208: An Introduction

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The podcast is back, so it is time to talk about what you can look forward to in the near future.

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Transcript

When we look back at the Second World War it is often really tempting to sort of chunk up the war into manageable pieces. The early years of German dominance, right up to the gates of Moscow, the entry of the United States, the truly colossal years of 1943 and 1944 when everything was decided, and then the grinding path to victory in 1945. Within those different eras of the war there are periods of time with their own narratives, for example the previous season was focused on the growing conflict as the fighting expanded beyond the borders of Poland in both eastern and western Europe. The newest season of the podcast, titled If Necessary Alone, covers the period after the fall of France when the British Empire was the sole major power at war with both Germany and Italy. The British Empire spanned around the entire globe, and in the actions that followed between the summer of 1940 and the summer of 1941 the British would call on that empire for support both in the home islands of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa as it tried to find a way to end the German and Italian advances in those theaters. However, even though I am using the name If Necessary Alone, a reference to one of Churchill’s famous speeches, it is important to make clear right from the jump that Britain, except for maybe a brief period in 1940, was not alone, and in the struggle against its enemies it would be joined by several friendly nations along the way, even if many of those would eventually themselves be conquered by the Germans or Italians. The season will be made up of 7 series of episodes, the first being the Battle of Britain, a campaign that needs no introduction and which followed closely on the heels of the French surrender in June 1940. The podcast will then travel to the Mediterranean for 5 series covering the events in North Africa, the Balkans, Greece, and on the Blue waters of the Mediterranean itself. This was the critical theatre of operations during the first half of 1941 as the German invasions pushed south and the Italians attempted to extend their control of North Africa all the way to the Suez canal. There will also be a series on the wider naval war throughout the Atlantic and other oceans. This would be the period of the great surface raiders, when the German Kriegsmarine would attempt to halt the flow of British trade not just with U-boats but with armed merchant cruisers, cruisers, and of course their battleships, culminating in one of the most important naval moments of the Battle of the Atlantic: the sinking of the Bismarck. Perhaps the best introduction to the topics for this season come not from the modern day, but from history, in a speech that just about everybody probably knows at least a few words of. I have a recording here, because while I have many goals with this podcast one of them is to never slip into an impression of the speaker, and I do not think I could avoid it in this case. So here is maybe the best way to introduce Season 4 of History of the Second World War If Necessary Alone, from his speech on June 4, 1940, Winston Churchill. [Insert final 2 minutes of We Shall Fight on the Beaches]

While this introduction episode serves as the introduction to a new season, it also brings us to a new series, the Battle of Britain. In the year 2025 the Second World War is at a really interesting place on the historical timeline, the wartime generations, those who experienced the war first hand are soon to be gone. Their children, and their grandchildren, still retain the family memories of those that survived the war, they knew them intimately, and they were their link to the events of the conflict. But even those generations are aging, and that begins to push the Second World War out of living memory, those that experienced it, and those that experienced those who experienced it, will eventually no longer be living. You can already see how this impacts how people interact with history, with individuals calling back to the events of the war years as some kind of foundational myth of the modern age, even though they themselves did not experience it. I won’t be giving specifics here, that is not the purpose of this show, but the topic of this podcast series has certainly been used in this way. The Battle of Britain is a foundational myth for modern Britain, a pivotal event that is referenced in modern politics and society and which is seen to in some way indicate and exemplify everything that made Britain great, and an example that should be revered and followed. Every country, every group of people, has events that fall into this category in some way, I do not think this is some kind of failing for the UK, but when these type of foundational myths are built up through generations, in some ways the truth does not matter anymore. The stories are what have the impact, particularly as events fade into the past and connections to them shift to “what my granddad did” or “what my grandmother said”. The actual history does not matter when it comes to that story your grandmother told about going down into the London tube station that night because their house burned down the night before by the German bombers. “Blitz spirit”, “Keep Calm and Carry On”, and so many more slogans and propaganda phrases have made their way down through the years as well, used as a model and a ideal to aspire to. So the question you should be asking, and one that I have asked myself, is what are we even doing here? How do you approach a topic like the Battle of Britain which brings with it such a shroud of myth making, and such a well established chronology and structure. The answer is to work within those myths and that myth-making, I’m not here to try and make some huge statement about how the battle should be remembered or why, but you can expect some touches on some of those myths throughout the course of this series. It starts with the overall structure of the next 28 episodes. This series will actually be broken up into 4 different mini-series so that people who like to wait for a reasonable collection of episodes to release can do so without waiting for the entire series to complete. These mini-series will ben titled: The Battle Before Britain, The Battle About Britain, The Battle of Britain, and The Battle After Britain. The first 8 episodes mini-series, titled The Battle Before Britain, are going to cover a variety of different topics and events that occurred either before the traditional start of the battle of Britain in the summer of 1940 or which were not directly related to the battle. The following 9 episode mini-series, titled The Battle About Britain, will be spent discussing the entire purpose of the battle: the invasion of Britain. Often forgotten in the heroic tales of aerial combat over southern Britain from June to September 1940 is the fact that those aircraft were just the first phase of the German plan, with the most important being the eventual invasion of Britain to put an end to British resistance. This invasion of course never happened, but it was the entire reason that the aerial battle occurred and its existence as a plan would have crucial ramifications for both the German plans and the British response. Then, of course will be a mini-series titled The Battle of Britain which will cover the heart of the battle, from Eagle Day to Battle of Britain Day, during which the Luftwaffe at least thought it was trying to win the battle of air supremacy against the Royal Air Force? Did the Luftwaffe think it was about to win? Absolutely. Were they ever close to achieving their goal? Not even remotely. The final mini-series of episodes, the Battle After Britain, will discuss the events after September 1940, the beginning of the Blitz, and how specifically the British were planning to continue their resistance against Germany moving forward. One of my goals with this series is to make it clear that the Battle of Britain was about far more than a few squadrons of Hurricanes and Spitfires in the air over Southern England. They were important, but the battle was waged on a far wider geographic scale and by a far larger cast of characters. The Few were supported by the Many, and that many were on land and at sea fighting against all manner of German and Italian attacks. As always thank you for listening, thank you for all of your support of the years, and I hope you enjoy the upcoming series.