Four infamous Second World War special operations that were not what they seemed. Nazi Underworld: Deadly Missions of World War II, 2013
Il Duce disappeared in captivity … Much of Italy was in chaos. ibid.
In Nazi occupied territories like the former Czechoslovakia thousands were tortured or murdered by German occupiers. In 1941 SS security chief Reinhard Heydrich ruled the so-called protectorate with an iron fist. ibid.
Bletchley Park was the headquarters of the British code-breaking effort ... Alan Turing was one of the first to arrive ... In 1944 he designed a speech enciphering machine codenamed Delilah. Horizon: The Strange Life and Death of Dr Turing, BBC 1992
A secret invention built here at Bletchley Park in rural England. Colossus: the most complex machine that had yet been built. Michael Mosley, The Story of Science: Power, Proof and Passion, BBC 2010
Is this his body? Ever since Hitler’s death mystery has shrouded the last moments of his life and the final resting place of his corpse. Are these fragments of bone in a Moscow archive the last mortal remains of Adolf Hitler after his death in the Berlin bunker? Secrets of World War II e2: Adolf Hitler’s Last Days, Military 1998
On the right were the switchboard room, generators and the quarters assigned to Hitler’s physicians; on the left were Hitler’s private rooms which included a conference room, office, sitting room and bedroom. Physically the Fuhrer was a dreadful sight. ibid.
To capture the city [Berlin] the Russians were to lose 300,000 men. ibid.
A secret German radar array … A daring airborne raid, the first by British paratroopers of the War. Secrets of World War II e5: The Bruneval Raid
After a brief discussion Rommel left the villa with the two generals for a last short journey; within minutes he was dead by his own hand. What happened to turn one of the Third Reich’s greatest heroes into one of its greatest enemies? Secrets of World War II e6: What Really Happened to Rommel?
Rommel had been implicated in the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler. ibid.
In August 1944 the Allies broke out of their beach-head of Normandy ... They were in for a rude shock. A massive and wholly unexpected German offensive in the hills and forests of the Arden seemed to threaten the Allies with a second Dunkirk ... It was the final gamble of a desperate man. Secrets of World War II e9: Secrets of the Battle of the Bulge
Bletchley Park had given warnings of an imminent attack. ibid.
Montgomery was at war with Patton. ibid.
April Fool’s Day 1945 dawned bright and clear in the east China sea, as an armada of America warships and troop-carriers assembled off the island of Okinawa. The fighting that was to follow the American landings on Okinawa was so savage that it prompted one witness to describe it as History’s greatest mad-house. It also brought a new word to the English language – kamikaze, or suicide bomber. Secrets of World War II e10: The Greatest Sea/Air Battle in History
The Chinese army was no match for the Japanese war machine. ibid.
Paradoxically, Yamamoto was an admirer of the United States. ibid.
For six months the Japanese ran riot: the British were swept out of Malaya and Singapore. The Americans were driven out of the Philippines. ibid.
Like the Germans, the Japanese never realised their codes had been broken ... It was the critical secret of the war. ibid.
The Japanese dream of empire went down with their carriers at Midway. On 7th August 1942 American marines stormed ashore at Guadalcanal where the Japanese were building an airfield. ibid.
American troops were appalled to see how many civilians were prepared to commit suicide. ibid.
The longest battle of the Second World War was fought in the cold grey waters of the Atlantic ocean. After victory had been achieved, Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill wrote: ‘The only thing that frightened me during the War was the U-boat peril’. Secrets of World War II e11: Above Us The Enemy
The largest merchant fleet in the world: 3,000 ocean-going vessels and 1,000 large coastal vessels … Their most dangerous enemy was the U-boat. ibid.
[Karl] Donitz took command of the U-boat service … Donitz was a fervent Nazi. ibid.
Depth readings would not be achieved until 1944. ibid.
Off the coast of Guadalcanal, a Pacific island in the Solomons Chain, there is a graveyard of American and Japanese warships. They were sunk in a savage six-month battle. Secrets of World War II e12: The Secrets Behind the Battle of Guadalcanal
A campaign which was to test the endurance and fighting skills of the US Navy and Marine corps to the very limit. ibid.
In 1940 long before the United States entered World War II a band of American airmen went into action against Japan … They became known as the Flying Tigers. Secrets of World War II e14: They Flew for China
In 1945 Germany lay in ruins. The heart had been torn out of her cities. This was the result of a secret revolution in the technology of air warfare. Secrets of World War II e15: How Germany was Bombed to Defeat
The bombers had got through, inflicting great damage on London and Britain’s great cities. But they had not destroyed the morale of the British or their war industries. ibid.
Tinsel was the codename for microphones fitted to a bomber. ibid.
In the winter of 1943 the Fiords of northern Norway provided a lair for the last of Adolf Hitler’s battle fleet. One of them was a battle-cruiser Scharnhorst … The Scharnhorst posed a threat to the Allies’ arctic convoys. Secrets of World War II e16: The End of the Scharnhorst
The fate of the Battle of the Atlantic lay in the hands of the U-boats, each one built at a fraction of the cost of a battleship or a battle-cruiser. ibid.
Remorselessly, Scharnhorst was being demolished. ibid.
At about 6.30 p.m. on 8th September Londoners heard a huge double boom. A massive pall rose above Chiswick in west London ... A new revenge weapon – the V-2 rocket. Secrets of World War II e17: The RAF versus the V-Weapons
Scientists and technicians at Peenemunde pressed ahead with the rocket program. ibid.
At first Britain’s air defences were stretched to the limit ... Of the 4,000 V1s eventually brought down over southern England about half were brought down by artillery coordinated by radar. ibid.
The rocket had been designed at the cutting edge of technology. Its gyroscopic guidance system was far in advance of anything in the Allied armoury, and the electric torque, which drive the motors, was the smallest of its kind. But each V2 cost twenty times more than the V1 for just one ton of explosives. ibid.
Captured V weapons were displayed in Trafalgar Square. ibid.
The real winner in the story of the V weapons may have been Wernher von Braun. He surrendered to the Americans with his entire research team. ibid.
A rocket-powered missile guided to its target by human hands. Japanese suicide aircraft – the Kamikazis – were among the most terrifying weapons of the Pacific war … Balloons loaded with bombs which rode the jet stream across the Pacific … The Japanese balloon bombers were perhaps the strangest secret weapon of the Second World War. Secrets of World War II e18: Japan’s Last Secret Weapon
One of the most hazardous secret missions of World War II: its task was to neutralize a mysterious new German mine which posed a potentially deadly threat to British merchant shipping. Secrets of World War II e19: The Minehunters
The victorious Allies were confronted with stark evidence of another aspect of Nazi rule: the systematic plunder of the wealth of occupied Europe … also the pathetic possessions of those the Nazis had murdered in their extermination camps. Secrets of World War II e20: The Nazi Plundering of Europe
The systematic theft of Europe’s art treasures … It was the job of special Allied teams to recover this booty. ibid.
Throughout World War II the Allies secret armies waged a lonely and hazardous campaign in the heart of enemy territory. They landed by moonlight in occupied Europe to link up with members of the Resistance. They came and went like phantoms in the dark. Sabotage was their specialty. Secrets of World War II e21: Confusion Was Their Business
SO1 for propaganda; SO2 for sabotage and subversion; and SO3 for planning (SO3 quickly fell by the wayside). ibid.
The SOE stores were an Aladdin’s cave for its agents. ibid.
The jungle of the Far East is an unforgiving landscape in which to fight a war. In 1944 it was an environment in which only the toughest and best-trained could hope to survive against the Japanese enemy who had mastered the art of Japanese warfare. In the Burmese jungle an American commander proved the equal of the Japanese – he was Brigadier General Frank D Merrill. Secrets of World War II s1e22: Merrill’s Marauders