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#61 They just pretended to shoot - Ep 1 Nightmare in the Trenches 1914-16
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1 July 1916. Had British Corps commanders understood machine gun warfare they would not have sent British infantrymen across No Man’s Land unprotected from the German machine gun crews. In fact we explain why the British army need never have been in the position it was in on the Somme, scrabbling about at the bottom of hills, peering up at German fortifications in all the strategic locations. We look at its refusal to take trench warfare seriously even though it had been around for 60 years. (R)
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#102 'The cuckoo in the Nobel nest' - Ep 2 Lunatics Take Over The Asylum: Neoliberalism uncut
31:11|How did less welfare, less government regulation of business (aka neoliberalism free market) become a global ‘fashion’ without any evidence of its benefits? Something to do with an imposter ‘Nobel’ prize and a PBS TV series funded by American big business? (R)
#101 'everything absolutely maxed out' - Ep 1 Lunatics Take Over The Asylum: Neoliberalism uncut
32:52|Civil liberty is different from individual liberty. Philosophers have known this since at least the 17th Century. We explore the two fundamental fallacies of neoliberalism to show why neoliberal economics can only bring prosperity to the few, and is incapable of predicting financial crashes. Today in the USA those damaged by neoliberalism have been driven to elect an unhinged criminal... (R)
#32 The curious case of inventing Scottishness
35:30|In 1983 Professor Hugh Trevor Roper claimed that Scottishness had been invented. We enjoyably demolish Trevor Roper’s theory and reveal that the commercialisation of romantic Scottishness in the nineteenth century had far deeper and darker roots than the manufacture of tartan and romantic fiction. (R)
#06 London fires were visible from France - Ep 6 Who really won the Battle of Britain?
23:56|Who won the Battle of Britain? For good strategic reasons Churchill claimed victory. But the Germans, who saw the eight months of the Blitz as part of the same campaign, achieved much of what they intended. (R)
#05 Forcing Britain 'to her knees' - Ep 5 Who really won the Battle of Britain?
25:17|The Battle of Britain was never as close as the popular story has it. The RAF was too well organised and supplied. But is that why the Luftwaffe switched to bombing London? Or was there another reason? (R)
#4 More than a double bluff - Ep 4 Who really won the Battle of Britain?
32:09|Churchill talks up the threat of invasion, even though it looks impossible. ‘I might as well send my men straight into a sausage machine,’ writes the German Chief of Staff. But invasion preparations still go on. Who is bluffing who? (R)
#03 'Always carry pepper to throw in their eyes' - Ep 3 Who Really won the Battle of Britain?
25:02|Britain is gripped by fear of invasion. Government leaflet 'If the Invader Comes' calls for pepper and ‘a sharp knife to kill them if necessary.’ Churchill goes on BBC and says ‘we await undismayed by the impending assault. Perhaps it will come tonight.’ So why in private is Churchill saying he doubts the invasion would ever take place? (R)
#02 A battle for air superiority? - Ep 2 Who really won the Battle of Britain?
29:38|Was the Battle of Britain a fight for Luftwaffe air superiority in order to enable an invasion? The Luftwaffe itself did not think so. It had another agenda altogether. (R)
#01 Waterworld Flotilla - Ep 1 Who really won the Battle of Britain?
25:02|The Germans make extraordinary preparations for the immense task of invading Britain in 1940. Why bother when neither Hitler nor any senior German officer wanted to do it or thought it was possible?