The Battle of Britain Explained: The Blitz

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 27 August 2024

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

2/2. The Battle of Britain was Hitler's first and potentially most important defeat. It defined the course of the war, forcing him to make a series of decisions that guaranteed his own destruction. In this two-part series, we'll trace this monumental story from the dark days of the defeat of France, through to the triumph of RAF Fighter Command in the skies above Britain.

In Part 2 Dan takes us through the battle's crescendo, as British, Commonwealth and European pilots took to the skies time and again to contest Luftwaffe raids. He explains why Hitler decided to turn away from this attritional battle and direct his rage against London - and how that terrible decision affected the course of the war.

Written and produced by Dan Snow, and edited by Dougal Patmore.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Peter Frankopen. And in our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history.
0:07.6	This season we're revisiting the life of Cecil Rhodes.
0:10.4	From Sickly Child to Diamond Tycoon, leading colonialist in South Africa, he was a bastion of British imperialism.
0:17.2	Over the past few years, campuses around the world have been met by students, chanting Rhodes must fall. His legacy has been completely transformed.
0:24.6	It's unbelievable how relevant roads still feels and how often his name is invoked by people
0:31.3	contesting really polarizing parts of our contemporary life.
0:35.6	But one of the questions about Rhodes is that he takes all the flag and therefore hides
0:39.7	away all the other people who were responsible for doing things that maybe not quite so bad.
0:43.7	That's why I think it's important to think not just about Rhodes and his own life, but about what that period
0:47.5	of British and colonial history meant.
0:49.2	And one of the things people often say is you have to judge these figures by the standards of their time
0:53.3	that's exactly what we're gonna do Peter isn't it so follow legacy now from
0:57.1	wherever you get your podcasts or binge entire seasons early and ad-free on
1:01.4	Wondery Plus.
1:06.0	The Prime Minister Winston Churchill spent March the late afternoon
1:10.7	deep underground at one of the most secret sites in Britain. He loved nothing
1:16.4	more than popping into the headquarters of Ari of Fighter Command's 11 group. This was the unit tasked with protecting the airspace above London and Southeast England.
1:28.0	That airspace in the summer of 1940 and particularly on that day,
1:35.0	the day on which Winston Churchill visited,
1:37.0	the 16th of August was being intensely contested
1:41.0	between the British Royal Air Force and the German Luftwaffe.
1:46.6	It was the first great battle in history to be fought primarily in the air that was one of the most decisive battles in the history of the world.
	...

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