History Date Night: A WWII Podcast

History Date Night: A WWII Podcast

by Justin and Jennie

Season 1

Episode 51 - Two Frances

This episode of History Date Night covers June 22nd through the 28th. For France this is the week the armistice with Germany is signed, and a second, smaller armistice with Italy follows. Hitler tours a conquered Paris and orders all memory of the German defeat in WW1 destroyed. Charles de Gaulle makes another broadcast from London and receives formal British recognition. The Soviet Union reaches deeper into Eastern Europe. And across an ocean, the Americans begin to realize that this war may not remain an entirely European affair. Between the 22nd and the 28th of June, 1940, the map of Europe is redrawn in a way that will not be erased for years. France is divided into occupied and unoccupied zones. Britain announces a blockade of Europe and launches its first commando raid of the war. German troops are issued English phrase books in preparation for the next invasion. The Battle of France is ending and the next phase of the war is already taking shape.

Episode 50 - The Railway Carriage

This episode of History Date Night covers June 19th through the 21st of 1940. The war is still moving fast, but the center of gravity is shifting as France is collapsing. Italy is now trying, and mostly failing, to grab a piece of the victory. And in a forest north of Paris, a railway carriage that once witnessed German humiliation is about to witness French humiliation in return. Over these three days the Germans take more French cities, Mussolini launches his long-promised Alpine offensive in a freak snowstorm, de Gaulle speaks again from London claiming to speak for France, The French fleet begins scattering to ports where Germany and Britain can't easily reach it.and Adolf Hitler personally arrives at Compiègne to begin the armistice talks only to walk out early as a deliberate insult. The end of the Battle of France is only hours away rather than days.

Episode 49 - Two Broadcasts

In this episode of History Date Night Justin and Jennie finally give one of the war’s most important figures the introduction he deserves and cover the 18th of June 1940. The day a relatively junior French brigadier general named Charles de Gaulle stepped to a BBC microphone and delivered the Appeal of 18th June radio address. Because the day itself has fewer events than the dramatic single day episodes covered before, Justin and Jennie tell de Gaulle’s story properly for the first time: the devout Catholic from Lille, the wounded and captured officer of Verdun, the interwar prophet of armoured warfare whom almost no one in the French high command wanted to hear, the man who nearly resigned rather than accept defeat, and the officer who risked arrest for desertion by flying to London with nothing but conviction. Listen to History Date Night as we continue through World War II, one date at a time.

Episode 48 - Our Finest Hour

This episode of History Date Night covers June 14th through the 17th. This is one of the most eventful four day stretches Justin and Jennie have covered so far in this war. Paris falls. Auschwitz and Theresienstadt receive their first prisoners on the very same day. A French Marshal takes power and asks for an armistice within the hour. And Britain suffers the worst maritime disaster in its history. This episode also has a Finnish civilian airliner shot down by Soviet bombers, a British general declaring that it's impossible to make a corpse feel supported, the deposed German Kaiser sending Hitler a telegram of congratulations and finally we see Winston Churchill declare that this will be Britain's finest hour.

Episode 47 - Black Thursday

This episode of History Date Night covers, June 11th through the 13th. We watch a French admiral make a promise about his navy's fate that's going to affect how the war moves forward. We watch a handful of armored cars open an entirely new theater of the war in the North African desert. And we’ll see the Fleet Air Arm's no good very bad day unfold in the Arctic, in an operation most everyone knew, going in, was a mistake. This episode also has three lone biplane fighters, nicknamed Faith, Hope, and Charity, standing as the entire air defense of the island of Malta. It has tens of thousands of Allied troops trapped against the French coast once again. And it has a French Marshal so ashamed of the letter he's written that he can't bring himself to show it to his own Prime Minister.

Episode 46 - The Hand That Held the Dagger

This episode of History Date Night covers just one day: June 10th, 1940. An extraordinary amount happens in these 24 hours, Norway surrenders. Italy declares war and Canada fires its first shots in anger of the war. This episode also has Mussolini finally getting the war he's wanted for months, except he doesn't even get to pick the date himself. It has President Roosevelt delivering one of the sharpest lines of his presidency at his son's college graduation ceremony. And it has a French tank crew discovering, in the middle of a battle they're about to lose, that their armor is much better than anything the Germans have.

Episode 45: The Loss of the Glorious

This episode of History Date Night covers June 7th through the 9th, we'll see the loss of the Polish submarine Orzel, whose extraordinary 1939 escape brought her fame. We also watch one of the most controversial naval disasters of the war unfold in the Arctic. And we hear the French Commander-in-Chief make clear that the battle for France is already lost. This episode also has RAF pilots landing Hurricane fighters on an aircraft carrier for the very first time in history, something nobody had ever done before and nobody was even sure was possible. Finally we'll see an Italian sea captain who in preparation for war tricks his British captors into helping him scuttle his ship right under their noses.

Episode 44 - We Shall Never Surrender

This episode of History Date Night covers June 4th through 6th, 1940. Dunkirk officially ends and Churchill delivers a speech that defines how history remembers the entire Dunkirk evacuation. Germany launches the second phase of its invasion, except this time, for the first time in weeks, the French Army actually holds its ground. This episode also has a British Cabinet minister banning strikes and telling factory workers there's no such thing as a peacetime economy in wartime. And it has one of the stranger stories we've come across in this whole series: American naval aviators towing French warplanes across the Maine-Canada border behind tractors because of those pesky neutrality laws.

Episode 43 - The Last Night

On this episode of History Date Night, Justin and Jennie cover June 1st through 3rd. Theese are the days when Operation Dynamo comes to an end. They're going to review the costs of Operation Dynamo, because the casualty figures at sea this week are staggering, and review a firsthand account from the beaches themselves. This episode also has Hitler personally touring the Vimy Ridge battlefield where he fought as a young soldier in the last war, and staging photographs to counter reports that his army had bombed a Canadian war memorial. And we end with Winston Churchill ordering the creation of an entirely new kind of British soldier, one this war hasn't seen yet.

Episode 42 - The Best Day

On this episode of History Date Night Justin and Jennie cover just two days, May 30th and 31st, 1940. This short but important stretch of days contains the most successful day of the entire Dunkirk evacuation, a general breaking down and weeping on the beach, and an argument between Churchill and Reynaud that's going to affect Anglo-French relations for years to come. This episode also sees a Victoria Cross earned by holding a burning barn against overwhelming odds, a nurse's firsthand account of German aircraft attacking clearly marked ambulances, and Britain preparing for invasion by removing road signs in the British countryside and shipping sixty million pounds of gold across the Atlantic all while its army is still trapped on a French beach.

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