The WW2 Podcast Angus Wallace

To commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day, I attended a special event at the Green Howards Museum. We started at the regimental war memorial in Richmond (Yorkshire) at 6.30 a.m., which was when the Green Howards landed on Gold Beach. The day was packed with discussion about the regiment and their role on D-Day. It closed with us having the privilege of getting up close to the only Victoria Cross, which was won on June 6th. 
If you find yourself in the Yorkshire Dales, visit the museum; it is a cracking afternoon out.
To round off my look at D-Day, I’m joined by Steve Erskine from the Green Howards Museum and Paul Cheall (from The Fighting Through Podcast), whose father landed on Gold Beach with Stan Hollis, who received the Victoria Cross for his deed that day.
In theory, we sat down in the museum on June 5th to discuss what D-Day meant to us. In practice, we had a rather wide-ranging discussion. We never got as far off the beaches as we anticipated…
I hope you find our war waffle interesting.
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More than 132,000 Allied troops landed on the Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944. Through their efforts, the tide of the war turned for the final time to favour the Allies.
But how did the Allied army get to the shores of Normandy? The contribution of Landing Craft to D-Day is often overlooked. Andrew Whitmarsh joins me to correct this oversight.
Andrew has worked as a curator in military history museums for over 25 years, latterly as the curator of The D-Day Story in Portsmouth. Outside of work, he is also the author of D-Day Landing Craft: How 4,126 ‘Ugly and Unorthodox’ Allied Craft made the Normandy Landings Possible.
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6th June 1944 saw the largest seaborne assault in human history: D-Day. While much has been written about the operation as a whole, little detailed attention has been paid to the battle for Sword Beach itself, the easternmost of the amphibious attack areas.
For this episode, I am joined by Stephen Fisher.
Stephen is a historian and archaeologist who specializes in military history. He is also the author of Sword Beach: The Untold Story of D-Day’s Forgotten Victory.
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As the Allied forces prepared for the monumental invasion of Normandy, concealing the massive build-up of troops in Britain from the Germans became increasingly challenging. To mislead German intelligence about the timing and location of the invasion, the Allies devised a series of elaborate deception plans. The most audacious of these schemes aimed to convince the Germans that the Normandy landings were merely a diversion. This ruse featured a fictitious army led by General Patton, complete with hundreds of realistic dummy landing crafts, tanks, and aircraft.
Joining me to delve into the intricate web of D-Day deception is Taylor Downing, author of The Army That Never Was: D-Day and the Great Deception.
 
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On the morning of May 20, 1941, the Germans launched Operation Mercury. The invasion of Crete was the largest airborne operation yet attempted during the war, with thousands of Fallschirmjäger deployed.
Key to the operation's success would be the capture of the airfield at Maleme. Outnumbered and having suffered horrendous casualties, when the airborne troops secured Hill 107, overlooking the airfield, it opened the door for reinforcements and, ultimately, the Allied withdrawal from the island.
For this episode, I'm joined by Robert Kershaw, a now-regular show participant who was last with us to discuss Dunkirk. He has a new book available, The Hill: The Brutal Fight for Hill 107 in the Battle of Crete.
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In this podcast episode, we will discuss the different approaches to command and control of the British Army and the German Army. From a management point of view, both organisations developed different doctrines to deal with the 'fog of war' or 'friction', which affected how commanders responded as a battle unfolded.
We'll do this by delving into the origins of each nation's different approaches to doctrine and training and, most importantly, how these strategies played out during the pivotal Battle for France in 1940.
Joining me today is Martin Samuels.
Martin is the author of Piercing the Fog of War: The Theory and Practice of Command in the British and German Armies, 1918-1940, which builds upon his early work Command or Control? Command, Training and Tactics in the British and German Armies, 1888-1918.
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