logo
episode-header-image
Feb 2017
9m 6s

The German American Bund

Bbc World Service
About this episode
In the 1930s, a group of German-American Nazi sympathisers known as the German American Bund held rallies and summer camps across the US. In Feburary 1939, they held a meeting for 20,000 people at Madison Square Garden in New York. Lucy Burns speaks to Skip Eernisse, who remembers the Bund summer camp Camp Hindenburg in his home town of Grafton, Wisconsin. ... Show More
Up next
Dec 2017
"Spend, Spend, Spend" - The Miner's Wife Who Won Big
In 1961, Viv Nicholson became a household name in Britain when she and her husband scooped a massive win on the football pools. Asked what she would do with the money, Nicholson famously replied "Spend, Spend, Spend" and the tabloids followed her closely over the next few years a ... Show More
9m 37s
Dec 2017
Voyager: Around The World On One Tank of Fuel
How two pilots, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, became the first to fly non-stop around the world without refuelling in December 1986. Their experimental aircraft was designed by Dick's brother, Burt Rutan. It had to be incredibly light to carry the huge weight of fuel required. But ... Show More
11m 40s
Dec 2017
The Climbers of Leningrad
Mountaineers risked their lives to camouflage churches and palaces in the great Russian city during World War Two. The city was besieged by the Germans and under bombardment. The climbers used paint and canvas to conceal the landmarks from enemy attack. Mikhail Bobrov was just 18 ... Show More
9m 36s
Recommended Episodes
May 2023
German child evacuees of World War Two
Beginning in 1940 thousands of German children were evacuated to camps in the countryside to avoid the bombs of World War Two.These camps were seen as safe places where they could continue their education but also where Nazi beliefs could be taught. Alex Collins has listened to a ... Show More
9m 10s
Jan 2021
Hitler's beer hall putsch
Hitler made his first attempt at seizing power in Germany in 1923, ten years before he eventually became Chancellor. The failed "beer hall putsch" - so named because it started in a beer hall in the southern city of Munich - would become a foundational part of the Nazis' self-myt ... Show More
49m 58s
Dec 2023
Nazi Germany: the myth of the innocent bystander
In 1945, after defeat in the Second World War, many Germans claimed to have known nothing about what had happened to their fellow Jewish citizens – and with that, the idea of the ‘innocent bystander’ was born. But just how true was this claim? Delving into a rich archive of perso ... Show More
37m 18s
Jan 2024
405. The Nazis in Power: The Nuremberg Rallies (Part 2)
“We did not lose the war because our artillery gave out, but because the weapons of our mind didn’t fire”In September 1934, the Nazis held their sixth annual party conference in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg. The location held a symbolic resonance for the party, being not only t ... Show More
55m 5s
Oct 2022
The US and The Holocaust
After Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, thousands of German Jews facing systematic persecution wanted to flee the Third Reich but found few countries willing to accept them. For refugees fleeing the Nazis, America’s immigration quotas, established in the 1920s and sustained b ... Show More
19m 57s
Nov 2020
America's WW2 refugee camp
In August 1944 President Franklin D Roosevelt agreed to allow nearly one thousand Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe to come to America. They were allowed entry only as "guests", so as not to breach strict US immigration quotas in place during the whole of WW2. The refu ... Show More
10m 21s
May 2020
The Wehrmacht exhibition that shocked Germany
An exhibition about the role of the German army the Wehrmacht during the Second World War caused a scandal when it launched in Hamburg in March 1995. “War of Annihilation: Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941-1944” was a key moment in Germany’s reassessment of its Nazi past – but it was ... Show More
9 m
Aug 2020
The internment of Japanese Americans
Thousands of Japanese Americans were sent to prison camps after the USA entered World War Two following the bombing of Pearl Harbour. Whole families found themselves housed in barracks behind barbed wire fences. Former Star Trek actor, George Takei, was just a child when he was l ... Show More
8m 59s
Jul 2020
The death of Heinrich Himmler
One of Hitler's most important henchmen was caught by British troops in the chaos of post-war Germany just after WW2 had ended in Europe. A British soldier described to the BBC how the leading Nazi bit down on a cyanide capsule and died. Gordon Corera has been listening to the ar ... Show More
10m 17s
Jun 2024
The expulsion of the Sudeten Germans
At the end of World War Two, the Czechoslovak government expelled up to three million German speakers, known as the Sudeten Germans. They were accused of being loyal to Nazi Germany and collaborating in war crimes. By 1946 the expulsions were in full swing, and Helmut Scholz, who ... Show More
9m 54s
Listen to millions of songs and podcasts on Anghami