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When the Nazis came to power in Germany, the SS began building concentration camps. Those held there were mostly ethnic Germans until 1938, hardly any of whom were Jewish.

Imprisonment of Jewish Germans simply for being Jewish did not begin until 1938. After the fall of Poland in 1939, the Nazis began the policy of “extermination through labor.”

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Transcript.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening War Theme

Fyra Aqvateller
Composed in 1899 by Tor Aulin. Public domain.
Performed by Gregory Maytan and Nicole Lee, and used pursuant to a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. Source.

Closing War Theme

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Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.

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Following the Battle of Midway, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff decided America needed to take advantage of the momentum gained by launching Operation Watchtower, the first US offensive operation of the war.

US Marines landed on Guadalcanal to seize an airfield the Japanese were building there. The operation was rushed and the Marines short on supplies, which moved them to refer to the mission jokingly as “Operation Shoestring.”

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Transcript.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening War Theme

“Pacific – 1941”
Composed and performed by Antonio Serbanescu.
Presented by arrangement with Pond5.com

Closing War Theme

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Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.

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The first weeks of Germany’s 1942 offensive against the USSR went well enough, except that the Wehrmacht was no longer surrounding pockets of hundreds of thousands of enemy soldiers as it repeatedly had in 1941. The Red Army was more mobile, and had learned its lesson.

Hitler was sufficiently pleased to revise the plan in July; instead to taking Stalingrad and the Caucasus sequentially, Army Group South was divided into two parts, which would proceed against those objectives simultaneously.

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Transcript.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening War Theme

“Song of the Volga Boatmen”
Traditional. Public domain.
Public domain recording. Source.

Closing War Theme

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Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.

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As soon as the United States entered the war, the US military wanted to land in France and take on the Wehrmacht. The Western Allies eventually agreed to a raid on the French port of Dieppe to test German defenses.

Meanwhile, German military intelligence began an operation to land saboteurs in the United States.

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Transcript.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening War Theme

“U.S. Field Artillery March”
Composed in 1917 by Edmund Gruber and John Philip Sousa. Public domain.
Performed by the United States Marine Band. Public domain recording. Source.

“Big Band Swing”
Composed and performed by Tim Brown.
Used by arrangement with Pond 5.

Closing War Theme

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Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.