WW2: The British Resistance
Warfare
History Hit
4.5 • 943 Ratings
🗓️ 5 September 2022
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If Germany's audacious plan to invade Britain - Operation Sea Lion - had succeeded, what exactly would the country's last line of defence have looked like?
Well much like the French Resistance, who were backed by the UK's very own Special Operations Executive (SOE), Britain had prepared its very own network of brave civilian saboteurs, spies, and assassins - many of whom went to their grave without revealing a word of what they'd been tasked to do.
In this episode James is joined by historian & author Andrew Chatterton, who helps us understand exactly what a British Resistance movement would have looked like.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone I'm your host James Rogers and I'm on the move again today. I'm in New York and I'm off to the United Nations headquarters to brief on the transnational threat of terrorist drones. |
| 0:09.7 | If you're interested in that topic, follow along on Instagram at James Rogers history or on Twitter at |
| 0:15.2 | D.R. James Rogers. But I wanted to take a moment to introduce you to this incredible episode on a history that I knew nothing about. |
| 0:23.0 | It concerns Britain's last line of defence had Hitler successfully launched Operation |
| 0:27.0 | Sea Line, that invasion of the UK in 1940 or 41. |
| 0:32.4 | What were the plans to keep the Nazis at bay to disrupt their plans? |
| 0:36.2 | Well, much like with the French Resistance, who were backed by the British Special Operations |
| 0:40.3 | Executive, the famous S.O. E. Britain had prepared its own incredible network of brave |
| 0:45.2 | civilian saboteurs, spies and assassins, many of whom went to their grave |
| 0:50.2 | without revealing a word of what they've been tasked to do. |
| 0:53.9 | To take us through this remarkable history, we welcome Andrew Chatterton onto the podcast. |
| 0:58.3 | Andrew is the author of a new book, Britain's secret defences, civilian saboteurs, spies and assassins during the Second World War, |
| 1:05.6 | and this is published by case-mate publishing. |
| 1:08.0 | This makes Andrew the ideal, the perfect person to take us through this deliberately hidden history. Enjoy. Hi Andrew welcome to warfare how you doing yeah brilliant thank you very. We've learned a lot about the homeguard. I suppose as they're still kind of called on this podcast. In fact, I've been doing this podcast long enough now to know that it isn't all about your pikes and your mannerings and your phrases. |
| 1:44.4 | It's far more than that. |
| 1:45.9 | These aren't a a bumbling bunch of oldies and veterans who are this lingering last line of |
| 1:52.3 | defense for Britain during the Second World War. |
| 1:54.8 | In fact, so many of them were highly trained and we had a whole episode on the auxiliaries on this |
| 2:00.3 | podcast and their legacies and it was truly fascinating. So when you approached me and said, |
| 2:05.2 | well I've got a bit more to this story, well we had to get you on the podcast Andrew. |
| 2:09.2 | It's a really interesting story isn't it that I think people have understandably |
| 2:14.1 | got into a narrative of pitchforks on cliff edges and old dodgy men being |
... |
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