Yesterday Mum & Dad went to a party in Dartford, leaving Corrie and I with Grandma & Granddad in Welling.
I sat and had a look through the Freeview television channels to see what I could find. And I found a history channel, called Yesterday.
It seems they were doing some sort of World War 2 season, because there were several documentaries and a drama series about the war.
First up, there were two episodes of “The Secrets of World War II”.
There was one about the Cracking of the Enigma Codes, looking at the capture of the German code machine long thought to be infallible… until the Allies built a computer. It spoke about how the more the Enigma machines became used, the more chance there was of a careless operator making a mistake, and at the processes all signals intercepted from the Germans went through before being translated into English and sent to the appropriate place depending on importance.
The second edition, which was broadcast straight after the first, was about the Real Heroes of Telemark, looking at the Norsk Hydro factory in Norway, where the Germans were creating materials for their first atomic bomb. This programme looked at how the British had sent a group of men in to blow up the Norsk Hydro factory, and then sank the ship being used to transport materials away from the factory. It looked at how this group had to hide away in occupied Norway for several months, and then flee away by skiing for miles until they got to the safety of (neutral) Sweden.
The drama series, was an episode of ITV’s Island at War – which was first broadcast in 2004:
The series tells the story of the German occupation of the Channel Islands, and primarily focuses on three local families: the upper class Dorrs, the middle class Mahys, the working class Jonases and four German officers. The fictional island of St. Gregory serves as a stand-in for the real-life islands Jersey and Guernsey, and the story is compiled from the events on both islands.
Island at War – Wikipedia
I found all three programmes very interesting – and its a shame I can’t get this channel at home; unfortunately a large number of broadcasters don’t make their channels available on the relay transmitters (which the Cirencester transmitter is)!
And if you’d like to read more about German occupation of the Channel Islands, Wikipedia is probably a good starting point.
