Special Forces In World War 2 Podcast

Version 1.2 During the editing of this episode, we accidentally duplicated one segment, resulting in approximately 25 minutes of repeated audio. We apologise for the mistake. This has now been corrected in Version 1.2.
On Sunday, September 17th, 1944, the largest airborne operation in history begins. This episode follows the first lift of the British 1st Airborne Division from the runways of southern England to the heaths and farmland west of Arnhem.
It starts in darkness. Almost 1,400 Allied sorties strike German airfields, flak positions and barracks around Arnhem, Deelen and Ede. At Wolfheze, the bombs fall on the village and on the psychiatric institution, Stichting Wolfheze, killing 87 civilians.
Then the sky fills with aircraft. Over 650 gliders, towed by Stirlings, Halifaxes and Dakotas, cross the North Sea behind their tugs. Pathfinders of the 21st Independent Parachute Company mark the zones at 12:40 hours. The 1st Airlanding Brigade comes down on Landing Zones S and Z. The 1st Parachute Brigade drops on Drop Zone X on the Renkumse Heide. Within minutes, hundreds of gliders are on the ground, some of them wrecked, with their pilots trapped inside.
We follow the men who stay behind to hold the landing area: the 2nd South Staffords at Wolfheze, the 1st Border towards Renkum and Heelsum, the 7th King's Own Scottish Borderers on the Ginkelse Heide, and the sappers of the 9th Field Company in their fight for the Hotel Wolfheze.
And we follow the German response, which comes faster than anyone expects. SS-Sturmbannführer Sepp Krafft throws a training battalion across the woods between the landing zones and Arnhem. At Doetinchem, SS-Obergruppenführer Wilhelm Bittrich sets the 9th SS-Panzerdivision Hohenstaufen against Arnhem and sends the 10th SS-Panzerdivision Frundsberg south toward Nijmegen. In Oosterbeek, Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model looks up from his lunch to see British paratroopers descending three kilometres away.
This is Part Three of our Operation Market Garden series.
For maps, photographs and the full source base behind this series, visit worldwar2-sof.com
#OperationMarketGarden #Arnhem #WW2 #1stAirborneDivision #Paratroopers #MilitaryHistory #WorldWarTwo #Airborne #GliderPilots #WW2History

In Part Two of this opening episode, the ground half of Operation Market Garden takes shape: XXX Corps, spearheaded by the Guards Armoured Division, tasked with breaking out from the bridgehead at Joe's Bridge and driving up a single road to reach the airborne forces at Arnhem, on a timetable that leaves almost no margin for delay.
Then come the final days before the operation launches: last briefings, cancelled leave, a night of heavy Allied bombing against German airfields and defences across the Dutch coast, and the morning more than two thousand aircraft and gliders take off from airfields across southern England, the largest airborne armada ever assembled.
By the end of this episode, the operation is airborne, and the day-by-day story of five separate formations, all fighting for the same corridor, on the same days, is about to begin.
Missed Part One? Start there first, this episode picks up right where it left off.
#MarketGarden #OperationMarketGarden #ABridgeTooFar #Arnhem #WWII #WWIIHistory #MilitaryHistory #Airborne #101stAirborne #82ndAirborne #1stAirborneDivision #XXXCorps #PolishParachuteBrigade #WW2Podcast #HistoryPodcast
🔗 Stay connected with us:
Website: https://worldwar2-sof.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ww2.sof
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorldWar2SOF
Facebook Support Group: https://www.facebook.com/WorldWar2SOF/subscribe/
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ww2.sof
Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/worldwar2sof

September 1944. The Allied armies have shattered the German front in France and driven deep into Belgium, and then, suddenly, they run out of road. Low on fuel, stretched across hundreds of kilometres of supply lines, the advance stalls just short of the Dutch border.
Out of that crisis comes Operation Market Garden: the largest airborne operation ever attempted, a daring bid to seize a chain of bridges across Holland and open a path straight into the heart of Germany.
In Part One of this two-part opening episode, we follow the argument between Montgomery and Eisenhower that gets the operation approved, the German recovery that nearly closes the door on it before it starts, and the detailed planning of three airborne divisions and a Polish brigade, each given a piece of a hundred-kilometre corridor, and each about to discover just how little room for error the plan allows.
This episode lays the groundwork for the series ahead, following the 1st Airborne Division, the 1st Independent Polish Parachute Brigade, the 82nd Airborne Division, the 101st Airborne Division, and XXX Corps through Operation Market Garden, day by day.
Part Two continues the story.
#MarketGarden #OperationMarketGarden #ABridgeTooFar #Arnhem #WWII #WWIIHistory #MilitaryHistory #Airborne #101stAirborne #82ndAirborne #1stAirborneDivision #XXXCorps #PolishParachuteBrigade #WW2Podcast #HistoryPodcast
🔗 Stay connected with us:
Website: https://worldwar2-sof.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ww2.sof
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorldWar2SOF
Facebook Support Group: https://www.facebook.com/WorldWar2SOF/subscribe/
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ww2.sof
Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/worldwar2sof

By mid-1942 the Japanese tide in the Pacific is turning, and the invasion Fiji feared never comes. But the war is not finished with the First Commando Fiji Guerrillas.
In this episode, the American forces take over the defence of Fiji, and the New Zealand-led commandos pass under a new command. They become an unexpected thing: a jungle-warfare school for the incoming US Army, running night raids and mock ambushes against their own allies, and arming their Fijian soldiers at last. Then the orders come, and the unit sails north into the Solomon Islands.
On Guadalcanal they absorb Fijians, Tongans, and Solomon Islanders into a five-nation force. On New Georgia they go to war for real, a small band whose reconnaissance behind Japanese lines becomes the key to the American advance on Munda, at a cost that begins to fall on named men. On Vella Lavella they hunt a scattered enemy through the bush. And in the end it is not battle but malaria that breaks them, until a unit worn down and used up is brought home and disbanded in 1944.
This is the story of how a garrison force raised to defend one island fought its way across others it had never heard of, and of the New Zealanders, Fijians, Tongans, and Solomon Islanders who made it.
Sources: Colin Larsen, Pacific Commandos: New Zealanders and Fijians in Action; Anna Annie Kwai, Solomon Islanders in World War II: An Indigenous Perspective; Richard Tregaskis, Guadalcanal Diary; D. C. Horton, New Georgia: Pattern for Victory; and further histories of the Guadalcanal, New Georgia, and Bairoko campaigns. Recorded testimony of Solomon Islander veterans, including George Maelalo.
For maps, photographs, and the full source base behind this series, visit worldwar2-sof.com
Search terms: WW2 Pacific, Fiji Guerrillas, New Zealand commandos, Guadalcanal, New Georgia, Solomon Islands, jungle warfare, special forces history
#WW2 #WWII #PacificWar #MilitaryHistory #HistoryPodcast #Guadalcanal #NewGeorgia #SolomonIslands #Fiji #Commandos #NewZealandHistory #SpecialForces #WorldWarTwo #Podcast #History #JungleWarfare #WW2History #PacificTheatre
🔗 Stay connected with us:Website: https://worldwar2-sof.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ww2.sofFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorldWar2SOFFacebook Support Group: https://www.facebook.com/WorldWar2SOF/subscribe/Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ww2.sofSpotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/worldwar2sof

In the dark first months of 1942, the Japanese advance sweeps south across the Pacific, and Fiji lies squarely in its path. The islands guard the sea and air routes that keep Australia and New Zealand supplied, yet the garrison is far too small to hold every shore.
The answer is an unusual one. In the least accessible corners of the main island, a handful of New Zealanders are sent to raise small bands of guerrillas from the Fijian people, and to hide them in the bush. Their orders are not to win battles, but to buy time: to harass any landing, close the single coast road, and hold the enemy back until stronger forces can move up.
This first part follows the making of the First Commando Fiji Guerrillas. New Zealand officers and non-commissioned officers go out into the remote villages, win the trust of the Fijian people, and train them week by week as scouts and guerrillas. They must first master a country of mountains, jungle, and flooded rivers that tests the teachers as hard as the taught. This is a story of formation, of hard training and harder ground, and of an unlikely partnership forged in the villages of Viti Levu, in the shadow of an invasion that may come any day.
Source: Colin Larsen, Pacific Commandos: New Zealanders and Fijians in Action.
For maps, photographs, and the full source base behind this series, visit worldwar2-sof.com
Search terms: WW2 Pacific, Fiji Guerrillas, New Zealand commandos, jungle warfare, Viti Levu, guerrilla training, special forces history
#WW2 #WWII #PacificWar #MilitaryHistory #HistoryPodcast #Fiji #NewZealandHistory #Commandos #SpecialForces #WorldWarTwo #Podcast #History #JungleWarfare #WW2History #PacificTheatre
🔗 Stay connected with us:Website: https://worldwar2-sof.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ww2.sofFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorldWar2SOFFacebook Support Group: https://www.facebook.com/WorldWar2SOF/subscribe/Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ww2.sofSpotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/worldwar2sof