How the Allies won WW2

Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. This summer, it's 80 years since the greatest conflict in human history came to an end. To mark the anniversary, the military historians and podcasters James Holland and Al Murray have written a new book that tells the story of the final moments of the Second World War, through the access surrenders that brought the conflict to a close. In today's episode, James, who's also the creative director of the Chalk History Festival, which runs this year from the 23rd to the 29th of June, revisits these dramatic episodes in the company of Rob Attar. James, we're approaching the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, and in your new book, you and Al Murray have decided to focus specifically on the surrenders that concluded the conflict.

Why do you think that this approach is a good way to illuminate our understanding of the period? Well, I suppose in in some ways it's an authorial trick. I mean, we are focusing on all the surrenders and and it's called, you know, sort of end of the war in A surrenders. But actually we're using each of those those surrenders as uh as a sort of entry point to broader themes. So, for example, the surrender in Italy, it is about the surrender in Italy, but it's not really about the last weeks of fighting in Italy, it's about the duel between Ernest Kaltenbrunner and Carl Wolff, and and they were the two most senior SS officers in the Reich.

directly under Himmler and they both hated each other's guts and both were trying to kind of get through the wall with their necks intact whilst at the same time trying to stitch up the other. And it is just the most extraordinary story of art theft, of high-level VIP hostages, of barely comprehensible scales of money laundering and just general skulldoggery at every turn. I mean, it is absolutely remarkable. So that's how we're approaching it.

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