Hitler's V1 & V2 Rockets

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As the world closed in on the Third Reich in the final chapter of World War Two, a desperate Adolf Hitler turned to his so-called 'Revenge Weapons' for salvation; cutting-edge armaments specifically designed to terrorise civilian populations and break their morale. His hope was that breaking the spirit of the Allies would reverse the course of a war that Germany was clearly losing.

Joining us is historian Murray Barber, author of 'V2: The A4 Rocket from Peenemünde to Redstone'. Murray tells us all about the most infamous of these weapons, the fearsome V1 and V2 rockets - did they actually have any impact on the course of the war, and how did they shape events later in the 20th century?

Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's history. It's the early evening on the 8th of September
0:05.4	1944 and we are in Chizik, a pretty residential suburb of London, very near where I grew up.
0:13.4	It's Nedyllic, leafy neighborhood, but war is never far away.
0:16.4	The residents are no stranger to it.
0:18.0	The Second World War has been ranging for years.
0:19.7	They know family, friends, loved ones who have been caught up and who have lost lives.
0:23.6	Air raid, warden's patrol the streets, making sure there's no light escaping through chinks in
0:29.0	blackout blinds and windows.
0:31.1	Bomb shelters are dotted around.
0:33.1	Sirens regularly Blair to one of incoming German attacks.
0:37.6	For years since 1940, the Germans have brought the war to London.
0:42.2	First, an enormous bombing raid,
0:43.7	or what we call the Blitz in 1940 and 41, and more recently
0:48.0	by a new state-of-the-art weapon, the V-1 flying bomb,
0:51.6	one of Hitler's so-called vengeance weapons.
0:54.7	Nicknamed the doodle bug, it was pilotless, it made distinctive buzzing noise,
0:59.1	and it was a weapon that induced great fear in the people of Southern England.
1:03.2	That buzzing sound meant that was a warhead over you
1:06.0	with 1800 pounds of explosives in it.
1:09.6	And if you heard that buzzing stop,
1:11.7	that meant the engine stopped and it would tip into a dive and
1:14.7	it was going to be hurtling to the earth at hundreds of miles per hour.
	...

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