The Top Assassination Attempts on Hitler

What does it take to kill a dictator? In this episode, we explore the most dramatic assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler. From Georg Elser, the lone-wolf carpenter who built a bomb by hand, to the Polish underground’s relentless plots under occupation, and finally Claus von Stauffenberg, the one-eyed officer whose briefcase bomb nearly took out the Führer. Joining us for this is Roger Moorhouse, author of 'Killing Hitler'. Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore. Dan Snow's History Hit is now available on YouTube! Check it out at: https://www.youtube.com/@DSHHPodcast Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Snow?

  Hey friends, if you love this podcast and want to decide what history we cover, then you need to become a Dan Snow's History Hit subscriber. Pitch your topic and if I like it, we'll make it into a subscriber exclusive episode. So far, we've covered the English Reformation, the Hudson Bay Company, the Trail of Tears, all of which have been decided by dedicated subscribers. So take the reins of your favourite podcast by heading over to historyhit.com/subscribe or sign up in your podcast player.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless gold flake caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash. Because Apple Card holders earn 2% daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone. I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favourite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound means I just got 2% daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  Apple Card, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a berry chantilly cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings. And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.

• 1:56Dan Snow?

  Adolf Hitler survived an astonishing 42 assassination attempts and plots against his life whilst he was the Fuhrer. Today, we're going to be looking at the top four of those near misses, each one of which would have changed the course of history. Whether it's the Polish conspirators in a smashed Warsaw, the lone craftsman in the Munich Beer Hall, the circle of Wehrmacht officers on the Eastern Front, and finally, and most famously, that one-armed staff officer carrying that briefcase into the wolf's lair.

• 2:32Dan Snow?

  This is the story of how resistance formed under a tyrannical regime of meticulous plans that were defeated by the weather, the wood, and just bad luck, and by people who decided that failure was worth the risk. For this, we are joined by a great friend of the podcast, Roger Moorhouse, brilliant historian and author specialising in modern German and Central European history. He's been on many times before. He is the author, among many other books, of Killing Hitler: The Plots, the Assassins, and the Dictator Who Cheated Death. Let's get into it.

• 3:05Speaker 03

  T minus 10.

• 3:06Speaker 04

  The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the Queen. No black-white unity till there is first and blank unity. Never to go to war with one another again.

• 3:16Speaker 03

  And put off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower.

• 3:23Dan Snow?

  Roger, good to see you on the pod.

• 3:24Speaker 05

  Thanks for having me, Dan.

• 3:25Dan Snow?

  Well, it's always great to have you on. Roughly speaking, how many attempts do you think to kill Hitler?

• 3:29Speaker 05

  Well, there's a difference between attempts and plots, I suppose. Now, there's a German book on this that gave 42 plots. In terms of actual attempts, it's probably less than 10. But that's tribute, in a way, to Hitler's security, which was absolutely state of the art. But that's still substantial. I think he's one of the most targeted statesmen in history, probably up there with Castro.

• 3:51Dan Snow?

  And a couple of very near misses.

• 3:53Speaker 05

  Absolutely, yeah, which we'll talk about.

• 3:55Dan Snow?

  Right, okay, where do we start?

• 3:56Speaker 05

  Well, let's start with, I suppose Georg Elser, I think he's one of my favourites.

• 4:02Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 4:02Speaker 05

  Georg Elser is a fascinating character. For a long time post-war, was sort of forgotten in this rather small pantheon of Hitler's would-be assassins. I mean, Stauffenberg looms large, we're going to talk about him. And in a sense, he sort of obscures all the others because he has been such a big figure. And part of my intention with writing about this was to try and look at the other figures as well. And Elsa was one that jumped out of me pretty much straight away when I started the research on this. And he's a fascinating character because he's a lone wolf. He's the ultimate lone wolf. And he's a craftsman. He's from Swabia, southwestern Germany, very ordinary German, you know, had a very working class upbringing, his parents ran a mill. He himself is trained as a cabinet maker initially and

• 4:46Speaker 05

  a carpenter. And he's not really political, he's kind of instinctively left, but not really in any sort of doctrinal way. He's not interested in ideology and stuff like that. But he sort of quite instinctively hates the Nazis, which is quite interesting.

• 5:01Dan Snow?

  Yeah, he just got it.

• 5:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, he got it. He saw through them effectively in a way that perhaps millions of ordinary Germans like him didn't, but he did. And I speculate that it might be that Hitler's bombast, if you like, kind of reminded him of his father. His father had been quite an abusive father, you know. So I think there's a possibility that there's that element in his makeup. But he sees through it all, you know. So there's a wonderful scene pre-war, which is recorded by contemporaries, where there's a parade of the SA, you know, the stormtroopers, the brown shirts, through his small town in Swabia. And everyone stands out on parade and puts their arm out in salute. And he turns his back and he says, "You can kiss my backside." So he's just one of these people who is, I'm not playing along. He's strong enough to say that.

• 5:47Dan Snow?

  But how does he go from there to this astonishing and risky and sophisticated attack?

• 5:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's quite astonishing. And as I said, he's kind of politically left, but it's not really politically motivated. It seems to be a very personal thing. He takes visceral, personal dislike to Hitler. And he goes in 1938, he goes to Munich. I mean, the problem is always, even in those days, actually getting access to Hitler. And he's reasonably accessible still pre-war. That all changes with the outbreak of war, of course. But he's reasonably accessible. So what Elsa decides to try and do is to find out where he's going to be, you know, in sort of set piece events and see if he's targetable. And he decides to go and watch the commemorations of the Beer Hall putsch in Munich in 1938, November 38.

• 6:34Dan Snow?

  So every year Hitler goes back to his old stomping grounds, where he launched that abortive attempt to take over Germany. Ridiculous. Fizzled out almost immediately. 1923. He was a bit of a nobody, but it becomes part of his sort of legend.

• 6:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's his own sort of foundation myth, effectively.

• 6:50Dan Snow?

  And he goes back every year to that same beer hall and makes big speech.

• 6:53Speaker 05

  Gives big speeches, there's parades through the streets and so on. It's really one of the highlight events of the Nazi calendar. So there's lots of spectators and so on. So it's not unusual for him to, someone like him to go and watch that. And he watches the proceedings. And he basically sees that the, probably the best place to hit Hitler is during that set piece speech at the Burger Broichela, which is where the original putsch kind of originated from.

• 7:17Dan Snow?

  It's a beer hall.

• 7:17Speaker 05

  It's a beer hall. He saw the opportunity to plant a bomb in there somehow. And that was what he plans to do the following year in 1939. So he has a year then to sort of plan his attempt, which he does. And he's a complete lone wolf. So he's just operating on his own. He's sort of going out to the countryside and testing explosives. He's testing detonators, making everything himself because he's such a talented craftsman.

• 7:41Dan Snow?

  So there's no weak link. So there's no chance that any intelligence agency is going to intercept this.

• 7:45Speaker 05

  Exactly. I mean, he's a really remarkable man. So he goes back to Munich in the summer of 1939. Of course, that tempestuous summer where we know what's coming, he didn't. He's there from August 39 onwards, preparing for this attempt, which is going to be in November, right? And he goes to the Burgaburka Keller every night and basically starts, first of all, sort of casing the joint to see what's possible.

• 8:10Dan Snow?

  And this is months before, so there's no security. It's just like someone locks up and goes home.

• 8:14Speaker 05

  Exactly, so he just used to turn up. He'd turn up in the evening, he'd have his evening meal, he'd have a glass of beer, and he'd stay there, reading a book or whatever, until closing time. And then just before closing time, he'd disappear to the loo. And then he'd hide in the loo while they locked up, and he'd stay there for about half an hour. And when it's all locked up and everyone's gone, he'd come out again. And he had his tools with him and so on.

• 8:34Dan Snow?

  No burglar alarms or anything?

• 8:35Speaker 05

  No burglar alarms. And he started basically, you know, found there was a pillar near where the lectern, he knows where the lectern's gonna be, so there's a pillar just behind it. He starts hollowing it out, pulling out the bricks one by one. And of course, every morning, so he does this through the night, and he's hiding the sounds of, you know, him chiseling out bricks to sort of time it with the passing trams and so on, so that no one will know he's ever there. And then all of the dust that he's making and all the debris, he gets rid of. And then he sneaks out in the morning before they turn up. So it's an astonishing story in itself, and he does this night after night, and hollows out this sort of chamber in the pillar behind the lectern, where the lectern's gonna be. And it's all sort of lined with cork and so on, so that no one would know it was there.

• 9:18Speaker 05

  There's a wooden panelling on it, so he creates this flush wooden door as well. And it's an astonishing piece of work. And by the time Hitler's standing there, on the 8th of November, you know, he's ready to go, and he's created this detonator, and he's created a timing mechanism, because he wanted to be in Switzerland by the time it went off.

• 9:35Dan Snow?

  Oh, but he did.

• 9:36Speaker 05

  Because he's wise like that. So he built his own timing mechanism with a couple of clock mechanisms that would run for 144 hours, so it gave him time to go. And it's supposed to go off in the middle of Hitler's speech.

• 9:48Dan Snow?

  So what happens?

• 9:49Speaker 05

  Well, a couple of things happen. The first thing is that Hitler himself, at that point in November 39, he's just defeated Poland to great success, he's at war with the Western powers, he's planning his invasion of France for the next spring. So he has a sort of high-level meeting with his military staff the following morning. So he said, well, I really have to be back in Berlin, can't stay the night in Munich. So that influences his travel plan, so it means he cuts his speech short. So he's got to get back on his train to go back further north to Berlin, can't fly because there's fog, so he's on the train. Speech is cut short, so that is gonna have an impact. The other thing is that Elsa, who is now trying to cross the Swiss frontier...

• 10:31Speaker 05

  Between November thirty nine and November thirty eight, obviously, the world has changed. So for him, where he sort of recked this in November thirty eight, it was a pretty open border. It wasn't that difficult. Now it's heavily fortified, you know, crawling with agents and troops and everything else. And he's waiting to cross the frontier and he's potentially in trouble. So anyway, that night Hitler starts giving his speech, you know, he's surrounded by the, if you like, the great and the good of the Nazi movement, lots of SA men, lots of SS men, lots of politicians and so on. And they're all sitting there listening to him giving forth about the, you know, how successful the Nazi revolution is and how successful the Nazi Reich is and all the rest of it. And he winds up slightly earlier than usual because he's got to get back to Berlin.

• 11:14Speaker 05

  And thirteen minutes after he's left the room. So they're all sort of clearing up, you know, the band are there and their staff are clearing the glasses and so on. And a few of the hardcore are finishing up their beers and all the rest of it. It's all sort of trestle tables like, you know, beer halls are. Elsa's bomb explodes, bang on time, incidentally. So everything had worked, the timers had worked and the detonators had worked. It goes off, shatters that pillar which is holding down most of the ceiling. So the ceiling comes down, it makes an absolute mess, absolute shambles of the room. Eight people are killed in that room, incidentally.

• 11:46Dan Snow?

  Wow.

• 11:46Speaker 05

  So more than fifty injured. It's a serious thing. Had Hitler been standing in front of that pillar where the lectern was, he absolutely, I think, a hundred percent would have been killed, without question.

• 11:58Dan Snow?

  Oh.

• 11:59Speaker 05

  But the fog on his return to Berlin essentially changed history.

• 12:04Dan Snow?

  And what about Elsa, did he, he didn't make it across the border?

• 12:07Speaker 05

  Elsa does make it across the border, but he is taken by Gestapo on the border. And the problem he has is that, we think, essentially he had various items in his pockets, which looked to me like he was planning a sort of a confession. To the Swiss authorities.

• 12:27Dan Snow?

  Oh.

• 12:27Speaker 05

  To basically be able to say, when the news of the bomb in the Burgaburka Keller breaks, he would be able to say, empty his pockets. He had, for example, some fuse wire, a postcard of the Burgaburka Keller, various other bits in his pockets. He's basically so that he can say, by the way, I did this, right?

• 12:45Dan Snow?

  That was his first and only mistake.

• 12:47Speaker 05

  Yeah. The problem is, he's picked up by the Gestapo, who basically say, what are you doing here? And he sort of stammers some response, but it's not very convincing. So they pull him in and empty his pocket.

• 12:56Dan Snow?

  Right on the border.

• 12:57Speaker 05

  Exactly. So the problem is that he's confessing to the wrong set of border guards. He's picked up by the Gestapo, taken away, is tortured, is interrogated. Of course, the Germans believe, have to believe to some extent, that he's an agent of foreign powers, rather than being a lone wolf. So they're constantly trying to press on him that he was linked to, you know, the British intelligence.

• 13:18Dan Snow?

  Sure, vast conspiracy, sure, sure.

• 13:19Speaker 05

  Absolutely, has to be a vast conspiracy. And he's essentially kept in isolation in a series of concentration camps until 1945.

• 13:27Dan Snow?

  Almost survives the war.

• 13:28Speaker 05

  Almost survives the war. April 45, he's in Dachau, in isolation. They kept him in really good conditions, actually, because they knew, you know, he's a craftsman. They allowed him to have, you know, tools and a sort of workshop and stuff to keep himself busy, but always in isolation, so he's never allowed to speak to anybody. Which, for him, because he was a bit of a loner, and probably wasn't that onerous, I think for the rest of us, it might have been. Yeah, in April 45, he's, you know, the order comes that essentially this man cannot be allowed to survive the war. And he's taken out and shot in the back of the head.

• 13:58Dan Snow?

  Wow. That was an astonishing story. You mentioned British intelligence there. Well, there's not really an assassination attempt, but there's a sort of hint at one, which I love. Before the war, could you tell me about that?

• 14:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:09Dan Snow?

  Well, one Brit in particular considers, well, he works out he could get rid of Hitler.

• 14:13Speaker 05

  Yes, it's the British military attaché to Berlin. His name was Noel Mason-McFarlane, wonderful character.

• 14:19Dan Snow?

  So he's a soldier?

• 14:21Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 14:21Dan Snow?

  But he's working in the embassy, so he's a bit of a military.

• 14:23Speaker 05

  So first-of-war soldier, you know, very upright, stiff as a ramrod kind of type. And he's in the, working in the, out of the British Embassy in Berlin. He actually witnesses, he's one of the guests at Hitler's birthday parade in April 39, which is a massive thing, you know, it's like an eight-hour military parade. It's a show of strength of the Third Reich. Cheering crowds, you know, endless tanks and sort of searchlight units and artillery unit, endless.

• 14:49Dan Snow?

  Authoritarians love that.

• 14:50Speaker 05

  They love that.

• 14:51Dan Snow?

  They love that.

• 14:52Speaker 05

  And Mason McFarlane watches that whole spectacle and he minutes back to Whitehall, to his masters in Whitehall and essentially says, I could take this guy out. You give me a rifle, I could take this guy out.

• 15:02Dan Snow?

  Because there's going to be a birthday parade each year. I know I could.

• 15:05Speaker 05

  Exactly. You know, he will have an opportunity. And the line that comes back, bear in mind, this is of course pre-war.

• 15:10Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 15:11Speaker 05

  It's just pre-war. So the tensions are there, you know, all the signs are there that the Third Reich is, you know, that sort of nefarious force that we know it to be now, but still it's pre-war. But the reply that comes back from Whitehall is quite telling because the line is, after he's suggested an assassination attempt, albeit obliquely, they come back and say, you know, we're not yet at that stage in our diplomacy where we have to resort to assassination.

• 15:36Dan Snow?

  Yes, darling. What do you think?

• 15:37Speaker 05

  Of course. Which is, I think is a lovely line.

• 15:39Dan Snow?

  Yeah, what were they thinking? All right. And it was all happening for Hitler. Little did he know, this parade, because whilst Elsa's plot was underway, there was quite a serious plot in Poland, wasn't there?

• 15:48Speaker 05

  Yes. Yeah. So I like including the Poles in this. The Poles try a couple of times. Actually, Polish underground is one of the most remarkable stories of World War II. And it's one that really deserves to be better known. And the first attempt that they make, there is a later one where they try and hit Hitler's train in, I think, 1942. But this one in 1939. So the Poles have just been defeated and Poland was invaded, of course, on 1st of September.

• 16:12Dan Snow?

  There's an excellent book about the invasion of Poland.

• 16:14Speaker 05

  Very good book.

• 16:15Dan Snow?

  I tell you, it's a classic.

• 16:16Speaker 05

  First to Fight. Thank you very much.

• 16:18Dan Snow?

  First to Fight, written by Raj Mohan.

• 16:20Speaker 05

  And what's interesting in this respect is that the Poles, although defeated in the field, never actually surrender. Right? So there's a message that is sent from exile. So that various politicians and so on, including the president, had escaped initially into Romania and then later on they resurfaced in France and then in London. But in the end of September, I think 28th of September, so Warsaw is still being surrounded and besieged. But they send this messenger in who brings the message from the president saying Warsaw is permitted to surrender, gives permission to them to surrender, but it also gives the order to set up the Polish underground. And the Polish underground is initially to sort of gather weapons, create weapons

• 17:03Speaker 05

  stashes and so on, so that they can resurface as a military force at some point in the future. So initially, it's quite kind of almost defensive in nature, because the opportunity isn't necessarily there. But a key strand of what is the thinking at the beginning is sabotage. And there's a couple of interesting characters involved in this, one of whom has the impossible name of Michaj Karasiewicz Tokajewski.

• 17:29Dan Snow?

  Well, you pulled that off.

• 17:30Speaker 05

  Thank you very much. Who is essentially in charge of that sort of nascent underground organisation. And one of his deputies, who is initially involved with this particular operation, was called Franciszek Niepokulczewski.

• 17:43Dan Snow?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 17:44Speaker 05

  Which is even worse than the previous name.

• 17:45Dan Snow?

  I think you're showing off now.

• 17:46Speaker 05

  I am showing off, I'm sorry. His codename was Theodore. They all had pseudonyms, obviously, for the underground. His codename was Theodore, so we'll call him Theodore from now on. But anyway, his operation, he decided, you know, this is a good opportunity, because Hitler might well be coming to Warsaw to sort of have a parade. This is his first big victory, and that's what comes to pass. On the 5th of October, he comes to Warsaw. The streets are sort of cleared of rubble, because it had taken a bit of a hammering. And he oversees this sort of big parade, I mean, you can see the footage of that parade still on YouTube, if you look for it, oversees this big parade. And Niepokulczewski and his fellow underground conspirators decide, well, there's that main intersection in Warsaw, where, in a sense, almost whatever direction Hitler's coming from, he's kind of got to pass over that intersection.

• 18:30Speaker 05

  So in amongst the rubble and everything else, and the roads have been repaired and so on, they basically hide about half a tonne of explosives. Along with mortar shells and bits of whatever they can find, anything vaguely explosive they put in there, with a spotter to see when the convoy is coming past, and somebody hidden away that can press the button.

• 18:50Dan Snow?

  Wow, so it's a proper detonator job. When they see the car in the right place, wow, okay.

• 18:54Speaker 05

  So it's a brilliant plan, and actually, again, could have worked. We don't know why it didn't. The records on this are pretty scant, partly because of the ravages of the German occupation and then the Soviet period in Polish history. So we don't know exactly why it didn't happen. It could well be that with the sort of the chaos of the aftermath of the parade and the sort of the number of people on the streets, perhaps the spotter was unsighted at the right moment. And essentially, the order was never given and the button was never pressed. But Hitler drove over that spot and it never happened.

• 19:28Dan Snow?

  So he came very close to being killed in October and November nineteen thirty nine.

• 19:32Speaker 05

  I mean, he knew about the second one. He didn't know about the first one. But the Poles try very hard. Actually, going forward, Polish underground is remarkably good, both at sabotage and actually assassination. So they actually killed the SS commander of occupied Warsaw in nineteen forty four. Is held up on the street and assassinated. And there are other examples. So they actually prove themselves to be pretty good at this stuff.

• 19:56Dan Snow?

  You listen to Dan Snow's History at There's More Coming Up.

• 20:06Dan Snow?

  This episode is brought to you by TikTok. I never thought about the history of coffee. You make it, you drink it, nothing more to it. Then I've had a TikTok video about how people in the seventeen hundreds would pour their coffee into saucers to let it cool before drinking it. I love that sort of discovery, a detail, but suddenly you're imagining how people lived and drank and socialized. Now I wonder what all baffled historians about us, mugs. It's a ceramic vessel, but crucially, it has a handle. Well, that's the joy of TikTok, folks. You look for one thing and find yourself somewhere completely different. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore.

• 20:48Dan Snow?

  This episode is brought to you by Decagon. If you've ever been trapped in phone tree hell, pushing zero fifty times while a voice robot pretends not to hear you, you know true psychological warfare. It's brutal, folks. Thankfully, that kind of horror is now confined to the history books. Customer service has evolved. Decagon helps companies create personalized, concierge-style customer experiences with AI agents across chat, email, voice, and SMS. They're available 24/7, feel natural to talk to, and can resolve customer requests on their own so businesses can keep up with requests without losing their personal touch. Plus, because workflows can be updated using natural language, Teams can make changes themselves.

• 21:31Dan Snow?

  Decagon gives your team full visibility into why agents make decisions and what's happening across every conversation, helping to power millions of conversations every day. Ready to transform your customer support? Go to decagon.ai/dansnow to see what Decagon can do for your team. That's decagon.ai/dansnow. Check Decagon out at decagon.ai/dansnow.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless gold flake caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash. Because Apple Card holders earn 2% daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone. I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favorite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound means I just got 2% daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Apple Card, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a Berry Chantilly cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings. And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.

• 23:26Dan Snow?

  So there's plenty of plots, as you mentioned. What's the next attempt that you think had a reasonable chance of success?

• 23:30Speaker 05

  Our next one, I think, is we jump forward to 1943. The German resistance, the military resistance against Hitler is something that, when people think of this subject at all, they're probably alight on Operation Valkyrie and Stalfenberg, and that's the July plot of 44.

• 23:46Dan Snow?

  Which we're going to come to.

• 23:47Speaker 05

  Which we're coming to. But that particular effort has a sort of longer tail, if you like, than we, I think, traditionally think it does. And one of the key figures in this, in that longer tale, is a chap called Henning von Treskow, who was another military man, who was a colonel, mainly serving on the Eastern Front in World War II. And where Stalfenberg, he's a bit of a Johnny-come-lately to the military resistance. So whereas he is a Johnny-come-lately, Treskow really isn't. So Treskow is someone who kind of sees with a surprising degree of clarity, very early on, that essentially Hitler's a wrong 'un and the Third Reich is going to lead Germany to its doom. It's actually an element where he sees this already in 1934, so astonishingly early.

• 24:32Speaker 05

  One of his former superior officers was a chap called General von Bredor, who was actually murdered during the Night of the Long Knives. And this was the moment that sort of opened Treskow's eyes, that for a lot of people like him, with military background, very patriotic and all of that, in those early days of the Third Reich, they'd kind of been seduced by the rhetoric of, you know, we're going to put Germany back on its feet, we're going to restore German honour, all of that stuff. And generations of men like Treskow would have gone, this sounds great. But then when they murder his friend and former superior officer in 1934, then it's like the scales fall from his eyes and suddenly it's like, oh my god, what have we done? So he has a very long tail in terms of just seeing with a degree of clarity what the Nazis are all about.

• 25:15Speaker 05

  So he becomes a really important player in the growth of the military resistance, long before Stalfenberg kind of has even entered the frame. And what Treskow used to do very effectively was to sort of have these sort of illicit conversations with people that... He thought perhaps because they've raised an eyebrow at the right moment in a conversation, people that he thinks are going to be sympathetic. So he would start to have a conversation with them in private and say, well, what do you think? You know, what do you think about this? Do you think we're going in the right direction? And he would sound people out quite cautiously. And he's actually the author ultimately of something like five attempts on Hitler's life, usually through proxies. But the first one we're going to talk about, which is in March of 1943, was himself. He did it himself.

• 26:00Speaker 05

  So he's a really influential character in everything that comes later on with the military resistance and ultimately with Stalfenberg. But this attempt in March 43 is his own. So he was a staff officer with the Wehrmacht and he was based in Smolensk in western Russia.

• 26:16Dan Snow?

  Just after the Battle of Stalingrad, yeah. Things are clearly going to go very badly for the German army at this point.

• 26:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, so this is the spring of 43, which is the moment at which essentially, for those with eyes in their head, it's pretty clear that Germany might not have yet lost. And they, of course, are still deep in Russia.

• 26:33Dan Snow?

  Yeah, oh, yeah.

• 26:34Speaker 05

  But essentially, it's like 1918 all over again, right? The realisation must have been for many people at that moment, maybe going into the summer of 43, but the realisation is growing that, all right, we haven't lost yet, but we kind of can't win.

• 26:46Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 26:47Speaker 05

  So this opens the question, what do we do about that? So he's one of the first to really think about this. And he, in March of 43, he arranges, he's constantly trying to get Hitler to come to the Eastern Front so that he can be targeted. And he's trying to persuade his fellow officers, senior officers, to come on board and to get involved with an assassination attempt. And a lot of them, most of them, are not interested.

• 27:09Dan Snow?

  Oh, cameras.

• 27:10Speaker 05

  They cannot possibly even imagine it. Even if they feel the same way as him, they can't make the jump to actively targeting their commander in chief. But he can. And he says, well, you know, essentially, if they're not going to do it, I'll do it myself. So he arranges an invitation for Hitler to come to Smolensk, which he does. They have sort of essentially like a sort of state visit. He's presented to all of the senior staff. He has lunch. Obviously Hitler's is vegetarian kind of slop that he used to eat. He used to eat the same food as everyone else, just with the meat taken out. So he had this vegetarian lunch with them. And then he goes to leave and Treskow has a package which he wants to be taken back to a colleague of his, who is based at the Volfschanza, Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia.

• 27:52Speaker 05

  And he gives it to one of the colonels in Hitler's entourage and said, would you mind taking this back to Colonel so and so? It is shaped like a bottle of brandy. It's actually two British clam charges with a fuse ready to go. You say British, supplied by the police? Yes, they were supplied actually from, yeah, it's curious story because the same bombs effectively crop up all the way through and they're the same ones that Stalphenberg uses in 1944. And they'd actually been captured from British intelligence circuits in Holland, supplied to the Dutch underground in 1940. They'd been rolled up by German security forces after 1940. And a lot of this material had found its way then into the hands of the ABWE, German military intelligence.

• 28:35Speaker 05

  And of course, there's a crossover between the German military intelligence and the military resistance. So it ends up in the hands of Henning von Treskow, peculiarly, right? So each of these clam charges, it's about the size of a sort of, I suppose, a hardback book. What they're meant for is to essentially be clamped onto railway lines, for example. Imagine the sort of size of it, clamped onto a railway line so it would then blow the tracks. But this became the method used to try and assassinate Hitler. Not once, but three times towards the end of the war. So the first outing for this thing is this brandy bottle bomb. So they're sort of clamped together, wrapped up with paper. It's dressed up like a bottle in a box. Please can you take this to the Volfschanza? Of course I will, take it on Hitler's plane. And it has a detonator in it, ready to go.

• 29:20Speaker 05

  Treskow, of course, is on tenterhooks, waiting for the news that Hitler's plane has been blown out of the sky. After a couple of hours, the message comes back that Hitler's landed safely at the Volfschanza. He, not only does he know that he's failed in his attempt, but then he also knows that the brandy bottle is going to be delivered to its recipient, who will very quickly discover that it's not a brandy bottle, right? So he has to dispatch his adjutant, a chap called Fabian von Schlabrendorf. Who then hurries to the Volkschande.

• 29:50Dan Snow?

  I bet he hurries.

• 29:50Speaker 05

  Makes all of his excuses and makes loads of apologies on behalf of Treskow and says, "Very sorry, but we've given you the wrong brandy bottle. Please can I have it back?"

• 29:58Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 30:00Speaker 05

  And then hurries back and takes it back to Treskow, but they get away with it remarkably. They get away with it. Only a week later, Treskow tries it again with one of his men that he'd kind of persuaded, who's a chap called Rudolf von Gersdorf, who's another German officer, similarly convinced of the necessity to get rid of Hitler. And Hitler then, again, this is still mid-March 1943, was in Berlin to sort of inspect a collection of captured Soviet weaponry, which was all on display in the armory in Berlin. And they chose this officer Gersdorf as his guide, because he was an experienced Wehrmacht officer. He'd been put forward, of course, by Treskow and others. And he was there with these two

• 30:43Speaker 05

  clam chargers in his tunic pockets, ready to go. So he was going to show Hitler around the exhibition, which he does. And at the right moment, he sort of pushes the fuses into them, they're time pencil fuses, so he breaks the time pencil fuses. He's essentially got 10 minutes. I mean, he would have been history's first suicide bomber.

• 31:02Dan Snow?

  Wow.

• 31:03Speaker 05

  Remarkable man. And then he's sort of showing Hitler around the exhibition. Hitler appears to have had something of a sixth sense for his own safety, because he got spooked. He evidently was spooked and, you know, sort of rushed through. He wasn't particularly interested in the exhibits. He wasn't particularly interested in what Gersdorf had to say to him. It may just be that Gersdorf was perhaps sweating a bit too much.

• 31:25Dan Snow?

  Yeah, I bet he was. Yeah, exactly.

• 31:26Speaker 05

  But, you know, Hitler sort of ran through the exhibition and out through the back door within about five minutes. And Gersdorf had a 10-minute fuse. After Hitler's gone out the back door, that essentially he can't follow him. So it has to abort mission. He takes himself to the toilet, pulls out the fuses, throws them down the toilet, manages to defuse himself. And crucially, those clam chargers get recycled back into the resistance circles. And they resurface the next summer in July 1944 with St. Alphenberg.

• 31:55Dan Snow?

  They're not the same actual...

• 31:57Speaker 05

  The same clam chargers.

• 31:58Dan Snow?

  What? Hang on. But those aren't the ones that were in the brandy bottle?

• 32:01Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 32:01Dan Snow?

  Those are actual, physical bombs used three times?

• 32:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:04Dan Snow?

  Come on.

• 32:04Speaker 05

  And finally exploded with St. Alphenberg in 44.

• 32:07Dan Snow?

  Well, what a... That is amazing.

• 32:10Dan Snow?

  This is Dan Snow's History here. More after this.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless gold flake caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash. Because Apple Card holders earn 2% daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone. I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favorite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound means I just got 2% daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Apple Card, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a Berry Chantilly cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings. And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.

• 33:47Dan Snow?

  Right, well, let us come to July 1944 with the most famous Operation Valkyrie.

• 33:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:54Dan Snow?

  By this stage, the war is going astonishingly badly for the Germans. Defeat is now months away, potentially. Is that what causes Stauffenberg to act at this point?

• 34:06Speaker 05

  A very good question. I think it's more than that. I think that's the traditional view is that essentially this is slightly craven, defeat is looming, we must do something to salvage something from the wreckage kind of mentality. There is a degree of that, of course, and particularly in the wider conspiracy, the way they managed to convince other people who might have wavered a year before. But by 44, it's pretty obvious the writing's on the wall. So I think there's an element of that. But actually, in those that are most motivated... Like Treskow, who I mentioned earlier on, and like Stauffenberg as well, there's a much more of a strong moral element to what they're doing. They know about the Holocaust because they've seen the, you know, the reports coming from the Eastern Front, the Einsatzgruppen killings, for example. In small details, they know about the Holocaust,

• 34:51Speaker 05

  but they know that this, to them, it's a sort of a besmirching of Germany's name. They see it as a shameful aspect of what the Nazis are doing that cannot be assuaged. It can't be wished away. It can't be explained away. So in a sense, and Treskow says as much in the run up to Stauffenberg's attempt in forty four, he says, we have to do this, even if it costs us our own lives. We have to do this. And the line that he uses is to show that there was another Germany, that there wasn't just these Nazis. There were other Germans who thought differently. So there's a sort of a moral clarity about, you know, what they're doing as well, moral aspect. So it's not just a sort of a craven defeat is looming. Nonetheless-

• 35:32Dan Snow?

  Let's chuck the pilot over the side and hope that we can salvage something.

• 35:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's not just that, you know, there's a more moral strand to it than that. But anyway, by the time that Stauffenberg is in place, I mean, he's an interesting character in forty three. He'd been in North Africa, had been in the Tunisian campaign, and had been very, very badly injured in a Allied strafing attack on his column. You know, he was standing up in his jeep, kind of directing the column through a pass, and then they'd been attacked.

• 35:58Dan Snow?

  Lost an eye?

• 35:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, he lost an eye.

• 36:00Dan Snow?

  A hand?

• 36:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, so he had left three fingers on his left hand, basically that. That's all he had left. Lost an eye and a hand as well, and, you know, had various shrapnel injuries as well. So it was touch and go in forty three as to whether he'd survive at all. So invalidated out. That's part of his conversion. He had been dabbling in sort of nationalist circles. He'd been one of those that perhaps was raising an eyebrow when Treskow would sort of seek out, but he wasn't yet fully on board. I think it took that injury, the months of convalescence, and the various operations that he had, that sort of soul searching period that he really converted, if you like. I would just add that he is a bit of a Johnny come lately. I'm a big fan of Treskow.

• 36:42Speaker 05

  I think Treskow is a really interesting character and he has that moral clarity. It's less clear with Stalfenberg. I mean, he's tremendously brave on a personal level. He does make the moral jump that's necessary, but he's a latecomer. I mean, he earlier on in the war, he'd written some very dreadful things about the Poles and, you know, so that element of the history.

• 36:59Dan Snow?

  He went on a journey.

• 37:00Speaker 05

  He had a journey, absolutely right, which is what makes him interesting for filmmakers and the rest of it, of course. There's a narrative arc there. But anyway, he is brought back to work within the home army, if you like, the sort of domestic arm of of the Wehrmacht, which is responsible particularly for sort of training of recruits and for maintaining security on the home front. So they then see a possibility with this Operation Valkyrie, which is initially is a legitimate official German plan to deal with a revolt on the home front, which might be by forced labourers or sort of, you know, those sorts of people within Germany. So this is an official plan to seize key institutions, key locations

• 37:40Speaker 05

  in the event of domestic unrest. And what the plotters around Stalfenberg do in the early months of 1944 is to turn Valkyrie from an official plan into an unofficial plan.

• 37:51Dan Snow?

  That's clever.

• 37:52Speaker 05

  Whereby they could first of all, try their assassination attempt, which needed access. And that's where Stalfenberg himself comes in later on. But then crucially, they could, at the same time, they can effect a coup against the the Nazi government.

• 38:05Dan Snow?

  Using the pre-existing plan.

• 38:07Speaker 05

  Using the pre-existing plan.

• 38:07Dan Snow?

  Very German, that.

• 38:08Speaker 05

  It is very German.

• 38:09Dan Snow?

  We're going to get the piece of paper out that says what to do in the event, but we've been doing it with a different intent.

• 38:13Speaker 05

  But this shows you how complex, I suppose, their deliberations had become by 1944, because it was no longer enough just to kill Hitler. If you just kill Hitler in 1944, all you do is accelerate the Soviet advance and accelerate the Bolshevization of Germany, which is everything that they didn't want. So they needed to kill Hitler and at the same time, take power.

• 38:34Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 38:34Speaker 05

  So the whole job of assassination has got that much more complex in the year between Smolensk and Stalfenberg in 44. So Stalfenberg is key to all of that because he has access, because in his role in that was known as the Replacement Army. In his role as key personnel in the Replacement Army, he has to report to Hitler.

• 38:53Dan Snow?

  Right.

• 38:54Speaker 05

  So he then is the man that has access. So. He initially sees Hitler in Bechtesgaden in the middle of July on the Orbe Salzburg. He has the bomb with him again. Oh, really? Yes. Those same, those- Those same clam charges. Wow. He asks for permission to set it off. The wider conspiracy base, they come back and say, no, because there weren't enough Nazi bigwigs in the room. So they wanted to knock out as much of the hierarchy as possible. Wow. The following week is- That's a what if. Yeah, absolutely. So he doesn't detonate it. He does his presentation to Hitler. He goes away again. He said himself, you know, this is a road you only go down once because of the nervous toll that it took on him. Next time, essentially, I have to do it because I can't go down that sort of stressful road

• 39:39Speaker 05

  again. A week later, he's summoned again to the Volkschranze, to Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia, to present something to Hitler in a situation conference. Again, he goes with his adjutant, with the bomb, ready to go. And he's due to go and see Hitler, I think, around midday. So he's there, preps the bomb. He makes a point, I think, of, and this becomes significant, he makes a point of priming the bomb himself. And if we bear in mind that he only has these fingers left, this is perhaps unwise. But I think this is about him taking ownership of the attempt, essentially. His adjutant is with him, Werner von Heften, who has all 10 fingers, but it's Stauffenberg who primes the bomb.

• 40:23Speaker 05

  In his stressed state, as you can imagine, as I said, he only wanted to go down that road once. In his stressed state, he has two charges. He primes one of them as he's being summoned to go and see Hitler. The second one, he doesn't prime, and he doesn't even put the charge in the briefcase. Oh. So essentially, the bomb that he's got in his briefcase is half what it should have been, right? So he goes into this room, it's a very hot day. It's a wooden and plywood kind of briefing room rather than a bunker. So it's a little bit more flimsy because of the heat, you know, they had the windows thrown open and so on. He's in there, there's about 20 other officers in there, members of the entourage, other visiting people like him.

• 41:05Speaker 05

  He had asked for a place next to Hitler because he says he's deaf in one ear from his maiming, which is quite convincing. Clever. So he says, can I have a place next to Hitler? He's given a place next to Hitler. He comes in, puts his briefcase down and says, I would just have to make a phone call and disappears. What happens next, of course, is crucial because they've got this huge oak briefing table which dominates the room.

• 41:29Dan Snow?

  Maps all over it.

• 41:30Speaker 05

  Maps all over it, absolutely. Everyone seated around. Hitler's leaning over the table, as you can imagine, gesticulating and making all sorts of-

• 41:37Dan Snow?

  Coming up with terrible ideas.

• 41:39Speaker 05

  Indeed, indeed. And of course, Stauffenberg's briefcase is underneath the table. Stauffenberg is making his mock phone call within eyesight of the building, and then he sees the explosion. In the meantime, his bag has actually been moved because someone trips over it. So they've moved it to the other side of a sort of heavy slab oak leg. So it's been moved essentially away from where Hitler was. It's been moved away that way. So any resulting blast, of course, is going to go in the other direction, which is what happens. So the bomb goes off. Stauffenberg watches it from a distance. Ultimately, it kills four people in that room, who are the four that were seated around the far end of the table. So it had its effect, right? Hitler has, I think, something like 300 oak splinters in his legs, that famous

• 42:24Speaker 05

  picture of his trousers, which have been completely shredded. That was the state of his legs. Burst in the eardrum, you know, various sort of contusions and bruising. Essentially, he's saved not only by the bag being moved, but also by the oak table. He's leaning over the oak table, so all of his vital organs are protected by that. So Hitler's quite battered and bruised, but essentially walks out of the room. Stauffenberg thinks he's done the job. He watched the explosion, thinks the job is done, starts to make his exit, bluffs his way out past the guards, who are all flustered. They don't know what's happened. Is it an air raid? Has a mine gone off? What is it? Nobody knows what's happened. He utilizes that sort of chaos to escape, get back on his plane, get

• 43:07Speaker 05

  back to Berlin, because he has to lead that wider coup that we mentioned. It's not enough just to kill Hitler, you have to take power as well. So he's going back to Berlin, believing that he's killed Hitler.

• 43:19Dan Snow?

  But he hasn't.

• 43:20Speaker 05

  But he hasn't, no. So he arrives back in Berlin. His co-conspirators are a little bit nervy. They don't really know what's happened in Rastenburg. They don't have the sort of instant information that we have. So there's lots of conflicting reports. Is Hitler dead? Is he not dead? Stauffenberg lands. He says, of course he's dead. I saw it. It all happened.

• 43:38Dan Snow?

  No one could survive that blast.

• 43:39Speaker 05

  Of course. So that was his mindset. And he galvanizes the sort of wider conspiracy. And they do try and take the Ministry of Interior, for example, and Goebbels' propaganda ministry. They try and take them using compliant troops that think this is Operation, the official Operation Valkyrie. They're not in on the plot. They think this is arising of, actually it's sold as arising of the SS peculiarly. But they're acting in good faith. They don't know that Valkyrie's been co-opted. Of course, once word comes that Hitler has survived, later on that evening, they have a radio crew in there. They broadcast on German radio Hitler's speech,

• 44:18Speaker 05

  saying that this clique of bandits and adventurers has tried to kill me and providence has preserved me for the, all that stuff.

• 44:25Dan Snow?

  All that stuff.

• 44:26Speaker 05

  It gives this speech. And of course, at that moment, it's like the spell is broken. The troops that have been operating unwittingly in the service of the conspiracy essentially melt away, saying we're not doing that. Those that had been wavering, suddenly, okay, maybe we need to save our own skins. And Stauffenberg is effectively left, along with a hardcore of other conspirators. But they're essentially left high and dry. And by the end of the evening, he'll be put up against a wall and shot.

• 44:53Dan Snow?

  Yeah, quick. So Hitler unbelievably lucky to survive as long as he did.

• 44:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:00Dan Snow?

  Lastly, Roger, why is it that the British, the Americans, I mean, it sounds like the Poles had the right idea. They tried to kill Hitler whenever they get a chance. Were the British and Americans sort of unwilling to go for Hitler's? Or did they just think, look, it's too hard? Or was there something that was sort of holding them back?

• 45:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, the British particularly, I think there are too many sort of political and moral scruples to some extent. You know, this was never less than controversial, interestingly. I mean, you would have imagined that the assassination of Hitler, maybe you can understand Mason McFarlane in thirty nine. Before the outbreak of war, you can understand why, why

• 45:32Dan Snow?

  Steady on, old boy.

• 45:33Speaker 05

  Steady on, old chap. That's not the way we do things. You can understand that. But once the war's broken out and certainly into the second half of the war, you can see that there would have been some realisation that this is a bad regime and this is a bad man. And surely the best thing to do would be to get rid of him. There's a sort of moral element there because it sets a precedent, of course. If you're going to do that to your enemy, what's stopping the enemy trying to do that to you? So there's a moral element which does loom large in the discussion. So the British had this thing called Operation Foxley, which was a really interesting planning document of how to assassinate Hitler. If you're going to do it, how would we do it? And it's a really thorough document. It's all in the National Archives. But Operation Foxley was never put into the operational phase. It was never made operational.

• 46:17Speaker 05

  So they never, you know, assigned a sniper or they never got the teams together to do it. It's purely a paper exercise, but a really interesting one. And a lot of the discussions are about morality, crucially, about setting a precedent. Now, is this what we want to put our aims to? We're supposed to be the moral ones, right? But also by the second half of the war, there's a very sort of hard-headed view, which is that Hitler's doing a pretty good job of messing up

• 46:43Dan Snow?

  Oh, wow.

• 46:43Speaker 05

  the German war operation.

• 46:45Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 46:45Speaker 05

  Right? By meddling, by constantly telling his forces to stand fast when they really need to be executing a tactical retreat, for example. So there's a hard-headed realisation that actually leaving him in place is probably the best idea.

• 46:58Dan Snow?

  Wow.

• 46:59Speaker 05

  So it's a much more complex set of justifications essentially for doing nothing.

• 47:05Dan Snow?

  Well, what a tour de force. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

• 47:09Speaker 05

  My great pleasure.

• 47:12Dan Snow?

  Thanks so much for listening, folks. We really hope that this has helped you better understand what's going on, given you a bit of context. And if you think your friends, family, colleagues would enjoy that, then please, please do share with them. Whatever your podcast player, whatever you're listening on, it will let you share this as a link or even a WhatsApp message. That sharing is the lifeblood of this podcast and what keeps us going. So thank you for listening and thanks for sharing. Join us next time for another episode of Dan Snow's History Head.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless gold flake caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash. Because Apple Card holders earn 2% daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone. I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favorite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound means I just got 2% daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval.

• 48:30Speaker 01

  Apple Card, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 48:39Dan Snow?

  Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History at and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard III. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.