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THE LOWLANDER - JUST THE JOB
152 Plays9 months ago
The Jocks are in Bremen, the dictators are a;; meeting a grisly end, and the 52nd Lowland Division is playing its part in wrapping up the Second World War. Andy and Merryn sift through the articles that made the headlines that made it into The Lowlander, this week in 1945 ...
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Transcript
The Lowlander Newsletter Update
00:00:05
Speaker
From 1944 to 1945, the 52nd Lowlander Division is fighting its way across Northwest Europe. The writing is on the wall, but it's also on the page. The Army Education Branch sends a newsletter out to thousands of men, all pulling together, pushing the enemy back. This newsletter is called The Lowlander.
00:00:41
Speaker
Hello, Andy. Hello, Mary. Hello, hello. Here we are again, armed with our copies of the Lowlander, ready to dig into the snippets and the updates provided to the men of the 52nd Lowlander Division, this time between the 30th of April and the 6th of May 1945.
Global News Highlights: Demmin and Berlin
00:00:57
Speaker
Yeah, the first week of May. Come on, give us a round up of the rest of the world news so we can get going.
00:01:02
Speaker
OK. This week, the mass suicide took place in Demin, an estimated 700 to about two and a half thousand suicides took place after 80 percent of the German town had been destroyed by the Soviets during the previous three days. The Battle of Berlin ended in decisive Soviet victory. The Allied spring offensive in Italy ended with the official surrender of German forces. And Karl Dönitz arranged to send a surrender delegation to Bernard Lord Montgomery's headquarters. So really the end is nigh.
00:01:32
Speaker
Shall we find out where the jocks are? Please tell us where the men of the 52nd lowland division are this week and what's going on.
00:01:38
Speaker
Yeah, well last week we saw them capture the city of Bremen and so one of the brigades, 156 Brigade, they're still in Bremen and they're just tidying up, sorting out displaced persons, prisoners, all the rest of it doing all that sort of stuff. But the rest of the division is pushing out from Bremen all around sort of maybe about a 20 mile radius to the north and the west of Bremen. So some of the battalions are moving out to Vegasac towards Bremenhaven
00:02:07
Speaker
155 brigade are pushing north to Warpsveda which is a kind of weird Finland type country just north of Bremen and they're pushing north and really they're all just waiting for the word for it to stop. They still take a few casualties and there's still some little bits of fighting going on but essentially it's
Rumors and Reports on Germany's Surrender
00:02:25
Speaker
over.
00:02:25
Speaker
and really at the end of the fourth into the fifth of may they could call to stop where they are don't move any further forward wait for the instructions and that really is the start of the end end where before of course the victory in europe date on the eighth of may okay let's get going then
00:02:49
Speaker
30th April 1945 The Lying Jade For the past 48 hours, Rumour has been working overtime and she never worked before. Every story of peace and a German surrender has found a gullible audience somewhere and the cocks of peace have been popping before the last shots of war have been fired.
00:03:07
Speaker
Only three facts of the marriage from the certain, from the maze of speculation. First, as reported yesterday, the British government has recorded a rumour that Himmler has offered unconditional surrender to the Western Allies, but not to Russia. Secondly, President Truman, in a press conference at 4am yesterday, denied categorically that the capitulation of Germany has been accepted.
00:03:29
Speaker
There was, he said, no truth whatsoever in the stories which had circulated that the ceasefire would be sounded in a matter of hours. Finally, Moscow has described the whole affair as just another Nazi trick to cause dissension among the Allies.
00:03:44
Speaker
For what it's worth, here is a brief account of the rumours. They started on Saturday afternoon in San Francisco. From the same source, with the experienced collaboration of Stockholm, came further accounts during the night of how Himmler had been given until Tuesday to include the Russians in his offer. It was this intriguing fabrication which inspired some Americans to indulge in a little nocturnal and premature sinking of stocks by way of celebration.
00:04:09
Speaker
Stockholm has added since a mass of circumstantial evidence on how Count Bernadotte, Vice Chairman of the Swedish Red Cross, saw Himmler on the 21st April and subsequently passed a message to the British and American Legations, how Hitler is suffering from cerebral hemorrhage, how he will die within 48 hours of Germany's surrender,
00:04:29
Speaker
How he is indeed already dead. The final touch was added last night by Count Bernadette flying off to an unknown destination where apparently everyone in Stockholm was fully aware that he was due to meet Himmler. Quite strange really when you think about it. There are still some men sitting in a trench somewhere.
00:04:46
Speaker
fighting for their lives. And people in San Francisco are popping corks and going, hey, it's all over. Oh, yeah, there's still lots and lots of fighting going on. And it's still going to be fighting for the next couple of days. And they're, you know, people getting pissed up in San Francisco. Although, of course, famously, Himmler did reach out to the Allies or try to reach out to the Allies to try and make some sort of deal.
00:05:11
Speaker
And of course that was completely and utterly ignored because it wasn't the full capitulation, as they said. Yeah, the title to this article is The Lying Jade. Shakespeare, King Henry IV Part 2. Rumour is a lying jade. It means it's foolish to believe in rumours because they are often untrue. Yeah, well, I was just about to say that, of course.
The Execution of Mussolini
00:05:37
Speaker
30th April 1945. The end of Mussolini. For 19 years Mussolini strutted and stormed as dictator of Italy. Today his body dangles at a street corner in Milan. Broadcasts by the Partisans who were once his subjects leave no doubt that he has been tried and summarily executed.
00:05:59
Speaker
17 other leading fascists, including practically his entire cabinet and his favourite mistress, have shared his fate and been sent to Milan for public exhibition at a spot where 15 Italian patriots were recently shot. The only partisan comment seems to be, he died too quickly and, as the rest of Europe, too late.
00:06:20
Speaker
There's been no slackening, however, in the pace of the 5th and 8th Armies advance. Padua and Vicenza have fallen in quick succession, thus half encircling the enemy forces still in Venice. American troops have reached the southern shores of Lake Garda. Others, who joined hands with the Patriots of Milan, may have driven on to Como and the Swiss frontier beyond. Three weeks of uninterrupted disaster have cost the enemy 100,000 men in prisoners alone.
00:06:49
Speaker
I mean, unlike some other dictators, there is absolutely no doubt that Mussolini was killed. I mean, I don't know if you see, you probably have the photographs of his execution in Milan. I think he's in a petrol station, isn't it? Petrol forecourt, yeah. I always say he's kind of a bit of a figure of fun Mussolini, but actually, when you think about it, he isn't fun at all. He's actually deeply, deeply
00:07:16
Speaker
nasty and brought his country into a war which pretty much destroyed his country completely didn't he? 1st of May 1945 36 miles to Rangoon The goal of the 14th Army is almost in sight. Leading tanks of General Missevi's 4th Corps are today only 36 miles from Rangoon and racing on.
00:07:40
Speaker
On Sunday they brushed aside the roadblock which the enemy hastily constructed before Pegu, bypassed the town and in all advanced 25 miles. In the Pacific another big air battle has developed above the US fleet of off Okinawa. Their temerity cost the Japanese 104 planes and accomplished little save superficial damage to one or two ships. Super forts have again struck the Kyushu airfields and in great strength at industrial plants 25 miles west of Tokyo.
00:08:08
Speaker
Remind me when they drop the large bombs on that area? I mean I'm assuming by large bombs you mean the atom bombs. That's not until the end of August. Yeah it's quite a way away isn't it? It's quite a way away and of course they're just gearing up to finish off Okinawa which doesn't get finished until June and then they have to launch their
00:08:31
Speaker
they'll potentially launch the invasion of Japan, which will be absolutely devastating if it was to carry on. Incidentally, the capture of Ranguna has one of the best operational names. There's a combined air and sea and ground assault on Ranguna, it's called Operation Dracula.
00:08:56
Speaker
And it's not long before this that they actually capture Rangoon, which is of course the capital of what is now Myanmar, but then Burma, which is of course way back in 1942, it was captured by the Japanese.
Operation Dracula and the Capture of Rangoon
00:09:12
Speaker
Operation Dracula is a much better name than Operation Toenails, isn't it? Yes. This is Frank Missevy, isn't it? General Frank Missevy, he went on to do great things in, was it India? Well, he wanted to do things in India. He looks a lot like, do you remember Lance Percival? No. No? Not the Percival, as in of Singapore fame. Lance Percival.
00:09:36
Speaker
I say. I'll find a picture of him. We'll put him up on the socials. Lance Percival. Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah. I'm with you. Yes. OK. Yes, I do. Yeah. Oh, that's what he looks like, is it? OK. We'll have to find a picture of the two of them. Oh, put them up together. Yeah.
00:09:54
Speaker
2nd May 1945.
Hitler's Death and Soviet Misinformation
00:09:57
Speaker
Hitler is dead. Adolf Hitler, the most monstrous and despicable trickster ever foisted upon us suffering humanity, is dead. He died of a stroke in the Reich Chancellery amid the blazing wreck of his capital.
00:10:12
Speaker
Not far away, the Russian flag flies from his Reichstag. The news of his death was given by Admiral Dönitz at half past 10 last night, in a special announcement over the North German radio.
00:10:25
Speaker
Dönitz, blind follower of a blind master, added that the war would continue under his direction. It is just over 56 years since Adolf Hitler was born in Brannau on the Austro-German frontier and some 12 since by a masterpiece of canary and terrorism he became a light chancellor.
00:10:45
Speaker
Now, can we just talk about this for a moment? Because Hitler here is a footnote, literally, in history. He's at the bottom of the page, 2nd of May 1945. And fake news, people. There are a couple of facts in there that aren't facts, they're fiction. And I think we need to put the record straight.
00:11:01
Speaker
Yeah, because we've seen in the Lowlander before where they have a stop press all of a sudden some users come in just before they've printed it. This isn't this. They've left the bottom of the page to talk about. You think that's what would have been the leading story, because clearly once Hitler's gone, then there's a very good chance the war is going to be finishing very soon. Instead, they've got the Northern Pocket, which is another story about how the 21st Army were fighting in the northern part of Germany. It's very weird, isn't it?
00:11:30
Speaker
Yeah, we've got Churchill on the same page, given more priority. He didn't die of a stroke, he died by his own hand. Yeah.
00:11:39
Speaker
Yeah, he shot himself in the Furobunka. I did a little bit of digging, obviously, before this episode. He'd actually retreated into the Furobunka in around the sort of 15th, 16th of January 1945. I know I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but all I'm saying is the 52nd Law and Division launched Operation Black Cop that week. I'm not saying they're related. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying, same week, you know, the writing's on the wall.
00:12:08
Speaker
Nobody, but he retreated into the bunker and he was basically there for the whole of the battle of Berlin and of course you can watch the film Downfall which is a fantastic film where Bruno Gantz plays Adolf Hitler and it just shows you the kind of insanity of that whole thing that was going on which we
00:12:23
Speaker
Probably haven't got time to describe it. Yeah, and of course, his body was dragged out with his wife, his then wife, Eva Braun, and their bodies were burnt and then partially destroyed. And the Russians actually found his remains fairly quickly because they captured the Reichstag on that day, and you'll see the famous photograph of the Russians raising the
00:12:44
Speaker
the Soviet flag over the last bag. And then they found his remains and they pretty much, they very quickly confirmed it was him for his old dentist, the dental records, they had some of his teeth. But of course in true Soviet style, they created a disinformation campaign about it.
00:13:01
Speaker
to kind of keep the allies on edge thinking that maybe he'd survived or maybe there was stuff going on all sorts of stuff and that those rumours continue to this day even though it's obviously been refuted and we know it was Hitler's body and he was definitely killed by suicide on the 30th of April. And that's enough of that.
Italian Surrender and Allied Progress
00:13:22
Speaker
3 May 1945, unconditional surrender by Germans in Italy. Enemy lands, sea and air forces in Italy have surrendered unconditionally to Field Marshal Alexander. In his unemotional words Mediterranean HQ yesterday announced a complete victory of the 5th and 8th Armies. Thus have those Armies, as Gallant as Prime Minister said in the comments last night,
00:13:45
Speaker
as any that had ever marched anywhere, crowned their marvellous record and avenged the heavy losses they have sustained in two years of fighting. The surrender agreement, which was signed on Sunday by Lieutenant General W.D. Morgan, Alexander's Chief of Staff for the British and Lieutenant Colonel and an SS Major for the Germans, provided hostilities to cease at noon yesterday. By then, as reported overleaf, the German forces in Italy had been slashed to pieces.
00:14:09
Speaker
The surrender covers not only Northern Italy but Western Austria with the provinces of the Tyrol and Salzburg and parts of Carinthia and Styria and affects 900,000 German troops.
00:14:21
Speaker
To quote General Morgan, it puts us practically in Berggesgaden. As if to substantiate his remark, American troops have been pouring into Austria in the past 24 hours. Farthest east, Patton is pushed on 20 miles, on an 80 mile front and now threatens Linz, Salzburg and Berggesgaden. His troops are not more than 60 miles from the first, 25 miles from the second and 35 from the last. In the centre of the South German pocket, the 7th has captured Badtholz, 25 miles south of Munich,
00:14:50
Speaker
Von Neustet was there for the good of his health. A second column overlooks Innsbruck from Mountain Peak 10 miles away. French troops are closing in on the town as they thrust along the valley of the Upper Inn from the Albert Pass which they seized yesterday.
00:15:04
Speaker
I've got a bone to pick here. In the first paragraph it talks about the 5th and 8th armies as any that have ever marched anywhere crowned their marvellous record and avenged the heavy losses they have sustained in two years of fighting. I've got to tell you, some of those boys have been fighting for a lot longer than that.
00:15:21
Speaker
Well, yeah, I mean, yes, I did have to think about that. I thought he means Italy, specifically. But the Eighth Army, well, the Eighth Army been fighting since 1941, hadn't it, really? Yeah, the Fifth Army not so much. The Fifth Army was, I think, late forty two, early four. Yeah, late forty two. But yeah, that's it. The towns of surrender. And that must have been really good news if you were a jock and you're in your slick trench on the northern side of them.
00:15:46
Speaker
Bremen to receive that, because clearly that's a big indicator that things have gone wrong. And of course, who was in charge of all the German forces in Italy? That's Phil Marshall Kessering, wasn't it? Albert! Now, let's do the Kevin Bacon Six Degrees of Separation. Albert Kessering, who was the Luftwaffe, he was in the Luftwaffe, but he was in command of overall forces in Italy. He, in his war crimes trial, the presiding judge, which was a military court, not a civilian court, was
00:16:16
Speaker
Hakewell Smith. Yeah, the commanding officer of the 52nd Northern Division. Well, there you have it. Coming back to this for just one moment, our previous article, the one we lifted there was about Hitler's death. It doesn't amuse me, but it does make me ponder sometimes. Berchter's Garden, it's described as Hitler's Irish word, his holiday home in the Ober Salzburg, the Bavarian Alps.
00:16:43
Speaker
Yeah, and RF command we'd we'd um, we'd made target maps of the area quite early on We knew where he went to help to to hide out but the decision was taken fairly early on I think and some do correct me if I'm wrong, but Actually just dropping a large bomber on Hitler while he was sat in a deck chair sipping his margaritas was not the best way to go about ending the war because it might have made him a martyr and
00:17:10
Speaker
Yeah, I see the point. Also, on the plus side you would have killed Hitler.
00:17:19
Speaker
Sunday 6th of May 1945. Just the job. So said the signal sergeant who flashed the message of surrender from headquarters 21st Army Group to Bush's headquarters at 7pm on Friday. Just the job echoed back the British 2nd Army when with the 7th Armoured Division in the lead it crossed the Danish frontier yesterday morning.
00:17:41
Speaker
And just the job, or its American equivalent, is probably what the 6th Army Group was saying last night. For just before 6pm, General Devers was able to report to the Supreme Commander that the 1st and 19th Armies forming German Army Group G were to cease hostilities at noon today.
00:17:59
Speaker
The latest capitulation covers the entire front of the 7th American and 1st French armies and extends from a little south of Linz to the Swiss frontier. It is a fitting climax to 48 hours of success in which the 7th had pushed on 20 miles beyond captured Innsbruck to enter the little mountain town of Jenbach.
00:18:19
Speaker
Meanwhile, the third is rolling on to link up with the Russians in Austria. Salzburg, Linz and Bertesgaden, where Hitler's chalet was discovered in flames, have surrendered. Near Bertesgaden, one of the most merciless of the Nazis, Frank, former commissioner for Poland, fell into American hands. The methodical sadist who had slaughtered millions of Poles failed in his attempt to take his own life by slashing his wrists. Wow.
00:18:49
Speaker
Now, here's where it gets confusing for me, because quite often, so on the fourth, the 21st Army group, the group under Field Marshal Montgomery.
Logistics of German Surrender
00:19:03
Speaker
they stop what they're doing on the 4th. The 4th is the day that they actually stop fighting because the surrender that Montgomery receives on Luneberg Heath on the 4th is not the whole German army, it's just the German army in North West Europe, Denmark and the Netherlands.
00:19:19
Speaker
the the
00:19:36
Speaker
on the 7th, I believe, and we've got a special coming up, we'll talk about that, where the actual full capitulation and surrender of all German forces by Admiral Donitz, that actually happens. So it can get a bit confusing, but basically from this, from the 4th, basically 21st Army Group stops what it's doing. Is this reflective, do you think, of the fact that, I mean, we talk all the time about the multi
00:20:04
Speaker
layered complexity of the second world war and what a complete bloody modern miracle it was that anything got done but is it a reflection of the fact that getting a nation or getting them to surrender is actually pretty complicated because it's not just about are you going to give up wave a white flag and walk across the line it's what are the terms of surrender what are we going to do with you are we set up to take on hundreds of thousands of extra prisoners what happens next
00:20:29
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I was just having a look at the instrument of surrender and there's seven key points, but they're kind of high level, but it's gone on to things like which time do you use? Do you use double British summertime? Well, yes, of course. So now the Germans have to start using British double time. So they're all speaking the same language. So when we say Saturday, 0800 hours on Saturday, the 5th of May, that is when you are officially surrendered.
00:20:55
Speaker
But things like agreeing what time you're using is absolutely key to that because, of course, it could go horribly wrong if they had a different idea. So, yeah, there's all sorts of stuff. I mean, just instructions about what actually you're covering. So for this particular one, it's Germany, Friesen Islands, Helgeland, Schfestig-Holstein, Denmark.
00:21:15
Speaker
And they call it Holland, of course, we would call it the Netherlands. So it's very clear which part. And of course, Monty himself is doing this under the instructions of Eisenhower, who is the Supreme Army commander in Europe. And of course, the German
00:21:30
Speaker
commander Hans Georg Feiberg who's signing the surrender on behalf of the Germans he's obviously operating under Karl Donitz the Admiral Donitz who's now the Chancellor of Germany after Hitler died so it's all that complicated back channel stuff where everybody's got to make sure that everybody's agreed to that different bet and of course you've also got to keep the Soviets informed because the Soviets demand that they are there for the actual proper surrender of the whole of the German forces and the whole of the country
00:22:00
Speaker
and they say it's not approved unless they are actually physically present. Bump a fact for this one. Go on. When Montgomery was taking the surrender on Luna Burkeith, do you know who's doing the translation for him? Go on, go on. Malcolm from the 52nd Lowland Division. Of course he was, you see. We caused Hitler's death and also they opened the surrender as well.
00:22:28
Speaker
6th May 1945 Pierre Laval's extradition has been applied for by the French government Pierre-Jean-Marie Laval, French politician, Prime Minister of France, he was the puppet leader of Nazi-occupied Vichy France and he was executed by firing squad I think
00:22:45
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, really, you don't want to be the Prime Minister of France during the occupation at the end of the war because people are not going to be very sympathetic towards. Yeah, he did a bunk to Spain. Of course, Spain was under Franco, even though they'd had some sort of agreements with the Allies for a couple of years. He was in Spain to try and avoid the inevitable, I suppose, I think probably fairly quickly after the invasion in the 6th of June in Normandy. I think he probably went, ah, OK, time to do a bunk.
00:23:15
Speaker
and he managed to bring him back and he put him on trial, didn't he?
00:23:28
Speaker
Moaning mini will be heard no more in Britain.
End of Britain's National Air Raid Warnings
00:23:31
Speaker
From today, the national system of air raid warnings is to be discontinued. From all over the country, 1500 local authorities are preparing to return evacuees to London. They were warned by the Ministry of Health yesterday morning to put Operation London Return in action.
00:23:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:51
Speaker
One month from now, special trains will be steaming into the capital with mothers and their babies to be followed a fortnight later by school children. But the government wants the return home to be conducted in the same orderly and organised manner as the evacuation and advises families whose houses have been blitzed to stay put.
00:24:10
Speaker
Should they flock back to the capital before adequate provision has been made for them, they will only cause confusion and complicate the difficult task confronting local government officials.
00:24:23
Speaker
I mean, so this is a couple of things. We should say that this is not the original evacuation. You think of the little boys and girls with their box and their tag on their jet. This is the one from the terror weapons, the V weapons, V1 and V2 weapons. They're the ones that sort of bugged out of London from about June 44 onwards.
00:24:48
Speaker
I mean the thing about the air raid sirens is I think the vast majority of people in this country now don't really know much about the First World War at all but I guarantee you know what an air raid siren sounds like. Do you know where the phrase moaning mini came from? Now I had to look this up because I thought it was neighbour workers that were called moaning minis. I was going to go on to say that I didn't realise these were called moaning minis before that
00:25:15
Speaker
There was a horse called a Moaning Mini which ran in Newmarket during the late 20s and early 30s. But a Moaning Mini, one of the first times it was mentioned,
00:25:26
Speaker
good old British newspaper archive, was in the West Middlesex Gazette. It was a piece fighting back at ARP critics. No uniform is provided by the borough and being out in all types of weather places quite a strain on clothing. Extra woolens are needed for chilly night duties either at the post or if one is called out of bed by moaning mini. Rather a good name for the siren, don't you think?
00:25:52
Speaker
Yeah, well, so there you go. Well, this is the newspaper archive. I think we'll maybe talk about a little bit of that later on. Yeah, because for you and I, and again, if you're familiar with the Battle of Northwest Europe and Italy, when the soldiers talk about morning minis, they're talking specifically about a German rocket bomb, which fires six rockets.
00:26:14
Speaker
and the hundred i think it's like 220 millimeter diameter they're huge rockets they fire and they've got a special attachment on them which makes a horrible sound when they're fired and it makes it makes a horrifying noise and it's more of a sort of psychological weapon than an actual effective mortar bomb but yeah neil werfer translates as fog launcher don't get me started on clotheswits and the fog of war oh god moving on
00:26:42
Speaker
6th May 1945, Holland.
Operation Manna and Chowhound
00:26:45
Speaker
While the Dutch were celebrating their first day of liberty, British and American planes flew over the cities of Utrecht, Hervresam, Rotterdam, The Hague to drop 1,200 tonnes of food. That's quite a bit of food. It is quite a bit, well, I mean it's not that much when you think about the population of the Netherlands. Of course, do you know what they're talking about here? I do indeed. This is Operation Manor, Manor from Heaven, and Operation Chowhound.
00:27:11
Speaker
which is the US vernacular for somebody who really likes eating food. Of course, the Dutch had been, because their country had been sort of sealed off, but still occupied parts of it right up until the end, there was a real terrible food shortage. And do they call it the great hunger or the hunger winter? Is that what they called it? Yeah, Dutch famine, 1944, 1945.
00:27:31
Speaker
Yeah, and of course one of the jobs for the RAF and the US Army Air Force was now that the bombing campaign has stopped, the bombing campaign has stopped really towards the end of April. They flew over loads and loads of missions and dropped tonnes and tonnes of food onto the Dutch populace. I can tell you how many. It was five and a half thousand sorties and about ten thousand tonnes of food for three and a half million people.
00:27:57
Speaker
Fantastic. And if you've watched Masters of the Air, a recent series on Apple TV about the 100th Bomb Group and the 8th Army Air Force, you'll actually see that. And it's pretty much how it happened. In fact, you'll see that on the ground they'd marked out, thank you, Yanks, on the ground as they flew over. And that actually happened. That actually happened during Operation Showerhood. It's quite nice to see it.
00:28:26
Speaker
And finally, we go to this week's thought for the day from the 6th of May 1945. Anger is to be very specially avoided in inflicting punishment. Cicero. Kick-a-row. Kick-a-row, is that it? No, it's Cicero, doesn't it? Please tell me it's Cicero.
00:28:43
Speaker
Marcus Tilly is Kickero. And in his time, it would have been pronounced Kickero. We always say Cicero now. And I'm thinking about Agent Cicero as well. We always say Cicero. Cicero, I think, is pretty much accepted. I don't think we need to explain that, do we? Anger is to be very specially avoided in inflicting punishment. Although, although when you think about what's about to come up with, like the Nuremberg trials and
00:29:08
Speaker
not retaliation and repercussion, but the redress of, look, you did a really bad thing and we need to make it right. It's quite thought provoking. How do you set about trying to enforce justice without meeting our anger? It's actually one of the few more thoughts of the day that I understood.
00:29:29
Speaker
There's deeper meaning as well as the obvious meaning. And I think, you know, the Allies, certainly, I think they're pretty magnanimous in victory. There's some people that say that the Nuremberg trials, et cetera, were a victor's justice until you actually see what the people that they were put on trial were actually doing. And then you think, no, actually, no, it's not victor's justice. I think, generally speaking, and you see how successful West Germany was and then the German, I think they did something right, put it that way.
00:29:56
Speaker
And at this point, we would usually say to each other, bye and see you next
VE Day and 52nd Lowlander Division Special
00:30:01
Speaker
week. However, next week is going to be a little bit different. Well, we're still going to see you next week. It's just instead of your normal episode of The Lowlander, we've got a couple of specials coming up. Yes, we've got a special VE Day Lowlander.
00:30:17
Speaker
bringing together some of the articles and snippets from the issues between now and the end of the the run of the Lowlanders really and what the 52nd Lowland Division was doing in May 1945 and then after that we are going to do a special walking with the docks.
00:30:32
Speaker
Yeah, that was a lot of fun to do. We actually got some little microphones and we wandered around some German woods, bimbling through the woods, but it will give you a flavour of the kind of thing you can expect if you come on our tour in October 2024. You may have heard us mentioning it before, but it just gives you a flavour of the kind of things we'll look at and the kind of sort of environments we're walking around in. And you'll get to laugh at me and her getting our feet wet, tripping over stuff and getting barked up by German dogs.
00:31:02
Speaker
Indeed, and one of the most enjoyable parts of the Lowlander over the last however many weeks and months has been, has put the mini ad breaks in promoting Walkie with the Jocks. And just before we go, thank you very much for listening to these two bimbling idiots rattling on for the last nine months.
00:31:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's been absolutely amazing, the responses we've had to this. We didn't do it for that reason, we do it because we love The Lowlander. It's been a lot of fun to do, but just to have the feedback from all the people out there who actually listened, thank you so much. Bye for now. Bye. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Lowlander. The Lowlander was written, produced and presented by Andy Aitchison and Mirren Walters.
00:31:51
Speaker
This was a hellish good production. And now, for the very last time, we go to the classified football results for the week commencing the 30th of April 1945. International match, Wales 2, England 3,
00:32:19
Speaker
English League Cup, North. Chesterfield 1, Man United 1. Wolves 2, Bolton 2. English League, North. Gateshead 3, Huddersfield 3. Grimsby 3, Knotts County 1. Hartleyville 2, Darlington, Nell. Middlesbrough 1, Newcastle 1. Cranmere 1, Stockport, Nell. York City 2, Sunderland 1.
00:32:48
Speaker
Liverpool 3, Oldham 2 Stoke City 6, Portvail 0 Blackpool 8, Preston North End 1 Barnsley 3, Sheffield Widdensley 3 Birmingham 4, West Bromwich Albion 1 Blackburn 2, Crewe 0 Bristol City 4, Swansea 2 Barnley 1, Bradford 1 Derby 3, Leicester 1
00:33:18
Speaker
Rochdale 2, Chester 1 Rotherham 5, Burry 1 Sheffield United 6, Leeds 0 Walsall 4, Mansfield 2 Rexton 2, Southport 0 English League, South Brighton 5, Aldershot 0 Chelsea 3, Watford 4 Fulham 5, Charlton 3 Spurs 1, Luton 0 West Ham 1, Arsenal 1
00:33:48
Speaker
Scottish League North East Aberdeen 6 Dundee United 0 Dundee 4 Wreath Rovers 0 Dunfowman 2 Arbroath 2 Parts 2 Falkirk 2 Scottish League South Falkirk 2 St Mary Mill Thardlarnock 1 Motherwell 1 English League Cup West Plymouth 3 Levels 1
00:34:16
Speaker
Glasgow Charity Cup, Rangers 4, Clyde Mill. Partik 1, Celtic 1. Other Matches. Millwall 3, Queen's Park Rovers. Other Matches. Millwall 3, Queen's Park Rangers 2. Portsmouth 4, Crystal Palace 5. East 5, 1. Queen's Park 1. Hebs 2, Scottish Services Mill.
00:34:45
Speaker
Well that concludes the classified football results for the Second World War. They were quite emotional. They went in there and they just saw the bloody Germans off. They were hellish good.