A History of England22 Joulu 2024

223. Blood, toil, sweat and tears

This episode includes several extracts from recordings of speeches by Churchill, so that we can enjoy listening to his actual voice – on the other hand, I apologise for the background noise on the recordings, but they sound inauthentic if I try to remove it.

We also meet a number of people who will continue to have a significant role later: a man who deserves to be better-known, the brilliant theoretician and practitioner of armoured warfare (sadly on the German side), Heinz Guderian; Erwin Rommel; Charles de Gaulle; Friedrich Pauls, attending an enemy’s surrender now though better known for offering his own later; and Bertram Ramsay, another man who deserves to be far better known than he now is.

All this is against the background of the devastating defeat of British and French forces in France, once Germany decided to end the phoney war (which had already started to be a lot less phoney in Norway) and, using the Blitzkrieg tactics favoured by Guderian, of rapidly-advancing armoured forces backed by air support and followed by infantry, broke though the French defences and rounded on the British Expeditionary Force and French troops in Northeastern France, pinning them against the Channel coast.

Those Allied troops were caught in a vice that was closing on them. It was only the extraordinary ability of the man Churchill chose to organise their evacuation from Dukirk, Admiral Bertram Ramsay, and Churchill’s own leadership, that allowed Britain to save the core of its army from destruction.

Illustration: Troops waiting to be taken off the beaches at Dunkirk. Photo: EPA.

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(275)

130. Pacifying Ireland

“My mission is to pacify Ireland,” Gladstone had declared when he took office as Prime Minister. This episode looks briefly at Disraeli’s behaviour as he left power, including the peerage he sought fo...

19 Helmi 202314min

129. The Liberals get liberal

The Liberals are back, and they're being liberal. Gladstone followed Disraeli into Downing Street, and led a reforming government. So Disraeli with the Conservatives managed to reach the top of the gr...

12 Helmi 202314min

128. The greasy pole

We're reaching the moment when Disraeli, fresh from outwitting Gladstone over electoral reform, climbed, in his own words, to the top of the greasy pole. Indeed, becoming Prime Minister after Derby re...

5 Helmi 202314min

127. Master class. In opposition. And opportunism

It’s time for a master class in opposition by the man who said that the role of the Opposition is to oppose. Disraeli and Gladstone, both now leaders in the House of Commons of the Liberal and Conserv...

29 Tammi 202314min

126. Helping the poor. But not too much

The American Civil War, like the war led by Prussia against Denmark, showed that Britain was no longer the superpower that had emerged from the Napoleonic wars. In both those conflicts, Britain had vi...

22 Tammi 202314min

125. King Cotton and his Lancashire Famine

After talking last week about wars in China and Italy, and potentially with France, in this episode we turn to the United States where one of the biggest wars of the nineteenth century was just breaki...

15 Tammi 202314min

124. The tide begins to ebb

When the Earl of Derby’s second government fell, Victoria tried to impose a Prime Minister of her choice on the elected politicians who felt rather differently. That, though, was obsolete thinking. In...

8 Tammi 202314min

123. Dizzy times

This week we’re into Dizzy times again. Disraeli, or Dizzy as he came to be known, had played a leading role in bringing down the Palmerston government in 1858. That allowed the Earl of Derby, leader...

1 Tammi 202314min