Britain's Secret Expedition to Antarctica

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2024

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1943, just as the Second World War was raging across the globe, the British government launched a top-secret mission to the Antarctic. Code-named Operation Tabarin, its goal was to gather scientific data in some of the harshest conditions on the planet and reaffirm British sovereignty in the region.

Dan is joined by Camilla Nichol, CEO of the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, and Klaus Dodds, Professor of Geopolitics at Royal Holloway. Camilla and Klaus explain how this secret wartime operation, driven by scientific endeavour and geopolitics, set the scene for Antarctic research right up to the present day.

Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.

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1:02.0	Hey everybody, welcome Dan to knows history in early 1944 a very special military
1:08.0	operation was underway the British had launched operation Tabarin, named after apparently very sketchy Parisian
1:16.4	nightclub. The Second World War was raging, the Soviet Union was launching massive
1:22.0	offensive on the Eastern Front.
1:23.7	Japan was reeling back across the Pacific.
1:26.8	Britain, America, Canada and others were stealing themselves
1:30.8	for an invasion of France in the summer of that year, D-Day. But Operation
1:36.0	Tabrin, oddly, had nothing much to do with any of that at all. The ships of
	...

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