A Bad Wicket to Bat First On (with Al Murray!) | The Blitz (Part 3)

29:02I think when you want to split the difference, you need to find a nice toilet. A nice one, yeah. A restaurant, hotel toilet. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. You know that row of toilets underneath the Pleasance Dome? Yeah. Oh my God, yeah. That's my Fuhrer bunker. When I'm in Edinburgh, when I'm in Edinburgh, and I'm out and about, I need a poo. The peace one is because you have complete anonymity. They can't. They can't. They don't know who it is because there's so many people in there. Not anymore. Finn doesn't have complete anonymity anymore. I mean, Who's that guy? They'll be going, Snell! Snell!

29:30Finn Taylor's taking his shit in our toilets again. The English time ever! Finn's in the toilet. Your traps run your anger. I live like that! Yeah, get in the toilet paper like that.

29:43Anyway, so people are sleeping in chief stations, they're in the shelter. 60 % of people simply stay at home because there are stories of like, you know, stubborn old fuckers who are like, no, fuck off. You're not getting me out of my armchair. And then they just evaporate. some fatalism fatalism creeps in and you're kind of playing the same odds yes I suppose it is yeah but in every war zone there's this there's these Ukrainian babushka ladies right who all just stay in war zones who don't even know what's going on yeah I'm not there's that woman have you seen there's the woman who still lives in Chernobyl in Pripyat in like a trailer park yeah there's always people who are like she's like 80s like ah fuck off fuck it yeah it's like you have no neighbours yeah but she's an 8 year old woman who lives in you know former Soviet the shit she's seen I know but then you think about I don't know how she's got so old because you think about blue zones you think about japanese and italian people have bollocks is what she's saying mate she's saying bollocks she said i live in a fucking nuclear nuclear holocaust wasteland and i'm still 80 yeah look this is a garden it's all mine fuck it nothing grows this is all mine maybe she maybe she walks uphill a lot i don't know what's the i know she's got a mate he's got one he's got a mate yeah just drinking and they've got booze so you know the brits never a ration beer do they no they don't know again one of the key You absolutely can't go doing that.

30:56No. Or tea or potatoes, actually, or fish. Don't get rations. Fish and chips and beer are still around. But beer, importantly, yeah. When you're sheltering underground, the trains are still running, are they? Yeah, everything's still kind of going. So you're sleeping in a tube station. Well, no. I mean, they're not running at night during a raid. No. They're pausing. But the idea is to try and keep everything running. Yeah. Try and keep it going. factories because it's all about the factories exactly so you're learning this stuff it's really good so you've got eric hosborn is so delighted yeah interestingly he says the short 20th century from a paedophilia perspective is 1973 to 2008 which was kind of a very groundbreaking innovative it is so it's i'm just trying to think of the venn diagram People who get that joke.

31:49Yeah, I know. I don't think there's many.

31:55Anyway, so popular songs. And this, to me, this is a nightmare. It's not Shaggy Bombastic, Charlie. No, Charlie, they're not playing Bombastic in the tube. I think that was in the 2000s, I think. Yeah. So it's way later. Anyway, so I really can't stand Buskers on the underground because it's like trapped. There's no air. Yeah. you know every now and then you see a guy absolutely shredding on a guitar you think that's fine i'm into that that's quite funny i'll stop and look at that an accordion underground i think it's a war crime personally yeah um so it's worse than what's going over ground if that genuinely i'd be like i'd get me back up there fuck this you've got an accordion you've got ukuleles a less terrifying sound than your genuinely i could sleep to stuckerbombers over at the sound of a ukulele you see when you're like a new act playing a ukulele i just think In 1991, two hikers in the Alps found a body melting in the ice.

32:49They assumed a fallen climber. What they'd actually found was a 5 ,000-year-old murder victim. Welcome to Buried Evidence. Join archaeologist Professor Raksha Dave and me, historian Rebecca Radil, as we dig up some fascinating true crime through history. Launching on Friday the 4th of September, you can find Buried Evidence wherever you watch or listen to your podcasts.

33:15Do you struggle to keep up with the news every week? The Bunker has got you covered. Every Monday, we release Start Your Week, where we go over the big stories to follow in the coming days. And then on Fridays, we have our weekly wrap-up, where we give you the context and the meaning behind the biggest and the weirdest stories of recent days. Search for The Bunker wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe so you never miss an episode. It's time for race rankings. We've ranked Pakistanis high recently, but let me tell you about Karoolean Indians. Oh, they're performing well at the moment. Listen, they are hot, sexy Indians.

33:50They are some hot property. And they are top of my list of my favourite races of people right now. Wow. I mean, this is big news. I mean, you're finding out here that this is the Screen Rock podcast. This is a regular feature we do. We do a bit of race rankings. It's kind of like woke racism whilst talking about social media, really. That's our vibe. Exactly. We pretend that we want to talk about social media. Really, we want to talk about whether we prefer people from Pakistan or Brazil. And right now, Pakistan are winning, baby. So listen to the Screen Rock podcast, if that's the kind of thing.

34:17We'll see you there. Kill me now. Absolutely kill me. I cannot stand comedy ukulele. Anyway, that's what people are singing on the platforms of the tube stations. Is it? Yes, they're doing Run Rabbit Run. But these are all like Cockney, all together songs, right? Knees up mother brown. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This stuff, no, it's too rich for my blood. It's too twee. Jaunty. Yeah. I'd rather just silence. I'd rather just sit there and just stare at a wall and just cry. No, I'm not crying. I'm going to get a lot of that. Good. I'm Presbyterian now. I'm staring at a wall and waiting for it to blow over or blow up.

34:53But this is where we'll meet again, which is obviously what the Queen invokes during COVID. This is where that song is top of the charts, viriline, all that. And the Blitz spirit has been over-mythologized, but supposedly there's much less PTSD than some people had predicted. But then this isn't, you know, this is decades before British mental health exists. Before we knew you were allowed to feel that. No one had separated being sad from being British yet. No. That happens in like the 90s, latest. And it's a terrible error. Exactly. It's Blair. It's the woke nonsense of the Blair years. What do you mean you're sad?

35:27Well, yeah. I mean, the sort of dire predictions that everyone's going to lose their shit don't come true. No. Even though they're essentially defenseless. And, you know, even with like, so Bristol's really badly bombed. And one of the interesting things is the newspapers can never quite, aren't allowed to say where it's been bombed because the Germans are reading the newspapers. So it's sneaky like that. Large city in West attacked is what the papers say about Bristol being bombed. And the people in Bristol are like, that was us. Yeah. Why are we not in the papers? And during the Bristol bombing, they discover that they send fire brigades from elsewhere and they discover that everyone's got different equipment so they can't help.

36:13And that's the... Well, like different nozzles to go onto the... Literally different pipes, different fittings. Oh, God. Is that a USB-C charger when you've got the old light? Exactly. So they have to standardise it all. Yeah. Because up to this point, everyone's had their own fire brigade with their own nozzle and their own... Well, just regionally, it was all... Yeah, yeah, it was all whatever. Yeah. so this is when men joined the home guard in there by their drove the auxiliary fire service and then women joined the women's voluntary service the wvs the motto we never say no you couldn't say that nowadays another country

36:49now they say no means no and that's fine um so they they are helping with evacuations and shelters for the displaced salvage recycling many claim that the mental health of the nation improves yeah but again i i don't really know how if you'd say the same for like gaza or ukraine well they say suicides go down but i've just absolutely no idea how they measured that yes i think people if you're being bombed i don't know if i'm sad or i'm just being bombed let's wait i'll wait it out oh no it was just me that was me yeah the bombing stopped but i'm still sad so by October 1940 it was becoming exclusively night attacks and so Al do you want to talk us through do you want to talk us through some of the you know what bombs are dropping when do they start dropping incendiaries well they do it's kind of right from the right from the off incendiaries are a big part of it because and what is an incendiary a bomb well that's like a I think it's like it's like a magnesium strip you know you must have set fire to magnesium in chemistry so it's a magnesium strip bomb they also put aluminium I think in there and the high explosive, which gives it a greater blast potential.

37:53And so the British do this too. You do this thing where the idea is you like blast a hole in a building and then fill it, drop incendies into it to set it on fire. Right. And so, for instance... So that all being a cluster, all dropped at the same time. Well, all kind of dropped at the same time. And they're not dropping big payloads of bombs, but this is the thing, this is completely, this is totally unprecedented because the bombing of Warsaw and the bombing of Rotterdam and Gönneke are one-offs. This is like a sustained thing. So the Germans, you know, getting to London's easy. They sail up the Thames Estuary.

38:25You can see at night below you the water. So they find it easy to hit. And then they're bombing with these high explosives with incendiaries and these things that float down. Delayed action fuses as well. Oh, that's a good one. When you're clearing up bomb rubble, it might go off. That's a nasty one, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a double tap sort of thing. That's not cricket. that isn't cricket no it isn't cricket but we are talking about bomb me on the head don't like go oh what's that bang like that's humiliating don't hide it under like a pot of honey so I'm like oh yum oh fuck so when you open up your nan's box of biscuits it's got drill bits in there but you done that no my no that's not him to me either that's like a classic thing is that there's like a box of biscuits at your grandparents' house yeah look I'm getting nods from the galley over there the drill bits in yeah see there's always a box of biscuits this is brilliant you open it up and it's just drill bits in there okay you're all really young That didn't happen to my generation.

39:19So this is where, I mentioned this last episode, but they had the radio-based navigation, which the Germans would call the Nickerbein. Yeah, the Nickerbein, X-great, yeah. Yeah, X-great, Y-great. And basically, this is a radio system. If you go too far left, it gives you one signal. If you go too far right, you get another. At least three fast, yeah. You fly down the middle. Not a Nickerbock of glory, Charlie. You get a clean thing. Yeah. and then there's an intersection, a point where you drop your bond. So there's a beam to fly down and a beam that intersects that. And when you get to there, so Coventry, for instance, when you get to Coventry, you get the other signal.

39:56All roads lead to Coventry. Yeah. And this is affected by the curvature of the earth. So it only reaches so far because it'll, I mean, I've gone and done that. Just done, I've just gone and done that. Oh, you're in the right place.

40:09Zoom in on that when you do that. Clip it up, clip it up, get it out there. The British do what they can to bend the beam, to misdirect the bombers. Beckham free kick. Yeah, completely. Send them to the wrong place. And they're also building, they're building, there's a fake city outside, like fake neighbourhood outside Bristol. I heard about this. This seems a lot of effort. They're building like a whole fake city and then setting it on fire to make it seem like it's a city. Yeah, because the Germans, because the thing is, no one knows where they're going at night. I mean, the navigation is hard enough during the day at this period, but during night it's really, really difficult, which is why they're using those beams and stuff.

40:44It's really difficult. So how fake is this fake? Is it just, it's very rudimentary. Yeah, yeah, but it looks like it. People aren't getting caught up in the role play. It's like a model village. Or we need a brothel in this fake city. A big thing laid out. Fake prostitutes, fake fucking me right now. We need this, or else they won't believe it. God, we believe them all. It's the oldest profession. But basically, if there's a fire, and you're flying, and you've got bombs dropped, you're going, oh, there's a fire, I'll drop it where the fire is because that's the right place to drop it. So they're trying that and it kind of works, kind of doesn't.

41:16It's amazing they got any bombs away, isn't it, really? Yeah, it is. And there's always that thing people go, oh, that place wasn't bombed because it was being saved as a headquarters for Hitler or for... Yeah, like the pavilion. Yeah, the pavilion is the whole day home. Bullshit. No one could hit... He would have hated Brighton. Yes, I mean, that's not the place for Hitler to stay. I mean, if Ernst Röhm was in charge, then maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Or a gay guy in a bathhouse. Yeah, Brighton's the place for you, Ernst. Gay sauna, yes, please. But yeah, but the idea that they could choose not to hit somewhere, they can't choose where to hit.

41:48It's just sort of daft, really. And what are these? So obviously the Brits, as we mentioned, they've got these ACAT guns, the anti-aircraft guns, that are firing. And you hear stories of people who are in the underground hiding, and they were waiting for those guns to start. And they knew that they're never going to hit one. Maybe one gun hit one plane once. They're firing thousands of rounds. and it's the Lieutenant General Frederick Pyle is the guy in charge of anti-aircraft defence and he's through the whole war. Pyle's is so quickly brought up. Yeah, I've actually met Sir Frederick Pyle quite a lot since I started going to the gym.

42:23You have an intimate relationship with Sir Frederick Pyle. Frederick Pyle's... He won't leave you alone. He keeps giving me boiled eggs and he's very agreeable. If you're habitual about dealing with Frederick Pyle, Frederick Pyle does go away in the end. Does he? Well, that's good to know. Yeah, absolutely. He's got a very firm handshake, Miss Miss. Mr. Piles. But yeah, they have to fire the guns so people hear the guns so they think, well, they're actually trying to defend us. I can't remember what episode or series we were talking about. We were talking about when people fire guns in the air and bullets come down and that does kill people.

42:50Yeah. The amount of ammunition and tracer fire in the sky, surely there are... Yeah, smashing roofs up and setting faster things. People just miles away just getting taken out. They're in their head. They're in... Well, yeah, but they're in shelters, aren't they? So... Yeah. But then I guess it's never been a... There's never been a braver burglar than during the Blitz. Well, or it's just the perfect time, right? Right, yeah. You know? Exactly. No one's going to catch you. Yes, exactly. No one's coming after you, no. Yeah. So they're firing the guns, and then they also have a night fighter effort of aeroplanes going up.

43:24But to start with, they've just got no way of finding the place. So they just sort of go and hang around and... They have bat lights, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, bat lights. They go up and follow the searchlights, but basically they can't shoot anything down. They can't see anything. But there is one hurricane pilot. It's a guy who used to fly with his cockpit open with a canopy back who was unnaturally gifted with night vision. And he'd have his crew walking him out to his airplane like blindfold. So it was as dark as possible. So as dark as possible. Yeah. And then out he'd go. And what he'd do is he'd go up, just on his own, like looking, and then see where a city was on fire or whatever.

44:09And he'd fly over there and he'd pick the Germans out. And he was shooting Germans down at night just on his eyesight alone. Wow, it's crazy. So he ate a lot of carrots. Yeah, he spent the whole day with a blindfold. I think so, yeah. Wow. Yeah, yeah. But it's just one, but the problem is - It's one bloke. It's one guy, right? And they start bringing up radar and putting it on night fighters and all this sort of stuff. but really by the time it's ready, the Germans are starting to sort of quit. So who drops more bombs on each other, Britain on Germany or Germany on Britain? I mean, is the blitz bigger in Germany than it is here?

44:46It doesn't bear comparison. We, we in Hamburg raids in July of 1943. See you later, Hamburg. Where British, Hamburg in the bin. Bomb of command and eight therefores put in a sort of three day maximum effort. Thousand bomber raid. We kill more people in that raid than the Germans do in bombing full stop. Allegedly. But do you know what I mean? It's just not talked about at all. It's crazy that they got so much more than we ever did. It's like we make a, you know, there's a firestorm in Hamburg, which is like where the fire feeds itself and draws air in. And it's like, it's just the most insane.

45:23And the way it happens is so horrifying. Dresden, people just melting on mass streets and streets. Yeah, and fourth time as well, roughly the same time as Dresden. And Dresden's like pre-atomic bomb, the worst bombing of any city. Is it February 45th? Yeah. And so that's the worst bombing of any city ever before. Yeah, kind of. Although Hamburg's up there with it, because there's an argument about how many people killed at Dresden, like one of those, depending on whose side of the argument you're on, you say more people. But, you know, yeah, it's horrendous. It's diabolical, but it's lots and lots of planes, unlike the atom bomb, which is, you know, more bang for your buck.

45:58Yeah. yeah but as in you know britain psychologically needs to have the blitz spirit rather than the dresden spirit yeah yeah which is i mean dresden spirits like when we beat um germany 5-1 in munich heskey and owen yeah what's that what do you mean that's an anomaly right our main national story is being defeated by the germans on penalties yeah and then having these few victories that are all the sweeter because the main narrative yeah is that we're the blitz whereas like america it's like number one we're the best and they don't need underdog stories 9-11 as the little aberration and they overreact whereas we can't deal with being the best we're the other way around we have to be the worst but overcome and surmountable odds we're fallen we're a social media platform no one uses anymore incredible focus group this it's a brain trust yeah I mean the thing is is that what the British then do to the Germans in terms of bombing is like it's in a completely different league like the planes they were asking for it Well, they started it.

46:59They started it. They fucking started it. You hear that? So, Pop Landlord's coming out now. seriously, you've got people in. Fuck them all in there. You've got Harris, Bomber Harris, the guy, you know, it's called Bomber Harris or Butcher Harris, right? That was his other nickname. He says, someone says to him, oh, you know, about the Blitz, what do you think about this? He says, oh, the Germans, they're going to, they're sowing the wind. They're going to reap the whirlwind. We're going to, we're going to give it back to them far worse than they gave it to us. And that's exactly what happens. I mean, it's the destruction.

47:33If you go to Essen in the Ruhr, there's like one building left from the whole city from the, from the, from the war that wasn't completely destroyed. It's the Ikea, by the way.

47:44And everywhere, everywhere, you know, we were, I can't remember. James and I were over, we went to the, where the dams were, the dam buster dams, we went to those and flew over them. It was really good fun. I mean, I can't remember where we stayed, but basically we were in the hotel reception said where do we go for dinner can we go to the outstat and she goes there is no outstat yeah yeah it was very bright and and and that's they're not allowed to complain about it i guess no they're not no no they're not because then it'd be like oh you killed my grand well your granddad was a nazi i'm sorry that's exactly what was your granddad doing yeah that's exactly it no sorry sorry it's like someone tries to cancel someone on twitter and it's like hang on a minute aren't you a pedophile well it's the ultimate milkshake duck moment when we when you go to hamburg there's a the bombed out cathedral there which is a similar thing to umst luke's in liverpool yeah yeah yeah and coventry like that you go in the the crypt of that is a museum about the bombing and it basically has a whole thing of we started it yeah quite right you know what's the origins of what happened here in hamburg well we started it nazism and we started the war and we bombed so you can't even grieve it properly because there's no like national monument to the loss of your ancestors and how traumatic it's like the german it's like the german guy who went on a forum and asked for someone to uh if anyone wanted to be eaten because he was a cannibal and some guy went yes i consent to be killed and eaten you go his family like well we can't fucking mourn him you're a fucking idiot he agreed to be eaten in a bathtub by a german funny enough um so you go what you know how are we meant to mourn this yeah so uh go on so uh let's tell us about um dresden then that this is uh what a thousand british uh yeah isn't necessary at this point in the war.

49:22Oh, God, was it necessary at this point in the war? Ah, man. Or was it? Was that a pleasurable noise? No, no. No, that was one of those disappointing orgasms. One of? Is there any other kind? No, the thing is, so the Germans at that, right at the end of the war are going, could you please stop bombing? Why are you doing all this? And Eisenhower is the head of, Schaaf is the Supreme Allied Commander, goes, surrender. yeah if you want this to stop surrender yeah and and that's the sort of that's actually the the calculus involved the the there's a period in the last sort of last five months of war in europe where basically the allies are going you're fucking lost come on yeah come on tired stop tap out tap out exactly and you can and you can any minute and you you can right now if you want and they're in what the ardennes at this point on on infantry or well no so that so uh so what episode of Band of Brothers are we in at this point?

50:23we're in the sort of, we're in the, the one where they're, you know, there's that one where they're, where basically it's obviously one of those episodes where, um, David Lewis is having his week off. I write, where they cross the river. Yes. Yeah. And there's the replacement. So they're on the Rhine. Tom Hanks, his son is in it for some reason. Colin Hanks. Yeah. And, uh, and they crossed. Yeah. It's, it's that phase of the war. And basically the, the, Le Fuffer can't answer anything that the British and Americans can do in the sky. And they'll be, ah, we just bomb the shit out of the place. Yeah.

50:52And destroy the railways, which gums Germany up completely. But it really is like, it's that thing. It's a little spike. It's a spiteful. It's a bit petty. It's the Simpsons, isn't it? Stop it, he's dead already. It's that meme. Yeah. Yeah, well, that's what, they didn't have to do that because Germany was already, I guess it would. They wouldn't surrender. Yeah, you'd lose British and American lives. Until Hitler kills himself. So Arthur Harris, allegedly, he may have been in Brazil we don't know the Nazis entered this war under the childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else and nobody was going to bomb them that's Harris I mean it's not it's hard to come back from that yeah you started it yeah they started it I mean yeah fair play and they did right but then is there a level of bombing is there a level of bombing that's like well that's not what's Dresden cricket is the question it's bad ball

51:43in stereo

51:48Alphic's in perfectly here. Fastball, when it's working, that's what it is. First summer. Best O against India. It's the first of a real fastball. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They had no answer to it. Have you been to Dresden? No. I went there years and years ago. They've rebuilt it quite well, haven't they? Yeah, they've redone the centre. And I went there basically expecting it to be sort of black and smouldering still. yeah like 60 years later wanting it to be still in room yeah ground zero this is an interesting question that you brought which is a great point is that so germany won the peace and that they the way they rebuilt their country was seemingly much more effective than ours and you basically said we weren't bombed enough well if you look at germany japan italy and how their economies grow whereas ours essentially we become in hock to the americans yeah who say we'll rebuild your economy on the proviso that you get the the nuclear bomb which costs this much to maintain yeah so immediately you're in layers and layers of debt yeah uh we still have an infrastructure that we had in the 40s the tube you know restart well but that you're making a leap there but it's in you're saying hs2 you could have done half the job in 1940 if you just bombed all those rail lines yes you could you could but the first half of ripping out the old one japan had a blank slate sent to bed May 45 night night August 45 go to bed lights off done restart hard reset and now they're you know they were a warrior culture and now they're and that's because they bang start again Britain was hanging on to is still hanging on to an infrastructure the whole post-war post-war consensus and the whole problem why we get into Thatcher is because we sort of it's still Victorian yeah you are listening to our usual podcast

53:36am i am i wrong well no thatcher obviously leans into exporting pedophiles yes it's the only thing we have left at that point she needs to get the economy going so james savile it was like finding the north sea oil windfall was finding the savile windfall finding the the pedophiles at the bbc yes we've broken through to new ground let's get them explore them worldwide Rolf Harris the other butcher yeah but Dresden Dresden is one of those places you go there and you can't it's all you could think about when I was there it's all I could think about and Hamburg were you extra polite when you were there was there any noticeable thing sorry Hamburg has so much post-war history with the Beatles so it's Beatles and bombing basically yeah I'm just saying it's my dad's favourite place oh yeah Beatles bombing He's just buzzing.

54:27And the Reaper bar. And the Reaper bar. Yeah, exactly. But Rotterdam, I've played at, there's a great club in Rotterdam. Have you done a Marcel's gig in Rotterdam? Clubhouse, brilliant gig. But walking there, it is a very depressing city because it's literally started in the 50s, 60s. From scratch, yeah. It's like flat roof. Milton Keynes on the canal. It's like a flat roof pub in Holland. Do you know what I mean? It's something a bit eerie about it. Anyway, so let's get to... But the thing, Dresden, Charlie, can you get up Dresden now? So they've rebuilt it and they've rebuilt beautiful buildings.

55:04What kind of baffles me about Britain is rebuilding the things we're like, well, it has to be the ugliest building ever, man. It's the only thing we can do. It has to be the ugliest possible building. But the way they've rebuilt Dresden is it's like, it's kind of amazing. Like that's new. Well, and the centre of Warsaw as well. I mean, the thing is, is the Soviets, because it was in East Germany, Dresden. they left the middle smashed up for quite a long time to go see that's what the that's capitalism yeah yeah but it's interesting it's like seeing this i was like oh i thought it had to for some reason i was like oh no it has to be the most hideous building block ever yeah but it doesn't you can but this is what coventry is now christ i went to uni in basing next coventry so what went to warwick which is actually not in warwick yeah because coventry is so hideous i looked drowned Warwick and I said this is a trick yeah it's Coventry this is Coventry it's just bad branding Coventry Art Centre isn't it Coventry's got a massive Ikea and that's it it's a used to be a CKP P gig on the roundabout did you ever do that gig no that club anyway let's talk about the end of the blitz we've been rushing ahead getting excited about Dresden because they deserved it and they started it ours was they had it coming they got basballed they did start it yeah so they lost the toss They did lose the toss.

56:23Well, they chose to bat first. They did. It was a bad wicket to bat first on. Because we love a chase. So the last major attack on London is the 10th of May, 41. Yeah. Now, by this point, you know, Goering has been orchestrating the blitz. Kesselring's nowhere to be seen. He's been taken off and sent to Italy yet? Yeah. Not yet, but he's not really part of this. No. So for Goering, it's all about London in flames. or want to terrorise the population, we're going to try and bring them to the table or is it still just terrorise them? Well, they don't really... Do they think the population will rise up?

56:57Well, they don't know really. They're in the stage of the war. They've got to do something. And the Luftwaffe, because Germany's all, you know, because Goering is political as well as head of the Luftwaffe. What he's trying to do is get the Luftwaffe to win the war to bring Britain to the table. So he gets the status out of it. But the issue is, is that what's lurking, what's coming is Barbarossa is this attacking the soviets um and so this is why the blitz draws down i mean aside from the fact that the nights are getting shorter so so you're you're of course it's a winter it's a winter campaign yeah yeah yeah it's easier to do at night when with longer nights right um but the days are getting the days are getting longer and also they need their aircraft for um for uh uh for russia attacking the soviets yeah for russia for and hitler claims that all this the the the tail end of the Blitz is all just a distraction because he's about to rip up the snow, not serve it in pact and go east.

57:51Yeah, it's to look willing, like he's looking in the other direction. But they're kind of stuck in a, they're kind of stuck in a, you know. Bloom spiral. Yeah, look busy. Look busy. Do something. The last major attack is where Westminster and the House of Parliament are damaged. Yep. The raid has an escort of 63 fighters, which is kind of a testament to how effective. The night fighter efforts got better, yeah. It's not just that one bloke. No, not anymore. No, no, because they've got aircraft with radar and stuff. Yeah. Okay. So they shoot down 38 bombers in May alone. And by the end of the month, Hitler's starting to look east.

58:22So between June 1940 and April 41, scores on the doors, the Luftwaffe lose 2 ,265 aircraft over Britain with at least 3 ,300 men killed and about 5 ,000 injured, missing. And if they lost 600 bombers, which is the higher end of the estimates, then that represents 1.5 % of all sorties flown. Yeah. And a sortie is an individual flight of an aircraft. Yeah, there and back. Yeah, there and back. So, I mean, as a percentage, that's not great for the RAF, is it? Not a little sort. Not a little sort, Charlie. It's not Danny Dyer seeing a woman he likes. Who's this little sort? That's cockney for attractive women.

59:02Yeah. As the evacuees would say. Yes, exactly. You're a little sort, aren't you? Wash your mouth, that young lady. So in total, they drop more than 40 ,000 tons of bombs on Britain, but Britain takes it. You can have Coventry. Yeah. You know. London can take it. Well, because they don't hit the Spitfire Factory outside Coventry that they're aiming at. Oh, is that why they go to Coventry? Right. And people are sleeping, like families are going to sleep in the fields in the countryside, like in hedges. Yeah. They just get on with it. In Hull, it becomes organised. They actually have, like, big campsites outside Hull.

59:39And everyone, when they come off their work shift, they trek out. They call it trekking. They trek out to the campsite, spend the night there, and then go back into work in the morning. Christ, that's pretty bleak, isn't it? Yeah, it's quite bleak. That's like some people, when they can't afford their fringe accommodation, they do that. That's exactly what it is. Tony Law camped on Arthur's seat for a month.

1:00:03So this is the end of, yeah, spring 41. You know, to sum up, Al, let's, because we've done a, we did a series on the rise of the Nazis. We've done Dunkirk and now we've done, you know, Battle of Britain. Let's just sum up where we are in the war. Everyone says this is sort of the turning point in the war. Is that a bit of a myth? Is that British exceptionalism? Is that, is that soothing to the British psyche? Well, no, the thing, you know, the elephant in the room is the, is the Germans attacking the Soviet Union, which is the point at which they throw any possibility of winning, winning whatever that means in their own terms, out of the window.

1:00:41They cannot defeat the Soviet Union, certainly not if they haven't knocked us out of the war. And then the thing that seals it is Pearl Harbor and the Germans declaring war on the Americans. Which they didn't have to do, did they? No, they didn't have to do it. There's a logic to it, but they don't have to do it. No. And also, isn't there a moment where Poland then declares war on Japan and Japan went, no, you're right. We know you're just doing that. You don't have to do that. I think it's Poland. I think... What's Poland going to do? No, but that's what Japan said. They go, no, you're all right.

1:01:14It's fine. Don't worry about it. No, but I would. No, but it's all right. No, but okay. You're literally getting fucked from every angle. But if I could stand up, I would. Japan are actually quite nice to Poland. They go, no, you don't mean that. It's fine. Yeah. But the beginning, it's, you know, is all that Churchill's not the end of the beginning, being in the end and all that stuff after El Alamein. but this is the sort of it's the end of the beginning when the Japanese enter the war and you're into a next phase yes the next film yeah exactly but it's Barbarossa it's June 1941 that's the moment where the Germans basically they've locked themselves into a set of events that means there's just no way out of the situation they're in they make a bloody good go of it though for a bit of Barbarossa yeah but it's one of those sort of too much winning situations where they get too far in and they can't sustain it.

1:02:04And this is where the Brits realised that if we're going to actually engage the enemy on the ground, it's going to have to be North Africa. And then it switches to the Eastern Mediterranean. The real moment was probably more Dunkirk and Churchill's speech. That was the hinge more than the battle of Britain. It's Churchill turning the cabinet in, for the point of a better phrase, at the end of May 1940.

1:02:30You know the story about him I think it's him and Noel Coward. It's a story about Winston Churchill and Noel Coward where he says to Noel Coward, what do you chaps get up to? Oh, yeah. I don't know this story. I think we talked about it. Yeah, you know what you chaps get up to. Show me one afternoon. He's a curious man. He's a polymath. I don't care what it is. He's just sort of do it over there kind of thing. Yeah, but the story is he spends an afternoon with Noel Coward or somebody. Oh, has a look. And afterwards goes, no, it's not for me. really Britain with the lights off is a different country even Churchill's getting involved and he was ginger is the other thing to remember about Winston Churchill but Churchill was having a look our great hero what was you trying to imply there ginger pubes anyway on that note that's the blitz no he was saved by a ginger man saved by the ginger pubes of Winston Churchill no that's a ginger jihadi ow it's been an absolute pleasure what a privilege the pleasure's been mine gentlemen we've got to get you back because we're going to do the World War II series bit by bit it's going to be over many years you should get James in here and you could be like fucking hell maybe on either side and just get absolutely Polanded by both of you why don't we get strapped together and you can just war on two fronts we can just get double teamed by We Have Ways anyway have you got anything do you like to plug are you on tour are you still on tour I'm on tour all year really genuinely some of the best I know crowd work is a different thing in this era, crowd work clips.

1:04:02Al Murray, are you at the Bloomsbury maybe or somewhere in Sharsby Avenue? Yeah, we'd have been somewhere like that, yeah. There's videos of it on YouTube. It's so, so good. It's so funny. No one better at crowd work than the pub landlord. You're on tour. What's the name of your show? Yours have good titles. It's called All You Need Is Gov. Lovely stuff. It's all year. And you can buy a premium ticket to wear a poncho and get beer pulled over you. Splash zone at the front. Yeah, in the splash zone. Al's going to stick around and we're going to do our Patreon where we're going to talk about Goering's art heists.

1:04:30But thanks so much for coming in. And join the Patreon for that. And if not, we'll see you next week for a new topic. Goodbye. Goodbye. Cheerio. Cheerio.