Special Forces In World War 2 Podcast

In Part Two of this opening episode, the ground half of Operation Market Garden takes shape: XXX Corps, spearheaded by the Guards Armoured Division, tasked with breaking out from the bridgehead at Joe's Bridge and driving up a single road to reach the airborne forces at Arnhem, on a timetable that leaves almost no margin for delay.
Then come the final days before the operation launches: last briefings, cancelled leave, a night of heavy Allied bombing against German airfields and defences across the Dutch coast, and the morning more than two thousand aircraft and gliders take off from airfields across southern England, the largest airborne armada ever assembled.
By the end of this episode, the operation is airborne, and the day-by-day story of five separate formations, all fighting for the same corridor, on the same days, is about to begin.
Missed Part One? Start there first, this episode picks up right where it left off.
#MarketGarden #OperationMarketGarden #ABridgeTooFar #Arnhem #WWII #WWIIHistory #MilitaryHistory #Airborne #101stAirborne #82ndAirborne #1stAirborneDivision #XXXCorps #PolishParachuteBrigade #WW2Podcast #HistoryPodcast
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September 1944. The Allied armies have shattered the German front in France and driven deep into Belgium, and then, suddenly, they run out of road. Low on fuel, stretched across hundreds of kilometres of supply lines, the advance stalls just short of the Dutch border.
Out of that crisis comes Operation Market Garden: the largest airborne operation ever attempted, a daring bid to seize a chain of bridges across Holland and open a path straight into the heart of Germany.
In Part One of this two-part opening episode, we follow the argument between Montgomery and Eisenhower that gets the operation approved, the German recovery that nearly closes the door on it before it starts, and the detailed planning of three airborne divisions and a Polish brigade, each given a piece of a hundred-kilometre corridor, and each about to discover just how little room for error the plan allows.
This episode lays the groundwork for the series ahead, following the 1st Airborne Division, the 1st Independent Polish Parachute Brigade, the 82nd Airborne Division, the 101st Airborne Division, and XXX Corps through Operation Market Garden, day by day.
Part Two continues the story.
#MarketGarden #OperationMarketGarden #ABridgeTooFar #Arnhem #WWII #WWIIHistory #MilitaryHistory #Airborne #101stAirborne #82ndAirborne #1stAirborneDivision #XXXCorps #PolishParachuteBrigade #WW2Podcast #HistoryPodcast
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By mid-1942 the Japanese tide in the Pacific is turning, and the invasion Fiji feared never comes. But the war is not finished with the First Commando Fiji Guerrillas.
In this episode, the American forces take over the defence of Fiji, and the New Zealand-led commandos pass under a new command. They become an unexpected thing: a jungle-warfare school for the incoming US Army, running night raids and mock ambushes against their own allies, and arming their Fijian soldiers at last. Then the orders come, and the unit sails north into the Solomon Islands.
On Guadalcanal they absorb Fijians, Tongans, and Solomon Islanders into a five-nation force. On New Georgia they go to war for real, a small band whose reconnaissance behind Japanese lines becomes the key to the American advance on Munda, at a cost that begins to fall on named men. On Vella Lavella they hunt a scattered enemy through the bush. And in the end it is not battle but malaria that breaks them, until a unit worn down and used up is brought home and disbanded in 1944.
This is the story of how a garrison force raised to defend one island fought its way across others it had never heard of, and of the New Zealanders, Fijians, Tongans, and Solomon Islanders who made it.
Sources: Colin Larsen, Pacific Commandos: New Zealanders and Fijians in Action; Anna Annie Kwai, Solomon Islanders in World War II: An Indigenous Perspective; Richard Tregaskis, Guadalcanal Diary; D. C. Horton, New Georgia: Pattern for Victory; and further histories of the Guadalcanal, New Georgia, and Bairoko campaigns. Recorded testimony of Solomon Islander veterans, including George Maelalo.
For maps, photographs, and the full source base behind this series, visit worldwar2-sof.com
Search terms: WW2 Pacific, Fiji Guerrillas, New Zealand commandos, Guadalcanal, New Georgia, Solomon Islands, jungle warfare, special forces history
#WW2 #WWII #PacificWar #MilitaryHistory #HistoryPodcast #Guadalcanal #NewGeorgia #SolomonIslands #Fiji #Commandos #NewZealandHistory #SpecialForces #WorldWarTwo #Podcast #History #JungleWarfare #WW2History #PacificTheatre
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In the dark first months of 1942, the Japanese advance sweeps south across the Pacific, and Fiji lies squarely in its path. The islands guard the sea and air routes that keep Australia and New Zealand supplied, yet the garrison is far too small to hold every shore.
The answer is an unusual one. In the least accessible corners of the main island, a handful of New Zealanders are sent to raise small bands of guerrillas from the Fijian people, and to hide them in the bush. Their orders are not to win battles, but to buy time: to harass any landing, close the single coast road, and hold the enemy back until stronger forces can move up.
This first part follows the making of the First Commando Fiji Guerrillas. New Zealand officers and non-commissioned officers go out into the remote villages, win the trust of the Fijian people, and train them week by week as scouts and guerrillas. They must first master a country of mountains, jungle, and flooded rivers that tests the teachers as hard as the taught. This is a story of formation, of hard training and harder ground, and of an unlikely partnership forged in the villages of Viti Levu, in the shadow of an invasion that may come any day.
Source: Colin Larsen, Pacific Commandos: New Zealanders and Fijians in Action.
For maps, photographs, and the full source base behind this series, visit worldwar2-sof.com
Search terms: WW2 Pacific, Fiji Guerrillas, New Zealand commandos, jungle warfare, Viti Levu, guerrilla training, special forces history
#WW2 #WWII #PacificWar #MilitaryHistory #HistoryPodcast #Fiji #NewZealandHistory #Commandos #SpecialForces #WorldWarTwo #Podcast #History #JungleWarfare #WW2History #PacificTheatre
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June 6th, 1944. The Commandos of 1st Special Service Brigade have fought their way off Sword Beach and up to the bridges over the Caen Canal and the River Orne. Now the harder task begins. They must climb onto the high ground beyond the Orne and hold it, whatever the enemy sends against them.

This episode widens to the whole Brigade. Number 3 Commando, Number 4 Commando, Number 6 Commando, and Number 45 Royal Marine Commando, on a low ridge that is the far left edge of the entire invasion. Hold it, and the eastern flank holds. Lose it, and the enemy looks straight down onto the beaches and the crossings below.

We climb to Le Plein with Number 6 Commando as the guns of the fleet come down among their own lines. We follow Number 45 Royal Marine Commando east to Franceville Plage and the guns above Merville, into a day of street fighting that costs them dear and drives them back into the ruins in the dark. We stand with the Brigade through the loss of Lord Lovat at Bréville, through the long grinding weeks in the foxholes where the killing is close and constant. And when the enemy breaks at last, we go forward with the pursuit, across the River Dives and on towards the Seine.

This is the story of eighty-three days on the eastern flank of Normandy. Of four Commandos who came ashore separately and learned to fight as one. Of a ridge held from the sixth of June until the enemy was gone.

Drawn from the war diaries of the units themselves and from the historians who preserved this campaign, this is special forces history told in immersive, documentary detail.

Search terms: D-Day, Normandy, Commandos, 1st Special Service Brigade, Lord Lovat, Sword Beach, Le Plein, Amfreville, Bréville, Franceville Plage, River Dives, 6th Airborne Division, Operation Overlord.

#DDay #WWII #WW2 #Normandy #Commandos #LordLovat #SwordBeach #BritishArmy #RoyalMarines #MilitaryHistory #HistoryPodcast #OperationOverlord #DDay1944 #WW2Podcast #MilitaryPodcast #6thAirborne #Bréville #WarHistory #1944 #SpecialForces
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