Battle of Britain: What Were the Germans Thinking?
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 19 September 2020
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Victoria Taylor is an aviation historian who is just completing her PhD in the Luftwaffe and its politicisation under the Nazis. She talked to me about how the Germans approached the Battle of Britain. Were they the mighty Goliath to Britain's David or were they in fact more evenly matched? And what on earth was the Luftwaffe's strategy for knocking Britain out of the war.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The London Review of Books has a new subscription podcast called Close Reading. |
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| 0:09.4 | Leading critics explore some of the great works of literature. |
| 0:12.3 | The poet of Beowulf says that was a good king, which we can decide whether we take that straight or ironically. |
| 0:18.4 | An introductory grounding like no other from Europe's leading literary journal. |
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| 0:26.5 | Find Close Readings wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:30.5 | Hi everyone, welcome to Ansono's History. |
| 0:34.3 | I'm sorry that there's a lot of anniversaries coming to thicken fast. |
| 0:37.1 | A lot of history happens in September everyone. |
| 0:38.9 | Everyone gets back from their summer holiday, their vacation. |
| 0:42.3 | They decide to make some history. |
| 0:43.8 | And so this week we've got 400th anniversary of the departure of the Mayflower from Plymouth. |
| 0:49.1 | We've got a lot going on on the podcast and on the TV channel about that. |
| 0:53.8 | We've also this week, however, on the 15th it's Battle of Britain. |
| 0:56.4 | There's the 80th anniversary of a sort of climax of the Battle of Britain |
| 1:00.0 | when Hitler launched his last major daytime strike on London. |
| 1:04.8 | And it was brutally rebuffed by the undefeated Spitfires and hurricanes of the RAF's Fighter Command. |
| 1:11.1 | This week got lots of programs going out on history at TV, |
| 1:14.8 | newly commissioned show with Stephen Bungay, who's written, I think, one of the best books about the Battle of Britain. |
| 1:20.1 | He's all about why Britain won. |
| 1:22.8 | A shortened version of that will be appearing on the podcast this week, so you can check that out here. |
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