The SAS in WW2: everything you wanted to know

Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. The second series of SAS Rogue Heroes is set to hit our screens later this week on the 1st of January on BBC One. So we thought this was a perfect time to bring you an episode from 2023 with Joshua Levine, all about the SAS in the Second World War. Joshua examines who was responsible for the creation of the SAS, what its original purpose was, and reveals the impact that a parachuting padre had on the morale of its men.

Here he answers listener questions in conversation with John Baucom. Now we've got a lot of questions to get through, but let's start with a a a relatively straightforward one, which has been submitted by Haley Hales on Instagram, and that is how was the SAS formed? Maybe straightforward, but it's quite a big question because there's a a tendency in stories like this to oversimplify and say, well, it was one person. Of course that's not the case with this as with so many things. It was a lot of influencers.

A lot goes into the DNA. Of the wartime SAS. So you can look back to, for example, T. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia. And, you know, he was carrying out sabotage behind enemy lines in the First World War.

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