War.
Tag words: Muslims; Palestinians; Jews; Zionists; anti-semitic; Arab Conquest; British Mandate; Second World War; 1920 Easter Riots; Grand Mufti; Simon Sebag Montefiore; Jerusalem: A Bigoraphy; Haj Amin al-Husseini; World Islamic Conference; Temple Mount; Nashashibi family; Mayor Nashashibi; Dajanis family; Suleiman; Nabi Daoud; Khalidis family; Supreme Muslim Council; Adolf Hitler; Umma; völk; Nazi; Ba’thist; Saddam Hussein; Mein Kampf; Mussolini; Emil Ghouri; David Pryce-Jones; Closed Circle; Sir Arthur Wauchope; Higher Arab Committee; British Army; Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen; Peel Report; Joan Peters; From Time Immemorial; Sheikh Izzat al-Din al-Qassam; Ragheb Nashashibi; Abd al-Kadir-Husseini; Falchri Bey Nashashabi; Musa Kazem Husseini; Abu Musa; Palestine Arab Party; Green Hand militia; Wasif Jawhariyyeh; Ein Kerem; John the Baptist; Yasser Arafat; Neville Chamberlain; Earl Peel;
It was straight forward to set up the new homeland for the Jews after the League of Nations approved putting the Balfour Declaration into effect. Step One – allow all Jews who want to go to Israel to go there without any restrictions. Make sure it’s a safe welcoming place. The British government did the opposite. Step Two – Stop Muslims from countries outside the British Mandate entering into the new Jewish homeland and settling there. Secure the borders to stop Muslims illegally entering into the British Mandate. The French had done that for their new mandates adjoining the British Mandate. That didn’t happen! Muslims poured into the proposed new Jewish homeland. The British said the French system of setting up identity passes was too hard and they never tried. The British, well they really did nothing to stop Muslims from outside their Mandate from pouring into the country. In years to come those Muslims who arrived after 1922 would claim to have lived in Palestine from time immemorial. They would become the Palestinian refugees who said they had been driven from their homes by the Jews. Step Three – help the Jews set up the machinery for the new Jewish government so that when the time to create their new state, they’d have no problems taking over. The British did the opposite. They put Muslims into key government positions, including the police, consulted with the Muslims on how many Jews should be allowed into Palestine and followed what they said and enforced those numbers. The result was that the Jews were mostly kept out while illegal Muslim immigrants poured into the country without any attempt to stop them. It was going to be hard to get a majority of Jews in their homeland which would trigger the end of the British Mandate. The Americans had been confident that the British would do a good job creating the new Jewish homeland. At the peace talks the American delegate had said the prophetic words – England, as mandatory, can be relied on to give the Jews the privileged position they should have without sacrificing the [religious and property] rights of non-Jews. They were prophetic in the way that many prophecies are prophetic, what he said proved to be the opposite to the truth. The wartime British government was a Christian government aware of the Biblical accounts of the Jews returning to their Promised Land. How this would begin the process leading to the end times. The post-war British government was a secular humanist government that didn’t believe in those things. It believed in the romance of the noble Arab warrior that Lawrence of Arabia had told. They were overwhelmingly and strongly anti-semitic. They valued having control of that strategic part of the Middle East under their control – something that would end if they discharged their duties under the Mandate. Woodrow Wilson and wanted to end colonialism, especially in the old empires that had lost the war. Their colonial possessions had to be transitioned to free countries as quickly as possible. After studying the facts, and with my nearly 40 years of experience as a commercial litigator in the Supreme Court of New South Wales and the Federal Court of Australia, I’m convinced that British policy in Palestine was to stall indefinitely, or see the abandonment of the plan to create a Jewish homeland. Over the next programmes, beginning with this one, . Tag words: Jews; League of Nations; Balfour Declaration; British Mandate; Lawrence of Arabia; Woodrow Wilson; Haj Amin al-Husseini; Mufti; effendi; fellahin; Muslims; Arabs; Ruhi Bey al-Khalidi; anti-Zionist; Pan-Arab Congress; King Abdullah; Faisal; Sheriff Hussein of Mecca; Transjordan; Lieutenant-General Sir Louis Bois; Lord Herbert Samuel; Lloyd George; was Sir John Evelyn Shuckburgh; Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen; hebraphobe; Lord George Curzon; Colonel John Henry Patterson; Mussa Qassem Al-Husseini; Ronald Storrs; Ragheb Nashashibi; Mohammed Kamal el-Husseini; Nassereddin Nashashibi; Abraham; Grand Mufti;
Thanks to the Muslim riots in April 1920, the Nabi Musa riots, the League of Nations quickly acted to confirm the appointment of Britain to be in charge of the Palestine Mandate, which had the duty to implement the provisions of the Balfour Agreement. I’ll talk about that in a moment. The fact that the riots did this was a first and only goal where Muslim resort to violence of this kind worked against them.
But this looked like the last hurrah for Britain’s pro-Zionist enthusiasm for creating a Jewish homeland. It seems to be the case that from this point forward, almost every step Britain took was calculated to prevent any Jewish homeland from ever happening – up until the point when the British unceremoniously bailed out of Palestine in 1948, when the last British High Commissioner, General Sir Alan Cunningham, at 8am on Friday 14 May, without completing Britain’s assignment under the League of Nations Mandate, handed the mess that they had created almost from the beginning, over to the UN to sort out.
General Cunningham marched out of Government House in his full dress uniform. He reviewed a guard of honour. Then he mounted his armoured Daimler, and drove to inspect the troops at the King David Hotel. After that he then headed out to Kalandia Airport. Flew from Jerusalem to Haifa. From there, after midnight, he sailed for England. The British Mandate, the vital next step to the realisation of creating a home land for the Jews, had been so full of promise. Properly handled it would likely have significantly reduced the slaughter of the Jews in the Nazi holocaust – I’ll explain that at the end of the programme.
This unseemly British scramble to leave Palestine, leaving such chaos in its wake, led to the first of the many wars between the Jews and the Arabs.
What went so terribly wrong that led to this, in world historic terms, failures when the proper handling of the role of administering the British Mandate would have made for an enormous significantly less troubled world today. I’m an admirer of the British Empire – but this, this was unforgivable.
Tag words: Nabi Musa riots; League of Nations; Palestine Mandate; General Sir Alan Cunningham; Kalandia Airport; Nazi holocaust; Sir Eric Drummond; Balfour Declaration; King George V; Kingdom of Transjordania; Chaim Wiezmann; Winson Churchill; 1967 Six Day War; Sir Henry McMahon; Zionism; the McMahon Pledge; Lord Maugham; Historical Summary of Principal Political Events in Palestine Since the British Occupation in 1917; King Abdullah; Paris Peace Talks; Adolf Hitler; Easter Riots; anti-semitism; Sir Harold MacMichael; Palestine High Commissioner;
The last Turkish soldier left Jerusalem by St Stephen’s Gate at 7 am on 9 December 1917. By coincidence that was the first day of Jewish Hanukkah, the festival of lights. Hanukkah celebrated the liberation of Israel from the occupying forces of the Seleucid Empire, under Seleucus Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 134BC.
But then the Jewish rabbis say that there’s no such thing as a coincidence, the hand of God was clearly visible in this.
But now the real work of creating the Jewish homeland was to begin, with the country freed for the first time since 635AD when the Arab Conquest armies had first arrived – and that is a work in progress that has been continuing from that day in December 1917 to the present day.
Now we have to go back to San Remo in Italy in 1920 because that was where I left off the story.
Tag words: Turkish soldier; St Stephen’s Gate; Hanukkah; festival of lights; Seleucid Empire; Seleucus Antiochus IV Epiphanes; rabbis; God; Arab Conquest armies; British Mandate; World War I; League of Nations; Palestine; Woodrow Wilson; Balfour Declaration; Lawrence of Arabia; Great War; Lowell Thomas; Last Crusade; Buffalo Bill; Wild West; Annie Oakley; Seven Pillars of Wisdom; Simon Sebag Montefiore; Jerusalem: The Biography; Lord Balfour; British Foreign Office; Ottoman Empire; muftism; Winston Churchill; King Faisal; Sherif of Sherifs; Semiramis Hotel; Arab Revolt; Bedouin; Palestinian Mandate; Clementine Churchill; Muslims; Arabs; Lieutenant-General Louis J Bols; Ze’ev Jabotinsky; Pinkhas Rutenberg; Lord Herbert Samuel; Unholy Memories; Sherif of Sherifs; Emir of Mecca; Richard Waters-Taylor; Haj Amin-al Husseini; Hashemites; Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen; Middle East Diary; Easter Aaron Aronsohn; anti-Zionist; Storrs; Easter; Nabi Musa; Husseinis; Khalil Sakakini; Wasif Jawhariyyeh; Nehemia Rubitzov; Yitzhak Rabin; Aref el-Aref;
In a previous programme I talked about how Kaiser Wilhelm II, well before the Great War, has positively drooled at the thought of winning Jewish favour and support. The Kaiser was definitely anti-Semitic. He believed in the international Jewish conspiracy but vast amounts of money were waiting there to be tapped by a friend of the Jews – him for Germany. He had met with Sultan, Abdulhamed to plead the Jewish cause - but without success.
It was now 1917 and things had changed a lot since the Kaiser’s meeting before the war. The British were advancing towards Jerusalem. Not perhaps the best time to make the offer that Theodor Herzl had wanted back then, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
Zionism, after all, had been born in Austria. The headquarters for the Zionist movement up to 1914 had been in Berlin.
With prodding from the Germans, in August 1917, Jemal Pasha, the tyrant of Jerusalem, visited Berlin. He met with German Zionists and the Ottoman Grand Vizier, Talaat Pasha. Jemal reluctantly agreed to promote ‘a Jewish national home’. A kind of chartered company was offered for German Zionists with a limited form of local self-government and right of immigration.
News of this reached the halls of power in London. They’d been thinking along the same lines, but they were now in a much better position to really do something, because General Allenby, with his army, was approaching Jerusalem.
The name most closely associated with the move that the British now decided to make was Lord Balfour – and its now time to tell you how the English came to think that it was a good idea to create a homeland for the Jews not on their traditional lands, but instead in Uganda.
Tag words: Kaiser Wilhelm II; Sultan Abdulhamed; Theodor Herzl; Zionism; Jemal Pasha; Talaat Pasha; General Allenby; Lord Balfour; Holy Lands; Yasser Arafat; Dr Chaim Weizmann; Sir George Buchanan; Lloyd George; Russian Revolution; Emperor Nicholas II; Lord Rothschild; Balfour Declaration; Muslims; Arabs; Arthur Toynbee; Sherif Hussein; Old Testament; Sherif of Mecca; World War I; Lawrence of Arabia; Arab Revolt; The Truth About the Peace Treaties; Lord Robert Cecil; Treaty of Versailles; Zionist Organization; Jewish National Home; Sokolow Nahum; League of Nations; Felix Frankfurter; Feisal; Woodrow Wilson; Palestinian Arabs; San Remo Conference; Uganda;
Which of the great European powers offered the best chance for the Jews to realise their own homeland wasn’t clear.
The Ottoman Empire was there, and the Holy Lands were part of that Empire. Any Jewish homeland inside the Ottoman Empire wouldn’t be a free independent country.
Theodor Herzl, the head of the Zionist movement (the movement to win a homeland for the Jews) had travelled to the courts of Europe to plead his cause – the creation of a home for the Jews – that’s what Zionism means.
Kaiser Wilhelm, a man of dubious mental stability and no wisdom (as his starting World War I would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt), received Herzl and his cause favourably.
Strong anti-semitic views flourished in Germany at this time (but we hadn’t seen nothing yet – Hitler would take that to a whole new level). But the Kaiser’s unusual views on Jews, of the kind always involved with anti-Semitism, encouraged him to support Herzl’s ambition for a home for the Jews.
The Kaiser recorded:
…. considering the immense and extremely dangerous power which International Jewish capital represents, it would be a huge advantage to Germany if the Hebrews looked up to it in gratitude.
The Kaiser told Herzl that he would intercede with the Sultan on behalf of Herzl, music to Herzl’s ears. He asked Herzl what he wanted. Since the Holy Lands were part of the Ottoman Empire, that really meant that there was no hope of an independent Jewish homeland. So Herzl said he wanted a chartered company, under German protection. That was a novel idea.
The Kaiser invited Herzl to meet him in Jerusalem.
The Kaiser was true to his word. When he met with the Sultan he put Herzl’s request. The Sultan, Abdulhhamed (also rendered Abdul Hamid), rejected the idea but he was realistic about the likely outcome of the determination of the Jews for their own homeland, ultimately being successful, not the first time he had expressed this opinion. He said to his daughter:
The Jews may spare their millions. When my empire is divided, perhaps they will get Palestine for nothing. But only our corpse can be divided.
So there was a certain warm, fuzzy feeling, in the Jewish community about the Germans and where their support may lead for the Jews.
Tag words: Ottoman Empire; Holy Lands; Theodor Herzl; Zionist movement; Kaiser Wilhelm; Sultan Abdulhhamed; Sultan Abdul Hamid; General Baron Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein; Ahmet Jemal; the Husseinis; David Ben-Gurion; Pan Arabists; Christians; World War I; Abdullah ibn Hussein; Sherif of Sherifs; Emir of Mecca; Marshall Lord Kitchener; Your Country Needs You; Hashemite; Sir Henry McMahon; al-Fatah; Al-Ahd; Three Pashas; TE Lawrence; Gertrude Bell; the Imp; Saladin; Abu Ubayda; British Foreign Office; Ronald Storrs; Simon Sebag Montefiore; Jerusalem: The Biography; Secret Despatches from Arabia; Seven Pillars of Wisdom; Aqaba; Jesus Christ; Zion Mule Corps; Aaron Aaronshohn; Yosef Lishansky; Sarah Aaronshohn; Avshalom Feinberg;
The rich Muslims, the effendi, who owned a great deal of land in Palestine, whether they lived in Jerusalem or not, had a lot of influence with the local administrator of those lands. The most important of the local administrators, appointed by Constantinople, was the Sultan. There was also a lot of attention paid to Palestine in Constantinople the capital of the Ottoman Empire.
The newly established Jewish farm settlements were paying proper wages to the Muslims who worked for them. The rich Muslims, the effendi, had never done that. That was one of the reasons they had become so rich by exploiting the poor, ignorant, peasant Muslim farmers, the fellahin.
The effendi very often forced these peasant farmers off the land because they found that the Jews were able to come up with ridiculous amounts of money to buy what was frankly, appalling land. Still, as the old legal warning goes, caveat emptor, let the buyer beware.
Poor Muslim peasant farmers started to be expelled from their land by the rich Muslim landowners more and more often from about 1880 with the increasing number of Jews wanting land to star farms.
Where did these Jews get their money? Some came from other Sephardic Jews living in Muslim countries. There had long been a duty on Jews living away from the Holy Land to send what money they could to the Jews who were actually in the land.
But the real money especially came from the fabulously rich Jews in Europe, like Baron Rothschild and Moses Montefiore, being able to pay the extortionate prices that the effendi found that they could ask for and get it. This fact alone kills the argument that the Jews were no worse off living under Muslims than living under Europeans. There were ways to the top for Jews in Europe. One Jew, Benjamin Disraeli, was the prime minister of England, in 1868 and again from 1874 to 1880. Jews were certainly singled out as being different, but there were none of the crushing religious practices that had seen the Jews. This is seen in the report from the British ambassador in Jerusalem, W.T. Young to Viscount Palmerston on 13 May 1839 when he wrote:
The spirit of toleration towards the Jews is not yet known here to the same extent it is in Europe. . . still, the Jew in Jerusalem is not estimated in value much above a dog. . . .
But selling the land to the Jews at an enormous profit, was a two edged sword for the effendi because they were losing their lowly paid peasant farmers to the Jewish farmers, and if they wanted to keep them, they were being forced to pay their peasant farmers more than ever before.
But there was one thing that united the effendi and the fellahin and that was their common religion, Islam. More importantly the beliefs of that religion had, for almost the time that the Jews had lived in countries ruled by Muslims, and to this very day shaped how Muslims saw, reacted to and treated the Jews and that is what I’m going to talk about in this programme.
Tag words: Muslims; the effendi; the notables; Ottoman Empire; peasant farmers; the fellahin; Holy Land; Benjamin Disraeli; W.T. Young; Viscount Palmerston; the Bible; the Torah; Moses; Leviticus 19:34; Deuteronomy 10:19; Exodus 22:21; Hermann Cohen; Sodom; Genesis 19:4-5; Quran; the Hadith; Mohammad; angel Gabriel; Nessim Joseph Dawood; Surah III v.112; Surah II v.96; Surah II v.90; Surah III v.181; Surah III, v. 117-120; Surah IV, vv 160-161; Surah IV, v 46; Surah IV, v 101; Surah V, v 51; Surah V, vv 62-66; Surah II, vv 71-85; PLO Charter; Bernard Lewis; Islam in History; PJC McGregor; Arthur Rupin; Sultan Mehmet V Rashid; Ha Lebanon; Habazeleth; Zionist movement; Theodor Herzl; Max Norda; Zikhron; Petach Tikvah; Rishon; Arab Revolt; TE Lawrence; David Lean; Lawrence of Arabia;
In my last programme I told you about the restrictions that the Muslim world started to impose to stop Jews who were living in other Muslim countries, or in European countries emigrating to the Holy Lands – the land given to them by God. They had been the native inhabitants of those lands since 1406BC, up until the time that the Arab invasion happed in 635AD. So there were no Muslim natives to that land during the 2,000 years that the Jews had lived there before the Arab invasion, but there had always been Jews in the land – as I have discussed in my previous programmes and Jews remained in the Holy Lands at all times.
After the Arab Conquest, the Jewish homeland had been occupied by Muslims – different empires over the time. It is not accurate to call those people Arabs, as they have many different ethnicities, most of them are not Arabs.
Many Jews had scattered throughout North Africa, the Middle East and Europe, before the arrival of the Muslims. They were living in what would later became Muslim countries in North Africa and the Middle East and Spain, which was a Muslim country for many centuries, until the Christians drove them out finally in 1492.
Many Jews also settled in Europe. But, as I said, there had always been Jews in the Holy Land who had not left – and over centuries of Muslim rule they had mostly been reduced to the status of badly treated beggars.
But something began to stir at the end of the 1800s. Jewish farming settlements were started before the Zionist Movement came into existence. Jews came to the Holy Land before the Zionist emigrations began.
Around this time, the Muslims, in the form of the Ottoman Empire, and mostly absentee Muslim landlords who owned land in the Holy Lands, and who partly incited the existing Muslim hostility to the Jews, began, with some success, to block the Jews from returning to their homeland. There were no restrictions on Muslims from other Muslim countries preventing them coming and settling on those same lands that the Jews wanted to move to.
Often the Arabs that were moving to the Holy Lands were attracted by the success of the Jewish farms that were breathing life back into the wasteland that Palestine had become and remained for centuries under the various rulers, including lastly the Ottoman Empire.
In this programme I’m going to finish the story of the Jews trying to return to their country up until the end of World War I.
Tag words: Muslim; Arab invasion; God; Arab Conquest; Zionist Movement; Ottoman Empire; Holy Lands; World War I; Theodor Herzl; The Jewish State; Der Judenstaat; Zionist Conference; John Hickson; Edmund Fane; Sandjak of Jerusalem; Palestine; Arab notables; the effendi; Reverend A Ben Oliel; the Presbyterian Alliance; S.E. Simeon; Mutasarrif of Jerusalem; Resid Bey; Sultan Abdulhamed; Yasser Arafat; David Farhi; Dr. Sami Gunzberg; Dr Atif Huseyin; PLO Charter; Nashashibi family; Anti-semitism; Ruhi Bey al-Khalidi;
For the longest time, there had been many Jewish leaders who had revived discussion in the Sephardic Jewish community – the Jews who lived under Muslim rule in North Africa and the Middle East, including the Ottoman Empire - about actually doing something about returning to the Promised Land. That was the land that God had promised Moses that the Jews would have forever – on one condition - that they honoured and worshipped God in accordance with his laws. Well the Jews had failed miserably on that deal. They had been punished by God more than once. By the Assyrians destroying the Northern Kingdom - forever. By the Babylonians destroying much of the Southern Kingdom, and deporting many Jews to Babylon – although that one was only temporary – for 70 years. That’s the exile that Boney M sang about in their song, “By the Rivers of Babylon”.
As early as the 1100s the famous Jewish rabbinical scholar, Jehudah Halevi, was urging a return to the Promised Land, a journey which he made – but not for long as I’ll soon share with you.
By the 1800s many of the world’s Jews lived under Muslim rule – which included the occupation of their homeland Israel by the Muslim conquerors. Who the masters of the Jewish homelands were was something that changed over time. It included the original Arab conquerors, the European Crusaders, the former slaves of the Muslims, the Mamluks, the Ottoman Turks for the longest time. Finally there was a little post script when, after World War I, the British were put in charge of a new land, carved out of the Ottoman Empire, that was called Palestine, or the British Mandate – modern Israel and Jordan. The plan there had been to have all of that land as a new Jewish homeland, where the more recent occupants of these historic lands, who were living there at the time the Mandate ended, the Muslims, could live together with the Jews in peace and harmony.
Many Jews lived in Europe, including Russia. They had been persecuted there – at times very badly. But at all times, always, there were still, and always had been, Jews living in their Promised Land. Those Jews clung on tenaciously to their homeland, although they were living in abysmally poor circumstances. Largely they had to survive on charity from Muslims, from gifts of money from other Sephardic Jews in Muslim ruled countries, and with gifts of money from Jews in Europe. It was important to keep the Jews in the Promised Land and it was the duty of every Jew to make sure that they could survive there until they all came together again.
The Jews living in the Promised Land had been oppressed by the Muslims for most of the time. But from the late 1800s, beginning first with Yehudah Alkalay’s 1857 treatise, which inspired Theodor Herzl’s 1897 book Der Jüdenstaat - The Jewish State, the yearning to return to their land began to become a reality. In the late 1800’s, from about 1873, the movement of Jews from outside the Promised Land to the Promised Land began, with a lot of obstacles.
Tag words: Sephardic Jewish community; Ottoman Empire; Promised Land; Moses; Assyrians; Babylonians; Boney M; By the Rivers of Babylon; Jehudah Halevi; British Mandate; Yehudah Alkalay; Theodor Herzl; Der Jüdenstaat; The Jewish State; effendi; the notables; Rishon L’Tsion; moshava; fellahin; peasant farmers; Promised Land; Arab invasion; Genesis 26:13-15; Philistines; Baron Edmond von Rothschild; Zikhron Ya’akov; Metullah; farming research station; Triticum dicocoides; American Ministry of Agriculture; Atlit; Zionist movement; Mehmed Sherif Rauf Pasha; Lovers of Zion; Hovevei Zion; Kerak;
On 13 November 1974 Yasser Arafat addressed the United Nations. He told them that from 1881 the Jewish invasion began of the verdant area inhabited mainly by an Arab people in the course of building its life and dynamically enriching its indigenous culture.
Everything he said was true.
Well not that there was a Jewish invasion. There was no Jewish state so how could they invade a part of the world that formed a part of one of the world’s then great powers the Ottoman Empire without an army. It took England, Russia and Australia four years to defeat the Ottoman Empire with their vast and powerful armies, but the idea that a bunch of Jews could forcibly take land off the poor Muslim farmers in the Holy Lands and from the Ottoman Empire, which had a proven track record of really hating the Jews for hundreds of years, did nothing to stop them is just nonsense.
The real story is that the Jews came into possession of land in the Holy Lands the way most of us do. They bought it. They bought it from wealthy Arabs, who mostly lived nowhere near the Holy Lands. Who lived in more distant and sophisticated cities in the Muslim world, like Cairo and Damascus. Muslim owners who had finished robbing their peasant fellahin farmers of every last shekel they had, then had expelled them from their land to become nomads roaming all through Muslim controlled lands. Then those same rich Arabs, the notables, the effendi, sold the land, at outrageously high prices, to the Jews. After they’d sold the land, those effendi told their poor fellow Muslims that the Jews were stealing their land. Yes, they did that and that lie continues today, as Yasser Arafat’s speech to the UN revealed. It’s a lie we hear all of the time in the media today as well as from many of the world’s leading politicians.
Oh, and the land was verdant - a rich green. No it wasn’t. It was a barren desert from centuries of neglect by the Ottoman rulers and their sultans who had robbed Muslim farmers blind until they were forced to walk off their land.
And, of course people who don’t know where their next meal’s coming from aren’t going to be dynamically enriching their indigenous culture, as Yasser Arafat said they were doing. In any event the people living in the Holy Lands brought their culture with them from some other part of the Ottoman Empire or the Muslim world because there were very few Muslims who had lived in Palestine for long.
The Zionist movement that Yasser Arafat complains about, began with the first Zionist Congress held in 1897. The first settlers from Europe under this new movement didn’t arrive in the Holy Lands until about 1907. So Yasser Arafat saying the invasion by Zionists began in 1880, is again way off the mark.
Well it looks like everything that Yasser Arafat said at the UN was wrong about the Holy Lands.
Let me tell you now what was really happening with Jews going onto their Promised Land to start farming, something they hadn't really done in a serious way since the Muslim invasion in 630AD – 1250 years before. But in the late 1870’s they did start to go back onto the land, even before the Zionist movement came into existence, and before settlers under that movement started coming to the Holy Lands. Something was stirring.
Tag words: Yasser Arafat; United Nations; Jewish invasion; Ottoman Empire; Holy Lands; Muslim; peasant farmers; fellahin; the notables; the effendi; Zionist movement; Zionist Congress; Baron Rothschild; Moses Montefiore; Petachvah; Petach Tikvah; Rishon-Le-Zion; Sephardic Jew; Jehudah Halevi; Promised Land; Rudolf Kayser; The Life and Time of Jehudah Halevi; Mohammad; Torah; Assimilation; state of Israel; Nazis; World War I; UNRWA; Theodor Herzl; Rabbi Yehudah Alkalay; Destiny of the Lord; WT Young; Viscount Palmerston; Colonel Charles Churchill; James Finn; Damascus Affair; 2 Samuel 5:7;
What were things like for the peasant farmers, the fellahin, living and farming in Palestine after the Ottoman Empire took over from the Mamluks in the 1880s when the Zionist invasion began and the land was forcibly taken from those peasant farmers?
According to Yasser Arafat’s speech to the UN on 13 November 1974 it would have been thanks to an enlightened system of government that let to Palestine under the Muslims who lived in the area of modern day Israel, and worked the farms there to make it, in his words, a verdant area, inhabited mainly by an Arab people in the course of building its life and dynamically enriching its indigenous culture.
Syria, as it was called, which covered Syria, Israel and Jordan, was ruled by sultans. Sultans were secular rulers of an area in the Ottoman Empire – not Muslim religious leaders. The sultan’s power was virtually unlimited. A wise sultan could make the area he governed prosperous. And if he was the opposite, then the result would be bad.
Historian Jacob de Haas in his 1939 book, History of Palestine – The Last Two Thousand Years, wrote of Palestine:
"The sultans regarded Palestine as their personal domain, acquired by the law of arms and war. The inhabitants …. could not pretend to real or personal property. Even private inheritance reverted to the sultan. …. all the country was crown land. When this system of crown land was compromised by grants to nobles, the peasants did not go with the land. …. The individual could not be imprisoned for debt though the village, as a unit, could be made to suffer for its collective obligation. The struggle, therefore, was between the land and the tax collector. If the assessor arrived at the right moment he seized what he claimed, and satisfied his demand. The peasant had no interest in thorough cultivation, or in the fertilization of the soil. His primitive tools were evidence of his poverty and indifference."
Obviously, for Yasser Arafat to have been right in his description of Palestine as a thriving, verdant green land, things had to have changed from what Jacob de Haas was describing, so let’s find out what happened and when that made this transformation of Palestine, that Yasser Arafat knew, possible.
Tag words: peasant farmers; fellahin; Palestine; Ottoman Empire; Mamluks; Zionists; Yasser Arafat; UN; Muslims; Sultans; Jacob de Haas; History of Palestine – The Last Two Thousand Years, wrote of Palestine; Count Constantine Francois Volney; Travels Through Syria and Egypt in the Years 1783, 1784, 1785; Charles Issawi; Columbia University; Princeton University; The Economic History of the Middle East. 1800-1914; Abraham Granott; The Land System in Palestine: History and Structure; Sir John Hope Simpson; The Refugee Problem: Report of a Survey; Lord Ormsby-Gore; Bernard Lewis; John Lewis Burckhardt; Travels in Syria and the Holy Land; William McClure Thomson; The Land and the Book; Roderique Davison; George Washington University; Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1876; Ziya Bey; Hurriyet #5; Suleyman Pasha; Printing presses; Hebron; Charles Thomas Wilson; Peasant Life in the Holy Land; Akira Kurosawa; The Seven Samurai; Sam Peckinpah; The Magnificent Seven; Count Volney;Charles Issawi; H. B. Tristramm; Lortet; G Schumacher; Der Arabische Pflug; Zionist Jews; Neville Mandel; al-Husayni; al-Khalidi; al-Nashashibi; Abdul Razak Kader; The Jerusalem Post;
Yasser Arafat, in his speech at the United Nations on 13 November 1974, declared that the Jewish invasion (his words not mine) of Israel began with Zionism in 1881. Then on 29 November 1947, the United Nations passed Resolution 181 for the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine, modern day Israel and Jordan, into Jewish and non-Jewish areas. This led to the creation of the modern states of Israel and Jordan. The British Mandate covered the area of Biblical Palestine, as it existed in the Bible. The whole of the area of Israel and Jordan was supposed to have been the new Israel. That didn’t happen.
The UN Resolution gave the Jews just about 8.3% of the British Mandate of Palestine. That was a bit puzzling because the League of Nations resolution of 24 July 1922 gave the British certain territories in the Middle East, including where the much smaller modern Israel is today, for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people. This Mandate was for the purposes of expressly putting into effect the declaration originally made by the British government on 2 November 1917, the Balfour Declaration, which had that aim. Why this happened will be the subject of some later programmes – and that is a story you won’t find told today.
The UN Resolution for creating the state of Israel, even in the form that it was passed in giving Israel only 8.3% of what it should have been given as its homeland, was voted against by all Arab nations.
Jews had been mostly blocked from moving to their Promised Land by the Ottoman Empire at the request of the local rulers it had appointed to that area. This has to be remarked on. Why would the Muslims have no problem with Jews living anywhere in the Ottoman Empire which covered all of North Africa and the Middle East, but forbade the Jews returning to their Promised Land. You would be justified in thinking that the reason for that was what was likely to come out of it. The Jews returning to their homeland that the Arabs had conquered and reclaiming it for their home. Just speculation on my part but it sounds plausible.
But with Zionism emerging in Europe, with powerful and wealthy Jews backing it, like Baron Rothschild and Moses Montefiore, and with well educated Jews, including many professional people, this stopping of Jews going to the Holy Lands looked like it was going to end. The Jews have always been a major race in the world, over represented in most fields of human endeavour. But without a country of their own they had been powerless and as my previous programmes have recorded from observations of travellers through Muslim lands over that time, at the overwhelmingly and unrelentingly cruel mercy of the Muslims for 1500 years.
The Jews had been mostly passive victims of the inhuman treatment they had received for so long from the Muslims and many European countries. Zionism, a movement expressing a strong urge for Jews to return to their Promised Land and make it their own again after thousands of years, was not a welcome development. How would the Muslims react in the time leading up to the creation of the ..
According to Yasser Arafat 1881 was when Zionism got under way, and some surprising and unexpected things happened that no one has bothered to tell you. Not even Yasser Arafat.
Tag words: Yasser Arafat; United Nations; Zionism; British Mandate of Palestine; Resolution 181; Israel; Jordan; League of Nations; Balfour Declaration; Ottoman Empire; Muslims; Jews; Baron Rothschild; Moses Montefiore; Promised Land; Holy Lands; fellahin; Egyptian Nationality Code; Theodor Herzl; Der Jüdenstaat; The Jewish State; Zionist Congress; Alfred Dreyfuss; anti-Semitic; Adolf Hitler; Joseph Stalin; Jewish Colonial Trust; Bank Leumi; Jewish National Fund; World War I; Statistical Abstract of Palestine; Arab Conquest; Jewish Revolt; Sephardic Jews; Reverend James Parkes; Vital Cuinet; Mohammad; Mamluk; Bedouin; Bernard Lewis; The Emergence of Modern Turkey; A Granott; The Land System in Palestine;
The Jews have claimed, especially since 1881, that they needed their own separate homeland. The land they claim is the land that they have occupied since about 1406 BC when Joshua led the children of Israel into God’s Promised Land. The Jews have lived there continuously, and in large numbers ever since. All sorts of empires have conquered and ruled them. The Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Medo-Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines and finally the Ottoman Empire. In about 635 AD the Arabs came as the latest conquerors of the Promised Land. But those Arabs didn’t stay there for very long. They were replaced by an enormous mix of different peoples, mostly connected with Islam, but including Christians. Many Muslim dominated cultures then ruled the Promised Land, with the exception of the time that the Christian Crusaders ruled the land for about 88 years between 1099 AD to 1187 AD and for other short periods. Then they were replaced by the Mamaluks, initially Muslim slave soldiers, but they became rulers of their own empire. Then the Ottoman Empire replaced them in about 1516 and after that ruled there continuously until the First World War saw their empire destroyed and new nations created out of their territory in the Middle East, including land that was intended to become Israel – modern day Israel and Jordan. The Jews got their own land and the Persians got back their lands of modern day Iran. The Jewish claim to their own homeland began to be agitated for by the Zionists (the movement for the Jews to get their lands back) from about 1881. The Zionists got their biggest boost with the British Balfour Declaration in November 1917 which promised what the Zionists wanted – a homeland for the Jews. The land that they had owned, or at least never ceased to live on, since 1406 BC – so for nearly 2,500 years. In fact the territory that formed Jewish lands in their day were much bigger than what the Jews were finally given as Israel. But the Muslims, who were trying to get their own states carved out of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, just like the Jews were, say that there never was a need for a Jewish homeland because they always lived in peace and harmony with the Jews. My last programme didn’t support that argument – at all. Since North Africa and the Middle East has been under Muslim rule, the Jews have suffered the unsufferable, at least in the countries that I looked at last time, which were Yemen, Iraq, Morocco, and Algeria. Well there are other Arab countries besides these so in this programme that finishes looking at Muslim countries in North Africa and the Middle East, I’ll see whether the Jews lived in contentment and harmony in those other countries. I’m going to start first with Tunisia. Tag words: Israel; Arabs; Muslims; Jews; Promised Land; Joshua; Christian Crusaders; Mamaluks; Ottoman Empire; First World War; Zionists; Balfour Declaration; dhimmi; Anselme Adorne; Al-Jannabi; Saad Dynasty; Morocco; Tunisia; ghettoes; hara; mellahs; Muhammad Bey; Salomon Garsin; Yom Kippur; A Taninos; Syria; Damascus; Arab Conquest; Albert Hourani; Abd al-Rahim al-Jawbari; Koran; Hayyim the Jew; JL Burckhardt; EBB Barker; HL Bodman; Lebanon; Druse Rebellion; Dir-el-Qamar; Libya; Byzantines; Almohads; Ali Gurzi Pasha; synagogue; Zliten; David Littman; Jews Under Muslim Rule in the Late Nineteenth Century;
From 1917, but even before that, there was a lot of pressure in the West to create a state for the Jews as their homeland. In a secular way, to give back to them the Holy Lands that God had given them under Moses. On 14 May 1948 that happened. But it happened in part thanks to a new movement amongst the Jews, known as Zionism – a homeland for the Jews. That movement had started in Europe (particularly Russia) and from the 1880s onward it had started to draw Jews back to their God Promised Land in response to that new idea. From my previous programmes you’ll know that there has always been large numbers of Jews living in what is now Israel, and they had been returning there almost continuously for over a 1,000 years. The Arab argument against creating a separate state for the Jews, was that the Jews did not need a country of their own. They said that the Muslims and the Jews had lived peaceably together for hundreds of years in all of the Muslim countries, so why stir things up – and has the creation of Israel stirred things up. That seems to be an important point, I think. So in this and the next programme I’m going to trace the history of how well, or otherwise, the Muslims and the Jews got along before the Zionist movement that said the Jews needed a homeland of their own. Once we’ve had a look at that we’ll have a pretty good idea of how well they got along before the idea of Zionism started and whether the Jews really did not deserve to have a separate homeland when they could live as equals among the Muslims. Tag words: Jews; Holy Lands; Moses; Zionism; Arab; Muslim; Jacob Sappir; Even Sappir; Yemen; Necbuchadnezzar; Cyrus the Great; dhimma; Mohammad; Mamluks; caliphs; Babylonian Captivity; al-Hakim of the Fatimids; Redeemer of Mankind; Golden Calf; Ten Commandments; HZ Hirschberg; A History of the Jews in North Africa; Edward Lane; Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians 1833-1835; Kanush al-Ghauri; mellah; hara; Maghrebi; Torah; David Littman; Jews Under Muslim Rule in the Late Nineteenth Century; Almohads; Moses Maimonides; Epistle Concerning Apostasy; Ibn Shoshan; anti-semitic; Charles de Foucauld; Reconnaissance au Maroc; William Shaler;
By the 1800s and 1900s the Promised Land was neglected and run down. The prophetic description of what would happen to the God forsaken Promised Land by the Old Testament prophet, Isaiah, in Chapter 33 verse 9 had well and truly been realised. “The earth mourneth and languisheth: Lebanon is ashamed and hewn down: Sharon is like a wilderness; and Bashan and Carmel shake off their fruits.” The Jews remained, and some other people, but mostly what is modern day Israel was a wasteland. It remained a wasteland until the late 19th Century when something changed. I’ll talk about that in another programme. By 1893 the population of Israel, the home today to nearly 10 million people, had a population of about 153,031 people. This was made up of Jews (who were the majority), Arabs (who were the next most populous group) and non-Muslims (people from a very wide range of other races and countries, as you heard in my last programme). How long those Muslims had been living there is an important question. I’ll talk about that in a later programme. The exact breakdown of people living in the Holy Lands at the end of the Nineteenth Century, the 1890’s, was 59,431 Jews, 55,823 Muslims and 37,852 Christians and other. The number of Jews living there was remarkable because the Ottoman Empire had been under constant pressure, for centuries, to stop or at the least severely restrict Jews from elsewhere entering the Holy Lands from other parts of the Middle East, Africa and Europe. Let’s have a look at the Holy Lands through the eyes of tourists who visited there during this time from the time of the Romans, after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD, to the 1890’s, including the famous author, Mark Twain. Tag words: Promised Land; Old Testament; Isaiah 33:9; Jews; Arabs; Holy Lands; Mark Twain; Jewish Revolt; Arab Conquest Armies; Suleiman I; Caesaria; Don Joseph Nasi; the Great Jew; Tiberias; Jesus; Nazareth; Thomas Shaw; Count Constantine Francois Volney; Travels Through Syria and Egypt in the Years 1783, 1784, 1785; A Keith; The Land of Israel; J. S. Buckingham; Travels in Palestine; Hebron; Bethlehem; Jerusalem; J.B. Forsyth; A Few Months in the East; H.B. Tristram; The Land of Israel: A Journal of Travels in Palestine; The Innocents Abroad; Bedouins; Jules Hoche; Pays des croisades; Reverend Samuel Manning; Those Holy Fields; Professor Fred Gottheil; The Population of Palestine, circa 1875; WC Prime; Tent Life in the Holy Lands; Colonel C. R. Conder; Heth and Moab; Pierre Loti; Mount Gilboa; David Landes; Palestine before the Zionists;
Israel. It’s hardly ever out of the news. It’s either always doing something bad, or accused of doing something bad. Whatever is happening it’s always painted as the villain. In 1948 the modern state of Israel was carved out of the lands that had been part of the Ottoman Empire. The Arabs, and their sympathisers (of whom there are many) today say that that wasn’t fair because the United Nations gave land to Jews who didn’t live there, taking it off the Arabs who had lived there from time immemorial. The Jews, the Arabs and their sympathisers say, had lived for well over a thousand years in other parts of the world – ever since the Romans expelled them from Israel in about 70 AD. But in my last programme I found that the Jews were still living and thriving in their homeland, which the Romans had called Palestine to piss the Jews off, up until the time that the Arab armies of Islam, with many mercenaries who weren’t Arabs, arrived and drove out the Byzantine Empire. So the question for me to answer in this programme is what happened to the Jews under the Arabs, or maybe more exactly the Muslims, because many of the peoples living in the Middle East, aren’t Arabs – like the Turks and the Persians for instance. But most of them are Muslims. Tag words: Israel; Ottoman Empire; Arabs; Jews; Romans; Palestine; Byzantine Empire; Turks; Muslims; Persians; Holy Lands; Arab Conquest; people of the Book; Christians; The Bible; Old Testament; New Testament; Jesus; Lydda; Ramle; Jordan; Ascalon; Caesarea; Gaza; Jericho; Dera’a; Hebron; dhimmi; Egypt; North Africa; Turks; Negroes; Berbers; Slavs; Greeks; Dailamites; Crusaders; Jerusalem; Acre; Caesarea; Haifa; Benjamin of Tudela; Academy of Jerusalem; Saladin; Mamluks; Kurds; Jewish Academy; Jacques of Verona; Dean of Mainz Cathedral; Bernhard von Breidenbach; Selim the Grim; Aleppo; General Allenby; Middle East; Suleiman I; Spain; King Ferdinand; Queen Isabella; Sephardic Jews; Sephardic Jews; Ladino; Safed; Don Joseph Nasi; the Great Jew; Zionists; Promised Land; John of Wurzburg; Latins; Germans; Hungarians; Scots; Navarese; Bretons; English; Franks; Ruthenians; Bohemians; Palestinian ; Bulgarians; Georgians; Armenians; Syrians; Persian Nestorians; Indians; Egyptians; Copts; Maronites; Norsemen; Danes; Frisians; Tartars; Russians; Nubians; Samaritans; League of Nations; British mandate; World War I; Mohammad; Genesis 17:8; Abraham; Canaan; Frederick the Great; Adolf Hitler;
I grew up in the 1950s and the 1960s. I remember when I was high school seeing the headlines in the newspapers in 1967 as the Arab nations united to go to war against Israel without Israel having done anything to provoke it, other than to exist. Graphics were shown, like I’m used to seeing in the military books I read all of the time. The balance of forces. The Israeli aircraft, tanks and men, compared to the massively overwhelming combined Arab forces of aircraft, tanks and men. The population of Israel in 1967 was about 2.7 million people. The population of the Arab nations was about 550 million. My memories from the time, I was at high school, not a university student nor in the work force, was that the world held its breath for Israel. It seemed to be the Biblical David, against the Arab Goliath. I felt like everyone was rooting for Israel. Then it happened. It was all over in a flash. Somehow, miraculously it seemed to me, and I think to the rest of the world at the time, Israel survived. It not only survived, it won a victory that was incredible. Then, maybe its just me and my perspective at the time and over the years since and because of that great victory, the mood of much of the world started to swing against Israel. Slowly, but with increasing speed. The 2.7 million Jewish people started to become the Goliath and the 550 million Arabs started to become the bullied victims of this irresistibly powerful monster. The main voice heard today in the media and from the left wing political parties and supporters, tells us that the Jews are to be hated, or maybe it’s just the Zionists. They seem to be the bad Jews. Well there’s one thing I hate and that is not knowing the facts and then still incredibly being stupid enough to make judgments about it. Mark Twain didn’t say it supposedly, but he easily could have, that it’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they’ve been fooled. How can I make a judgment about Israel being bad, when I don’t know the facts. So now after doing a lot of investigation, and I think it would be helpful for you if I shared what I’ve learnt, I’ll tell you what I’ve learned. In this programme I’m going to begin at what seems to me to be the best starting point. Before the Zionists came on the scene, and the modern state of Israel was created, possibly stealing the land from the unwilling Palestinian population who we are told had lived there from time immemorial. We’re told that after the diaspora, the word used for what is said to have happened after the Romans crushed the Jewish rebellion in about 70AD and destroyed Jerusalem and scattered the Jews across the Middle East and Europe, the Jews were left living anywhere and everywhere, just not in Israel. So in this programme I’m going to begin at what seems to be the beginning, what were things like before there was the modern state of Israel. Was Israel/Palestine freed from Jews by the Romans? The German word for this was judenrein – meaning free from Jews, that was Hitler’s goal for Europe. Tag words: Israel; Biblical David; Arab Goliath; Six Day War; Mark Twain; Zionists; diaspora; judenrein; Adolf Hitler; General Allenby; Balfour Declaration; Ottoman Empire; Turkey; Middle East; West Bank; the Gaza Strip; British Mandate; Iraq; Syria; Lebanon; Jordan; League of Nations; Transjordan; Abdullah; Jewish People’s Council; Tel Aviv Museum; Rothschild Boulevarde; Egypt; Palestinians; Jews; Abraham; Abram; Sarai; Sarah; Herman Melville; Moby Dick; Ishmael; Nebuchadnezzar; Lamentations; Cyrus the Great; Nehemiah; King Atarxerxes; King Solomon; Alexander the Great; Antiochus IV Epiphanes; Maccabean Revolt; Pompey; Coliseum; Holy Lands; Bar Kochba; Promised Land; Palestina; Caracalla; Byzantine empire; Constantinople;
In this Danger Zone programme I’m going to talk about a cavalryman who was shot down – what was he doing? Riding a flying horse? Two planes that shot each other down. About what happened when those crews who shot each other down met on the ground after they’d each crashed? Did they become good friends and laugh about it? Or did the ones that had the guns kill the ones that didn’t have any? Why did they steal a car? It’s a pretty interesting programme. So don’t flip channels. Tag words: He-111 bomber; Leutnant Horst Schopis; AdolfHitler; General von Falkenhorst; Feldwebel Karl-Heinz Strunk; Unteroffizier Josef Auchtor; Hans Hauck; Blackburn Skua; Captain Richard Thomas Partridge; Royal Marines; Lt Robert Bostock; Royal Navy; HMS Hermes; HMS Ark Royal; Fleet Air Arm; Gotli; Bergen; Trondheim; Lake Heilstugu; Lake Breidal; Spitifres; King George VI; Stryn; Sevald Grotli; Ålesund; Blenheim fighters; Robert Bostock; Klas Gjolmesli; Norwegian Aviation Museum; Bodø; Yeovilton Museum; Into the White; Rupert Grint; Ron Weasley; Harry Potter;
You’ve probably heard of the Darwin Awards – a made up thing with stories about people who meet their deaths through their own unbelievable stupidity – Darwin – survival of the fittest etc. Well this Danger Zone programme is about the opposite. People, who in spite of everything, should have died – but didn’t. I tried to see if there was a name for the opposite of the Darwin Awards but there isn’t. Tag words: Darwin Awards; Elvas Jenkins; Methodist church; Christian Endeavour group; Jeanie Reid; Methodist minister; 2nd Field Company Australian Engineers (Sappers); The Bible; New Testament; Psalms; Western Front; Pozières; Airman Nicholas Alkemade; Royal Air Force; Lancaster Bomber; Gestapo; Luftwaffe; Tsutomu Yamaguchi; Usain Bolt; Mitsubishi; Hiroshima; B-29 bomber; Nagasaki; DNA; Chernobyl;
Have you ever been conned? I remember someone told me that they’d never met a conman they didn’t like. If you have been you probably felt all sorts of regrets that you should have seen it coming. That you shouldn’t have been so stupid. But you know something, it meant that you were a normal human being. In September and October 1938 the Prime Minister of England was conned when he met Adolf Hitler and gave him a large part of Czechoslovakia. Boy did that cause the world some trouble but you have to understand why it is that we trust people that we shouldn’t and trusting someone says that you are a good person even if your judgment is off – and in this Danger Zone I’ll explain why as we look at what happened to Mr Chamberlain, I’ll look at Bernie Madoff (one of the greatest conmen of all time – and one of the nicest guys you could ever want to meet) and finally Mr Markopolos – the man that caught Bernie Madoff and a man you would probably never want to be in the shoes of. Tag words: Adolf Hitler; Führer; Neville Chamberlain; Czechoslovakia; Harry Markopolos; Bernie Madoff; Woodrow Wilson; Nazi Party; Greater German Reich; Sudeten Germans; Berchtesgaden; Lord Halifax; Herman Göring; Joseph Goebbels; William Lyon McKenzie King; Gertrude Stein; George Bernard Shaw; Malcolm Gladwell; Talking to Strangers; yurodivy; holy fool; Hans Christian Andersen; The Emperor’s New Clothes; Michael Ocrant; Securities Exchange Commission;
Yesterday, upon the stair,I met a man who wasn't thereHe wasn't there again todayI wish, I wish he'd go away... That poem was inspired by the real story of a haunting by a ghost supposedly seen on the stairs of a house in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada. In 1899 American poet, Hughes Mearns wrote that poem, the words I just read to you. It ended up in a song and then a play. In the 1930’s it was given a make-over and became a popular song. It’s appropriate for this programme because I’m going to tell you about a man who wasn’t there, and he made a huge contribution to the victory over Hitler. Unusually this hero was dead before he did what he did. But he wasn’t a ghost, he was a cadaver. Tag words: Hughes Mearns; Adolf Hitler; cadaver; Captain (Acting Major) William Martin; Royal Marines; Ian Fleming; James Bond; 007; World War II; Rear Admiral John Godfrey; Royal Naval Intelligence Division; Trout Memo; A Suggestion (not a very nice one); corpse; Winston Churchill; Operation Mincemeat; Operation Barclay; John Glyndwyr; Michael Glydwyr; John Melville; HMS Dasher; Lieutenant Commander Mark Hill; rat poison; DNA; Charles Chalmondeley; Ewen Montagu; MI5; Jean Leslie; Ronnie Reed; Lloyd’s Bank; “Jock” Horsfall; Aston Martins; HMS Seraph; Huelva; Lieutenant Commander (future Admiral) Jewell; Psalm 39; Mae West life jacket; Lieutenant-General Sir Archibald Nye; General Sir Harold Alexander; Adolf Clauss; German spy; General Franco; Nazis; Karl-Erich Kühlenthal; Abwehr; Operation Husky; CIGS; Chief of the Imperial General Staff; Operation Brimstone; Bletchley Park; Führer; The Man Who Never Was; starring Clifton Webb; Gloria Graham; Stephen Boyd; Operation Mincemeat; Colin Firth; Matthew McFadyen; Kelly Macdonald;
Slim Dusty’s famous song tells of one of the greatest fears that faced many an undoubtedly brave fighting man. The prospect of no grog. In the Pub with No Beer Slim says: Oh it’s a lonesome away from your kindred and all By the campfire at night we’ll hear the wild dingoes call But there’s-a nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear Than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer. This programme is going to cover some amazing, and some of the world’s greatest characters of legend. Including Helen of Troy, the Trojan Horse. Then the story becomes much more mundane – but only for a while – until Adolf Hitler marches into Poland and World War II begins. Then the Japanese attack Pearl Harbour – bringing America into the war. Fighting the Battle of Atlantic against the Nazi U-Boat menace. Finally the story takes on a surreal atmosphere. It becomes the story of a man, any man, in a part of the world, at a time in history, when he could stand on one spot and turn through 360o and not see a beer anywhere for thousands and thousands of miles. This Danger Zone programme’s all about – one of the greatest untold stories of World War II. Well for some people it definitely is. For others, not so much.
Tag words: Slim Dusty; Pub with No Beer; Adolf Hitler; Battle of Atlantic; Nazis; U-Boat; World War II; King Menetheus; Theseus; Zeus; Leda; Helen of Troy; Castor; Pollux; Spartan army; Oath of Tyndareus; siege of Troy; Trojans; Ocean Steamship Company; Govan; Winston Churchill; Bessie Braddock; Skunked beer; Davey Jones Bar; George Brown; Truman’s Brewery; Royal Navy; floating brewery; Royal Navy; Josephus Daniels; Jack Daniels; Prohibition; Acting Captain Nash;
Have you ever been to hell? Would you go there deliberately? Well some brave, or perhaps stupid, might be a better description, Greek heroes did. One who did was Theseus, helping his friend Pirithous. Both young men, after accomplishing their many amazing feats, decided they should take new wives for themselves. They decided they would help each other in finding their wives. They didn’t choose a partner who was going to be easy to get. Some nice girl next door who you could just marry and settle down with. No they couldn’t possibly have found more difficult partners. Heroes didn’t woe the women they desired, they took them. Theseus chose the beautiful wife of King Menelaus of Sparta. A young girl known by the name of Helen. That is a massive whole story in itself. So we’ll leave the dramas of the Trojan Wars for another time. Pirithous, the other hero, decided that the girl that he wanted to take to wife was the legendary beauty Persephone. Menelaus may have been a fearsome warrior and the king of Sparta a nation of the fiercest warriors, but Persephone’s husband was something else. I’m sure you know his name, even if you don’t know anything else about mythology. His name was Hades – the king of the underground. Hell. Get the picture! To get to hell you had to travel to a place on the southern tip of the Peloponnesian Peninsula known then as Tainaron. Today it’s better known as Cape Matapan. From 27 to 29 March, 1941, the Royal Navy fought a vital battle off the coast of Cape Matapan against the Italian Navy. Prince Philip too, like Theseus and Pirithous crossed into the gates of hell. Tag words: Prince Philip; Duke of Edinburgh; Royal Consort; Princess Elizabeth; Queen Elizabeth II; Queen of England; Theseus; Pirithous; King Menelaus of Sparta; Helen of Troy; Trojan Wars; Persephone; Hades; Hell; Peloponnesian Peninsula; Tainaron; Cape Matapan; Royal Navy; Admiral Cunningham; HMS Valiant; HMS Barham; HMS Warspite; Greek War Cross of Valour; VJ Day; VP Day; victory over Japan in the Pacific; Victory in the Pacific; American Civil War; William Tecumseh Sherman; HMS Wallace; Harry Hargreaves; HMSWhelp; Japanese Navy; Battle of Leyte Gulf; kamikaze; Tokyo Bay; Margaret Thatcher; The Jam; Just Who is the Five O’Clock Hero; Aircraft Research Association;
During a visit to Cape Canaveral, to inspect the Space Shuttle, Prince Philip was introduced to a young thirteen year old boy, Andrew Adams. Andrew told Prince Philip that it was his ambition to be an astronaut. Prince Philip looked him up and down and said to him: “Well, you’ll never fly in it; you’re too fat to be an astronaut … You could do with losing a bit of weight.” Just the sort of remark that got a lot of people, who couldn’t laugh, upset. But you know, you really do just have to laugh at some of the outrageous things that Philip said. Prince Philip started carrying out engagements as the Royal Consort, after Her Majesty, Elizabeth, became the Queen. That was back on 2 March 1948 when he was 37 years old. He performed his last solo engagement on 2nd August 2017 – 69 years later. Over those years Prince Philip carried out 22,219 solo engagements. I don’t know how many he carried out with Queen Elizabeth or other royals, but the number would have to be staggering. Even in his retirement year, when he was 96 years old, he was still one of the most active members of the royal family rendering public service. So, in my book, Prince Philip can say anything he damn well likes, and unless you’ve given as much service to the public as he has, I don’t care what you think about him. In this programme I’m going to explore more of the fascinating life of Prince Philip. Tag words: Prince Philip; Duke of Edinburgh; Royal Consort; Princess Elizabeth; Queen Elizabeth II; Queen of England; Cape Canaveral; Space Shuttle; Andrew Adams; King Edward VIII; Wallis Simpson; Duke and Duchess of York; King George VI; Lilibet; Winston Churchill; Clementine; Prince David; King George V; Stanley Baldwin; Fat Scottish cook; Joachim von Ribbentrop; Nazi; Royal Air Force; Dickie Mountbatten; Lady Edwina Ashley; Princess Margaret; Adolf Hitler; Reich Chancellor; World War II; Communist Russia; Communist China; HMS Ramillies; Vice-Admiral Harold Tom Baillie-Grohman; Thomson M1928 submachine gun; Tommy Gun; Luftwaffe; the Blitz; Buckingham Palace; Hatfield Campus; University of Hertfordshire; Joseph Goebbels; Soviet Union; Helmut Kohl;
On 9 April 2021, Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, the longest serving royal consort in British history, passed away at the age of 99. He was born on 10 June 1921 – so he very nearly reached the age of 100, which he had said he would rather not. He had undertaken his last official engagement on Tuesday 2 August 2017. For a man who had longed to pursue a military career this last ceremony was at a parade of the Royal Marines celebrating the men who had undertaken the Global Challenge Trek of 2,678 kilometres to raise money and awareness about the Royal Marines Challenge. Tag words: Prince Philip; Duke of Edinburgh; Princess Elizabeth; Queen Elizabeth II; Queen of England; Royal Marines; Global Challenge Trek; Royal Marines Challenge; World War II; Royal Navy; HMS Calypso; Joe Kerr; Gill Hicks; Greek Orthodox; Princess Victoria; Professor Wilmanns; Bellevue Sanitorium; George Mountbatten; Donald MacJanner; Adolf Hitler; Nazi; Mussolini; Book of Ecclesiastes; Ecclesiastes 1:9; So there’s nothing new under the sun; Dr Kurt Hahn; Salem school; Royal Variety Show; Tom Jones; You Can Leave Your Hat On; Night of the Long Knives; Ernst Rohm; Gordonstoun; Marchioness of Milford Haven; Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark; Prince George; Duke of Kent; Great Depression; Great War; Ernest Simpson; Wallis Simpson; Cecilie; Junkers 52; Princess Johanna;
In the Bible Jesus gave us this quote that is often used today, even by unbelievers – John 15:13: Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.Will I think today’s story tops that. Stay tuned and tell me what you think? Am I right? Tag words: Greater love has no one than this to lay down one’s life for one’s friends; 30th US Infantry Division; Frau von Reventlow; Stephen Ambrose; Band of Brothers; The Victors. The Men of World War II; Werner Kleeman; Dachau concentration camp; JD Salinger; The Catcher in the Rye; Ernest Hemingway; General Eisenhower; Hürtgen Forest; Battle of Agincourt; Shakespeare; Henry V; 275th Infantry Division; 116th Panzer Division; Russell Weigley; General Courntey Hodges; Friedrich Lengfeld; Wilde Sau; Wild Boar;
On 20 December 1943, so close to Christmas, two men met – in mid-air, in two different aircraft. About 304 metres above the ground. One was a German by the name of Oberleutenant Fritz Stigler, fighter ace, flying a German, an Me-109G fighter, flying for Hitler’s Third Reich and the other was an American, 2nd Lieutenant Charles (Charlie) Brown, flying an American B-17 four engine bomber, well just enough of it left to let you call it a B-17 bomber, with only one engine still working, and most of the crew severely wounded or dead. Charlie Brown’s plane was a sitting duck. With this German fighter next to him there was nothing he could do that could save him or his crew from being blasted out of the sky. What happened next was unbelievable. Tag words: Oberleutenant Fritz Stigler; fighter ace; Me-109G fighter; Adolf Hitler; Third Reich; 2nd Lieutenant Charles (Charlie) Brown; American B-17 Flying Fortess bomber; Great War; Lufthansa; Luftwaffe; Gerhard Barkhorn; Richard Bong; Messerschmitt Me 109F; Afrika Korps; North Africa; Jadgeschwader 27; Leutnant Gustav Roedel; Caterpillar Club; 379thBombardment Group; Ken Burns; The War; Focke-Wulf; Ye Olde Pub; Jagdverband 44; Me-262; Knight’s Cross; West Virginia Wesleyan College; Purple Heart; Gathering of the Eagles;
Ever wondered why all those hard working Nazi scientists and doctors in the death camps never won a single Nobel Prize for medicine or science among the lot of them. They did so much hard work into all sorts of problems concerning the human body suffering battle injuries and terrible diseases. They were helped by Jews, Russians and all of the other unwilling prisoners who had their lives taken from them for science? You think I’m joking? Well you know that old saying (maybe you don’t) that many a truth is said in jest. If you have a curious mind you won’t want to miss this Danger Zone programme. Stick around. Tag words: Nazi scientists; Nobel Prize; Adolf Hitler; Hadamar; Michelle Williams; Golden Globe Award; First World War; Rhineland Bastards; Aryan race; Eugen Fischer; Human Hereditary and Race Hygiene; Mein Kampf; Third Reich; Doctor Sigmund Rascher; Dachau; Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler; Dr Bickenbach; Dr Josef Mengele; Hitlerjugend; Bullenhuser Damm; SS; Keio University in Tokyo; Unit 731; Lieutenant-General Ishii Shiro; Maruta; Bill Bryson; The Body: a Guide for Occupants; Dr Carl Clauberg; Auschwitz; Block 10; German Chamber of Medicine; The Medical Questions in Marine & Winter Emergencies; Dr Karl Gebhart; Dr Fritz Fischer; American Environmental Protection Agency; EPA; Todd Thorslund;
In April 1933, Annmarie Kohler, a doctor in the town of Pirna wrote about how ‘fanatical’ the staff at her hospital had become. Kohler said ‘They sit around the radio and when the “Horst Wessel Song” is played … they all stand up and perform the raised-arm Nazi salute.’ That salute became a part of every day life for many German families during the time Hitler was the leader. A letter was sent to the ‘honourable Führer’ from a family in Mannheim in March 1933 which read: ‘Our little Rita would like to send her regards to the Führer with a Heil Hitler! For that reason, we have taken the liberty of enclosing a photo of her performing the German salute. She is ten months old and is the youngest of five. Whenever we show her a picture of Uncle Adolf, she immediately salutes.’ In this programme I’m going to tell you who Horst Wessel was, and how the US Coast Guard comes to be still operating this very Nazi tall ship today. Stay tuned. So you’ll know the music, called the Horst Wessel. Tag words: Annmarie Kohler; Horst Wessel Song; Nazi Party; National Socialism; Adolf Hitler; Rudolf Hess; Horst Wessel; Communist; Red Front; SA; Sturm Abteilung; Sturm Abteilung; Joseph Goebbels; Heinz Neumann; Erna Jaenicke; Ali Höhler; Erwin Rückert; Der Angriff; Horst Wessel Lied; Third Reich; World War 2; Blohm und Voss Shipyard; Bismarck; Parteiadler; Gorch Fock Class; Kaiserliche Marine; Tido Holtkamp; B-17 bombers; Bei Mir Bistu Shein; St Louis Blues; Billi Holliday; Albert Leo Schlageter; swastika; US Coast Guard; Eagle; President Truman; President Nixon; President Kennedy
On 17 February 1864, as the American Civil War was nearing its end, the USS Housatonic, a sloop of war, was sunk. The Housatonic was on station as part of the Union naval blockade of Charleston harbour, South Carolina – stopping Rhett Butler blockade running. It’s sinking gave it a place forever in military history. The first ship ever sunk by a submarine - the Confederate submarine –the H. L. Hunley, named after its inventor. Unfortunately for the crew, all 8 of them perished. But how? Well the submarine was found in 2000 – about 300 metres from where the Housatonic had gone down. When it was recovered the eight man crew were found sitting (their skeletons) at their stations as if nothing had happened. Initially, the discovery of the submarine only deepened the mystery. The crew were seated at their stations along a hand-crank that drove the cigar-shaped craft. They hadn’t attempted to escape when their submarine began to sink. One historian said: “If anyone had survived, they may have tried to release the keel ballast weights, set the bilge pumps to pump water, or tried to get out the hatches, but none of these actions were taken.” The crew had suffered no visible injuries, no broken bones and the air hatches were closed. Except for a hole in the conning tower and a small window that may have been broken, the sub was remarkably intact. Speculation about their deaths had included suffocation and drowning but if that had happened they wouldn’t have been found at their posts would they In 2017 Dr Rachel Lance and her team, after three years of experiments, at Duke University finally found out how the crew had died. The weapon that this early submarine carried was a copper keg containing about 6kg of gunpowder, which in those days they called a torpedo (same name but very different today) The torpedo was at the end of a 6 metre pole at the front of the submarine. The weapon was delivered by ramming the submarine into the hull of the target ship. The powder charge in the keg would then explode, sinking the ship, as had happened. The blast from this explosive barrel created a shock wave great enough to instantly rupture the blood vessels in the lungs and the brains of all of the crew. Dr Lance said: “This is the characteristic trauma of blast victims, they call it ‘blast lung’. You have an instant fatality that leaves no marks on the skeletal remains. Unfortunately, the soft tissues that would show us what happened have decomposed in the past hundred years.” So yes they had a submarine in the American Civil War – just the one. Warfare had now taken its first faltering steps to going under the waves. In this programme I’m going to talk about submarines, sea monsters, a submarine that was so full of shit that it sank, and how a submarine taught Vladimir Putin how to rule – forever – well until death do him part. Tag words: American Civil War; USS Housatonic; Rhett Butler; H. L. Hunley; Dr Rachel Lance; Duke University; Vladimir Putin; sea monster; World War I; Loch Ness monster; Daily Mail; Robert Wilson; Smithsonian Museum of Natural History; HMS Coreopsis; U-Boat; UB-85; Kapitan Günther Krech; Gary Campbell; Thomas Crapper; Sir John Haringon; Queen Elizabeth I; Alexander Cummins; crap; Type VII U-Boat; U-1206; Kapitan Karl-Adolf Schlitt; Kursk; Stalingrad; K-141; Oscar II Class nuclear powered cruise missile carrying submarine; Vladimir Putin; Edward Snowden; Lt. Captain Dimitri Kolesnikov; Mammoet; Northern Fleet; apparatchnik; Communist; George Orwell; Larry King; Nadezhda Tylik; Sergeant Sergei Tylik; Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov; The Intercept; KGB;
In this Danger Zone - I'm going to introduce you to the man who was James Bond, Captain Jack Aubrey, Rambo and Winston Churchill all rolled Into one. You know his name, but you almost certainly don't know who he really was.
Tag words: James Bond; Captain Jack Aubrey; Rambo; Winston Churchill; Captain Arthur Phillip; Royal Navy; American Revolution; Botany Bay; Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen; Louis XV; Comte de La Pérouse; Guillotine; King George III; Van Diemen’s land; Major Ross;
Over the past decade terrorists have killed an average of 21,000 people around the world each year. Global deaths from terrorism over the past decade have ranged from 8,000 in 2010 to a high of 44,000 in 2014. In 2017 terrorism was responsible for 0.05% of global deaths. 95% of terrorist deaths in 2017 were in the Middle East, Africa or South East Asia. In most Western countries terrorism is the cause of less than 0.01% of deaths. In the West there’s widespread public concern about terrorism. More than half of people surveyed have said that they’re worried that they might be a victim. The perception of just how much terrorism is really happening is grossly exaggerated in the West by our traditional media and the even more hysterical and politically driven social media. So what is the real ability of terrorism to seriously disrupt a population in a modern Western country? There’s a great story on this exact topic in Malcolm Gladwell’s book “David & Goliath – Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants” and that’s what I’m going to be looking at in this Danger Zone programme. Tag words: terrorists; Malcolm Gladwell; David & Goliath – Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants; Things to Come; HG Wells; War of the Worlds; World War II; Battle of Britain; The Blitz; General Franco; Guernica; Picasso; Herman Göring; Battle of Britain; British Foreign Minister Arthur Henderson; Luftwaffe; Winston Churchill; RAF; Handley Page bomber; Wellington Bomber; Adolf Hitler; Sir Basil Liddell Hart; John T. MacCurdy; The Structure of Morale; Nicolaus von Below;
So who was the man, or men, who were the true life inspirations for Ian Fleming’s James Bond? Ian Fleming denied that it was him. The head of British spying operations in the United States, a man known by the code name Intrepid – William Stephenson – said that when Ian Fleming was sent to boot camp he hesitated when he was ordered to kill – so not the stuff of a 00 agent licensed to kill. Bond’s coldness to women, certainly in his books and in his early movies, is definitely Ian Fleming who was severely damaged when the first serious love of his life, and he, broke up. I talked about Ian’s brother, Peter, who was an awesomely famous explorer before World War II and a man who played an important part in training and conducting undercover operations in German occupied Europe, but he doesn’t seem to have been the man either. So let’s look deeper into the mystery of who was the true James Bond. Tag words: Ian Fleming; James Bond; Patrick Dalzel; Royal Navy; Narvik; Boden; Norway; skøyter; King Haakon VII; Conrad Fulke Thomond O’Brien-ffrench; Maquis of Castelthomond; Royal Canadian Mounted Police; Mountie; Battle of Mons; August Abad; Neu Brandenburg; Cathleen Mann; Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming; Secret Intelligence Service; MI6; Colonel Stewart Menzies; World War I; Bolshevik Russia; SIS; ST36; Comrade Leo Krassin; Comrade Pieter Ilych Lenin; Prince of Wales; King Edward VIII; Mrs Wallis Simpson; 16th/5thQueen’s Lancers; Maud; Kitzbühel; Austria; Riksgranzen; Lapland; Artic Circle; Nazi Germany; Peter Fleming; Markwert.; Claude Dansey; Auric Goldfinger; Erno Goldfinger; The Man with the Golden Gun; Francisco Scaramanga;
Ian Fleming had seen a lot of behind the scenes of the intelligence organisations of England and the Americans. He’d seen how they operated at the very top. He’d played a key role in helping the Americans to get their intelligence organisation up and running, but now he was going to do his first work in the field. Then he had to go to the spy training school where secret agents are taught how to kill, how to blow up bridges and how to do all of those other things you’ve seen in the James Bond movies – this was for real. Tag words: Ian Fleming; James Bond; British Security Co-Ordination; William Stephenson; Type B Cipher Machine; Baron Oshima; Adolf Hitler; Pearl Harbour; Admiral Kimmel; Casino Royale; Duexiéme Bureau; Le Chiffre; Baron Ismay; Major-General Sir Colin Gubbins; Lord Beaverbrook; Special Operations Executive; Winston Churchill; Dunkirk; Clementine Churchill; Ernest Cuneo; Wild Bill Donovan; OSS; FBI; J Edgar Hoover; Robert Jackson; Paul McCartney; A.J. Taylor; Camp X; the Farm; McKenzie King; Bickham Sweet-Escott; Ivar Bryce; Goldeneye;
Where, in the recesses of the mind of Ian Fleming, did James Bond come from? In my last programme I talked about Ian Flemings early days. How he grew up, unsettled, but finally found his niche in intelligence. In this programme I’ll tell you about Ian Fleming’s wartime experiences. The people he worked with including Roald Dahl (the author of children and adult novels), the famous British singer Noel Coward, the greatest 5th Avenue advertising man ever – a Scot by the name of David Ogilvy; the outstanding British rebel of noble birth, a man born to European nobility, whose great grand-father was the founder of the American chemical giant, W.R. Grace & Co, who was tall, dark and handsome to the point of absurdity, he looked like an Aztec prince and was often mistaken for a film star – Ivar Bryce. He was a man of whom Lord Louis Mountbatten, a distant uncle, said “It’s terrible, the advantages he’s had to overcome”. This is a rip-roaring story – the cauldron out of which James Bond steps immaculately in his tuxedo, every hair in place. Tag words: Ian Fleming; James Bond; Roald Dahl; Noel Coward; David Ogilvy; Ivar Bryce; W.R. Grace & Co; Lord Louis Mountbatten; William Stephenson; M; Winston Churchill; British Security Co-Ordination; Admiral Godfrey; St Ermin’s Hotel; Pearl Harbour; H.G. Wells; Somerset Maugham; Winnie the Pooh; A.A. Milne; Walter Winchell; Walter Lippmann; Telekrypton ciphering machine; J Edgar Hoover; FBI; President Roosevelt; New Deal; Vincent Astor; Fighting 69th; Wild Bill Donovan; Nazi Germany; Joseph Kennedy; Office of Co-Ordinator of Information; OSS; Office of Strategic Services; 38 Colt Police Positive revolver; For Special Services;
He was 38 years old when he was born in 1953. He never ages. He never loses. Like Dr. Who he’s continuously being reborn – in body and mind as he moves effortlessly through the passing decades since the movie Dr No was released in 1963. Was this fictional character modelled on a real person. Is that even possible? Perhaps he’s a composite of more than one person. Or is he just pure fiction? Let’s go into the world of national and international interests, where the highest stakes imaginable is the only game in town that he plays in. And danger is ever present. In this series of programmes I’ll reveal all and the creator of James Bond, Ian Fleming. Tag words: Dr Who; James Bond; Ian Fleming; Salman Rushdie; The Satanic Verses; Ayatollah Khomeini; fatwa; Muslims; Cat Stephens; Yusuf Islam; Peace Train; Chitty Chitty Bang Bang; Enid Blyton; Valentine Fleming; Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars; Distinguished Service Cross; Winston Churchill; Eton; Oxford University; Peter Fleming; Grenadier Guards; World War II; Daniel Craig; Casino Royale; David Niven; Peter Sellers; Woody Allen; Sandhurst military academy; Kitzbühel; Ernan Forbes-Dennis; Reuters; Bernard-Rickatson-Halt; Stalin; Rowe and Pitman; Rear Admiral John Godfrey; Sir Reginald “Blinker” Hall; Naval Intelligence; Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve; M; Admiral Darlan; Captain Cedric Holland; Charles de Gaulle; King Zog of Albania; Bletchley Park; Alan Turing; Enigma code machines;
This programme is a true story that you probably have never heard before. And what a story it is! In 1940, after Hitler had invaded Poland and England and France had declared war on Germany, England and France were about to enter into a war with Russia. Given that there was no differences that matter between how evil Nazi Germany was, and how evil Communist Russia was, this would have made a lot of sense. What the British and the French were planning would have drastically altered the course of World War II. Now, pull up a chair, or just keep driving around, for the next hour, and I’ll tell you exactly how this almost happened. Tag words: Vladimir Putin; Nazi Germany; Communist Russia; Finland; Phoney War; Anglo-French Supreme War Council; Field Marshall Edmund Ironside; Joseph Stalin; Vozhd; René Massigli; Mao Zedong; Lavrenty Beria; Oshtashkov; NKVD; Vasily Blokhin; Katyn massacre; Édouard Daladier; Neville Chamberlain; Hugh Macphail; Lockheed 14 Super Electra; Casablanca; Ilsa Lund; Ingrid Bergman; Victor Laszlo; Paul Henried; Ugarde; Peter Lorre;Cloudy Joe; Royal Air Force; Alan “Tubby” Dixon; Blenheim Mk IV bombers; Middle East Command; Batumi oil fields; Adolf Hitler; General von Manstein; Heinz Guderian; Hamilton Fish III;
Shock & awe – words we came to know in March 2003 with Operation Desert Fox. A revolutionary new military tactic using revolutionary new weapons. But were the shock & awe tactics new or had they been around for a long time. Let me illustrate my point from long long ago – about 480BC. The great Chinese military strategist, Sun Tzu, found one technique for achieving this which he recommended to his emperor. The emperor asked him if it would work on women. He said it would. So the emperor told Sun Tzu to prove his point by turning his concubines into a precision marching troop. At Sun Tzu’s request the emperor had the concubines summoned before him. Sun Tzu told them that they would now be trained to be a military marching troop. They laughed at him. He had the head concubine beheaded. He asked again. The ladies still laughed at him. The next most senior concubine was beheaded. Before you knew it the concubines had been turned into one fine precision marching drill team. Beheading people to inspire fear and submission was the idea that he had been promoting to the emperor. He’d made his point. So it was that in 2003 the Americans updated Sun Tzu’s tactics with a metaphorical style of beheading of their own – the launching of their high tech aerial attack on Baghdad on 19 March 2003 - a prelude to the beginning of Operation Desert Fox. In this programme I’m going to be talking about what could have been Hitler’s war winning shock and awe. Tag words: Shock & awe; Operation Desert Fox; Sun Tzu; Adolf Hitler; Lancaster Bomber; Boeing B-17; V-1; Hanna Reitsch; Nazi Germany; Nuremburg Rally; 1936 Berlin Olympic Games; Triumph of the Will; Olympia; Leni Riefenstahl; Professor Focke; Me-163 Komet; Me-262; Robert Ritter von Greim; Herman Göring; German Blitz; Peenemünde; Bletchley Park; Dr R.V. Jones; Werner von Braun; V-2; Cruewell; von Thoma; General Ismay; Bodyline Committee; Crossbow Committee; Lord Cherwell; Winston Churchill; Third Reich; General Walter Dornberger; NASA; National Medal of Science; Apollo series;
Who, or what, was responsible for killing more Nazi officers than died in active combat? This is a fascinating and incredible story. It involves Adolf Hitler, who avoided the death that so many German officers suffered from this cold-blooded killer even though he was a number of times in its sites. Ferdinand Porsche comes into this story too amongst others. Stay tuned because you won’t want to miss this one. Tag words: Nazi; Adolf Hitler; Hans Ledwinka; Paul Jaray; Erich Übelacker; Zeppelins; Hindenberg; Steyr; Tatra; Czechoslovakia; T11; T77; T87; Ferdinand Porsche; T77a; Christa Schroeder; Volkswagen; KdF-Wagen; Kraft durch Freude; John Steinbeck; Jay Leno;
I guess like me you often find yourself lying awake in bed, wondering what the world would be like today if Adolf Hitler, instead of answering the call to be the saviour of Germany (a job he ended up doing really badly) had decided to follow his natural bent for comedy and had instead become a stand up comedian. In this Danger Zone programme I’m going to look at the jokes that Hitler told, and the jokes that Hitler was told that had him holding his sides, convulsing with laughter and struggling not to pee himself. Tag words:
The attack on Pearl Harbour had not been the success the Japanese needed. In the modern war that was shaping up in the Pacific aircraft carriers were the key weapons. For the Japanese mastermind of Pearl Harbour, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, he needed to finish what he‘d started. If he didn’t he knew that the war was lost. So now the stage was set for a number of key players, who very likely would have been visitors to Cairns depending on how things worked out for Yamamoto, to tangle with each other - - in a struggle for life and death. Victory and defeat. On the American side the important men were Admiral Frank Fletcher and Rear Admiral Aubrey B Fitch. On the Japanese side it was Admiral Takagi. In this Danger Zone, I’m going to tell you about this struggle for our freedom that took place in May 1942 in the Coral Sea – not too many kilometres away from Cairns. Tag words: Pearl Harbour; Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto; Admiral Frank Fletcher;Rear Phelps Admiral Aubrey B Fitch; Admiral Takagi; World War II; Battle of Midway; Battle of the Coral Sea; Port Moresby; Shokaku; Zuikaku; bombing of Darwin; Ceylon; Carrier operations; Shoho; Yorktown; Port Moresby; Admiral Crace; HMAS Hobart; Lexington; Lady Lex; New Guinea; USS Sims; Neosho; Combat Air Patrol; USS Phelps; Admiral Nimitz; Lt. Cmdr. H. J. Pfingstag; Paul Allen; Bill Gates;
On 12 September 1918 a tank attack was led by Colonel George S. Patton – the legendary leader of American tank forces in France in World War II. Patton was just a young colonel in World War I. He walked along the top of American trenches, with an American infantry brigade sensibly taking shelter in their trenches. Sensible because a creeping German artillery barrage was moving their way. Patton commented that the commanding general of those infantry, General Douglas MacArthur, was standing on a small hill near him. Patton walked over to him and together they stood watching the enemy artillery explosions as they came closer … and closer. Patton wrote that he thought both of them wanted to take cover but didn’t want to show fear in the presence of the other. One shell exploded close to them covering them in dirt. Patton remained standing but visibly flinched. MacArthur said to him: “Don’t worry Colonel. You never hear the one that gets you.” Patton wrote to his family that he thought MacArthur was the bravest man he’d ever met. So let’s find out how MacArthur came to be staying at Room 80 at the Hides Hotel in Cairns? Tag words: Colonel George S Patton; General Douglas MacArthur; Bataan Peninsula; Corregidor; Philippines; President Roosevelt; World War II; Tokyo Rose; PT boat; Mindanoa; B-17 bomber; Arthur MacArthur; Jean MacArthur; Del Monte; Trans Australian Airways; TAA; DC-3; Alice Springs; Darwin; Australian Army; Terowie Railway Station; Adelaide; Melbourne; I shall return; Kooinga; Dick Marshall; Spencer Street station; Menzies Hotel; Trustees Executive & Agency Co Building; Supreme Commander South West Pacific Area; Victoria Barracks; General Brett; Hides Hotel; General George C Kenney; Allied Air Forces Southwest Pacific Area; corn cob pipe; Cairns; General Gordon Bennett;
The Emperor Napoleon has an important connection with Cairns, and there are some other interesting ones he has with Australia too. In this programme I’m going to tell you about both, and where you can go and see the large, unmissable relic from Napoleon in Cairns. Tag words: Emperor Napoleon; Boney; Betsy Balcombe; Elba; Treaty of Fontainbleau; Louis XVIII; Colonel Neil Campbell; Lord Castlereagh; Charles Dickens; David Copperfield; Benjamin Franklin; For the want of a nail the shoe was lost; Louis XVI; French Revolution; Congress of Vienna; St Helena; l’Inconstant; HMS Partridge; Golfe-Juan; Marshal Ney; bring Napoleon back to Paris in a cage; Grenoble; Vive l’Empereur; Waterloo; HMS Swiftsure; Great Barrier Reef; Ben Cropp; HMAS Cairns; William Balcombe; Cinques Bouteille; Sir Hudson Lowe;
The 20th Century, from about 1949, when the Soviet Union detonated its own atomic bomb, made using stolen intellectual property from the American Manhattan Project, with the help of some of the scientists who worked on that project and were spies for the Soviet Union, until 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, the world lived in fear of a nuclear holocaust. This fear was not based on theoretical scientific models, not based on dubious assumptions, like climate change, this was based on the real fact that the it was known that the number of nuclear warheads in the world, if they were all used at the one time, would wipe out every human on the planet many times over – although as the title to the 1967 Jams Bond movie tells us, that would be more than enough because “You Only Live Twice”.In my last programme I talked about nuclear war and how the world changed because of it. But since the 1980s, when the IBM Peanut was first launched into the world, the first desktop computer mass produced by a major company, the software powering those computers has gotten smarter and smarter, now coupled with the internet and cloud computing etc. Today we depend on them for almost everything. Which means that if you can attack key computers, you can come really close to winning a war without needing to use too much weaponry, and certainly not nuclear weapons. Although there’s a catch there that still make nuclear weapons something you have to take into the equation if you’re fancying trying to win a cyber war.So how would a Third World Cyber War play out? Until it’s fought no one’s going to know. World War I and World War II weren’t anything like the experts had predicted.One possible answer to that question is found in the fictional account of how a cyber war could run written by two cyber warfare experts.One of the hottest selling books amongst the top level people at the Pentagon since 2016 has been “Ghost Fleet” written by PW Singer and August Cole. They’re both experts in cyber warfare and consultants to the US government and military at the very highest levels. So when they imagined a cyber World War III, it is worth everyone’s time to sit up and take notice and to consider the way that such a war could be fought, based on their expertise.Some of the things that happen in the book seem incredible, seem like it has to be a work of the wildest science fiction, but it’s not. Every trend and technology discussed in the book is real – and it either already exists or is being developed right now.So let me share with you how Singer and Cole see World War III happening. Some glimpses from their novel. If you’re really interested, get the book.The Chinese are the bad guys and they’re called the Directorate – you need to read the book to understand why.Tag words: Soviet Union; atomic bomb; Manhattan Project; IBM Peanut; Ghost Fleet; PW Singer; August Cole; the Directorate; COIL; Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser; Chinese Communist Party; CCP; F-35 Raptor stealth fighter; micro-chips; KC-135; Davis-Monthan Air Force; Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles; ICBMs; Clive James;
What’s World War III going to look like? Not that I want to see.It’s not going to look like anything we’ve ever seen before. One of the hottest selling books amongst the top level people at the Pentagon since 2016 has been “Ghost Fleet” written by PW Singer and August Cole.These guys aren’t the writers of your typical boy/man political/war thrillers, like Tom Clancy’s “Red Storm Rising”.Singer is a consultant to the US military, the intelligence community and even Hollywood (maybe that counts for more than the other two). Just kidding, most stuff that comes out of Hollywood, as far as authenticity is concerned, is absolute rubbish.Singer’s top selling non-fiction book is “Wired for War”. It’s about the robotics revolution and how warfare is likely to develop in this century.August Cole, the co-writer for Ghost Fleet, is a writer, analyst and consultant, and was a former defense industry reporter for the prestigious Wall Street Journal. He’s also a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council – a think tank that looks at our world at the international level, and how things will develop. Cole’s focus is on exploring the future of warfare.In their novel, “Ghost Fleet”, they look at how they imagine World War III could start and how that war would be fought.It’s a terrifying story. I’ll be talking about that in this and my following programme.Tag words: World War III; Ghost Fleet; PW Singer; August Cole; Tom Clancy; Red Storm Rising; Wired for War; Stanley Kubrick; Dr Strangelove; George C. Scott; General “Buck’ Turgidson; Peter Sellers; Merkin Muffley; Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper; B-52; Cuban Missile Crisis; President Kennedy; Curtis Le May; Hiroshima; Nagasaki; Apocalypse Never; Michael Shellenberger; Victor Weisskopf; Neil Bohrs; NATO; Warsaw Pact; John Lewis Gaddis; Kenneth Waltz; Robert Oppenheimer;
International Womens’ Day. Some women have their praises sung and their achievements recognised. But not all women. After all International Womens’ Day is very much something that the feminist movement has instituted and that is a movement that only recognises women of the left. To paraphrase one of Joe Biden’s remarkable comments during the 2020 US Presidential election, if you ain’t on the left, you ain’t a feminist – or a woman. But that’s obviously not true.So today’s Danger Zone is going to look at a woman who the distinguished English historian, Andrew Roberts, described, in his book “Leadership in War”, as the most remarkable Englishwoman since Queen Elizabeth I.She served as prime minister from 1979 to 1990 – winning an unmatched three elections in a row.She died in April 2013, apparently suffering from progressive dementia.. Notwithstanding the fact that she had not held the office of prime minister for over 23 years when she died, the left, who never forgive, never forget, and never stop hating, responded in this way to the news of her death.Street parties were held in certain parts of England where Margaret Thatcher’s policies were seen as having the most damaging effect. The song, Ding Dong the Witch is Dead, from the famous 1939 Judy Garland movie, “The Wizard of Oz” reached number one on the charts in England. In truth the left were not able to pay a greater tribute to this remarkable woman than their vile reaction to her death. So let’s learn about her leadership in war during the 1982 Falklands crisis.Tag words: Margaret Thatcher; Andrew Roberts; Leadership in War; Falklands War; Alfred Roberts; Beatrice Roberts; Edith Mühlbauer; Muriel Thatcher; Methodist; Dachau; HMS Endurance; General Leopoldo Galtieri; Flavius Vegetius Renatus; De Rei Militari; Igitur qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum; Winston Churchill; Adolf Hitler; Malvinas; Sir Henry Leach; Christian; General Belgrano; HMS Conqueror; Mark 8 torpedoes; HMS Sheffield; British Type 42 destroyer; Sub-Lieutenant Carrington-Wood; Exocet missile; HMS Coventry; Lieutenant-General Sir Julian Thompson; Rule Britannia; David Cameron; Denis Thatcher; Boudicca; Elizabeth I; Catherine de Medici; Catherine the Great; Maria Theresa; Golda Meir; Indira Gandhi
If you’ve ever seen the movie “Zulu” with Michael Caine you’ve seen the story about how a handful of British soldiers stood up against a large army of Zulu warriors defending a place called Rorke’s Drift. If you’ve ever heard of Breaker Morant, or seen the movie of the same name, you’ve seen a movie about the Boer War which was fought in South Africa in 1900. It’s not a war that most people have heard of. It was the first war where a significant number of soldiers from the different states of Australia – Australia hadn’t yet been federated – fought and died for their country. I can almost guarantee you that you’ve never heard of the incredible siege of the station at the Elands River in South Africa defended by some of the soldiers from Australia fighting in the Boer War.Someone said that if A.B. Banjo Paterson had been at Elands River the name won with the blood of the incredible resistance of the Australians to the enemy’s overwhelming firepower would be as familiar to you today as the name of Gallipoli. If you’ve ever heard of the Boy Scouts movement, then you may have heard of its founder, Baden-Powell – he was involved in this siege. So was Lord Kitchener still remembered from the iconic First World War propaganda poster pointing at you with the caption “Your Country Needs You”. If you’ve ever heard of the author of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, you might be interested to hear what he had to say about the Australian stand at Elands River between 4 and 16 August 1900. This action was dramatic, heroic, and drew in some of the greatest personalities from the beginning of the 1900s – what a movie this would make.Tag words: Zulu; Michael Caine; Rorke’s Drift; Breaker Morant; Boer War; Elands River; Gallipoli; Boy Scouts; General Robert Baden-Powell; Lord Kitchener; First World War; Your Country Needs You; Sherlock Holmes; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; British Empire; Victoria Cross; Mafeking; Rustenberg; Colonel Hore; Major Walter Tunbridge; Queensland Mounted Infantry; Surgeon-Captain Albert Duka; Magato; New South Wales Citizens Bushmen; 3rd Queensland Mounted Infantry; 3rd Victorian Imperial Bushmen; 3rd Western Australian Imperial Bushmen; 2nd Tasmanian Imperial Bushmen; Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Carrington; Australian Imperial Bushmen; General Koos de la Rey; Jan Smuts;
Here’s a murder mystery that you’ve possibly never heard about. A cold case. The possible murder of Dr Todt, committed at Hitler’s headquarters (built by Dr Todt’s organisation) from which Hitler conducted the war against Russia. The HQ was called the Wolfschanze. Hitler’s knickname was Wolf – so the HQ was called the wolf’s lair. It was located in East Prussia.The murder victim (if this was a murder) was Dr Fritz Todt, the engineering genius who had built Germany’s super highways, the Autobahn. Dr Todt was, at the time of his death, fully engaged in building massive defensive works to deter or stop an Allied invasion of Europe, to protect the U-Boats which were waging the critical Battle of the Atlantic and many other works to make Hitler’s Europe impregnable. He was also the Minister for Armaments – responsible for the delivery ofthe quantity and quality of weapons that Germany need to fight and win the war. Who were the suspects behind this possible murder? They include the Führer himself, Adolf Hitler, the commander of the Luftwaffe, Reichsmarschall Herman Göring and Albert Speer, Hitler’s favourite architect and the man who gained the most from Dr Todt’s death. But perhaps there were many people in the German Army that had reason to want him dead as well. He had no shortage of people at the Wolfschanze with the motive to kill him. Let’s investigate this murder, if it was a murder, and see if we can find the murderer.Oh and by the way – Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, that obsessive builder of an SS Empire in the midst of Hitler’s empire, should not be ruled out of contention as Todt’s killer.Tag words: Dr Fritz Todt; Todt Organisation; Adolf Hitler; Wolfschanze; Luftwaffe; Reichsmarschall Herman Göring; Albert Speer; Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler; Third Reich; Martin Borman; Berghof; Niall Ferguson; Mordor; Sauron’s Tower; Nicolaus von Below; He-111; Field Marshall Hugo Sperrle; SS General Sepp Dietrich; Captain Hermann Nein; Hitler’s Table Talk; Führerbefehl; Unresolved Cases; Jurgen Thorwald; Joseph Stalin; Dr Brandt; Dr Morel; Gita Sereny; Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth; Field Marshall Erhard Milch; Admiral Isoroku Yamamto; Rudi Wolters; Ilsebill Todt; Thomas A’Beckett; Henry II;
Technology and science have let us kill people far more efficiently than we ever could before. The guillotine of the French Revolution allowed the socialists to use mechanical means to exterminate their class enemies, the aristocracy (and vastly more numbers of other people who fell foul of the these revolutionaries). The guillotine was the precursor of the far more efficient Nazi extermination camps that allowed the National Socialists to kill Jews (and other enemies) by the millions. Science also let people kill other people on the battlefield, and even off the battlefield, in far more horrible ways than ever before – with chemical weapons. This programme is about all of those chemical battlefield horrors and the surprising, and accidentally found, good that came from chemical warfare that has saved, and is still saving, millions of lives. You’ll be stunned by what I’m going to be talking about – there’s even a good chance that it’s your life, or that of a loved one, that’s been or is in the process of being saved right now thanks to an evil brought into the world by the killing fields of World War I.Tag words: French Revolution; guillotine; socialists; Nazi extermination camps; National Socialists; chemical weapons; World War I; Tear gas; Dr Fritz Haber; James Bond; Ernst Stavro Blofeld; Mike Myers; Dr Evil; Haber Process; chlorine gas; Clara Immerwahr; phosgene; Mustard gas; IG Farben; Zyklon B; Adolf Hitler; Geneva Protocol; Chemical Weapons Convention; Saddam Hussein; Bashar Al-Assad; Rudolph Hoess; The Poisonous Cloud; World War 2; Castello Normanno Svevo; American Fifteenth Air Force; General Bernhard Montgomery; Major General James H “Jimmy’ Doolittle; Battle of Midway; American 8th Air Force; Messerschmitt Me-210; Oberleutnant Werner Hähn; Air Vice Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham; Captain A.B. Jenks; Field Marshall Albert Kesselring; Rommel; Field Marshall Wolfram von Richthofen; Afrika Korps; Foggia; Bari; Ju-88; Duppel; Oberleutnant Gustave Teuber; John Wheeler; Liberty Ship; M47A1 mustard gas bombs; Lt Thomas H Richardson; 701st Chemical Maintenance Company; Lt. Col Dr Stewart Francis Alexander; Yale University; Louis S Goodman; Alfred Gilman; Mechlorethamine; Axis Sally;
In January 1944, Vasily Grossman, a non-practising Jew, entered the town of his birth, Berdichev in the Ukraine, to finally confirm that his mother had been murdered by the Nazis. It was the first time he’d been back there for a long time. Soon after the German invasion of Russia on 22 June 1941, he’d left his mother and other members of his family there because his wife, Olga Mikhailovna, had refused to let them move into their flat in Moscow. The flat was big enough for everyone. Vasily was a member of the prestigious Writer’s Guild and had more generous accommodation than your average Russian.
Because his mother was left in the town, which the Germans overran in July 1941, on 15 September, she was murdered by the Nazis in what was the first days of the holocaust.
20 years after her death, and not long before his own from cancer, Vasily wrote this letter to his mother:
My darling, twenty years have passed since the day of your death.I love you. I remember you every day of my life, and my sorrow has never leftme in these twenty years.
I last wrote to you ten years ago, and in my heart you are stillthe same as you were twenty years ago … I am you, my own one. And as long as Iam alive, you are alive, too. And when I die you will live in the book which Ihave dedicated to you and whose fate is so like yours. And it seems to me nowthat my love for you is becoming greater and more responsible because there areso few hearts left now in which you will live.”
His mother was immortalised by him in possibly the greatest Russian novel of the 20th Century, Life and Fate, as the character Anna Shrtum.
Tag words: Vasily Grossman; Berdichev; Nazis; Life and Fate; Anna Shrtum; Auschwitz; Aktion; SS; 1st SS Division; SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler; Einsatzgruppen C Sonderkommando 4a; Standartenführer Paul Blöbel; Luftwaffe; Heinrich Himmler; Reichsführer SS; Katya Vaisman; Chelmno; Belzec; Sobibor; Majdanek; Victor Alter; Henryk Erlich; Albert Einstein; Joseph Stalin; Winston Churchill; Shlomo Mikhoels; Itzik Fefer; Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee; Leo Tolstoy; War and Peace; Vostryakovskoe Jewish Cemetery;
The time had come for the SS to perfect its skills. It wasn’t easy. Things worth doing never are. A Panzer Division had showed up for a rest and re-fit – pretty much right in the middle of where the SS was to conduct its mass executions. So a huge live variety extravaganza was turned on for the men at night, plus showings throughout the day of the latest release movie. Beautiful Ukrainian girls kept the boys company. Better still, a lot of the girls were blondes. How perfect was that. All of this was staged in a nearby town – out of gunshot, I mean earshot – of where the SS had to do their work. And why is it that when you are committing an atrocity, someone always seems to survive to dob you in.Tag words: SS; Soviet Union; Nazis; Joseph Stalin; classicide; the Great Terror; gulags; Standartenführer Paul Blöbel; 11th Panzer Division; Berdichev; Romanovka; Naum Epfield; Riding for Germany; Baron von Langen; 1928 Amsterdam Olympics; Aktion; untermenschen; Reichskommissariat “Ukraina”; Vladimir Liashchevich; Kiev Opera; Vasily Grossman; Yekaterina Savelievna; Semyon Osipovich; Olga Mikhailovna; ;
How to quickly and efficiently kill the 30,000 Jews at Berdichev was the problem that had to be solved. It was important to get it right because, if they could,they could do it on a far bigger scale at the next place where they’d already planned to do a mass extermination of Jews, a place called Babi Yar near Kiev.So how did the SS tackle this first time problem of mass murder? How did the average German soldier respond to the mass killing of Jews – men, women andvery young children. The most shocking thing, you could find yourself – on either side - of what happened here. It’s a story that you must hear.Tag words: Babi Yar; 11th Panzer Division; Wehrmacht; Joseph Stalin; Red Army; Nazis; SS; Major Rösler; Field Marshall Walther von Reichenau; Belaya Tserkov; 29th German Infantry Division; Lieutenant Colonel Groscurth; Standartenführer (Colonel) Paul Blöbel; Sonderkommando 4a; Einsatzgruppe C; General von Paulus; Soviet Prisoners of War;
Everything has to start somewhere. This programme’s about the first day of the holocaust. Not the efficient extermination camps like Auschwitz. But men working hard days organising the digging of deep pits (just the right length), ammunition (you don’t want to run out half way through), organising Jews to the site and then shooting them all day long (you need plenty of Schnapps for the men) until there were none left. Standartenführer (Colonel) Paul Blobel was the right man for the job. In September 1941, they nailed it at the Ukrainian town of Berdichev. But first you need me to tell you how everything came together for this perfect storm.The son of one of the elderly women murdered that day would become the greatest Russian writer of the 20th Century. She died there because of his failings. He carried it with him to the day he died but he shared it with the world the way no-one else ould have. This is the story of that one fine autumn day.Tag words: Standartenführer (Colonel) Paul Blobel; the Final Solution; Berdichev; Vasily Grossman; Communist; Jew; Yekaterina Grossman; Yekaterina Savelievna; Russian Revolution; Trotsky; Stalin; Olga Mikhailovna; Boris Gruber; George Bernard Shaw; Writers’ Union; Great Terror; NKVD; KGB; Kulak; Adolf Hitler; Operation Barbarossa; Who Dares Wins; SS; Adolf Eichmann; 11th Panzer Division;
After World War 2 Churchill said: "The only thing that really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril. I was even more anxious about this battle than I had been about the glorious air fight called the ‘Battle of Britain’”.But that wasn’t true. The U-Boat activity, sinking shipping heading to England, was annoying and needed the defences bolstered to counter it, but it was nothingmore than annoying. If you know anything about history you’ll probably be thinking I’m joking or stupid. But maybe I’m right. Stay listening and give me the opportunity to surprise you.Tag words: Winston Churchill; Battle of Britain; U-Boats; guerre de course; Admiral Dönitz; B-dienst; Naval Cypher No.2; Naval Cypher No.3; Naval Cypher No.5; Enigma; Triton; Bletchley Park; Huff Duff; Torpex; hedgehog; squid; Mark 24 Mine; Wandering Annie; Iron Coffins; happy time; Battle of the Atlantic;
The Tom Hanks movie, “Greyhound”, tells the dramatic story of a much older man, Commander Krause (played by Tom Hanks), but still a rookie as a navalcommanding officer, taking his first command at sea. Like many in World War II Commander Krause came into the Navy from civilian life. In the movie he’s appointed as the commander of an American Fletcher Class destroyer. More than that he’s put in charge of three other naval escorts. One a British Tribal Class destroyer, HMS James. One a Canadian Flower Class Corvette (HMCS Dodge – an appropriate name for an escort having torpedos fired at it), and one Polish destroyer, Viktor. He’s also in charge of convoy HX-25 with 37 merchant ships sailing from Halifax in Canada to Liverpool in England.
War dramas are always calculated to get the adrenalin pumping. Frequently they show war bringing out the best and worst qualities in men. Convoys seen in this movie were typical of what they were in what Churchill called the Battle of the Atlantic, which began with England’s declaration of war against Germany on 3 September 1939 and ending just under six years later with Germany’s surrender on 8 May 1945.
Let’s look at the movie and see how accurately it tells the story of this fierce war on the seas. The key players included Bletchley Park and Alan Turing, his story’s told in the movie “The Imitation Game” - how the British broke the German secret codes used to send instructions to their U-Boats – well that’s the partof the Bletchley Park story that I’m interested in when looking at this movie.
The men of the merchant navy (that was the name that Winston Churchill came up for them during the war). They were civilians, who risked their lives signing up for the perilous crossing of the Atlantic. In this movie, as in the way most people look at this vital battle of World War II, they are a vital character in thisgreat drama but they’re not seen – just the ships that they were manning. They were the, mostly, unsung heroes of this Battle. The sharp end of this fightwere men of the navies and air forces of England, America and Canada who had the job of protecting the merchant ships carrying the supplies needed to keepEngland alive with food, arms and munitions, needed to build England up as an unsinkable aircraft carrier for the re-conquest of Europe and the defeat of Hitler.
The German U-boat crews were their counterparts – they were mostly conscripts unlike the submariners who served in the Royal Navy and the US Navy who were all volunteers.
The battle was about getting across the Atlantic Ocean the vital supplies needed to be brought beyond the seas from the United States to England.
Tag words: Tom Hanks; Greyhound; Fletcher Class destroyer; Flower Class Corvette; Battle of the Atlantic; Bletchley Park; Alan Turing; The Imitation Game; Winston Churchill; U-boat; Kriegsmarine; Royal Navy; US Navy; C.S Forester; The Good Shepherd; Black Pit; wolf packs; Type VII; Admiral Dönitz; Adolf Hitler; Torpedo boats; PBY Catalina; RAF Coastal Command; ;
In this programme I’m going to share with you the story of the most remarkable plane ever.One pilot described this experience during a flight. It was just him and his Reconnaissance Systems Officer. The plane carried a crew of only two. It was amoonless night. They were flying at just over 25.5 kilometres altitude. Your average commercial airliner flies at about 3 kilometres. The pilot wonderedwhat the sky would look like if he turned off the lighting on his instrument panel. He was amazed to see a bright light outside from his window. It took a fewmoments for his eyes to adjust. What he was looking at was a gleaming thin stripe – the Milky Way. Clusters of sparkling stars. Shooting stars flashedacross the visible sky every few seconds like a heavenly kind of fire works display. He looked down at his instrument panel again. He didn’t need artificialillumination. It was illuminated by the powerful celestial glow outside.Despite the fact that he was flying at nearly 3,200 kilometres per hour, the stars of the Milky Way looked to him as if they were standing still. He was humbled in the presence of God Almighty. He was seeing, like only a handful of us will ever see, the living proof of Psalm 19 – “The heavens declare the glory of God”.And all of this from a plane that had had its design start in the 1950s by a man who had created the legendary P-38 Lockheed Lightning twin tailed World War II fighter, the F104 Starfighter and the U-2 spy plane – Kelly Johnson. The name of the plane. Well for now you’re going to have to guess.Tag words: Blackbird SR-71; Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum; President Reagan; F-111 Fighter Bombers; Brian Shul; Gary Powers; U-2; Safronov; Order of the Red Banner; Mikhail Gorbachev; Pratt & Whitney J58 engines; BF Goodrich; US Air Force; F-18 Hornet; P-38 Lockheed Lightning; Kelly Johnson; F-5; SR-72;Son of Blackbird; ;
In a weak moment, of sympathy for the German Führer, Adolf Hitler, that he had been dealt with too harshly by history for killing a mere six million Jews and many millions of Poles and others, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the famous Soviet dissident who spent many years in Stalin’s gulags, commented that Stalin killed many times the number of people that Hitler had, and most of them were his fellow Russians. And there is scarcely a word said against him.Hitler again got all of the attention for starting World War II, but is that fair? Historian Sean McMeekin, in his book “Stalin’s War”, says that World War II should be more fairly seen as starting in 1931 and ending in 1989 when the Soviet military occupation of Eastern Europe finally came to an end. Well that’s not strictly true. North Korea is still occupied by a regime that Stalin imposed on it. The same with Vietnam, at a stretch. The man who should get most of the credit for bringing about the Second World War, and then gaining the most from it, was Joseph Stalin. All Stalin lost was maybe 25 million people, and what does that matter in the grand scheme of things. What Sean McMeekin has to say makes a lot of sense and I’m going to share his thoughts with you in this programme.Tag words: Stalin’s War; Sean McMeekin; World War II; Adolf Hitler; Joseph Stalin; Russian Empire; Czars; Winston Churchill; Roosevelt; Pearl Harbour; Chiang Kai-Shek; Operation Barbarossa; Battle of Khalkin Gol; Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto; Matsuoka; Hans Krebs;
One question you have to ask about the famous 1950s/1960s ad man, David Ogilvy, the greatest advertising man the world has ever seen, the first among the so-called “Mad Men” as they were labelled in the recent TV series about the Madison Avenue advertising industry, is what was he up to spying on the BritishAmbassador, his own boss, in Washington DC. Was David a double agent for the Nazis? That and many other questions will be answered in this programme – infact I can guarantee you that by the time you get to the end of this programme you’ll be curiously refreshed. If you want to know what that means you’re goingto have to listen.
Tag words: David Ogilvy; Mad Men; William Stephenson; British Security Co-Ordination; Ian Fleming; James Bond; Road Dahl; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; James and the Giant Peach; Noel Coward; Madison Avenue; Viscount Halifax; Mahatma Gandhi; Luftwaffe; Herman Göring; Joseph Goebbels; Adolf Hitler; Berchtesgaden; Neville Chamberlain; Winston Churchill; Benito Mussolini; Intrepid; Confessions of an Advertising Man; Gallup; Jennett Conant; Irregulars; Schweppes Tonic Water; Joan Alexander; Ethiopian Baptist Church; Chateau de Touffou; Sir Martin Sorrell;
I remember, like it was only yesterday, when all the young people, the Millennials, were attacking Donald Trump as president. These cool people wanted to change the world. They were rightly sick up to their teeth with our world being run by old white guys. With the presidential elections coming it was time to make a millennial shift, so to speak, and make a revolutionary changing of the guard. So now that the American elections are over they got their way. They replaced Donald Trump, a 74 year old white guy, with Joe Biden, a 77 year old white guy – who somehow doesn’t meet the offensive and unacceptable offence of being an old white guy. You know I just had it in my mind that they were looking for something else than what they ended up with. Obviously I misunderstood what their goal was and honestly I still haven’t got it.
But what about those polls? What was going on there? How did they get it so wrong? Or did they get it wrong?
Sorry, you might be having trouble keeping up. I’m not talking now about the 2020 US presidential elections, I’m talking about the polls that were conducted in 1944 on the questions of who would be the next president and who would be the vice-president.
But you know the really scary thing! A lot of the lessons from the 1944 US Presidential election are pretty well identical to the lessons from the 2020 elections – 76 years later.
Anyhoo – Joe Biden always struck me as being a cool white rapper. He has a lot in common with Eminem – and I guess that was why Joe Biden used one of his song for his election campaign – it fitted him like a glove.
Tag words: David Ogilvy; Mad Men; the Great Depression; Gallup polls; British Security Co-Ordination; William Stephenson; Rockefeller Foundation; Public Opinion Research Project; Opinion Research Division; Intrepid; Camp X; Nazis; Standard Oil; IG Farben; Dow Chemical; CIA; OSS; Tom Dewey; Roald Dahl; Vice-President Wallace; Charles Marsh; Dewey; Gerard B Lambert; Roosevelt; Nicholas Konstantin Roerich; Harry S Truman; Isaiah Berlin; Irving Berlin; Lord Halifax;
David Ogilvy would become the greatest ad man in history after the end of World War 2 – but in 1940, as England goes into an unequal struggle with Nazi Germany he has to succeed at his toughest, most important assignment ever – he has to convince Americans to help arm England so that it can defend itself, and an even bigger challenge for him, if he can, he has to get America to join the war against Nazi Germany. As a spy for England working in America these would be the most important things he ever did which hardly anyone would know about. But before the war started David Ogilvy was going to Hollywood with Dr Gallup to help the movie studios better serve their audiences.Tag words: Dr Gallup; RKO Radio Pictures; Walt Disney; Snow White; Cary Grant; Katherine Hepburn; Bringing Up Baby; Anne of Green Gables; David Ogilvy; Hollywood; The Little Minister; Sylvia Scarlett; William Randolph Hearst; Citizen Kane; Orson Wells; Joseph Kennedy; Prohibition; President Roosevelt; Public Opinion Research Project; British Security Co-ordination; William Stephenson; His Majesty’s Secret Service; The Confessions of an Advertising Man; Rolls Royce Silver Cloud II; Apple; The Merriam-Webster Dictionar; snail mail; Jennet Conan; The Irregulars; Roald Dahl; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; James and the Giant Peach; Gerard B Lambert;
In 2007 a new TV series went to air – “Mad Men”. It was called Mad Men because it was about the, mostly, men in the advertising industry on Madison Avenue. The series was the creation of Matthew Weiner. He’d been one of the writers on the The Sopranos series. The other actors in the series were unknowns. Jon Hamm was the first amongst them.Mad Men had a slow start. The first season wasn’t popular with the audiences. But importantly it was popular with the critics – who says critics never do anything good! It picked up the Golden Globes for the Best Drama Television Series, the Best Actor (Jon Hamm). That year it also picked up a total of six other awards. Those successes got the series into the public eye.Springing from those successes the series went on to another 6 seasons. It’s success let AMC, the production company that made the series, produce other hugely popular series like “Breaking Bad”, “The Walking Dead” and “Better Call Saul”.The advertising industry on Madison Avenue owes its existence to the maddest man of all. The maddest man in World War 2. A Scotsman by the name of David Ogilvy. His career came from the vital work he did as a spy for England in World War 2. He worked with Ian Fleming (the creator of James Bond), Roald Dahl (famous children’s author – think “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”) and a man called Intrepid (the code name for William Stephenson) – that’s who these Danger Zone programmes are all about.Tag words: David Ogilvy; Confessions of an Advertising Man; Madison Avenue; Charles Lutwidge Dodgson; Lewis Carroll; Through the Looking Glass; Jennet Conant; The Irregulars; Oxford University; Fettes College; Keith Feiling; Great Depression; Aga stoves; C.F. Hathaway Company; Ellerton Jetté; Lewis Douglas; President Roosevelt; Baron George Wrangell; Dr Gallup; Arrow Shirts; Ethel Barrymore: Ruth Gordon; Harpo Marx; KatherineHepburn
In the last week of July 1944 units of the Red Army’s 1st Byelorussian Front overran the abandoned site of an SS Death Camp known as Treblinka – moreprecisely the Germans called it Treblinka II. Treblinka I was a labour camp for people that were not to be exterminated on arrival.Vasily Grossman, a non-practising Jew, was with these Red Army units. He is the outstanding Russian novelist of the 20th Century. He served throughoutthe whole war, known to us as World War II but to the Russians as the Great Patriotic War, as a journalist on the Krasnaya Zvedzda (The Red Star).It was the official newspaper of the Red Army. But it was also read widely in the Soviet Union by a people anxious to know what was happening in the war.When the Russians arrived at Treblinka II they found forty survivors from the Camp. The Camp had been shut down in August 1943. There was no-one who could get eye-witnesses to tell their story like Vasily Grossman could. He immediately interviewed the survivors to learn what they could tell him about what had happened here when it was operating. One mystery that puzzled him was how 800,000 Jews could have been exterminated in a camp which only had an SS staff of 25 men. He found the shocking answer to that question.He called his account of Treblinka “The Hell Called Treblinka”. It was later quoted to the Nuremburg International Military Tribunal that tried the top Nazis for war crimes. What I am about to tell you from this article is the most shocking thing that I have ever read. You may prefer not to continue listening. It’s a story that needs to be told for the new generations that do not believe or understand the depths that human beings descended to during the time that this Death Camp operated. It’s a story that people of the generation born during or after the war have probably never heard before as well – it is nothing like what happened at Auschwitz – it is much more shocking.Tag words: Vasily Grossman; Treblinka; Death Camp; Warsaw Ghetto; Sukhomil; Zepf;
During World War 2, the giant DuPont company in America had developed a new house paint. The problem for DuPont was that the paint would spontaneously burst into flames.The flaming culprit in the paint was a substance which was a left over residue once all of the oil had been extracted – a chemical called divinylacetelyne. Perfect. Normally for many products the left overs are what you throw away, dispose of, but one of the great things about oil is that from its leftovers we get so many amazingly usable products – like plastic that saved whales from extinction in the 1800s. Back then the bone from whales, called baleen, had many of the properties of plastic. Plastic made from oil extracts was far better all round than the baleen from whales. Since the baleen wasn’t need any longer, vastamounts of plastic could be produced from oil residue. With the population of the world growing, all of the whales would have been hunted to extinction andthere would never have been enough baleen anyway. Plastic was cheaper and available in whatever quantities you needed.The DuPont company’s chemical, divinylacetelne was good for burning but the scientists found that they could improve dramatically on that. They came up with something better. They found that if you mixed gasoline with aluminium naphthalene plus aluminium palmitate you got a really killer inflammable, weaponizable, substance. That name was way too big to use everyday though, something shorter was needed. So they took the na from naphthalene and the palm from palmitate and you’ve got – ta da napalm.And the new commander of the XXIst Bomber Group was going to be able to put this to good use.Like Lt-Col Bill Kilgore says in Apocalypse Now - he loved the smell of napalm in the morning.Admiral Isoroku Yamamto, the brilliant Japanese admiral, who had planned the attack on Pearl Harbour but warned the Japanese leaders who ordered him to plan that attack, that after launching that attack, which he reluctantly planned, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."He had lived for many years in the United States and knew what the Americans were capable of. He knew what he was talking about.Even before the war began, while the planning and practice for the attack at Pearl Harbour was under way, he made another comment: “Tokyo will probably be burnt to the ground.” These were prophetic words.Tag words: tatami; Dugway Proving Ground; Antonin Raymond; thermite incendiary; General Hansell; Twenty First Bomber Group; Curtis Le May; B-29; Operation Meetinghouse; Hosea 8:7; General Stonewall Jackson; Tokyo; napalm; United States Strategic Bombing Survey; General Lauris Norstad; HenryStimson; Conrad Crane; General Douglas MacArthur;
I’m guessing a lot of you have heard of the DuPont company. They make all sorts of paints, amongst other things. A lot of you people have probably had your house painted using DuPont paint.In the early 1940s, DuPont had this new paint that they were working on. They were using an additive made from a by-product of oil, waste called divinylacetylene. They mixed it with a pigment which made the paint dry into a tough, thick adhesive.It was great. There was really only one tiny problem with their new paint. Not a killer selling point – in fact it was quite the opposite. After the paint hadbeen applied to a surface, it had an unfortunate tendency to burst into flames. I think I can safely say, even without engaging expert product/sales researchpeople that not many people want to use a paint that will burn their house down.In this programme I’m going to talk about that paint. Turns out that it was better than the atomic bomb and how!Tag words: Pearl Harbour; Albert Einstein; Adolf Hitler; Nazi Germany; B17 Flying Fortress; Wright Brothers; Manhattan Project; President Roosevelt; B29 Superfortress; Enola Gay; Twenty First Bomber Group; Haywood Hansell; American Army Air Force; General Lauris Norstad; DuPont
I’ve done a programme before based on a book by Ben MacIntyre called “The Spy and the Traitor” – a true story about the most important spy who defected to the West from the Soviet Union. He leaked information to the West that probably averted an all-out nuclear war.Ben has also written a number of other true life books about spies and spying, in World War II and in the Cold War. So I was interested to see that he’d written an article for The Times newspaper about the Munich Agreement that the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, with French Prime Minister Daladier negotiated with mediation by the Italian Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini in September 1938. The newspaper article was prompted by a movie on Netflix about Neville Chamberlain and this incident. The movie’s called “Munich: The Edge of War”.Ben McIntyre concludes that Chamberlain wasn’t taken in by Hitler – well not entirely. He says that England wasn’t prepared for war at that time. Following Munich, MacIntyre tells us that Chamberlain took steps to speed up the rearmament of England. He brought in conscription, doubled the size of the Territorial Army, ordered more bombers and created the Ministry of Supply, to co-ordinate the provision of equipment for all three branches of the armed forces. Ben summed his point of view up by paying this tribute to what Chamberlain had achieved by averting war in September 1938:“The Britain that faced Germany in September 1939 was far better prepared for war than it had been a year earlier”. All of this seems to have some merit but there were other things that made all of those points seem to me to be of small consequence compared to what Chamberlain had given away at Munich. I'm going to test that against the evidence.Tag words: Neville Chamberlain; Adolf Hitler; Herman Goring; Sudetenland; Czechoslovakia; Tatra mountain range; Luftwaffe; high octane ethyl petrol; American Standard Oil; tetra-ethyl lead; Chief of the German Army General Staff Ludwig Beck; General Franz Halder; General Erwin von Witzleben; Things to Come; HG Wells; Guernica; Sir Basil Liddell Hart; Munich Treaty;
In November 1940 during the dark days of World War II, when it looked like Hitler had won the war, Australia, which didn’t even have a car industry, decided to design and build a tank. It turned out to be one of the best tanks in the world at that time. This incredible, success, story is told for the first time, indetail, in a book written by Cairns’ own, Jason Belgrave, assistant manager at the Australian Armour and Artillery Museum at Smithfield. And I have him herewith me for this programme to tell us about his book and to finalise, from my two previous programme, this amazing story of the Australian tank that theycalled Sentinel. The book is available at the Australian Armour and Artillery Museum, as well as from their on-line store, and also from the publishers, Jabiru Publishing.
In November 1940 during the dark days of World War II when it looked like Hitler had won the war, Australia, which didn’t even have a car industry, decided todesign and build a tank. It turned out to be one of the best tanks in the world at that time. This incredible, successful, story is told for the first time in detailin a book written by Cairns’ own, Jason Belgrave at the Australian Armour and Artillery Museum at Smithfield. And I have him here with me for this programmeto tell us about his book and to continue, from my previous programme, this amazing story of the Australian tank called Sentinel. The book is available atthe Australian Armour and Artillery Museum, as well as from their on-line store, and from the publishers, Jabiru Publishing.
In April 2016, the Australian government entered into a very weird contract with the French company, DCNS to convert DCNS’s nuclear powered submarine model into diesel powered submarines for the Royal Australian Navy. DCNS had to know that even if they were able to get a submarine that had been designed as a nuclear powered submarine into a working diesel powered submarine the results would most likely be pitiful. The Australian government experts who went with this French submarine really had to know that too.
It would have been easier for Australia to buy a tank and convert it into a jet fighter.
So you have to marvel at how, in November 1940 during the dark days of World War II when it looked like Hitler had won the war, that Australia, which didn’t even have a car industry back in the day, decided to design and build a tank. It turned out to be one of the best tanks in the world at that time. This incredible, successful, story is told for the first time in a book written by Cairns’ own, Jason Belgrave at the Australian Armour and Artillery Museum at Smithfield. And I have him here with me for this and the next two programmes to tell us about his book and this amazing story of the Australian tank called the Sentinel.
There’s nothing worse than a bad neighbour. Your life can go completely down the toilet. Sometimes moving away is an option – and that’s an option often worth taking. But sometimes you don’t even have that choice. For example, if you’re Finland or the Ukraine, and your neighbour is Russia. Or you’re Tibet, orVietnam, or India, and your neighbour is China.
Today’s programme is about a tiny country that was being monstered by its neighbour Russia and all of the problems that brought with it – and the surprising outcome for a country that was determined to fight for its freedom – like the Ukraine when it was invaded by Russia in 2022.
Tag words: Hitler; Stalin; Latvia; Estonia; Lithuania; Finland; Leningrad; St Petersburg; Red Army; Molotov; Väinö Tanner; Otto Kuusinen; President Roosevelt; Helsinki; Klim Voroshilov; Simo Häyhä; The White Death; NKVD; Nazi Germany; League of Nations; Neville Chamberlain;
Taika Waititi claimed to have made Oscar history as the first indigenous New Zealander, Maori, to win an Oscar. Well it turns out that he’s half indigenous.His mother is Jewish. Sometimes he uses her surname as a professional name – Cohen. Shopping for the best ethnicity has become an important part of ourworld today. Ironically this isn’t so different to the issues discussed in his Oscar winning movie JoJo Rabbit – set in Nazi Germany where, like the people who love identity politics today, ethnicity was a big thing. Some things never change do they. JoJo Rabbit is a movie from the Disney studios – poking fun at Hitler,the Nazis and anti-semitism. Funnily enough all the things that Walt Disney loved and admired – Hitler, the Nazis and anti-semitism. If he was running the studio today this movie would not have been made. Today’s programmes looks at Walt Disney and the Nazis – then and now.
Tag words: JoJo Rabbit; Nazis; Johannes Betzler; Stephen Marchant; President Donald Trump; Mickey Mouse; Donald Duck; Third Reich; Walt Disney; Ub Iwerks; Steamboat Willie; Goofy; Snow White; Joseph Goebbels; Hitler; Charles Lindbergh; Leni Reifenstahl; Triumph of the Will; 1936 Berlin Olympic Games; Olympia; Kristallnacht; Art Babbitt; German American Bund; Pearl Harbour; Fantasia; Guadalcanal; Übermaus; Stalingrad; Bambi; The Third Reich Is All-Reich With Me; Pluto; Gestapo; President Franklin Delano Roosevelt;
One of the ritziest hotels in New York before and during World War 2, was the Hotel Pierre. It was a real life Café Americain from Casablanca. Filled with doubtful and flashy characters with Nazi-Fascist-Vichy backgrounds and connections. The hotel had been bought by John Paul Getty after a waiter had been rude to him when he was a guest. Getty bought the hotel so he could sack him. When Getty bought control of it he first employed an Austrian baron, then a German war veteran and an ex-U boat captain as managers. Among the residents living in luxury suites at the Pierre, on no visible income, was Countess Möhle. She spent her time making herself attractive to US Army officers. She was in a perpetual state of wide-eyed curiosity about military matters. Without StandardOil, the greatest oil company in the World, giving Hitler a helping hand, World War 2 in Europe couldn’t have happened. Here’s this amazing true story.Tag words: Hitler; Heinz Guderian; Achtung Panzer; Standard Oil; Exxon; BP; Esso; IG Farben; Vacuum Oil Company; Ernst Kaltenbrunner; Adolf Eichmann; Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler; John Rockefeller Jr; John D Rockefeller; William Farish; Asuchwitz-Birkenau; Kilgore Committee;
This company designed the most produced fighter aircraft of World War II for the Nazis. The first operational jet fighter – faster and more heavily armed thanany Allied fighter. Became part of the first modern European consortium to design jet passenger aircraft and many other types, is a serious challenge toBoeing’s monopoly. Made the first commercially viable digital fly-by-wire aircraft and the largest commercial airliner in the world. Another thing the world can thank Adolf Hitler for - Airbus. Listen to this fascinating and shocking story.Tag words: de Havilland Comet; Comet 1; Super Constellation; Boeing 707; European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company; EADS; DaimlerChrysler Aerospace; Messerschmitt-Boelkow-Blohm; MBB; Dornier; Messerschmitt; A300B; Ottobrun; Willy Messerschmitt; Me109; Me262; Albert Speer; Hitler; Auschwitz; Aron Tenenbaum; Airbus; Boeing 747 Jumbo; A380;
What have Krispy Kreme Donuts, Prêt-à-Manger, Kylie Jenner Cosmetics, Coty Cosmetics, Calvin Klein Cosmetics, Dr Pepper, Jacobs Dowe Egberts (MocconaCoffee for instance) and Durex Condoms got in common? The Nazi Party and the holocaust. Don’t believe me? Then you’d better stay tuned in. And by the way –there are lots of songs with the words “Krispy Kreme” in the lyrics.
Tag words: Nazi Party; Adolf Hitler; JAB; Albert Reimann Senior; Albert Reimann Junior; German Workers’ Party; Munich Putsch; Benckiser; Third Reich; Emilie Landecker; Alfred Landecker; Belzec; Sobibor; Paul Werneburg; Endsieg; Krispy Kreme Donuts; Kylie Cosmetics; Coty; Calvin Klein Cosmetics; Prêt-à-Manger; Dr Pepper; Jacobs; Dowe Egberts; Moccona Coffee; Durex Condoms;
Ferdinand Porsche – the man behind the amazing iconic German brand who brought new standards of excellence to racing and sports cars, invented and manufactured the world’s first hybrid car in 1898 as well as designing an all electric car. He designed the first Volkswagen beetle or Adolf Hitler. Designed the legendary World War II German Tiger tank, as well as the world’s heaviest tank ever, the 200 ton super heavy tank, the Maus. After the war he founded the iconic Porsche company. What a story! Stay tuned.
Tag words: Ferdinand Porsche; Béla Egger Electrical company; Staatsgewerbeschule; Jakob Lohner & Co; Emperor Franz Joseph; Egger-Lohner; electric car; Semmering-Bergrennen race; Lohner-Porsche; hybrid; Emil Jellinek; Daimler Moteren Gesellschaft; Adolf Hitler; Volkswagen Beetle; Kubelwagen; Schwimmwagen; Tiger tank; Ferdinand; King Tiger; Jagdtiger; Maus; Cisitalia; Type 356;
In 1945 it looked like Nazi Germany had lost the war, but there was a huge BUT - the new Škoda flying saucer looked unbeatable and light years ahead of anything the Allies could put into the skies against it. It could fly at 2900 kph. The fastest Allied plane could only fly at less than half that speed. It could stopin mid-flight and hover. It could fly in any direction from wherever it was. It would have shot every Allied plane from the skies and given Germany total air supremacy. Final victory in World War II seemed to be in reach for the Germans. This Danger Zone programme looks at the Škoda company and the crucial part it played for Nazi Germany in World War II.
Tag words: Volkswagen; Audi; SEAT; Bentley; Bugatti; Lamborghini; Porsche; Ducati; Scania; MAN; Václav Laurin; Václav Klement; Czech Republic; Czechoslovakia; Skoda-Hispano-Suiza; Joseph Vollmer; PzKfw III; PzKfw 35(t); PzKw 38(t); A7 tank; Adolf Hitler; Sudetenland; Neville Chamberlain; Reinhard Heydrich; Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; Wansee; Edvard Beneš; Skoda Works; Albert Goring; flying saucer; climate change; Iron Curtain; Communists; Lada; Estelle sedan; Prague; Prasna Brana; Velvet Revolution;
Toward the end of his life Henry Ford was talking to a young kid by the name of John Dahlinger (more about him later in the programme). Henry was telling the kid how great his education had been when he was a boy, in a single-room schoolhouse. The kid listened to this stuff and then said “But sir, these are different times, this is the modern age and …” Henry cut him off before he could finish. “Young man I invented the modern age”. Now I know if you’re like me, you’re thinking what an arrogant arsehole. But the problem was he was right. And what a character Henry Ford was.
Tag words: history is bunk; Battle of Gettysburg; Clara Bryant; Thomas Edison; Quadricycle; The Ford Motor Company; Alexander Malcomson; Ford River Rouge factory; Adolf Hitler; Albert Speer; Ford Model T; The Dearborn Independent; The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion; International Jew; Mein Kampf; Consolidated Liberator B-24 bomber; Willows Run Factory; John Dahlinger
His eyes burnt into hers. “There's a very fine line between pleasure and pain. They are two sides of the same coin, one not existing without the other.”
Said Christian Grey to Anastacia Steele in “Fifty Shades of Grey”. It was a sentiment that the owners of the publisher, Random House, came to understand during World War 2 when they were working with the Nazis.
Tag words: Gütersloh; Westphalia; Germany; Rhine River; Emperor Napoleon; Grande Armée; C Bertelsmann Verlag; Mohn family; Penguin Random House; Heinrich Mohn; Reinhard Mohn; Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler; Flieger am Feind; Joseph Goebbels;
The Adidas story is the story of an amazing man by the name of Adolf (Adi) Dassler – a man who revolutionised sports from World War I, through Nazi Germany and into the post-war world. He was the Michaelangelo of sports shoes. His equally amazing wife, Käthe, in an incredible story, saved the Adidas factory at theend of World War II from being flattened by the Allies, then Adi and Käthe transformed the business into the top international brand of sports shoes. You have to love their story.
Tag words: Herzogenaurach; Bavaria; Germany; Adi Dassler; Rudolf Dassler; Karl Zech; Josef Sepp Erhardt; Gebrüder Dassler Sportschuhfabrik; Lina Radke; Josef Waitzer; Jesse Owens; Baldur von Shirach; Hitler; Panzershreck; Adidas; Puma; Uwe Seeler; Cassius Clay; Joe Frazier; 1954World Cup;
This programme’s about a piano salesman who on the one hand helped the greatest armed forces on earth to a righteous victory and on the other hand helped the commission of one of the most vile crimes against humanity in history. So the lesson is, think twice before you invite a piano salesman into your house – youcould be biting off more than you can chew. This piano salesman was born in 1874 when the Stephen Foster song, Ring Ring de Banjo was popular.
Tag words: Herman Hollerith; electro magnetic punch cards; IBM; Willy Heidinger; Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft GmbH; Dehomag; Hitler; Machine Record Units; MRU; Manhattan Project; Auschwitz
The President of General Motors export arm, James Mooney, stood in his hotel room practising his Nazi salute in front of the mirror. Should his sieg heil showenthusiasm or maybe solemn obedience? Too late for any more practice, it was the afternoon of 1 May 1934. Time to meet Hitler - as his special guest at the giant May Day Parade. General Motors World, the General Motor Corporation’s company in-house paper, enthusiastically covered this momentous May Day event in a glowing multi-page cover story, and it published another story which read "Hitler is a strong man, well fitted to lead the German people out of their former economic distress. ... He is leading them, not by force or fear, but by intelligent planning and execution of fundamentally sound principles of government.".
Tag words: William (“Billy”) Crapo Durant; William Durant; Opel; Hitler; Ford Model T; Volkswagen; Wilhelm Keppler; Nazi Party; Opel Blitz; Alfred Sloan; President Roosevelt; New Deal; Führer; SA storm troopers; Standard Oil; IG Farben; Blitzkrieg; Albert Speer; Ju88; President Dwight D Eisenhower; M-4 Sherman tank; Buick; Pershing tank; Cadillac; P-38 Lightning; Chevrolet; Oldsmobile; M3 White Half Track; Bofors
“America never contributed anything to the world but chewing gum and Coca-Cola” said Otto Dietrich, the Nazi Press Chief and head of propaganda in 1942.
But then all of the Nazis fantasies came true with a new amazing drink developed by the Coca Cola company in Nazi Germany called Fanta – it didn’t win the war for them but it made losing a lot easier.
Tag Words: General John Clifford Pemberton; Ulysses S Grant; Pemberto’s French Wine Coca; Pemberton Chemical Company; Drink Coca-Cola; Coca-Cola; General Eisenhower; Robert Woodruff; Fanta; General Georgi Zhukov; Great Patriotic War;
The last time I told you the story of 19 year old Sergeant Daniel Culler. His B-17 bomber, “Hell’s Kitchen”, had just forced landed in Switzerland. He planned to set the plane on fire by pumping out its fuel and then firing a flare into it to stop it falling into German hands. The rumour going around on the American air bases was that the Swiss were swapping American and British planes that fell into their hands for new German military aircraft for their armed forces. Swiss soldiers had prevented him carrying through his plan, and saved his life. He hadn’t noticed that he was soaked in petrol. But with what was going to happen to him as a prisoner of the Swiss, there were undoubtedly long periods of time when he wished that he was dead. This programme, Dan’s story as a prisoner of the Swiss, makes for chilling listening. The Swiss behaved in totally unexpected ways towards some of the Allied airmen that they interned, not as prisoners-of-war because the Swiss were neutral, that the Nazis would have admired.
Tag words: Geneva Convention; General Barnwell Rhett Legge; Straflager Wauwilermoos; Captain André-Henri Beguin;
In the great 1949 movie, “The Third Man”, set in the immediate post war rubble of the then once great city of Vienna but now reduced to rubble from bombing and combat during World War II, Orson Welles, playing the lead character, Harry Lime, talking to the newspaper man and his friend from the past, Holly Martines, played by Joseph Cotton, gives the briefest and most brutal put down of a country that has ever been delivered. The country, is Switzerland, and he says something remarkable about that country.
During World War II Switzerland was supposed to be neutral, but was it?
In the summer of 1944, there were plenty of stories going around that the men of the American bomber forces, facing what seemed certain death before they could complete a tour of duty of 25 missions, were flying their undamaged planes to land in neutral Switzerland or Sweden to get out of the war. These stories were now reaching the commander of the American Army Air Force, Hap Arnold, and they were a serious concern to him and a situation that he would not tolerate.
And there were other much darker stories about the Swiss more than willingly co-operating with the Nazis. A forgotten story. Aren’t they the best kind. So let’s see what was going really going on in the country where the lawns, even on the mountains, are kept tidy by people armed with and using nail clippers.
Tag words: William Joyce; Lord Haw Haw; Joseph Goebbels; Collier’s magazine; General Carl Spaatz; Bomber Mafia; Norden bombsights; Memphis Belle; Ira Eaker; Allen Foster Dulles; OSS; CIA; Dean Acheson; President Harry Truman
One benefit of being persecuted over a long period of time, since 1572, and not giving up the fight, is that it’s not as easy to be intimidated as people who have always lived a quiet life.
The reason these people had been persecuted for so long was because of their religious beliefs. They were Protestant followers of John Calvin in Catholic France. Their beliefs set the framework within which they chose to live their lives. And what the Nazis wanted them to do, what their brand new government located in Vichy France wanted them to do, was what they had spent nearly 350 years refusing to do, to betray their beliefs. As if that was going to happen.
Vivarais Plateau. Huguenot. Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.
Miss Dior – such a popular and well loved perfume. The very essence of femininity – or is it? Perhaps it’s the very essence of the free spirit too, the free scent of France – maybe even of the world. And what did Dior have to do with melting clocks?
But in 1940 France was humming to a different tune. The sounds of German footsteps on the pavements. Shopping in the stores for that legendary French fashion that the officers of the German Wehrmacht., SS and other German officials were looking for who were lucky enough to get a posting to Paris. Where they could get that oh so oooh la la gift, for their wives, their mistresses and their girlfriends.
In this Danger Zone programme I’m going to tell you about the Spanish fashion designer who met 6 enormous thugs sent to his Paris studios by Adolf Hitler. Hitler wanted Berlin to become the fashion capital of the world. He wanted this designer to relocate there from Paris. Balenciaga sent them packing saying tothem “tell your boss you might just as well take all the bulls to Berlin and try and train the bullfighters there”.
But there were also dark shades suggesting collaboration with the Nazis.
Who was he? Well I’ll tell you in a minute. But since he was a Spanish designer working in Paris I should play something suitable. And about perfect is the Torreadors song from Carmen. A song about bullfighting in Spain written by a French composer – that ticks all of the boxes.
He was like Dick Whittington. In 1835 a young boy of 14 set off walking to Paris looking for a job and to learn a trade. Today his company, Louis Vuitton, is a $42 billion dollar a year brand in a conglomerate with Moët and Hennessey. But what of its past that it doesn’t want to talk about. A past during the dark days when France was occupied by the Nazis. Follow me back to the time when Adolf Hitler ruled Europe and it didn’t look like that was going to change.
I can tell you that you were very unlikely to have heard Edith Piaf singing one particular song after May 1940 that she sang once only after the Nazis had occupied Paris. The songs lyrics tell of happiert times for the French – a time when they were confident of beating the Boche again. Some of the lyrics go “I can’t stand Hitler, the Nazis seem to forget that we were the people who slammed them in the first world war”. Edith Piaf had recorded that song after World War 2 had started but before the shock of the collapse of France just 8 months later. Probably by accident one day after Paris was occupied by the Germans, French radio presenter, Pierre Hiegel, accidentally played the “B” side of one of Edith Piaf’s records and THAT song went out on the air. It seems that nothinghappened to him. He was a lucky man.
Audrey Hepburn. Princess Diana. Kate Moss. What famous woman style icon isn’t known for her little black dress. For Hepburn, it was her Hubert de Givenchy in 1961, for Princess Diana it was Christina Stambolia in 1994, also known as “The Revenge Dress,” and Kate Moss is always wearing a show-stopping LBDs. So, where’s its power come from?
The LBD possesses what so many women want to achieve with their style: effortless elegance. If effortless elegance seems like a paradox, it’s because it is, and, like many evergreen fashion trends, it relies on tension. The Paste website says that the LBD doesn’t give the woman who wears it anything to hide behind—the dress insists that its wearer shine. Coco Chanel said that “Scheherazade is easy. A Little Black Dress is difficult”. Chanel, of course, is credited for having originated the LBD. But in 1940, when the Germans occupied much of France, including Paris, Coco Chanel did something that you might find surprising.
It’s 1939 in Germany and the future is looking bright – although there’s just a possibility of war. But in the 6 years since their new and charismatic leader, Adolf Hitler, was elected things have just have been getting better and better (though not so much if you’re a Jew though). Unemployment had been at 30% when Hitler came to power. By 1938 there wasn’t any.
German self esteem and pride has reached an all time high. Hitler has taken back the Ruhr. Austria had been enthusiastically absorbed into the new empire that is going to last for a thousand years. The Germans in the Sudetenland district of Czechoslovakia, after a tense confrontation with England and France, have become part of the new empire. Hitler has even gone on to take over the rest of Czechoslovakia. It wouldn’t be long now before he gets Danzig back and even maybe the bits of Prussia that Germany had been forced to give to Poland at the end of World War I.
So when you turn your radio on at the end of a long day (working hours in Germany had stretched out to 60 hours a week by now – but there’s a lot to do) you might have heard this popular song (everyone had radios - Hitler wanted to be able to reach his fellow Germans whenever needed for his important messages).
The Nazis especially put a premium on smart uniforms.
“America never contributed anything to the world but chewing gum and Coca-Cola” said Otto Dietrich, the Nazi Press Chief and head of propaganda in 1942. But then all of the Nazis fantasies came true with a new amazing drink developed by the Coca Cola company in Nazi Germany called Fanta – it didn’t win the war for them but it made losing a lot easier.
Two men. Both lived at the same time. Both did the same thing on the same night, at the same place. Everything they did was the same. One man changed the history of the world. The other man was hardly even noticed, just for the record, his name was William Dawes. That will mean nothing to you – and that is the whole point of this programme. What was it that they did differently from each other that produced such a startlingly different outcome. You need to know, because what they did, and how they went about doing it can totally change your life. The world we live in today is still a radically different world because of the other guy.
On 12November 2020 Australia’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, announced that a 4½year enquiry had revealed allegations of war crimes said to have been committedby some members of the Australian Defence Forces serving in Afghanistan. ScottMorrison “warned the nation to prepare forallegations of “serious and possibly criminal conduct” by Australia’s defenceforce in Afghanistan that could see soldiers prosecuted for unlawful killings.
General Angus Campbell, Chief of the Defence Force, soon after this news release said that he would write to the Governor-General asking him to revoke the Meritorious Unit Citation for special forces soldiers who served in Afghanistan from 2007 to 2013. On 23 November he issued a further press release showing that many members of the SAS Regiment had been issued “show cause” notices about why they shouldn’t be sacked” – remarkably before any decision had been made on whether a crime had been committed.
It was back in March 2016, when General Angus Campbell was the Chief of the Army, caused Major-General Paul Brereton (a sitting judge of the New South Wales Supreme Court – never a combat soldier as far as I am aware – judges never have to have actually done the thing that is being heard by them) to be appointed to head up an enquiry into allegations of war crimes against some Australian Special Air Services soldiers.
The allegations are that there were 39 murders of prisoners and civilians and the cruel treatment of two others by members of the Australian Special Air Services regiment during tours of duty in Afghanistan in the periods between 2005 to 2016.
Although the top brass in the Army have been quick to “tut tut” this alleged behaviour by the men they command, they need to look to the standard set by the victorious Allies at the end of World War 2 regarding the responsibility of commanding officers for the conduct of the men they command. The Standard that they can’t walk past was the one set in the trial of General Yamashita, the Japanese commander of the 14th Army in the Philippines in 1944 when large scale killings of civilians, especially in Manilla took place. The standard is disarmingly simple and I have to say I wonder why some of the commanders of our forces in Afghanistan at the relevant times are smugly taking pot shots at the men they were commanding and not contemplating the gravity of their own positions.
A story has broken concerning allegations of Australian Defence Personnel having been involved in war crimes. In the present age it seems that more often than not that an allegation is treated as if it was the sames as a conviction, only without a trial.
While that’s acceptable, and normal, in socialist regimes like Communist China and North Korea, the former Soviet Union, it has never been the way things are done in this country.
A person’s reputation is a precious thing. It is easily lost. The reputation of one of Australia’s most important institutions, the Australian Defence Forces is also easily lost when hasty and ill-informed allegations are made as if they’re the findings of a court of law.
It’s to Australia’s credit that it raises the issues of these allegations publicly. In 1940 the socialist regime of the Soviet Union butchered 22,000 Polish officers in the Katyn Woods in Poland and spent the next years, after the massacre was uncovered by the Germans in 1943, trying to shift the blame onto the Germans. All of the bodies were riddled with bullets from Russian weapons and overwhelming evidence, no longer disputed, showed that this was a Communist slaughter.
So let’s look at the allegations that have now been made against the Australian Defence Forces with a cool head, applying the principle of the Anglo-Saxon legal process that a person is innocent of a crime until proven guilty in a court of law.
This Danger Zone programme’s about how a Russian double agent, Colonel Oleg Gordievsky, fled the Soviet Union using only a plastic Safeways shopping bag and a Mars Bar.
And how an American spy got that old South American feeling – I Yi Yi Yi – and married his dream Latino woman, of very expensive tastes and needs, so he became a Russian spy to give her the lifestyle that she needed and that he couldn’t afford on his CIA salary - and because of him at least 10 men died.
In 1982/1983 the world stood at one minute before midnight. Russia was ready to launch an all-out first nuclear strike against the West – because, wrongly, they knew that America was about to launch a surprise nuclear attack on them. How the hell was the world going to avoid this! The key player to avoid this apocalypse was a Russian double-agent - Colonel Oleg Gordievsky.
This programme’s about the man who has undoubtedly been the greatest spy in the history of the world. Every one of you listening right now owes your life to him. If it wasn’t for him World War III would definitely have happened. No “”ifs” or “buts” – the Third World War would definitely have happened and civilisation would have ended.
A lot of people know about the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. That was nothing. The only reason that the world was saved in 1983 was thanks to this Russian spy. In this program I’m going to tell you what he did – and what difference it made.
It’s been said that “no other band … is as synonymous with the words party and good times than the B-52’s. Their infectious music is layered with dance grooves galore, that frankly just makes your body move, and has been in high gear for the past 35 years”.
Athens Georgia is a university town - the University of Georgia. Athens Georgia is located just 70 kilometres from Atlanta, the capital of Georgia. It all started for the B-52s in October 1976. After having drinks at a Chinese restaurant a group of people, Fred Schneider, Kate Pierson, Keith Strickland, Cindy Wilson and Ricky Wilson, decided to form a band. They called it the B-52’s because of the bouffant hairstyles that Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson wore at the time. Their hairstyles, popular at the time, looked like the nose cone of a B-52 bomber – which is what that hairstyle was called.
The B-52s played their first gig at a friend’s place on Valentine’s Day, 1977. By 1992 the band was coming to the end of its road as a main stream popular band at the fore front of the music world, but even today they continue to tour.
This Danger Zone programme’s about the plane that the B-52 group took their name from, an American strategic bomber that first went onto the drawing board in 1948. This bomber, the B-52 stratofortress, is scheduled to remain in service until 2060. It will be over 100 years old, if it retires then. I guess that’s why is has the Jurassic Park sounding nick name – the Stratosaurus.
Nothing much surprises me today but this did. You’re not going to believe what I’m about to tell you. There are people out there who are against electricity, modern medicine, hospital, worldwide telecommunications – almost instantaneous (like Skype, Facetime, Zoom – all of that stuff), international travel, cars, highways, plentiful food with virtually no famines, television, live streaming - I could go on and on and on but I think you get the point.
And these people are trying to convert you, yes you, into agreeing with them. They’re a bit sneaky about it – well the smart ones. The dumb ones are too dumb to know their being had by the smart ones – things never change.
If it wasn’t for this thing, that they’re complaining about and telling you was terrible, you wouldn’t be living in the modern world. What is this thing. Well I’ll tell you,
This is the final episode in the story of the man who the ANZAC’s Revered – Fighting Mac.
Mel Gibson told the story of Desmond Doss – the Seventh Day Adventist who refused to kill, was rejected by the men in his platoon and by the Army but at the Battle of Okinawa, on one day, 5th May 1945, saved the lives of 75 men.
This story is about a man who risked his life for 2½ years in the bloodiest fighting from being with the Australians at Gallipoli and then on the Western Front in Europe. A man whose repeated acts of bravery and selfless devotion to the men of the ANZAC, earned him their undying respect, and the undying respect of their families and loved ones back in Australia until the day that he died on 26 July 1947.
He was a man mobbed wherever he went when he returned to Australia from World War I. A man who was invited to give one of the three eulogies for the famous General John Monash after his funeral, with the first eulogy being delivered by Sir Harry Chauvel – commander of the legendary Australian Light Horse. After the war he was the guest of honour at many ANZAC Day services. At the end of those services it was not uncommon for his hands to be bleeding from shaking so many hands. So many hands desperate to touch his.
Yet today no statues of this man stand for the modern haters of the left to tear down – maybe that’s a good thing. What isn’t a good thing, is that this remarkable man, who makes the heroism of Desmond Doss, told in Mel Gibson’s movie, “Hacksaw Ridge” pale into insignificance, is almost totally forgotten – a fate that reflects poorly on us all.
God bless the Salvos - the Salvation Army.
William “Fighting Mac” McKenzie is the most famous man of the ANZACs of World War I that you’ve never heard of. When he returned to Australia in early 1918 he was mobbed wherever he went, by the veterans who had come home, by the families and friends of ANZACs who he had helped – by writing to them about the deaths and the circumstances of the deaths of their loved ones, by helping distribute thousands of letters and parcels from Australia to our boys, his “Lonely Soldier” campaign, and most importantly of all, for what I am going to talk about in today’s programme about Fighting Mac, by lifting up the dead bodies of our fallen, often in the middle of No-Mans Land, and burying them in that place and for the whole time he did this he was in great danger of death or maiming himself.
To many of the people who were so desperate to shake his hand when he got home, the reason they were desperate to shake his hand was because his hands was the last human contact that their loved one’s lifeless body had, Mac digging a grave for him and then gently lifting the man’s body into the grave to bury him with a Christian burial service:
Forasmuch as it has pleased Almighty God, in his great mercy, to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed. We therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. In sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ who shall change our vile body that it may be like unto His glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to Himself.
Fighting Mac was a Salvation Army chaplain with the AIF. He was the man the ANZACs revered. Do you know how difficult it would have been to have been so respected, venerated, by these men?
God Bless the Salvos. The Salvation Army.
The most famous man of the ANZACs of Gallipoli and France, the man who was revered by the men of the ANZACs in World War I and till the day they died, is a man that you’ve probably never heard of. The ANZACs, when they were in the fighting zones, when they were resting, wherever, he was sought out for his company. When he returned to Australia in early 1918, exhausted to the point where he would never be the same, he had crowds of people coming to see him wherever he was. Word spread like wildfire.
His name is William “Fighting Mac” McKenzie and you really need to hear his story. In this programme the Australians have just arrived in France after being evacuated from Gallipoli. I’ll pick up his story from there.
God Bless the Salvos - the Salvation Army.
Fighting Mac was the man who our ANZACs revered. When he returned to Australia, after reaching a state well beyond exhaustion, having served first at Gallipoli, and then on the Western Front all the time with the 4th Battalion, he was ordered home in late 1917 reaching Australia in early 1918.
The war was nowhere near won. The Germans had beaten Russia and now over 1 million of their battle hardened soldiers were being poured into France for one mighty push to win the war before the Americans arrived.
The people of Australia, the wounded veterans who had already been sent home, and countless numbers of Australians who felt like they knew Mac personally, were willing to travel hundreds of kilometres to hear him. For many of the families, touching him was important. They wanted to shake hands with him, and they did until they were bleeding.
Who was he and what had he done to be held in awe by the men of the ANZAC – not easy buggers to win over.
Well one of the places where he earned his fame was in the fighting for Lone Pine, the ridge above where the most forward position of the ANZACs was at that time. At 5:30 pm on Friday 6 August, the Australians were ready to launch their diversionary attack to take Lone Pine from the Turks.
The Turks had covered the front line trenches with pine logs, sleepers and earth and were doing the same to the reserve trenches behind. Coils of barbed wire had also been laid in front of the front line trenches to slow the Australians approach to the trenches, so that the men would be exposed to Turkish fire for longer – hopefully to be driven off before they ever reached the trenches. It wasn’t a case of being able to reach the trench and jump in any more with these improvements.
Prior to the attack, the men brought their packs and left them with a corporal whose job it was to stop men from other battalions, not engaged in the fight, from stealing their belongings.
The Australians had had what they called the best sport they’d ever had shooting down the Turks who had attacked them from uphill Lone Pine on 19 and 20 May – just a few weeks before. Now they were the ones who were going to be in the open – coming from downhill. That should have frightened them.
God Bless the Salvos - the Salvation Army.
You’d have to be a right bugger to have a go at the Australian Army chaplains in World War I. Why? Well listen to this story of one of them – and he’s not even the chaplain that was a legend to the ANZACs. This is another one.
Chaplains weren’t supposed to have been landed with the first troops at Gallipoli, but somehow one was. He didn’t get that memo. He was Roman Catholic chaplain, Father John Fahey of the 11th Battalion from Western Australia. He was a man of God so it would be a bit rough to accuse him of lying about that memo.
Father Fahey was a tough and practical man, much like the man that these programmes are about, our Fighting Mac. Father Fahey had come from preaching to the hard men in the rough timber settlements and mining towns in Western Australia. He was no wimp.
He landed with the first ANZACs at 4:30 am on the morning of 25 April. His battalion landed on the northern end of the beach, looked down on by Ari Burnu. It came into what was probably the heaviest fire and probably suffered the worst casualties of all of the Australian battalions to be landed that day.
Father Fahey saw men killed to the left and the right of him. His coat, haversack, waterproof sheet and tobacco tin were all riddled with shrapnel and bullets in a series of separate incidents, the one after the other. A book was shot out of his hand, it could have been, most likely was, the Bible. A tin of jam was perforated by bullets and shrapnel as he ate from it. He was half buried by shells – not once but twice. This all happened in the first three weeks that he was ashore.
So now we come to where the enormous legend of Fighting Mac really begins – and it’s a story that has been tragically forgotten in this country today. That’s something I want to put right in this and my following programmes.
The most famous Australian that you’ve never heard of is William “Fighting Mac” McKenzie. He is known as the man who the ANZAC’s revered. Don’t worry, don’t feel embarrassed that you haven’t heard of him. It’s highly unlikely that you’ve heard of him or that anyone you know has because sadly we’ve let this man’s story be forgotten.
But back in the day, in Australia, between the wars and through to soon after World War II when Mac finally found eternal peace, there wouldn’t be anyone who hadn’t heard of him, and vast numbers of Australians, living and dead, then were in his debt. In these programmes I’m talking about this sadly forgotten legend whose memory I’m trying to revive.
On Good Friday 2 April 1915, one of the lesser known battles of the Australian soldiers took place. The landings at Gallipoli were just a few weeks into the future then. That battle was in Cairo, Egypt, it was the day when the Battle of Wassa took place. Wassa was the Red Light district of Cairo. It was an area where the worst of the brothels were located. It was an area where Mac had gone many times, including into the brothels themselves, to confront young Australian soldiers who he found inside these establishments and persuaded them to come back to leave what they were intent on doing there and to come back to the camp with him.
Legend has it that Mac, driven to distraction by what the brothels in this area was doing to our young men, to protect them, took matters into his own hands. He led a group of ANZACs into the red-light district and burnt the place to the ground. To make sure that that was going to be the result, the men slashed the fire-hoses so that the blaze couldn’t be put out.
Is that just a colourful story, or did he really do that? Certainly the red-light district was burnt down by the Australians, but could really a chaplain have led the raid?
Well I’m going to tell you.
Thank God for the Salvos - the Salvation Army.
At the end of World War I “Fighting Mac” was the most famous ANZAC. Even before the Australians landed at Gallipoli he was a hero to the Australian soldiers.
After the ANZAC landings, and right through to the time that he was sent home from the Western Front, exhausted from his super human exertions in the War, he was a legend and the man that the ANZACs revered.
For decades after the end of the war he attracted huge crowds of adoring soldiers and their families wherever he went. “Fighting Mac” never rose above the rank of major, he served only with the 1st Brigade AIF, he wasn’t one of the wartime leaders, or one of the great generals, but his fame spread throughout the entire AIF and back home where people were desperate to shake his almost sacred hands, until at the end of a day of meeting people, they were left bleeding.
And how is it that today if you say the name “Fighting Mac” people will have no idea who you’re talking about?
Fighting Mac is Australia’s forgotten hero. He’s been forgotten for too long and I’m going to share his story with you in these programmes. It’s a story that we all should know.
Thank God for the Salvos - the Salvation Army.
He was the most popular man in the Australian Imperial Forces by the end of the FirstWorld War. He’d been amongst the first men to land at Gallipoli and he was oneof the last to leave those dreadful shores. He served on the bloody WesternFront until late in 1917. 1917 was the worst year of the war for the
Australians. 55,000 casualties, 38,000 at Passchendaele alone. He was alwaysamongst the worst of the fighting.
The need of his men for him to stay with them was great, but the man was shattered by theend of 1917 and ordered back to Australia. Then he was shattered at having to leave them.
When he got home, the government organised for him to go around Australia to bring news ofthe war, and because he was an absolute legend to so many people. When he wastouring, people travelled hundreds of miles to where he was going to be. To seehim, or better still to hear him speak. Most importantly of all, for so manytragic people, to feel the touch his precious hands.
There was a kind of magic about his hands. It wasn’t magic like in some goofy TV series, itwas a tragic magic that drew many many Australians, irresistibly to him like amagnet. His hands were often left raw and bleeding at the end of a day. Why?
This is a man whose story you need to hear from me, because nobody else is telling it – and it should betold. This man is one of the greatest Australians – and at the same time nothing.
No wonder they say "Thank God for the Salvos" - the Salvation Army.
The world we live in today has been inspired out of the teachings of the Christian faith.And so it was that as part of that tradition, in 1912, the Presbyterian Churchcommissioned the Reverend John Flynn to look into the needs of bush communitiesin remote outback Australia. The Australian Inland Mission (AIM) was set up in1912 as a result of his recommendations. Then in 1928 a new and exciting steptook place using modern aircraft. It was done as a one year trial to see if itwas worthwhile. It was called the AIM Aerial Medical Air Service. This morphedinto The Royal Flying Doctor Service. It looks like it was really a good idea.
It was a way of rapidly bringing medical aid to people in extreme need and of rapidlygetting those people to the medical aid they needed.
You know what it’s like when you go to the markets. If you see something unique andreally great on a stall one month, by the next month that same thing isavailable on a lot of stands. Aerial delivered medical services were clearly anunbeatably brilliant idea and as the crucial moment of World War 2 in Europewas coming, the invasion of continental Europe by the British, Americans andCanadians on D-Day, there was going to be an urgent need to get the woundedaway from the landing areas on D-Day and the following days, back quickly tofirst rate medical help in England.
This is the story of the nurse volunteers who took to the air, at considerable personalrisk to themselves, to bring this urgent medical evacuation help to severelywounded soldiers who bringing liberation to Europe from Nazi tyranny. The“Flying Nightingales” they’re called. One of only two of them perhaps stillalive, lives in Malanda, the other in Western Australia. This is their story.
On 14-15 April 1912, the mighty, unsinkable, Titanic struck an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean. It took just 2 hours and 40 minutes for the Titanic to sink. 1,500 lives were lost. But the size of that maritime disaster was dwarfed on 30 January 1945, when the Germans were carrying out the largest seaborne evacuation in history – 2 million people fleeing the onrushing Russian forces.
One of the ships taking part in this evacuation was the luxury cruise liner, the Wilhelm Gustloff. Built to carry 1900 people, on this night it was carrying 10,582 people, 5,000 of them children. Most of the passengers were refugees. 9,343 of them perished in the icy waters of the Baltic when the Wilhelm Gustloff sank in 90 minutes after being torpedoed at night by a Russian submarine. This is the tragic story of the greatest maritime disaster ever …
On 14-15 April 1912, the mighty, unsinkable, Titanic struck an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean. It took just 2 hours and 40 minutes for the Titanic to sink. 1,500 lives were lost. The people who died with the sinking of the Titanic died alone – in the middle of a vast ocean.
But the sinking of the Titanic was not the greatest disaster at sea with the greatest loss of life. In today’s programme I’m going to tell you about a disaster that was far greater and happened in the safety of a port, in the heart of a modern Canadian city, Halifax. This is the horrific story of the sinking of the steamship Mt Blanc in 1917 and the consequences of that sinking. It could happen in any modern seaport – even today.
There have been three naval military disasters where the loss of life was greater than the 1,500 lives lost in the sinking of the Titanic. The stories are incredible. Over the next three programmes I’ll talk about them, beginning with the riverboat sinking on the Mississippi River in 1865 just as the American Civil War drew to a close – the worst maritime disaster in American history.
Between 1929 and the early 1930s, the Communist government in the Soviet Union had conducted a policy of genocide against the peasant farmers of the Ukraine, called the kulaks.
One of the benefits that was promised to come from getting rid of those vermin, those blood-suckers, would be the establishment of collective farms. Food production would be increased. Everyone would be happy. From each according to his ability. To each according to his need.
What could possibly go wrong with forcing people onto collective farms. Many of the people that were forced onto the collective farms, weren’t farmers. The kulaks had been professional farmers – but they were all gone. And good riddance to them eh comrades!
Now we could get a view from our collective farm – happy days were coming, the socialist paradise was almost here.
Today many people tell us that we should forget about history, we don’t need it. But then those same people tell us about all of the sins of our past that we must be deeply ashamed of today. If they say history doesn’t matter, then why are they telling us that we should be ashamed of our history. Slavery. Colonialism.
There’s far more interesting history to talk about than those old issues. That history really interesting history doesn’t go back hundreds of years. Times from which there isn’t one living person. This interesting history is about recent times and about people today who will do the same things again if they think it necessary. No European nation, the United States, Australia, New Zealand are going to be bringing back slavery and colonialism. Let’s get closer to current times, with people still alive today who suffered from monstrous wrongs, or whose children are still alive and remember when damage was done to their parents. This history has important lessons for us today. It teaches us a lot about what and why those people telling us to forget about history especially mean forget about the history of their beliefs – and the actions of people from those times that are being repeated today in a different form, and who may still yet decide that it is necessary to do it all over again.
This programme is about one of the greatest horrors that happened less than 80 to 90 years ago. There’s scarcely anything that can rival it. It’s history that you may not have heard about before, but you must.
Perhaps after you’ve listened to this story you might think that you would like to know more about history – that you absolutely must know more about history. Especially when the ideology that murdered over 8 million people is rising again.
Stick around for the next twenty minutes, if you’re willing and learn something that you need to know.
At the end of the magnificent funeral service for Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, a lone piper stood playing a piece. The piece is known by the name “The Flowers of the Forest”.
In Eric Bogle’s moving song, No Man’s Land, he asks the unresponsive Private William McBride, whose gravesite he’s standing next to, “Did they play the Flower o’ the Forest” at his funeral.
The Flowers of the Forestwas composed as a lament for the army of King James IV, remembering an much earlier war, a much earlier battle when the flower of Scottish manhood were slain with their king on the battlefield of Flodden in September 1513.
In 1513, the Scots had invaded England to support their long and close allies, the French. It was on 9 September 1513 that the Scots army, under King James IV, faced off against the English forces of King Henry VIII, under the command of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey. The battle was ferocious and bloody - men were felled by artillery, arrows, pikes, bills and swords. Around 14,000 men died, including James IV, who had the dubious and, I’m sure unwanted honour of being the last British king to die in battle.
The composition of this song began with a fragment of a very old ballad. Mrs Patrick Cockburn of Ormiston drew on this fragment to write a full song. Then in the mid 18th century Miss Jane Elliot, daughter of Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto, Lord Chief Justice Clerk of Scotland, drew on Mrs Cockburn's work to make her lyric a much finer piece than what Mrs Cockburn had originally written.
This pipe tune is well known to anyone who has attended a Remembrance Day service in Scotland, but the song is all too seldom heard nowadays.
The tune is held in such reverence that very often the piper will practice it in absolute privacy, so no one else can hear it. Then play it only in public at funeral service, such as the Duke of Edinburgh’s, or at memorial services.
Now what horrors were the Australians going to have to face, after the bloodbath of the Nek to bring the Gallipoli campaign to an end. Everyone expected a bloodbath if they tried to evacuate. Join me now to learn that final story.
In my last programme I told the story of the ANZACs heading to Egypt and then the first day’s landings on Gallipoli. At the end of that programme I told you that by night time the commanders on the ground had some surprising feelings about how the landings had gone. I said that I’d talk about that in the next programme. So here I am. Let me tell you about what our generals thought about the Gallipoli campaign.
Charles Bean, the first embedded journalist, who landed at Gallipoli with the ANZACs on that first day, whose inspiration and leadership led to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, and who wrote the official history of Australia’s experience in World War I wrote about the feelings at the end of that first ANZAC Day:
“... clearly something was in the wind. In a minute or two I heard what it was — some question as to whether we were to hold on or to embark at once ... “
The Allied generals were reporting back to the highest command that their brigades were saying that they hadn’t established secured positions. They wanted the troops withdrawn immediately – that night. Things were really grim on that first night. In reality the position of the Australians and our allies never got any better until their withdrawal in December.
But it would have been a huge call to end this massive undertaking in less than 24 hours. The reputations of some of the top people in England would have faced ruin. But that’s not a good reason to make that sort of decision and there was in fact a good reason why no evacuation took place that night – or could possibly have taken place that night. Evacuation, with the resources that they had was impossible. So the opportunity to bring this doomed operation to an end quickly was either missed or more probably wasn’t even an option. Many lives were going to be lost over the next months without anything to show for it, except that Australia, as a strong, proud and independent nation was emerging.
In 1995 the TV Series “Mr Bean” went to air for the first time. It was a strange programme. Mr Bean was mostly silent – with only a handful of words being spoken by him throughout the whole three series. The audience reaction to him varies a lot. I think the cleverness of the wordless comic actions is brilliant and I love the show. My wife finds Mr Bean to be an incredibly nasty human being, which he is. She also can’t contain her discomfort at the situations that he gets himself into.
There’s a saying "Nothing can be made foolproof because fools are so ingenious". And that is what the Mr Bean series is all about.
But ANZAC Day’s approaching and this programme all about ANZAC Day. So why am I talking about Mr Bean, his silent comedy and foolishness? Well because it echoes my story about ANZAC Day, how the experience of the fighting at Gallipoli changed how Australians had seen themselves from Englishmen abroad to start with, to Australians completely at home with themselves as the War dragged on, and the remarkable qualities of those Australian soldiers compared to the English soldiers that they were fighting alongside with.
And no, I haven’t gone completely mad. There is a Mr Bean in my story. Mr Charles Bean. He was the first embedded war correspondent in modern terms. He was also the man who was destined to write the official history of Australia’s experience in World War I – and written by a man who had seen it up close and lethal.
So the whole silent movie thing of Mr Bean harkens back to the time of the Great War and just afterwards, with comedians like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. And some of the things that happened – well they could have been funny if thousands of men didn’t pay with their lives, or in the case of those lucky enough, or maybe not, to have survived, who carried the scars of what they went through until the very day that they died. Mostly with their families, sometimes never leaving the hospitals that they were sent to after being gassed or losing their minds. Their families typically knowing nothing of what they had been through and perhaps grateful for it.
The remarkable thing about chess is that you can’t lose. I mean you’re looking down on the board. You can see every piece that your opponents has and where they are. You can see every piece that you have and where they are. Does it get any better than that! You can’t lose. But is that the right way to look at it? Because that’s how some of the top military people in the US thought it worked when the second Gulf War was looming. They were totally wrong. I’ll tell you exactly how disastrously this panned out for them. What they thought would happen and what really happened.
This series of programmes is all about how war has improved all of our lives. And this programme’s all about how modern heart surgery happened thanks to war and because of one man’s struggle to overcome what, up to and during World War II, was an area of surgery that no right thinking surgeon would do. Heart surgery.
The heart’s an incredible pumping machine. It’s the size of a grapefruit, it beats slightly more than once a second, 100,000 times a day. Depending on how long you live, it can have up to 3.5 billion beats in a lifetime. Your heart pumps out blood with enormous force. If your aorta is severed your heart will send a fountain of blood 3 metres up into the air.
It was only during World War II, and because of one remarkable man, that surgeons began to perform surgery on the heart. Until then it had been a no-go area. After the war, heart surgery was revolutionised.
This is an amazing story.
Back in the happy days before the white imperialist invaders came to Australia’s shores everyone was happy, healthy and contented. Well maybe I’m exaggerating a bit.
If you weren’t healthy then you would die. A hunter gatherer community, that lived from day to day, needed everybody to be contributing to making their society work.
So if you weren’t healthy, and couldn’t keep up when your clan moved on, then you weren’t of much use and you would soon die.
So life in Australia before the arrival of the English was unforgiving. It takes a society that can farm and produce more than enough for each day, that can store the surplus for the future, to be able to allow people who aren’t contributing to what’s available for everyone to stay alive.
But things weren’t all fun in England at the time when Governor Philip brought the First Fleet to Australia. His job was to set up a small penal colony on the east coast of Australia. Period. He wasn’t a conqueror. He set up the new colony at Sydney Cove, not Botany Bay which had seemed like the place to aim for from Captain Cook’s reports of his first voyage. There were no plans of conquering the continent. The spread of settlers across Australia got totally out of hand. It was the result of individuals who decided that they actually liked living in Australia and would like to make a real go of it. And it was the sheep brought to Australia that made that spreading out from Sydney happen.
For at least half of the people who were left back in England, and probably much more than that, things weren’t in a lot of respects nearly as good as they were for the nomadic Aborigines living in Australia. The Australian aborigines mostly had a warm climate so that they didn’t need heavy clothing to keep them warm for a good part of the year, without which they’d die. Generally the aborigines had a plenty of food. They had a level of medical help that was no better and no worse than what most Europeans living in rural villages had. But things in Europe were on the cusp of a monumental change that would radically alter the balance between living in Europe in the eighteenth century and living in the Australia of 60,000 years before. The industrial revolution.
But even with those changes that the industrial revolution brought, having people live in the crowded European cities of the industrial revolution, with poor to no sanitation, appalling air quality, terrible diet, was having a dramatic effect. It was an effect that it turned out to be one that governments couldn’t ignore. It was because of war and the threat of war that these health and fitness problems were going to be soon addressed and eventually fixed. This is the story of how we all got to have gyms and fitness centres everywhere, good food, and healthy living that took advantage of all of the advances that had been made through the industrial revolution but had not yet delivered better lives to everyone.
Human beings have always known about blood. In civilisations since the earliest stone age hunter gatherers until today, too much blood has been spilt. But what we’ve known about blood has, for most of time, been completely wrong. Thank God we finally got it right.
This programme’s about the world that war has made so in this programme I’m going to tell you a bloody good story – which is what war is all about after all – about how we finally got to understand blood and save millions of lives.
War has shaped all of our lives. You may not like it. You might think that war is evil. That war must come to an end. But whatever you think, every day of your life, and throughout every day more than you’d like to think, so many of the things that you do or get the benefit of, have been shaped or come out of war.
Anyway enough of that depressing talk. How about you just go into that coffee shop there and get your starter for the day – a nice cup of coffee. Sit down. Make yourself comfortable. Why not get a croissant – with ham and cheese. Maybe a sweet croissant if that’s more your style.
Why am I talking about croissants? Well the first people who sat down to enjoy a croissant did it because something marvellous had just happened. It was the year 1683 and people were sitting down to try the newest pastry delight. It had been created to celebrate the ending of the danger of the Christian world being conquered by the invading armies of Islam. Until just then it looked like that was going to happen. But thanks to the arrival of the brilliant Polish army, their amazing looking winged hussars, and the armies of the Holy Roman Empire, the army of the Ottoman Empire, commanded by Merzifoniu Kara Mustafa Pasha, was decisively defeated. The threat of Islam to Europe now slowly and forever re-traced its steps back to modern Turkey where they had come from. Their battle standards, the crescent moon, became immortalised in the crescent moon shaped pastry delight of the croissant the same shape that we still enjoy today.
So what else to we have to thank war for? It’s going to take some time to answer that but let me get started.
In September 1939, Czechoslovakia was betrayed to Adolf Hitler by the British and the French. It had been done for the most noble of motives, in an effort to avoid another war with Germany. They had thrown Czechoslovakia to the ravenous beast that Adolf Hitler was. It turned out to be rather unsuccessful in avoiding disaster as 60 million people died in World War II rather than a few thousand that might have died if they had instead called Hitler’s bluff. Although it was then more likely that his generals would have removed him in a coup.
It would be 50 years, though, before the Czechs would be able to breath the air of freedom again.
This is the third part in the series on poor Prague. This is the part where the Czechs at last were able to throw off the cruel slavery of Communism and win their independence in what is known as the Velvet Revolution. This is the story of the Velvet Revolution.
On 8 May 1945, the German commander of Prague, General Rudolf Toussaint, signed an instrument of surrender with the Czech resistance. The deal was that the resistance would let the German armed forces leave the city without being shot at. Toussaint lamented: “Who am I now? A general without an army. All I can do is go home and sit in the ditch and look at the blue sky”.
The next morning a convoy of German armoured vehicles and trucks left the city. One brutal totalitarian regime had left.
That same afternoon a column of the Red Army arrived in the city. The Czechs had just switched one cruel oppressor for another – the Communists. It would be another 44 years before they would win their freedom from that one, with one brief period when a false illusion of hope would lift their spirits, only to be cruelly dashed. This programme looks at that oh so brief period of hope.
Queen Libussa was a legendary witch in central Europe. But you won’t have heard of her. She lived a thousand years ago. One day, in a trance like state, while she was standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down at the River Vltava and the forest on its far side, she spoke a prophecy saying: “I see a great city. Its glory will touch the stars”.
Then she said to one of her courtiers, “In the forest below there is a clearing. There you will find a man making the best use of his teeth at midday. That is the place where this city will be founded.”
The courtier did as the Queen had bade him, descended from the cliff and rode into the forest. There he saw some men. They were building a house but it was midday, so they had taken a break to eat their lunch, (making the best use of t heir teeth as she said) well all except for one man. He was still working, sawing a block of wood. The courtier went up to him and asked: “What are you making?”. He replied: “A threshold for a house”. In the Czech language the word for a threshold is a prah.
Libussa’s prophecy was right. The city that grew up on that sight is today called Prague, in the English, which means threshold - praha.
In these programmes I’m going to tell the story of three very dramatic moments in the life of that great and beautiful city. The misfortune of Czechoslovakia in 1938, was the gift to the world today of one of the great cities of Europe, left intact from the devastation of World War 2. So I should begin my story in 1938 and leave the mystical Queen Libussa on her cliff.
In last week’s programme I did the first part of a programme remembering the 60thanniversary of the beginning of Australia’s involvement in the war in Vietnam. A war to stop the brutal Stalinist regime of Ho Chi Minh from taking over the democratic country of South Vietnam.
I was joined for that programme by Gary McKay (now with Mat McLachlan Battlefield Tours), a nasho, who served in Vietnam as a 2ndLieutenant in charge of a rifle platoon. He extended his time in national service so that he could serve with the Australian forces as they withdrew from that country. There is no more dangerous time for soldiers than when they are withdrawing, especially like here when the enemy knows that you are pulling out. Gary became engaged in a fierce battle, the last Australian battle of the Vietnam War, with regular North Vietnamese units on 21 September 1971. By then the 3 battalion task force had been whittled down to 2 battalions, and the Australian tank support had been withdrawn.
4 of the 5 Australian killed were in Gary’s platoon. The Australians expended over 140,000 rounds throughout that contact. Gary was awarded the Military Cross.
Today he conducts battlefield tours of Vietnam (with Mat McLachlan Battlefield Tours), as well as writing many insightful books into that war and other instances of actions by first responders. He is also involved in the never ending battle to get justice for the veterans that fought in that war.
OK let’s push on with the interviewDZ 60th Anniversary of Australia’s Involvement in the Vietnam War 31 July 1962
Time flies when you’re having fun. 31st July 2022 is the 60thAnniversary of Australia committing troops to the war in Vietnam.I was university student during those heady days and I was totally sucked in by that slick left wing propaganda machine. The left, the same people who had sold Hitler as being a good guy, until Germany invaded Russia, then made the tens of millions of their own people who Stalin had murdered seem not to be the droids that we were looking for, the bad guy was now Hitler. The same people who sold us the heroic Chinese Communist Revolution, which, between 1958 and 1962, starved to death more of their own people than died in the horrific fighting of World War I. The same people behind the murderous regime in North Korea that continues to this day.And so it came to pass that as a university student at Sydney University I found my sympathies lying with the murderous butchers in North Vietnam, from which 650,000 Catholics had fled south to the safety of the democratic country of South Vietnam.But the left, the Communists, are good at making shit taste like sugar. Thanks to people like me a cruel injustice was done to the free people of South Vietnam, betrayed to a brutal Stalinist Communist regime. No wonder that so many of the South Vietnamese fled to so many countries around the world including Australia. Australia has been enormously enriched by these hard working people but until now I have never acknowledged my shame for my betrayal. Admittedly Australia was only a small player and the Americans called the shots. The Australian Army did a brilliant job of beating the external invaders from North Vietnam, and genuinely winning over the hearts and minds of the people of Phuoc Tuy province, giving them a mostly safe environment to pursue a mostly peaceful life while we were there.So now is a good time to remember and give thanks to those Australian men and women who wore khaki and blue in Vietnam, trying, and sadly ultimately failing, to give those wonderful people the good life that they deserved in their own homeland.Time to give thanks to the same people we made to feel like shit when they came home not getting the thanks that they deserved. Whatever your politics, the members of the armed forces offer to give up their lives for our country. They go where our politicians tell them to go. So if your ever wanting to take out your feelings of anger about where our fighting people fight, take it out on the pollies. And thank our military for their selfless service. They just go where they’re told.In this programme I have the honour of speaking with one of our heroes of that war, Military Cross winner, Gary McKay (now with Mat McLachlan Battlefield Tours), in the first of two programmes about the Vietnam War then and the debts we still have to pay today, work we haven’t yet finished.
By the end of World War II, the 125,000 men of Bomber Command weren’t just forgotten but were shunned. There was a deep sense of shame at the devastation that had been inflicted on Germany and its cities by what is called the indiscriminate area bombing campaign. I can understand the mood as being something like I experienced when the war in Vietnam came to an end.
The brave men and women who served Australia and the United States in the Vietnam War became the objects of disgust and even hatred That was to be the fate of the men and women who had served in Bomber Command during World War 2.
It took people of great courage and conviction to bravely battle to turn this thing around and to have the vital achievements of the men of Bomber Command, which made winning World War 2 possible, recognised.
One of the people who was most dedicated to the cause of erecting a lasting monument to the brilliant achievements of Bomber Command, correcting the mistreatment that those men received at the end of World War 2, was the late Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees. He was the president of the memorial’s heritage foundation for many years and a driving force in making the memorial’s realisation happen.
Shortly before his death, Robin Gibb got to visit the nearly complete Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park at the end of Piccadilly near Hyde Park Corner. He scrambled up ladders so he could take the full tour of the 15 metre high Memorial. When he came face to face with the 3 metre high crest emblazoned with the words “Bomber Command Royal Air Force”, the full impact of what he had accomplished hit him. He said:
“This is honestly the proudest thing I’ve ever done. It was so important to finally see the brave airmen who risked their lives every night to fly bombing raids over Germany and shorten the war were finally honoured, and now it is happening. This memorial is bigger than even the Wellington Memorial and will still be here long after we are gone. It will last forever.”
Robin Gibb died from the cancer that had hounded him for many years on 20 May 2012. Just over a month later, on 12 June 2012, the Bomber Command Memorial was formally dedicated by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II commemorating the contribution of the 125,000 aircrew of Bomber Command, including 10,000 Australians and our own Vic Trimble from Mareeba. 57,862 of them died performing this invaluable service, of self sacrifice, as Jesus said no greater love hath a man than to lay down his life for his friends. Just over 46% of all the aircrew died in performing this sacrifice for everyone in the world. Just think of it.
But because of the Christian nation that we live in, forgiveness is at the heart of our values and as the war neared its ends, the people in England and Australia began to see the horrific and extensive damage that Bomber Command inflicted as something to be ashamed of because they were moving to forgiving the Germans for the war.
We need to have a hard look right now at how Bomber Command contributed to winning the war to weigh up for ourselves whether their contribution to the war is a thing to be ashamed of, or to be grateful for.
On 9 November 1934, five years before World War 2 began, a schoolboy in the German city of Dresden, wrote an essay on aerial warfare. He imagined what would happen if some enemy decided to bomb his city. He wrote:
“The sirens howled and the people fled into their air-raid shelters. The bombs fell with deafening noise, blowing in windows and destroying all the houses.. Vast flames rage over Dresden. A second wave of enemy bombers come, dropping gas bombs. Almost everyone in the bomb shelters were killed. Ashes and rubble were all that remained. The raid was a total catastrophe.”
His teacher was furious. He wrote on the boys paper:
“It can’t get any worse! Stupid! Evil! It’s not so simple to lay waste to Dresden. You write almost nothing about defences. The essay is crawling with errors.”
Fifteen years later, by which time our student had undoubtedly volunteered or been conscripted to fight in the German Wehrmacht (their word for the armed forces), and had possibly been killed, the British did their last major night bombing raid of World War 2. On 13 February 1945 Dresden was bombed.
With the Russian army approaching, the city’s anti-aircraft defences had been moved to the front to fight the Russians. Dresden itself had not been bombed during the war and it looked highly unlikely that it would be.
Just like our student had written, the city had no defences. The next day the Americans carried out two raids over the city. A firestorm was created. Freakish, cyclone like winds, that engulfed the whole city in flames. 25,000 people were killed.
One of the people there during these air raids was an American prisoner-of-war – Kurt Vonnegut. He wrote about his experiences of this bombing in the novel, “Slaughterhouse Five”.
Of all of the actions of the war, this raid drew the most criticism for the allied programme of indiscriminate bombing of cities.
The men of Bomber Command became the forgotten soldiers of World War II. But things weren’t that simple. In this programme I’m going to give you a feel for what it was like being in a city while it was under attack from British bombers, and then in my last programme in this series, I’m going to tell you some remarkable things about the bombing policy on Germany and its effect on the German people.
Your everyday working life is, or was if you’ve retired, getting up out of bed, getting dressed for work and then heading off. At the end of the day you’d come home. It would be a shocking experience if you, or any of your work mates suffered some sort of reasonably serious work place accident. That would really throw you.
But if you were a crew member of a Lancaster bomber flying regular bombing missions over Germany, you would have been surprised if you went on even a couple of missions without seven men that you knew, crew of one of the bombers in your unit, didn’t return from a mission, probably dead. Captured if they were lucky.
Even today having a job in the Australian Defence Forces, the Police, the Fire Brigade, their work contract has a clause you won’t find in your employment contract. They are required to lay down their lives, if needed, in carrying out their duty.
I remember an eye witness during the September 11 attack on the twin towers saying something that he saw that staggered him. The man said that he watched people running from the buildings. That’s what you’d expect. He also watched the fire brigade and the police arriving at the buildings and running into the buildings, and almost certainly to their deaths. The Christian ethic of loving your neighbour, that these firefighters were putting into effect, couldn’t be further from what a lot of people promote today as the ideal – the ‘me’ culture. No way would a ‘me’ person be laying down their lives for others – for complete strangers.
And these men grew up in a society where death at childbirth, from disease, accidents etc were taken as part of life. Prince Philip made a speech on the 50thAnniversary of VJ Day in 1995 – the victory over Japan in the Pacific. Today we more modestly call it VP Day, Victory in the Pacific, so as not to offend the Japanese. Personally I think the Japanese are made of stouter stuff than that. Prince Philip, in his speech, told one of his truths about what it’s like to be a fighting man in war – a truth that still holds true today.
“It was part of the fortunes of war. We didn’t have counsellors rushing around every time somebody let off a gun, asking ‘Are you all right – are you sure you don’t have a ghastly problem?’ You just got on with it.”
In this programme I’m going to tell you about what it was like getting ready to fly a bombing mission over Nazi occupied Europe.
In Don McNaughton’s book about his father’s wartime experiences when he was the mid-upper gunner on a Lancaster bomber during World War 2, retold in “Lucky Pommie Bastard”, he talks about the night, some time after his father had passed away, that he and his mother watched a programme on TV about the British bombing campaign against Germany in World War 2.
His mother told him she found it helpful to understand more about her late husband, but she said she was still confused about something, something that had obviously troubled her husband from his war years, and that never left his subconscious.
So after the programme had finished she said to Don:
“I have some understanding of why your father could be short tempered but what was behind the many nightmares he suffered for years when he woke up in a sweat shouting ‘corkscrew, corkscrew’.”
Don wrote: “Mum had never asked Dad (or he didn't tell her) what his nightmares were about and it was the TV programme that at last informed her that the term was used when sighting a night fighter to get the pilot to take evasive action. This episode also gave me some further insight into how my mother dealt with her war experiences and with Dad, or rather how she could box those memories and experiences up, store them away and ignore them for so many years. Geez Mum if you had asked any of your sons (even me at 12 years old) they could have told you what "corkscrew" was all about and maybe made life a tad easier!”
Let me tell you about what his father meant by corkscrew and why that was a word that he would start screaming out during the night until his dying day.
In 1939 the cost of travelling by cruise ship from Australia to England was beyond the wildest dreams of your average Australian. Overseas travel was an absolute luxury and only for the very richest people.
Most Australlian workers at this time got one week’s paid annual leave. Not much good if you wanted to spend two months sailing to England and then spend another two months sailing back.
There was some long distance air travel – in the great and luxurious flying boats of the time. They would fly over the Atlantic, and even to Australia, landing frequently on the water on their way. That was the beauty of the flying boats, airfields weren’t needed. But flying in these days, especially long distances, was extremely dangerous. Many important military leaders during World War 2 were killed in plane crashes, as was Major Glenn Miller. Churchill especially made many trips out of England during the war, nineteen in all between August 1941 and March 1945, and none of them were free of the risk of death.
And once again, just like travelling on a cruise ship, passenger flights were unbelievably expensive, considerably more than travelling on a cruise ship, and it required more courage than paying to fly into space for a few minutes on Elon Musk’s Project X space ships – which are infinitely safer.
So international travel for the overwhelming majority of Australians wasn’t even a dream.
The Great Depression in Australia was almost as bad as it was in Germany. It’s effects were still being felt when World War 2 started.
So what I’ve been saying in my long winded way, is that although heading off to war in England may not quite be your idea of a dream come true, it must have been a pretty exhilarating prospect for the young Australians who signed up to be trained as aircrews serving in Bomber Command, flying bombing missions over occupied Europe from air bases in England.
This type of war, a campaign waged entirely in the air, had never happened before so no one knew what to expect. It turned out to be something far worse than anyone had counted on – far worse for the crews flying those planes, and far worse for the people on the ground where the bombs were dropped.
But I’m sure the feelings of the loved ones back home, apart from never ceasing to worry about their loved ones serving with Bomber Command, had another dimenstion too which were probably reflected in the 1923 Eddie Cantor song , about the soldiers who had gone off to fight the Great War, “How Ya Gonna Keep Them Down on the Farm”.
In this series of programmes I’m going to be looking at this air war through the eyes of a young man from Mareeba, Vic Trimble. His story, and the story of the crew of the Lancaster bomber that he skippered, is told in their biography written by Don McNaughton, the son of Roy McNaughton, who had just turned 19 when he joined Vic Trimble’s crew as a mid-upper air-gunner.
Vic and his crew were seven (that was how many men made up the crew of a Lancaster bomber) of about 10,000 Australians who volunteered for, and served with Bomber Command in the war against Nazi Germany in Europe. In all 125,000 personnel flew bombers against Germany and Italy during World War II. A staggering 55,573 of them gave their lives – but not in vain.
Jesus said in John 15:13: “For the greatest love of all is a love that sacrifices all. And this great love is demonstrated when a person sacrifices his life for his friends.”
Hitler and the Nazis were one of the greatest horrors that the world has ever seen and it was vital that his regime was brought down.
Today we know that China is doing fabulously well and winning the cyber and technological wars. How do we know this? Because China is telling us it is. Hang on. China said there was no terrible new virus breaking out from its laboratory in Wuhan and went out of its way to hide the story. Problem with a pandemic is that sooner or later you have to fess up. Well they didn’t fess up but the rest of the world guessed – I mean its pretty hard to ignore a pandemic. Makes you think doesn’t it.
So the question is, is China doing well in the cyber technology war or not? Are they telling us the truth or not? And the answer is most likely, Not. Stick with me and in this programme I’ll give you an answer to that question with a surprise ending.
Woody Allen started performing as a stand up comic in New York. Some really funny stuff. But who would ever have thought that he was a prophet! I mean he’s Jewish, which has a history going back thousands of years of having some extraordinary prophets. But this will really throw you.
I’m going to tell you that the Chinese Communist Party probably has you under surveillance inside your home right now, and if it doesn’t it soon will have.
Now I’ll explain what that has to do with you.
Liu Xiaobo is a dangerous man. The Nobel Peace Prize website tells us this about how serious a threat he poses to the freedom, peace loving Chinese Communist Party.
Liu was born on the 28th December 1955. He studied literature and philosophy. Then he worked as a literary critic and university lecturer in Beijing. He took a doctorate in 1988. After that he was a guest lecturer at universities throughout Europe and the USA.
It first became apparent that Liu was dangerous when he took part in the student protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. For that he was sentenced to two years in prison – clearly the Chinese Communist Party took a lenient view of his serious errors, expecting to be repaid with gratitude, not betrayal. But this mad man later served three years in a labour camp for having once more spoken out criticising China's one-party system. Why would anyone do such a thing!
For over twenty years, Liu has fought for a more open and democratic China. He demands that the Chinese authorities comply with Article 35 of the Chinese Constitution, which lays down that the country's citizens enjoy "freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration". Is he serious? Just because the Constitution says this, does Liu seriously expect it? I warned you that he was mad.
In 2008, Liu was a co-author of what is called Charta 08. It’s a manifesto which advocates the gradual shifting of China's political and legal system towards a democratic system. He was arrested in December 2008, and sentenced a year later to eleven years' imprisonment for undermining the state authorities. Once more the tolerant and paternal regime gave him a slap on the wrist, not wanting to go too hard on him – which is clearly what he deserved. Liu has constantly denied the charges. He says "Opposition is not the same as undermining". He clearly misses the point.
On 8 October 2010 the Nobel Prize committee, in the days when it acted with integrity and upheld its principles, rather than bowing down to the Chinese Communist Party, announced that it was awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to him.
Peking University acted appropriately, by using marvellous new technology, to examine the facial expressions of the students on hearing this news. Any face that “showed unusual happiness” could be guilty of serious face crime and at risk of having their scholarship cancelled – possibly worse.
Modern technology, social media companies and silicon valley high tech companies know how to treat the Chinese Communist Party with respect. Let me tell you more.
The Chinese Communist Party has emerged as the major threat that Australia is facing today to our national security and even our national sovereignty.But the news isn’t all bad. In the event of a military conflict, the technology that Australian scientists have developed give, at least, them a guaranteed successful outcome. That might sound a ridiculous thing to say but I say it with absolute confidence. Through initiatives of the Australian government we’re funding vital high technology research that is providing cutting edge technology to China’s People’s Liberation Army.Of course you have to be pretty twisted to see that as a plus, and you have to wonder just how stupid Australia is in its handling of the silent invasion of Australia by the Chinese Communist Party, as Clive Hamilton calls it in his book of that name, in paying for research that will make the Chinese Communist Party an even bigger threat to world peace than it already is.
Here’s a bit of fun. Complete this sentence: “There is a common sentiment in China that government officials will only speak the truth when …” – over to you. Finish that sentence.
I’m sorry times up. If you said “when they are drunk or careless” you were right.
That question was read out of a standard book, “Human Resources Management” by Raymond J Stone, then used at Monash University in Melbourne, by lecturer Aaron Wijeratne in May 2017. This sentence reflects a sentiment often expressed in China. In the Western world, this idea is found, perhaps, in a Latin saying – in vino veritas. Translated “in wine there is truth”.
But a student from China, in the class, Gao Song, wasn’t amused, worse still, he was offended, and he did something about it.
I love this story.
In 2014, Prime Minister Tony Abbott made his first visit to China. One of the people who went with him was his chief of staff, Peta Credlin. They were attending the Boao Forum. A Chinese Communist Party initiative for meetings of high level leaders from government, business and academics to share their visions on the most pressing issues in this part of the world.
It also enjoys the international reputation as being THE most bugged event in China. That is a remarkably high honour.
Before the delegates left Australia for the conference they were all briefed by ASIO on how to handle themselves and what dangers to look out for. Some, like beautiful women spies, called “honey pots” in the spy trade, prove impossible for some delegates to resist. You might find one in your room when you first arrive. A sad comment on our abandonment of morality as a follow on with the left doing their darndest to remove Christianity from our society.
Some of the ASIO tips, maybe you’ll find these useful if you’re ever going to visit China, include the advice to take a different phone with you, not your usual one. Use a different SIM card as well – very important that. Never, ever, plug your phone into a charger that is generously provided at no charge by the Chinese Communist Party controlled hotel that you’re staying in.
Typically at conventions you’ll end up sooner or later with at least one complimentary USB stick. Throw it away. Don’t use them.
Finally, never ever leave your laptop, or other electronic devices, in your hotel room if you’re not there in the room.
When Peta Credlin was shown to her room she followed some of the essential security advice that she’d been given. She unplugged her bedside clock radio and disconnected the TV set from its power source.
A few minutes later there was a knock at her door. KNOCKING SOUND “Housekeeping”. She had just checked into the room. If it was about housekeeping you’d think the room would have been properly prepared for her arrival and they wouldn’t need to come calling as soon as you’ve entered your room. She opened the door and the person entered the room. This person was none too subtle. They plugged in the TV set and the bedside clock radio and left. They did nothing more.
Peta Credlin immediately unplugged them both again.
Again, a few minutes later there was a knock at her door. KNOCKING SOUND. The person entered, plugged the TV set and the bedside clock radio and left again.
This time Peta Credlin unplugged her bedside clock radio and put it outside her room next to the door. She then covered her TV set with a towel.
By the way, if you find a cute Chinese girl in your room, do the same with her that Peta Credlin did with her bedside clock radio – put her out in the hall.
Now I’m going to talk about boxes that the Chinese Communist Party uses.
In February 2019, a female Chinese born and resident student, attending the Australian National University in Canberra, made a comment in class. To an Australian who heard her comment, they would think nothing of it, the comment she made was just part of the normal exchange of ideas and thoughts that happen all of the time in class and interacting with other students on campus. But that isn’t the end of the story.
It is very common, normal, for students in Australia from China, to monitor each other and to report any conduct by one of their fellow Chinese students that would not be tolerated in China, to the embassy. In recent studies in the United States, professors reported that they assumed that their Chinese students were reporting on each other back to China. It’s a wise student who reports a fellow student who steps out of line. Because if it’s found out that you were aware of the comment, remark, behaviour, and did not report it, then you will fall under suspicion of condoning it. The added bonus of reporting a fellow student is that it is likely to benefit you in your relations with the Chinese Communist Party.
Now back to our Chinese student who made a remark of a kind that she would not have made if she was in China. In under two hours of the remark being made, her parents, in China, received a house visit from the Ministry of State Security. They were warned about their daughter’s behaviour. Such a thing must never happen again – or else. The “or else’s” can come in many forms. The parents might be punished, she might be recalled to China.
Australia is not doing a lot to stop this behaviour in our country by the Chinese Communist Party interfering in our domestic affairs. It’s not only Chinese students visiting Australia from China who are subjected to this intimidation, but potentially anyone of Chinese ancestry who has lived in Australia going back many generations who might find themselves on the receiving end of being punished.
In this programme I’m continuing looking at how the Chinese Communist Party coerces Australians of Chinese ancestry, and Chinese people visiting Australia, to behave the way it demands.
There are over one million people in Australia of ethnic Chinese descent. World wide there are over 50 million ethnic Chinese, living in countries other than China.
The earliest date when the first Chinese visited Australia isn’t known for sure. But maybe this gives us a clue. In one book by Confucius, in his “Spring and Autumn Annals”, written in 481 BC he recorded that two solar eclipses were observed by Chinese astronomers on 17 April 592 BC. And as best we can reckon, they might have been in Arnhem Land. The problem is that it wasn’t called Arnhem Land then so they could have been anywhere.
Another Chinese book, called “Atlas of Foreign Countries”, written between 265 and 316 AD, described the mountains above Cairns, as being inhabited by a race of one metre tall pygmies. It turns out that this was a reference to the pygmy sized Aboriginals identified by Australian anthropologist Norman B. Tindale in the late 1930s.
The earliest known Chinese immigrant to arrive in Sydney post Invasion Day, I’m not sure whether his arrival constitutes the beginning of a yellow invasion following hard on the heels of the white invasion. It’s highly unlikely that he was a Communist because Karl Marx, lazy sod that he was, well he as a socialist, didn’t get around to writing his book Das Kapital until 1867. Anyway this person, probably not a Communist, is recorded as being a man by the name of Mak Sai Ying. He was born in Guangzhou (Canton) in 1798. He arrived as a free settler in New South Wales in 1818 and purchased land at Parramatta.
In 1829 Mak Sai Ying (who had adopted an English style name, John Shying) was granted the licence for The Lion, a public house at Parramatta. I guess this shows that racism hadn’t been invented by white people back in those days. His descendants became cabinet-makers and undertakers in Sydney. Packing death.
Between 1849 and 1887, China, particularly in the south of China, suffered from foreign invasions, rebellions, severe flooding and famines. Since China wasn’t then the nice place to live that it has become under Xi Jinping, and the gold had just been discovered in Australia, a lot more Chinese were encouraged to come here.
Many of the people living in Australia today, of Chinese ethnic descent, are therefore very dinkum di Aussies.
There are also many more recent Chinese arrivals in Australia and some of those have a dubious connection with this country.
Bob Hawke was the Australian prime minister at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 the man who famously said on the day that Australia won the America’s Cup, that “any boss who sacks someone for celebrating Australia II's America's Cup victory is a bum” and he always a man who carried his heart on his sleeve. After the massacre, Tiananmen Square, not the whipping that Australia gave the Americans in 1983, Bob Hawke generously gave 42,000 Chinese who were in Australia at the time permanent resident rights – and the same to their close family members – making a total of about 100,000 Chinese. It was a big hearted gesture. It was to help Chinese dissidents by not forcing them to return to an unpleasant reception when they got back to China. But it was a really dumb gesture. No one from China could visit a foreign country like Australia unless they were trusted by the Chinese Communist Party. No dissidents allowed. This gesture by Bob Hawke was against the wise advice by public servants who told him not to do it.
Myths and legends. It’s funny how some ideas get a hold on your head and you either never realise it, or it’s just so against what you know that you just refuse to believe it.
I’ll give you a for example. A lot of people think that the ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, is a body funded by the Australian government, independent with its own charter, that provides a neutral, even handed, balanced view of the news that matters, and even a lot of news that doesn’t matter, fearlessly to Australia and the rest of the world.
It’s funny how we get these ideas. What if I told you that the ABC is an arm of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Bureau, which has the role of spreading the their propaganda and disinformation that the Chinese Communist Party wants so very much, the rest of the world to believe is the truth.
You don’t believe me? Well let me tell you something you didn’t know.
People have wandered the earth over many many centuries predicting the end of the world – the climate alarmists continue this ancient tradition. So far no one has gotten that right – not even close.
But something remarkable, although not as remarkable as the end of the world, happened in 1948. In that year a country of 9.6 million square kilometres ceased to exist. What replaced it is something very scary. That’s what I’m going to be talking about in this programme. If you want to find out what on earth I’m talking about I’ll tell you.
It’s 30 January 1933 and we’re in Berlin.
Well I can’t believe what I’ve been seeing happen. It’s beginning to look a lot like Adolf Hitler is going to become the new Chancellor of Germany. Incredible!
If Hitler isn’t made the Chancellor today, and soon, the rumour is that the Army’s going to stage a coup – and that’s for sure and certain. Then they’ll put von Schleicher back in charge. Everyone agrees that Germany could suffer no worse fate.
So I’m going to pop over to von Papen’s apartments where everything is happening. I have to say thank goodness for von Papen.
Thank God it’s Sunday. The shabat, the sabbath, but of course it’s Sunday 29thJanuary 1933, so not the Jewish sabbath but the Christian one. And the less I say about anything Jewish in a nice way the better. Anti-Semitism is pretty much a thing today.
The cold bite that has been freezing Germany for a few days now still isn’t really let up. Grey, overcast day. I don’t think it’s going to get any brighter. In a lot of ways maybe.
Today, at this minute, Germany is leaderless. Well Schleicher’s still technically the Chancellor but he’s just keeping the seat warm for the real chancellor who will be ….. – Franz von Papen perhaps. Perhaps even that man who was looking like a rank outsider just a few weeks, even a few days ago, Adolf Hitler.
This Sunday there’s no time for President Hindenburg to attend church as he usually does. He’s in his study and it’s only 10 o’clock in the morning. Right now, as I’m watching him, he’s telling his aide, Otto Meissner, to send an urgent telegram to General Blomberg. Blomberg’s in Geneva attending the armaments talks. About cutting Germany a bit of slack from all of the restrictions imposed on her at the end of World War I. Hindenburg’s telegram is telling Blomberg to return immediately to Berlin and report to the President. Wonder what that’s all about?
While he’s at it, Hindenburg is sending another telegram. This one to Schleicher, also summoning him to the President. Thanks to all of Schleicher’s spies, still working for him as the Minister of Defence, he’s just hearing that General Blomberg will be returning to Berlin – summoned by the President. Schleicher’s opinion. Blomberg’s not a man to think for himself. Schleicher’s wondering why he’s being summoned. Blomberg’s certainly not a man of my outstanding qualities – Schleicher thinks to himself.
I wonder what this is all about.
It’s Friday 27 January 1933. The weekend is coming. Everyone knows that Chancellor Schleicher is going to be kicked out but who is going to take his place. No-one in the know, knows.
André François-Poncet, the French ambassador, who always knows what is happening on the political scene in Berlin – doesn’t know. He’s heard rumours that Schleicher, the Chancellor, will soon be going. He’s sent that news to Paris but he doesn’t know anything beyond that. He doesn’t know the answer to the big question.
Joachim von Ribbentrop is visiting Hitler and Göring at Göring’s apartment. “What’s happening?” asks the Führer. Ribbentrop answers: “I don’t know. Hindenburg is still saying he is not going to make you the Chancellor.”
But Ribbentrop has an idea. “The National Front – do a deal with Hugenberg. I’ll organise another meeting at my place at 10 tonight with von Papen. We can try to find a way through”.
The big news just out, not the biggest news that everyone is waiting for, is that the body that decides when the parliament is to sit again, the Council of Elders, has announced that parliament, the Reichstag, will sit next on 31 January. Wow! That is wow! Schleicher will resign before then if he’s smart – unless he can turn Hindenburg around – which is not likely. IResigning will be better for him than having a vote of no confidence passed against him – how humiliating would that be!
But right now a meeting is just about to take place at Göring’s apartment. Hitler, Göring and Frick (the head of the Nazis in the parliament, the Reichstag) are here for the Nazis and Hugenberg, and the head of the parliamentary DNVP Party, Otto Schmidt-Hannover are on the other side. Looks like Hitler took Ribbentrop up on his idea. I wonder how this is going to work out.
Both sides are as subtle as flying mallets. Hitler says “I will be the new Chancellor and my men will hold the cabinet positions of the Interior Ministries of Prussia and the whole of Germany” (that’s the police forces – very important offices – as I suspect we would soon see if Hitler ever gets his way).
But the pig-headed Hugenberg is not taking any scheiße from Hitler. “The office of Chancellor will be a member of my party and so will the cabinet press officer. You are not getting the Interior Ministries either.”
Complete stalemate – I told you Hitler is not getting the top job – no way, no how. Complete balls up by Hitler.
Hi, today’s Thursday 26 January 1933 and here’s the weather report. A powerful anti-cyclone has settled over Europe, driving cold air from the Baltic and northern Russia towards Germany. The nights will be clear and icy. In East Prussia and Pomerania the temperatures are going to plummet to -28 degrees. The Rhine River is freezing over and drifts of ice are making for difficult and dangerous conditions for shipping. It’s expected that soon all shipping movements on the Rhine are going to be ordered to be halted.
Here in Berlin the temperatures are expected to reach -20 degrees. It looks like the political commentators are right. Hell will freeze over before Adolf Hitler comes to power. I wonder how’s his manoeuvres to get to be the Chancellor are going? Time to check in.
It’s still Thursday 19 January 1933. Chancellor Schleicher has an entirely unexpected visitor. It’s Ernst Torgler, the head of the parliamentary Communist Party. An unlikely visitor to the conservative, army officer, Chancellor. The’s here because the Nazi brownshirts are going to march outside the Communist Party’s headquarters in Berlin – Karl Liebknecht House – on Sunday 22 January 1933. The Nazis had done the same thing last summer in Hamburg. Then 18 people had died in the violent clashes that had followed. But then again maybe that sort of bad behaviour by the Nazis is what Schleicher is hoping for to make sure that Hindenburg will never entertain having Hitler as Chancellor. Such devious times we’re living in.
Friday 20 January 1933 with some familiar news. Parts of Germany are in the grip of a flu epidemic. Schools in Brunswick and Göttingen have had to be closed. In Hamburg hundreds of new cases are being admitted to the hospitals every day. Berlin, for some reason, is immune to this epidemic. Go figure!
Papen is hitting a brick wall with trying to get von Schleicher kicked out of the Chancellor’s office. He turns to Hindenburg’s top people to help get this happening – Hindenburg’s son, Oskar von Hindenburg, and Hindenburg’s top public service adviser, Otto Meissner. They both agree that they want to have Schleicher removed as chancellor as their first priority, even if that means having von Papen share power with Hitler. Ewwww.
That night von Papen tells Joachim von Ribbentrop that Oskar von Hindenburg and Otto Meissner are agreeing to meeting with Hitler. This is a huge concession on their part. Could things be looking up for Herr Hitler? I have to say that I doubt it.
Do you think football will ever turn professional? Today is Thursday 12th January 1933 and the news is that Italian football club AS Roma has just signed the Argentinian striker and World Cup veteran Alejandro Scopelli after paying a transfer fee of a whopping 80,000 marks to his former club, Estudiantes de La Plata.
The Germans didn’t want to go down this route. In 1930 they‘d banned fourteen footballers on the FC Schalke 04 football club because they charged expenses of 10 marks per match instead of the permitted 5 marks.
Then again, just a few months earlier at the German National Conference of the Football Association approved a German Reichsliga (a national football league) that would allow professional players so that Germany would be able to play competitively on the world stage.
That is great news. I wonder what’s happening on the political pages of the newspapers in Berlin. Hitler seems to be washed up. The Nazis had only got their big vote in July 1932 as a protest vote. In the last election they’d started to sink like a lead balloon. Their policies hadn’t mattered when it was a protest vote but in November people have to really decide if they wanted to vote for the Nazis. No-one’s quite sure what they will do if they’re elected. Any way it doesn’t matter now, that isn’t going to happen.
I’ve been telling the story of those last few days from November 1932 to January 1933 and about the most unlikely success story - how Adolf Hitler accidentally ended up as the leader of Germany, because genuinely powerful political people who hated each other, didn’t realise what would happen when they put him in charge to spite their real enemies.
At last it was 1933. Hitler kept saying that he knew his destiny to become the Chancellor of the Third Reich would be achieved that year. If it didn’t then he would probably have ended up dead by his own hand.
Hitler isn’t universally loved. Even the man who would become the head of perhaps the most feared state security organisation that has ever existed in this world, the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller, had described Hitler as “an immigrant unemployed house painter”. On another occasion he’d called him “an Austrian draft dodger”.
In 1937 (well into the future from where I am right now with Hitler still hoping that he’s going to be appointed the German Chancellor), a local Nazi Party official wrote about this head of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller ‘we can hardly imagine him as a member of the Party.”
Another internal Party memo from that same year said that it could not understand how “so odious an opponent of the movement” could have become the head of the Gestapo. But that’s a fascinating story for another time.
So, is Hitler going to realise his destiny to become the Chancellor of Germany in the course of this programme? If yes, how? Keep listening.
It’s 22 December 1932 and Adolf Hitler is still as far as he has ever been from becoming the leadmer of Germany – hopefully he never will. That’s what most people think – but not everyone.
Bella Fromm was a woman with a coquettish mouth and dark eyebrows. She was forty one years old and a journalist. She worked for the Vosische Zeitung newspaper. This paper was a must read if you wanted to try to keep up with the politics in Berlin – and nowadays that was no easy thing to do.
Bella had come from a wealthy Jewish family. By now she’d been married twice. She’d had a daughter from the first marriage, but right now, once again she was single – alone again naturally. The inflation disaster that hit Germany in 1923 had wiped out a lot of her inherited wealth and she had needed to get a job – hence she was now a journalist writing a column called “Berlin Diplomats”. She covered what was happening with the foreign emissaries, staff and foreign ministry and the politicians in Berlin. She kept her poison-tongued political analysis out of her newspaper column, saving it for her diary and her closest confidantes. If she wanted to have good relations with these people, insulting them or betraying their confidences was not the best way to go about it. Being a Jew today in Germany, 1932 that is, did mean that there were some people that didn’t want to talk to you anyway – like say the National Socialist Party.
Although she’d lost a lot of her wealth, she had managed to hand onto a villa in Berlin, a sports car and two horses. Not bad in these financially distressed times.
It was worth hearing her thoughts on what was happening in Germany and where the country was headed to – and she knew because she has access to having a chat to US Consul-General George Messersmith. He’d arrived in Berlin two years ago and was keeping a close eye on the Nazis in particular.
Today is Thursday 8 December 1932. History tells us something that seemed impossible on that date was soon going to happen. That was that in just under two months, Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, would be the Chancellor of Germany and in under 13 years after that, 60 million people who were alive then, or were born during those next 13 years, would be dead. Countless millions of other people would have their lives shattered beyond anything that was imaginable.
In this programme I’m taking a close look at what happened in those few days that were destined to send the world to a new kind of hell. What was impossible on that Thursday, 8 December 193, on Monday 30 January 1933 would become the new reality as Hitler was handed the keys to the gates of hell.
Hitler was the supreme gambler, it was the reason he came to power and it was the reason that he almost dragged the entire world to hell with him. In July he’d refused to accept the office of Vice-Chancellor that had been offered to him. He would only agree to being the Chancellor. That didn’t happen. One of Hitler’s most important lieutenants, Gregor Strasser, then resigned from the Nazi Party. Many of the top political people and political commentators in Germany saw this as the end of the Nazi Party. A sane betting man would have to have agreed with them.
Germany after World War I found itself a Republic and a democracy. Neither of which its people wanted. This was all new and all came out of what happened at the end of the First World War and was forced on the Germans by the victorious allies. If you were a German back in those critical days, the first thing the returning German soldiers from the trenches did was to be paraded through the streets of Berlin, as if in a victory parade. The mayor made a public speech telling them that they were returning undefeated. Today we’re used to lies from our leaders and activist groups but perhaps they weren’t so used to them back in 1919. Some people will tell you that no harm can come from that sort of lie that helps, unjustifiably, to build up your self-esteem. Don’t believe them. Did Germany need a new leader with vision to take it to its true destiny?
During the war, especially in the first four years from 1939-1941, Germany took many prisoners of war. A continuing stream of prisoners of war were always falling from the skies over occupied Europe –British and American airmen. Australians and other nationalities too. The majority of the prisoners were housed in Germany’s eastern territories, mainly Poland or eastern Germany.
In late 1944-1945 the war was rushing towards its climactic end. British historian Richard J. Evans believed that Hitler, since he could no longer win, wanted, a Wagnerian end for himself, one that was fit for the gods of the Vikings. In the last days leaving Berlin was unthinkable for him. The Nazi capital, Berlin, that had always rejected Hitler and the Nazis in all of the elections, would be finally immolated with Hitler in his glorious ending. How ironic.
At this stage of the war, the allied prisoners of war had two things to fear. Being butchered by their defeated German guards, or falling into the hands of the approaching Russians and being sent to join the other millions of slaves, including many Russians, in the gulags.
This programme is the story of the elite American fliers at Stalag Luft I and the incredible story of how they managed to escape from both perils.
And to finish off, a final shocking story of betrayal by Roosevelt and Churchill to Stalin after the war had ended, one that they had agreed to at Yalta.
From the time Hitler invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 until the defeat of Japan, World War II, or The Great Patriotic War, as the Russians like to call it, had been an absolute bonanza for Stalin. Sure tens of millions of Russians had died, been shockingly wounded, been psychologically damaged, but for Stalin that was all a cost of doing business – building an enormous empire in just 6 short years.
Stalin’s view of the horrors of World War II is captured in the comment he made during the Korean War. Things had stabilised at the 38th Parallel. But it suited Stalin to keep the war going. But the Koreans and the Chinese were losing a lot of men in the ongoing fighting. They begged Stalin to end the war. Stalin replied that there was no reason why the North Koreans and Chinese should not continue fighting. He replied:
“they lose nothing except for their men.”
Many of the soldiers fighting heroically for their Russian motherland suffered the loss of all four limbs – both legs and both arms. Those men were, quite frankly, rather unsightly and quite bad for morale. Stalin had them sent to towns above the Arctic Circle so no-on would have to look at them. The Russians called them samovars – like the Russian teapots that stand on four tiny stumps of legs.
The Americans and the British, well especially the Americans, had made sure that Russia awash with their military and civilian equipment. Whole factories were even shipped to Russia by the Americans and assembled there. No American secrets were kept from them, except for the atomic bomb, and they easily got that, what with so many spies and fellow travellers in the US, including at the White House.
Russia started the war as just being Russia but when it was over it had all of Central Europe, a lot of territory that the Japanese had owned, and it oversaw Mao Zedong taking over mainland China.
At Tehran Roosevelt and Churchill had given Stalin everything he wanted, or hadn’t been strong enough to oppose him and to say no.
Now, at Yalta, Roosevelt again raised his desire to have the Russians help to beat the Japanese, the empire of the Rising Sun, and end the war. A request he had made previously at Tehran, but now he needed to get it firmed up. That is what this programme’s all about.
It’s a fact of life that your bargaining power is at its weakest when you’re at your weakest. As I’ve discussed before this, paradoxically, didn’t apply to Stalin in World War II. Stalin could as easily have swapped sides, again. He had already been aligned to Hitler, during World War II. He could have joined with Hitler again if the right deal was offered. For the English, who should have done a deal with Hitler in May of 1940 after the fall of France, that was out of the question. To do that would have been morally wrong.
For Stalin, even with tens of millions of his fellow citizens killed by the Germans and vast amounts of his cities, their factories and infrastructure destroyed, that wouldn’t have mattered. If Hitler ever had an offer that he was willing to put to Stalin, that was better than what the Americans and British had on offer, he would have changed sides at the drop of a hat. Mind you Hitler, although in 1942 he had toyed with making a deal then rejected it – preferring to fight to the death.
So during World War II, when Russia was weak and on the backfoot, and that was the case pretty much from June 1941, when Hitler invaded, until at least mid-1943 to the end of 1943, the Americans and the British, in theory, should have had the better bargaining hand. But their relations with Stalin never worked out like that.
By February 1945, when the Yalta meeting took place between America, Great Britain and Russia, Russia was then clearly the strongest military power in the world on the basis of raw coal face power.
At the time of the Yalta Conferencein February 1945, America especially, but also England to some extent, had just been beaten up by the German attack known as the Battle of the Bulge. That attack most likely happened with them, and not Russia as the target, largely as a result of the Germans finding out about the Morgenthau Plan that Russian agents, at the highest level in the Roosevelt administration, had prompted the Americans and the British to adopt. If implemented it would have reduced Germany to a farm.
That offensive had removed vast amounts of tanks and troops from the Eastern Front facing Russia – against the wishes of General Heinz Guderian. It had allowed the Russian offensives in late 1944 and the beginning of 1945 to gain real ground against minimal opposition.
The Russians had launched their offensive on 12 January 1945 about the time that the Allies had finally halted Hitler’s Ardennes offensive, were starting to recover from the punishing blows they had suffered and were then pushing back to the lines they had held in mid-December.
Our friend Rokossovsky, who had had a box seat for the Warsaw Uprising, which destroyed the Polish resistance, now smashed his way into central and northern Poland and East Prussia. His Second Belorrussian Army Group came to a halt on the Oder River just 65 kilometres from Berlin.
On 17 January 1945 the Red Army had marched into the ruined capital of Warsaw. At the start of the war, Warsaw had had a population of 1.3million. By the time the Red Army entered the city in 1944 its population was reduced to just 130,000. If you want to get a good visual on what Warsaw looked like at this time watch the last scenes in the 2002 movie The Pianist.
Romania had been overrun in late 1944, and so had Hungary.
So what would Stalin want now that he was the strongest of the three Allies?
On 3 September, 1939, England and France, and as a consequence, the dominions of the Empire, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, found themselves at war. The declaration of war followed the German invasion of Poland. The war was to preserve the independence of Poland as a free nation. Freed from the yoke of a tyrannous regime.
60 million lives lost later, including in the Pacific, the last meeting of the wartime leaders, before the fall of Nazi Germany, and before Hitler took his own life, took place at Yalta in the Crimea between 4 and 11 February 1945.
The world leaders present at that meeting, were Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of England, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, (a man so sick that he would be dead just 10 weeks later) and Stalin, the Vozd, the leader of the Soviet Union.
On 6 February, 1945 the leaders discussed the future of Poland. With most of Poland overrun, and with 10 million Russian soldiers occupying most of eastern Europe, including parts of Germany, the Allies had no choice other than to let Stalin set up a puppet regime in Poland which became a slave state to the Soviet Union.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the original reason for going to war had, by that agreement, completely failed.
I’m going to look at what happened that winter on the Black Sea in Crimea. If nothing else, Stalin gave some of his best quips over those few days.
Henry Morgenthau, Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Treasury, steered by the Communist agent, Harry Dexter White, had done as much as anyone to bring about the war in the Pacific. Now he was manoeuvring to have Germany dismembered mainly for the benefit of his boss, Joseph Stalin. He also was hoping to bring about the deaths of 30 million Germans by starvation, and the mass shootings, without trial or any other legal process, of upwards of 100,000 German officers. Well, on the bright side they wouldn’t starve.
In Sean McMeekin’s book, “Stalin’s War”, with the benefit of extensive access to what had been the secret, and closed to Western eyes, records of the USSR, until after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, we are given a breathtaking view into how Communist spies in Washington, with the willing, if uninformed enthusiastic support of President Roosevelt, had successively led America to vast and unlimited supplies of American manufactured war and civilian materials, foodstuffs and fuels, oils and lubricants, without which Russia could not have survived the Nazi onslaught, and the provision of vast amounts of intellectual property that set up the Soviet Union for decades to come in what would turn into the Cold War.
After the successful landings on D-Day, and then the breakout of the American, British and Canadian forces in August 1944, winning the war was now just a matter of time. So thoughts had to turn to what was going to happen when the war was over. Particularly, what was going go happen to Germany.
The Treasury, under Henry Morgenthau, a Jew, I’m not being anti-semitic and shortly you’ll see why, and one of the most influential people in the Treasury, advising Morgenthau, was one of the top Communist assets in Washington, was Harry Dexter White, and they were going to play a big part on American thinking on what should happen to Germany after the war. Harry’s thoughts, surprise, surprise, fitted in with what would help Communist Russia.
From a previous programme, if you were listening, and for those who weren’t Harry Dexter White was the man who almost single handedly caused the Americans to provoke the Japanese into attacking them.
Now Sean McMeekin, described how the almost totally Soviet controlled Roosevelt government looked at the question of post-war Germany. He says this:
“…. a long-running policy discussion in the Treasury on how to administer the German economy after the war morphed into an open-ended revenge fantasy.”
After the Second World War, between 1947 and 1957 there was a scare, in America and other countries that had only just recently been allies of Communist Russia against Nazi Germany. These included England, Australia, Canada. The scare was that their countries were infiltrated with Communist agents everywhere. As the old Garfield joke goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t meant they’re not out to get you.
The scare had more substance that people ever knew. It's not the number of Communists working in your country to betray your country that mattered, it was what power they had, what positions they held and what access to vital, top secret information they had.
The Democratic regime that was ushered in with the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, swept into office with it’s supporters, many significant people who were either Communist spies, or fellow travellers. People sympathetic to Communism. They were the people who Lenin called useful idiots. So the problem of having your top secrets, including vital intellectual property, handed over to the Communists didn’t begin in 1947, it began in 1933 when Franklin Roosevelt was sworn into office.
The man who was destined to play a major role in dragging America into a war with Japan, to advance Joseph Stalin’s goals, was a man with the very traditional and American sounding name of Harry Dexter White. He was not then and never was a member of the United States Communist Party, but he was a spy working and reporting variously to members of the United States Communist Party and later Stalin’s secret service agents, in the GRU, located in the United States, mostly thanks to Roosevelt giving diplomatic recognition to Russia against his experts’ advice.
What motivated Harry to betray his country isn’t known but he had more than almost anyone else to do with the air force of the Imperial Japanese Navy arriving over Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941 to attack his own country. In this programme I’m going to look at how America and Japan were tricked by Stalin into going to war with each other. This programme isn’t the end of what Harry got up to – but that’s for another programme in this series.
One of history’s most significant speeches was delivered to a joint meeting of both houses of Congress on 8 December 1941, by the United States President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In his speech he focussed on the surprise attack that had been launched on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii by aircraft launched from 3 squadrons, 6 aircraft carriers, of the Empire of Japan following the breakdown in peace negotiations between Japan and the United States.
In this programme I am going to tell you a remarkable, true story, that has been learnt from the recent release of secret archives in Russia, after the fall of the USSR. It tells how Joseph Stalin manipulated both Japan and the United States into the war, one with the other, as part of his aims of saving the Soviet Union from the German invasion, which had gone far far worse for Russia than Stalin had ever imagined possible, to pursuing the eternal Communist goal of overthrowing every regime in the world that wasn’t Communist and replacing them with Communism.
The two most evil empires in Europe, by mid-1941, Stalin’s Russia and Nazi Germany, had divied up between themselves all the spoils. They had been able to share out Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, parts of Finland, and Russia had grabbed parts of Hungary.
Germany, without any help from Russia, had grabbed Denmark, Norway, France, Holland, Belgium, Yugoslavia and Greece. And now all that was left was to devour was each other.
The myth that has grown up, because it was the only story being told by the Russians, that they were the hapless victims of Adolf Hitler’s unprovoked invasion in 1941. But now we know that that wasn’t true. Stalin had been building up his armaments since 1929 ready to take over Europe.
Here’s a little illustration of how strong Russia was by 1939. Russians deployed 3,885 aircraft against tiny Finland during the Winter War of 1939-1940. That was more than the combined number of aircraft used by both Germany and Britain in the Battle of Britain.
By mid-1941 Stalin was ready to move against Germany, which would mean that he would then be in control of all of Germany’s conquests too.
In this programme I’m going to tell you about Russia’s incredible preparations for war. It was ironic that a man who was at least as evil as Hitler, and who was ready to launch his war of aggression against Europe became the heroic and much-admired ally of England and the United States. But the warning that the recalled, and astute, US ambassador to Moscow, William Bullitt, had given to President Roosevelt in July 1935, proved to be right on the money:
As for the prospect of a new European war, I don’t doubt that current Soviet policy is "peaceful, but this is only because Stalin has not yet completed his armament drive. It is the primary object of the Soviet Foreign Office to maintain peace. . . until the strength of the Soviet Union has been built up to such a point that it is entirely impregnable to attack and ready, should Stalin so desire, to intervene abroad."
By May 1941 Stalin believed that that build-up had been accomplished and he was ready to strike.
In 1941 was Russia planning to engage in a war with Germany, to defeat Hitler’s Third Reich, and then take over his empire in Western Europe.
This programme is going to explore that question and what the evidence shows. The most important evidence that has to be closely examined are the records in the Russian archives that were opened up some years after the fall of the Soviet Union. You will be shocked. And if you’re not shocked you should be.
Hamilton Fish III was a congressman from western New York. His grandfather had been a secretary of state. On a nationally syndicated radio broadcast he thundered:
“Opposed though I am to Nazism, I am certain that American mothers will not willingly sacrifice their sons to make the world safe for Communism. It is "preposterous to think of America being aligned with Joe Stalin as our pal and comrade, with his hands dripping with blood of murdered priests and nuns and the same dagger in his hand which he plunged into the backs of Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and our friend the little honest Republic of Finland."
That was pretty hard to argue with.
But something strange was happening at the very top of this brand new Roosevelt administration about how the Democrat, socialist regime, saw Stalin’s Russia. You might expect the State Department (responsible for overseeing America’s relations with foreign countries) would protect the interests of capitalist America. They’d done a great job so far, so there was nothing to worry about – or was there?
From the distance of the years, from all that you see and hear about a man who has grown into something of a legend, the 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR was one of the great presidents. He was one of the Big Three leaders of World War II, along with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin.
It’s not easy to get a view out of the ordinary view that we always hear about about FDR, one that looks at the failings of this man on the world stage. The serious flaws he had that betrayed the high ideals on which the United States of America was founded, but the book by Sean McMeekin, “Stalin’s War”, written with the benefit of access to records of the former Soviet Union that were opened up for many years, and now are substantially sealed again. This is a chilling book showing a side of FDR’s character that you won’t have heard about before anywhere. It tells you about how FDR helped to make the world safe for Communism. The results of his failings, as seen through the perspective of our world today, are disturbing and ongoing.
So I’ll stop waffling and get down to the bones looking at what happened from 4 March 1933 when FDR was inaugurated as 32nd President of the United States of America. Perhaps a date that may turn out to be one that will live in infamy.