Navajo Code Talkers – America's secret WWII weapon

We Are History

Angela Barnes and John O'Farrell

History

4.9 • 802 Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2023

⏱️ 67 minutes

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Summary

Angela Barnes and John O’Farrell present the not-so-serious podcast unravelling fascinating and down-right bizarre historical events. This week; our history enthusiasts discuss how the US military used an indigenous American language to outfox the Nazis. By taking a gamble that there weren’t many natural Navajo speakers in Berlin, the Americans kept their secret messages unbreakable by the enemy. Get all episodes a week early – when you support We Are History on Patreon: https://patreon.com/WeAreHistory “You couldn’t choose just any language for coded messages; for instance; ‘we’ll just send all our messages in french’ as if the Nazi’s couldn’t speak french.” – Angela Barnes “The Navajo language hadn’t ever been written down in 1940; there was no Duolingo for Navajo.” – John O’’Farrell “They created a new code, as a crossword nerd I love this.” – Angela Barnes “Their name for Adolf Hitler was ‘crazy white man’, doesn’t narrow it down, does it?” – John O’Farrell Reading List: Navajo Code Talkers by Nathan Aaseng Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee by Dee Brown We Are History is written and presented by Angela Barnes and John O’Farrell. Audio production by Simon Williams and artwork by James Parrett. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor is Andrew Harrison. We Are History is a Podmasters Production. https://twitter.com/wearehistorypod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to We Are History. I'm Angela Barnes.
0:20.0	And I'm John O'Farrell.
0:22.1	Oh, yeah, we get old.
0:23.4	See what we did there.
0:24.4	Angela has chosen this week's topic and we're going to go World War II because you know what she's like?
0:30.0	She's absolutely obsessed with Spitfires and Nazis and Battle of Britain.
0:35.9	And she's like, Dad's Army, massive Dad's Army being. Battle of Britain. It's just like,
0:39.4	a massive dad's army fan.
0:42.0	Yeah.
0:42.7	Oh, God.
0:44.3	I am excited about this one though,
0:47.0	because I'm not a World War II nerd.
0:49.6	And I'd never heard about this operation that we're talking about today
0:50.7	until I was in Berlin before Christmas.
0:54.1	And I went to, with with my husband we went to
0:56.7	Das Deutsche Spionage Museum Spionage Museum. Spionage museum. That is das. That is the German spy museum.
1:05.3	Actually, I really recommend it. If you go into Berlin with the family, lots of, one of those museums with
1:10.2	there's lots to do, you know.
1:11.8	I've been there. I've been there. It's great. My favourite bit was, um, there's a room where it's sort of
1:17.5	set up like a East German office and you've got a bug detecting device and you have to find
1:24.2	the bugs. That sounds fun. The room. It's good fun. Anyway, there were lots of videos and interactive stuff.
1:29.9	And because I am at the moment on a project to sort of improve my German, I was watching
	...

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