WW2: Spying on Nazis

Warfare

History Hit

History

4.5 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 7 July 2021

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When captured Nazi generals found themselves in Britain in the Second World War, they were probably surprised to be brought to a beautiful country house where they were wined and dined by a senior British aristocrat. But it was all a charade. Unbeknown to the generals, every single conversation they had was bugged and an army of translators and transcribers worked away in the basement below. The 'senior British aristocrat' who they suspected had Nazi sympathies was a fictitious character named after a whisky distillery, and the entire show was a genius plot by British Intelligence to squeeze out snippets of valuable information. In this episode, Helen Fry joined Dan Snow to reveal the extent of this remarkable operation, and the military strategy which was altered as a result of careless comments.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone welcome back to the history hit warfare podcast I'm your host
0:03.8	James Rogers and you're catching me as I'm in an Uber on the way to go and interview
0:08.7	one of President John F Kennedy's former staffers and this is for a new chapter I'm writing on the missile gap and
0:15.6	JFK's road to the White House. But in today's episode we're talking about the
0:20.8	Second World War. Well that's a war that JFK fought in but we're talking about the Second World War. Well that's a war that JFK fought in but
0:24.3	we're talking about what happened to Nazi generals when they were captured and
0:28.9	brought to Britain. It turns out they found themselves in a beautiful country house.
0:34.0	They were wind and dined by senior British aristocrats,
0:38.0	but it was all a charade designed to make them talk.
0:41.0	From the skirting boards and the swing seats to the flower pots, everything
0:45.9	was bugged and every conversation was recorded. This episode was originally broadcast on Dan Snow's history hit and Dan is joined by Helen Fry,
0:55.3	who explains the extent of this remarkable operation and how it changed British military strategy.
1:01.9	Enjoy. Helen, thank you very much coming on this podcast. It is such a brilliant piece of work this.
1:23.0	Thank you. It's a privilege to be chatting to you today. Thank you.
1:27.0	I mean, we hear so much about intelligence and the Second World War, but why don't we know more about this? Is this a hidden story?
1:33.0	It's definitely a hidden story.
1:35.0	The files were only declassified about 10, 15 years ago,
1:39.0	and I stumbled across them just a year or so after they were declassified. And I think just the sheer volume of information if it hadn't been for my own
1:49.0	personal connection to a war veteran I promised him I would tell the story of his unit. I think I would not have, you know, worked through these files. They're pretty daunting.
1:59.0	And thank goodness for everybody that you did work through them. Let's go from the beginning.
2:03.0	When did the British government come up with the idea of treating high-ranking German prisoners
2:09.1	in this particular way?
	...

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