War Under The Waves

WW2 Pod: We Have Ways of Making You Talk

Goalhanger Podcasts

Society & Culture, Education, History

4.8 • 5.3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How did submariners survive for weeks at a time at sea on patrol? Were there any perks to joining the submarine service? Why did so many submariners in WW2 have bad breath? Listen to this exclusive extract from James M Scott and Roger Moorhouse's talk from this year's We Have Ways Festival on life in the submarines of the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Nazi German Kriegsmarine. Start your free trial at ⁠patreon.com/wehaveways⁠ and to listen to the rest of this talk, and more get more subscriber perks. Enjoy livestreams, early access to podcast episodes, ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and a weekly newsletter packed with book deals and behind-the-scenes insights. Members also get priority access and discounts to live events. A Goalhanger Production Produced by James Regan Assistant Producer: Alfie Rowe Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Social: @WeHaveWaysPod Email: wehaveways@goalhanger.com Membership Club: patreon.com/wehaveways Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for listening to We Have Ways of Making You Talk.
0:05.0	Sign up to our Patreon to receive bonus content, live streams and our weekly newsletter with money off books and museum visits as well.
0:13.0	Plus early access to all live show tickets. That's patreon.com slash we have ways.
0:20.0	Hi there. patreon.com slash we have ways.
0:29.4	Hi there, Al Murray here, co-host of WW2 Pod, We Have Ways of Making You Talk.
0:34.1	Did you miss out on our incredible fifth weekend festival of Premium War Waffle in September?
0:37.4	Perhaps you were there, but couldn't get to every talk you wanted to hear. That's certainly the case for me. Well here at We Have We've Way's HQ. We're hard at work
0:41.3	putting up all the talks on our Patreon page in a collection just for subscribers.
0:46.3	We've just uploaded a fantastic array of talks from Friday's briefing tent with some of the world's most engaging historians on topics as diverse as doodle bug killers,
0:55.9	the Pacific Fleet and visions of peace.
0:59.1	We're doing a lot of naval chat on the main show at the moment.
1:03.0	So now is the perfect moment to subscribe and get a bit more nautical.
1:06.9	Go to Patreon.com slash we have ways to be piped aboard.
1:11.9	To sweeten the deal, we've prepared a small teaser of James M. Scott and Roger Morehouse's talk about submarine warfare. So what about conditions? Oh, yeah, conditions. You go first.
1:21.6	Let's talk about the Germans, though. And this is a part that I particularly wanted to bring out in my book, because I think a lot of the literature on this, and there is a fair amount on the Battle of the Atlantic in general.
1:34.7	The main spur for the book was that it occurred to me when I started looking into it, that it's very often, or normally, it's very often from the perspective of the surface.
1:43.4	It's the merchantman and the
1:45.6	destroyer and it's an essential part of our wartime stories, all of that. But the U-boat that's
1:50.8	attacking them is literally and metaphorically invisible. You know, you don't know what number it is,
1:55.6	you don't know how long they've been at sea, you don't know who the commander was. Sometimes that
1:59.9	becomes part of the story, but it's not an intrinsic part of it, right?
2:03.9	So they're kind of an invisible enemy.
	...

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