April | 2025 | The History of the Twentieth Century

Stained-glass window at the Pentagon that memorializes the Four Chaplains.

At the beginning of 1943, the German U-boats were sinking Allied merchant ships faster than Allied shipyards could build new ones.

But by June, Allied technological superiority in radar, electronics, and ASW aircraft definitively turned the tide in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Listen now:

Transcript.

Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening War Theme

Prelude No. 24, “The Storm.”
Composed in 1839 by Frédéric Chopin. Public domain.
Performed by Ivan Ilic and used pursuant to a Creative Commons CC-BY-3.0 license. Source.

Closing War Theme

Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.

US Army graphic, explaining how strategic bombing will turn the German public against the Nazis. (At least, I think that’s what it’s trying to say.)

The RAF bombing campaign against German cities, and in particular the devastating raid on Hamburg, forced Germany to change its air defense strategies.

Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt met in Québec to confer on war strategy, including a deal that would fold the British atom bomb project, codenamed Tube Alloys, into the American Manhattan Project.