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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.

• Listen now:

Transcript.

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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

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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 Battle of Stalingrad raged on. The Germans slowly gained ground, but took major casualties.

Red Army soldiers devised new ways of tormenting their enemies, including the Soviet secret weapon, the Katyusha rocket launcher.

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Transcript.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening War Theme

The Capture of Kars
Composed in 1880 by Modest Mussorgsky. Public domain.
Performed by the University of Chicago Orchestra 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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As the Battle of Stalingrad raged on, Bernard Montgomery was in Africa, laying plans for an attack that would push the Germans and Italians back out of Egypt.

And on the other side of the Mediterranean, Dwight Eisenhower was laying plans for the invasion of French North Africa. Secret negotiations were underway with high-ranking French military officers, in the hope of persuading the French in North Africa to join forces with the Americans.

• Listen now:

Transcript.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening War Theme

Lohengrin
Composed in 1850 by Richard Wagner. Public domain.
Performed by the United States Marine Band. 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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“Time is blood,” declared Red Army General Chuikov, commander of the defense of Stalingrad. He meant that the only way to slow the German advance was by sacrificing lives.

German soldiers entered Stalingrad expecting to take the city in a few days. They were not prepared for the bloody slog that was to come.

• Listen now:

Transcript.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening War Theme

On the Steppes of Central Asia
Composed in 1880 by Alexander Borodin. 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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The German Army Group B advanced across the steppes of southern Russia in 1942, reaching the outskirts of Stalingrad on August 23.

Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler was becoming increasingly mistrustful of, and often openly hostile to, his military commanders. He ordered several key officers sacked and replaced.

• Listen now:

Transcript.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening War Theme

Fantasie from Die Walküre
Composed in 1870 by Richard Wagner. Public domain.
Performed by The United States Marine Band. 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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The Nazis were experienced at mass murder by 1942, having already killed millions of disabled people, Soviet POWs and Jewish people in Eastern Europe.

The year 1942 and Operation Reinhard would see a system of rapid and efficient murder of large numbers of people, the like of which had never been seen before. They kept the operation secret, and the very impossibility of imagining such a horror kept its victims ignorant of the fate that awaited them.

• Listen now:

Transcript.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening War Theme

Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, “Pathétique.”
Composed in 1799 by Ludwig van Beethoven. Public domain.
Performed by Paul Pittman. 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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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.”

• Listen now:

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.”

• Listen now:

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.

• Listen now:

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.

• Listen now:

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.