Achtung! History

Achtung! History is a narrated documentary podcast written and presented by Simon J. James. Its territory is Germany and its neighbours from the early twentieth century into the Second World War. The dates in the excerpts run from a British election campaign in 1909 to a bombed-out Rhine city in 1944, with the rise of National Socialism at the centre. The approach is biographical. Two episodes, 'The Man With A Thousand Faces [Part 1]' and 'The Man with a Thousand Faces Act II', follow a Hungarian-born con man named Ignatius, who secured the Liberal nomination in Darlington in 1909 and went on to become a member of parliament. The story then takes in his claims to have spied for both Britain and Germany, a collapsed putsch that scattered its leaders into exile, a trial that ended in acquittal and expulsion from Vienna, and flight under false names to Rome and Trieste. James allows that the man may have been deplorable, and says outright that his story serves as a vehicle for dramatic moments in European and world history. Other titles are built on single names too, including 'The First Soldier of the Third Reich - Schlageter' and 'Hitler's Swiss Enclave - The Story of Wilhelm Gustloff'. The Schlageter material covers two things: the tenth-anniversary ceremonies for a man cut down by a French execution squad, with a plaque reinstalled on the Zugspitze, and his move from artillery soldier to spy during the Third Silesian Uprising. The Gustloff material looks at Nazi pressure beyond Germany's borders, from the July 1934 assassination of Austria's chancellor by National Socialists to efforts to draw German-speaking Swiss into an organisation. Scene-setting is the house style. Cold opens drop the listener onto a specific date and place, such as Hamburg's harbour on 5 May 1937 with the KDF passenger ships lined up at the docks, or the Duchess of York nearing Britain before dawn in May 1934. One opens in German before the English narration takes over. Primary sources are quoted directly: a Hitler speech, the numbered sections of the December 1936 Hitler Youth law, and the con man's own account of his Darlington campaign. 'Resistance: The Edelweißpiraten' sets that law beside Arthur Harris's thousand-bomber raid on a city on the Rhine, a raid the narration says was aimed at the civilian population. Then there is 'The Week that Was - Episode 1 - 25th October 1926', which trades documentary narration for a news review of a single week in Berlin. It covers news about the exiled former Kaiser, a cocaine case exposed through forged insurance claims, theatre and cinema listings including Ben-Hur, and a Sunday magic show, with period songs such as 'Tango Sentimental' between items. It even closes by inviting listeners to write or telegram. Closing credits point to Patreon, a subreddit and an email address, and one thanks the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for its resources. The show suits a listener who wants dates, names and documents kept in the story rather than smoothed away.