378: The End of the Beginning


A British Crusader tank, camouflaged to look like a truck.

Winston Churchill was impatient for a victory. Bernard Montgomery successfully persuaded the prime minister to give him ten weeks to prepare for one.

Meanwhile, in Gibraltar, preparations were underway for an Allied invasion of French North Africa, while US consul Robert Murphy worked in secret to persuade the French military to defect to the Allied side.

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Transcript.


Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening War Theme

Second Suite for Military Band
Composed in 1911 by Gustav Holst. Public domain.
Performed by the United States Air Force Heritage of America Band. Public domain recording. Source.

Closing War Theme


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.

One thought on “378: The End of the Beginning

  1. Logistics has come up quite a few times on these episodes, and I think it would be interesting to have a look at logistics overall during the century. The cold chain is developing, I assume that pallets and forklifts are about to come in, and I’ve heard that the American war in Vietnam had a huge impact on the development of shipping containers. Surely the war must have had some impact? I realise that I have little understanding of how it works at this time. Is it all crates?

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