295 - Inside the Siege of Warsaw
The WW2 Podcast
In September 1939, during the German invasion of Poland, American photographer and film-maker Julien Bryan became the only foreign journalist to remain inside Warsaw during the Nazi siege. While other correspondents fled, Bryan stayed in the city, documenting the Siege of Warsaw from the streets, hospitals and civilian shelters as German bombs fell. Bryan’s photographs and film captured the impact of the Second World War on civilians, showing wounded men, women and children, devastated neighbourhoods, and the resilience of ordinary Polish people under attack. His footage became some of the...
info_outline
294 - Churchills Forgotten Generals: Slim, Auchinleck & Savory
The WW2 Podcast
Today, we are heading back to the Burma campaign, but through a slightly different lens. Rather than focusing on a single battle or operation, we examine three men who shaped how the war in Burma was fought and ultimately won. When people think of British commanders in the Far East, one name usually stands out: Bill Slim. His leadership of the Fourteenth Army and the victories at Imphal, Kohima and the advance into Burma rightly secure his place among Britain’s most successful wartime commanders. Claude Auchinleck is also well known, though more often for the Middle East than for his crucial...
info_outline
293 - Allied POWs in WWII
The WW2 Podcast
This episode looks at a very different side of the Second World War. Not the battlefield, but captivity. It focuses on the experiences of Allied prisoners of war held in German camps and how they tried to survive, adapt, and maintain a sense of purpose behind barbed wire. I am joined by , author of . A newly revised edition was released in 2025. Her book explores the lives Allied POWs led in captivity, from the routines and hardships of camp life to the ways prisoners supported one another and resisted the effects of long-term imprisonment. Education forms part of this story, but it sits...
info_outline
292 - The War Chest of Colonel Kreps
The WW2 Podcast
In this episode, I talk with Erik Kreps about a remarkable family mystery. Erik’s grandfather, Colonel Kenneth Ray Kreps, served in the Second World War, and after returning home, he sealed his wartime belongings in a chest with the instruction that it was not to be opened until after his death. For decades, the chest remained closed, and no one in the family knew what it contained. After Colonel Kreps died, the chest was put into storage and almost forgotten. At one point, it was nearly auctioned off, which could have meant the contents were lost forever. Instead, it was saved, and when it...
info_outline
291 - Far East RAF Liberators
The WW2 Podcast
RAF Liberator bombing operations in India, Burma, and Thailand remain one of the least explored air campaigns of the Second World War. Flying long-range missions from Bengal, RAF crews attacked Japanese targets across Southeast Asia, including the infamous Thailand-Burma Railway, under demanding and often dangerous conditions. In this episode of the WW2 Podcast, I am talking to historian Matt Poole, author of . Together, we explore this campaign through the experiences of Roy Andrews, a Royal Australian Air Force wireless operator and air gunner who flew with RAF 215 Squadron on B-24 Liberator...
info_outline
290 - Your WWII Questions Answered
The WW2 Podcast
For this episode of the podcast, we are doing something a little different. Rather than focusing on a single subject, we open the floor to your questions. Over the past few weeks, podcast patrons were invited to submit questions they had always wanted to ask about the Second World War. These range from strategy and leadership to memory, myth and the smaller details that continue to provoke curiosity today. To help answer those questions, I am joined by two returning guests. John McManus is a military historian specialising in the United States Army in the Second World War. He is the author of...
info_outline
289 - Charles De Gaulle
The WW2 Podcast
Charles de Gaulle remains one of the most distinctive figures to emerge from the Second World War. Soldier, writer, leader in exile, and later the creator of the Fifth Republic, he played a central role in reshaping modern France. His relationship with Winston Churchill, their shared struggle during the war, and the influence both men continued to wield long after the fighting ended make him a fascinating subject. In this episode, I speak with historian Richard Vinen, author of . His book explores the lives of de Gaulle and Churchill and sets their wartime partnership within a wider story of...
info_outline
288 - Beyond Burma: The Forgotten Armies
The WW2 Podcast
The fighting in Burma during the Second World War was among the most demanding of the entire conflict. Soldiers faced dense jungle, monsoon rains, disease, and a determined enemy — conditions that made the campaign both brutal and complex. Yet for decades, Burma remained one of the least remembered theatres of the war. The men who fought there — British, Indian, African, and Burmese — became known as the “Forgotten Armies.” A new exhibition at the National Army Museum in London, , seeks to change that. It explores not only the campaign itself but also the wider human and political...
info_outline
287 - Tunisgrad: The Battle for Tunisia and the Fall of Tunis
The WW2 Podcast
By late 1942, after the success of Operation Torch, the Allies had finally gained a foothold in North Africa. What followed was a hard-fought and often overlooked campaign in Tunisia. For six months, British, American, and French forces battled determined Axis troops for control of the last corner of Africa held by Germany and Italy. It was a campaign marked by tough lessons, uneasy cooperation, and moments of heroism — one that would shape how the Allies fought together for the rest of the war. In this episode, I’m joined by historian and author Saul David to discuss his latest book, ''....
info_outline
286 - Rhineland, 1944-45
The WW2 Podcast
By the autumn of 1944, the Allies had driven across France and Belgium and reached the borders of Germany. Ahead of them lay the Rhine — a vast natural barrier and the last line of defence protecting the heart of the Reich. What followed was some of the most intense and costly fighting of the war in Western Europe. From the bitter battles around Aachen and the Hürtgen Forest, through the crossing operations of Plunder and Varsity, to the dramatic capture of the bridge at Remagen, the campaign for the Rhineland was brutal, chaotic, and often overshadowed by the more famous Battle of the...
info_outlineOn the night of May 16th, 1943, 19 Lancaster bombers took off from England heading toward the German industrial heartland of the Ruhr. They carried a new bomb, designed to skip across water avoiding any torpedo nets before hitting the target and sinking into the depths; then exploding.. The bomb was codenamed ‘upkeep’, we know it today as the ‘bouncing bomb’ designed by Barnes Wallis.
Those Lancaster's of 617 squadron, commanded 24 year old Guy Gibsonwould become known as the ‘Dam Busters’, the operation was CHASTISE. The mission would be a success, as in two of the targeted dams were hit and breached causing millions of tons of water to surge down into the Ruhr region, flooding mines, destroying factories and homes.
The crews that survived the raid would arrive back in Britain as celebrities, swept up in the wartime propaganda; and of course memorialised in books such as Paul Brickhill’s ‘The ‘Dam Busters’, of which the well known 1955 film is based.
Joining me to discuss the raid is Victoria Taylor.
Victoria is a Post Graduate Researcher at the University of Hull. Her MA thesis is Redressing the Wartime and Postwar Mythologization of Operation CHASTISE in Britain.
Recommended books about operation Chastise.
Cooper, Alan W. The Men Who Breached the Dams. Pen & Sword Books, 2013.
Holland, James. Dam Busters. Random House, 2012.
Sweetman, Dr John. The Dambusters Raid(Cassell Military Paperbacks). W&N, 1999.
