Speaker 1: Welcome to Spycraft, a podcast that tells gripping life and
death spy stories and the amazing devices and operations that
made them possible. Now let's get started.
Speaker 2: Back everyone, Today, we have a great guest, doctor Helen Fries.
She's read numerous books on the Second World War, with
particular reference to the ten thousand Germans and Austrians who
fought for Britain. With a portfolio of experiences of World
War Two, historian, Helen undertakes consultancy work for documentary companies
and as a consultant historian for location filming of World
War Two scenes for TV channels including BBC, ITV and
Channel four. She's also been engaged in a range of
writer whiter projects, including the for school's curriculum and adult
education related to World War One, World War Two, and
the Cold War. She's an honorary member of the Association
of Jewish Refugees and associate editor for I Spy Magazine.
She's also an ambassador for the Museum of Military Intelligence
and president of the Friends of the National Archives. But
we're not going to be talking about any of that today. Actually,
we're gonna be talking about two of her books. For
more recent books.
Speaker 3: One of them is called right Get Right Here, The
Walls have ears. It's the General. Nope, not the General.
Speaker 2: It's the Greatest Intelligence Operation of World War Two. So
again the Walls have years. The Greatest Intelligence Operation of
World War Two is one book we're going to be discussing,
and the other one is m I nine. So we're
going to be looking at these books together and talking
about them. Before we get started, make sure to share, subscribe,
and hit that like button that's always any more time.
Speaker 3: Walking to the show, Doctor Frye. Welcome, Doctor Frye.
Speaker 4: Thank you, it's great to be with you today.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much for doing this. We truly appreciate it.
Speaker 4: So the problem.
Speaker 3: The first thing I wanted to do is what got
you into World War Two history?
Speaker 4: Oh, I've always been interested in history, and I think
the inspiration, as for many people, often comes from a teacher.
And there was a very particular teacher when I was
a teenager who was inspirational. In fact, his period of
expertise was not actually the Second World War. But I've
always loved history, and I got into this subject because
I was looking at the ten thousand Germans, mainly Jewish,
who fought for Britain in the Second World War, and
of course there's an equivalent story in America of around
fourteen thousand German Jews who fought with the American forces.
So very quickly you soon realize the knowledge of language.
They're taken into intelligence work stuff behind enemy lines. And
once I got into this, I got hooked, completely hooked.
So it was quite accidental in many ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the world of the ESPNI is kind of addicting,
isn't it.
Speaker 4: It's detective work. It's kind of trying to see if
you can solve the mysteries, which, of course his stories
have been trying to solve for decades.
Speaker 3: Folks.
Speaker 2: I did forget to mention on her new book at
m I nine. It's a history of the Secret Service
for escape and Evasion in World War Two. I was
having a little bit of a difficulty reading what I
was saying there.
Speaker 3: So doctor Fryar, I guess your first book, The Walls
Have Ears? What is this all about?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this is a top secret a bugging operation
during the Second World War. Many of your listeners will
probably have heard of the work of the codebreakers at
Bletchley Park, but of course it's not just the cracking
of the Enigma codes. I suppose today what goes over
the internet. To give a contemporary analysis or analogy, we
also need to human intelligence and the British Intelligence Service
later working with American intelligence after Pearl Harbor believed that
one of your most important sources of intelligence are your
prisoners of war. Yeah, you're Germans and Italians as well,
But how do you get the information out of them?
You can't rough them up in interrogation. Doesn't give you
anything particularly useful or reliable. How do you know it's reliable.
It's against the Geneva convention. So the commanding officer of
this particular unit, Thomas Joseph Kendrick, who is whose father
was American. Anyway, he was far cleverer and devised a
whole unit that would inadvertently or surreptitiously bug the conversations
of German prisoners of war. So, just to say briefly,
they would have a sort of phony interrogation, and they
thought their war was over. They'd go back to their room,
chat to their cellmate and brag about what they hadn't
told the interrogating officer. And they thought they were so
smart and so clever, but of course there were microphones
hidden in the light fittings and sometimes in the fireplaces.
Speaker 2: Oh man, so Huber's got the best of them. Why now, Kendrick,
what was his position again? He using the military or
was he an intelligence?
Speaker 4: Yes? He was. He was a commanding officer of the
whole unit and established this from scratch. He'd already spent
nearly thirty years working in British intelligence from Boa War
South Africa nineteen oh one he was just twenty one
years old, and all the way through the First World
War in France in intelligence, and then in the nineteen
twenties and thirties he's working for what today we call
MI six in Vienna running spy networks. He's expelled by
the Gestapo by the German authorities for allegedly spying, which
of course he denies, and he's back in London in
the summer of nineteen thirty eight, and that's when he
starts preparing this unit that will springing to action at
the outbreak of war whenever that's going to happen. And
of course we now know it was the third of
September nineteen thirty nine that Britain was at war with
Nazi Germany and his unit, he might probably want to
talk about this, but his unit went on to mask
the most incredible volume upon volumes of information and intelligence
that actually turned the tide of the war, alongside the
code breaking of Bletchley Park.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know in your book you mentioned I forget
what it was.
Speaker 2: It was like these these homes they were trained into
prisons or something and Trent Park and they were Yeah,
on the interrogation.
Speaker 3: Is that part of what you were talking about earlier?
Is that a separate entity?
Speaker 4: No, this is part of it. And I suppose I'm
personally am reluctant to use the word prison, and the
word prison is never used in the intelligence files have
been declassified. Trent Park in North London, right there at
the end of the Piccadilly Line. Could all look on
your map of the underground of London. It was sort
of known as Special Quarters and from nineteen forty two
this was where Kendrick held Hitler's captured generals who started
to come off battlefields North Africa. Of course, by May
nineteen forty three and that had collapsed, and then after
Sicily Italy, after D Day, all Hitler's top commanders his generals,
Field marshals. They all end up in this house, and
Kendrick has two other houses just outside London called Latham
House and Wilson Park, so it's deep in the countryside,
away from prying eyes. Nobody knows what's going on at
these secret sites.
Speaker 3: Ominous. That sounds quite ominous.
Speaker 2: And I know we're going to get into a little
bit more of the interrogation aspect is in your book.
Speaker 3: It's almost like you're kind of guiding.
Speaker 2: Us to this evolution of interrogation by Kendrick, like almost
how I developed an intelligence and how it improved?
Speaker 3: Am I how far off on that?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I mean he's already a pretty skilled person by
the time he opens this unit because he understands human psychology.
He's good actually at enabling personnel in the air, minustry, Army,
naval intelligence, all these kind of rivalries between the departments.
He's the ideal man to set aside those egotistic infighting,
which has been a problem for intelligence before. But not
only that, he very rapidly ramps up this unit. He
starts in a very small way in the Tower of London.
Tower of London are iconic tourist attraction. Today, that's September
nineteen thirty nine, and just within a few months he's
got his eye on needing a proper big place outside London,
and that's when he requisitions Trent Park and increases his
staff from just six, just six of them when they started,
to over five hundred, and by five hundred by the
middle of the war. He's got about a thousand intelligence
personnel alongside American intelligence. So he's ramped it up and
he goes on to listen well, his personnel listening to
the conversations of over ten thousand Key prisoners of war,
German prisoners of war. And as we've already said, those
hop commanders Hitler's top commanders. And you know, nobody ever
asks what happened to Hitler's generals when they were captured
on the battlefields of Normandy. I did well. They ended
up in his stately home, Trent Park, and there they
were wined and dined, and they lived the life of
relative luxury. And they didn't think or question why they
were not in this and huts with barbed wire. They
were in a beautiful, stately home, plenty of wine and whiskey.
But of course, as you know, the Walls Have.
Speaker 3: E that's a big con game there.
Speaker 4: It's marvelous. Who would believe it?
Speaker 3: That's crazy stuff. Yeah, if you saw in a movie,
if you pitched it as a movie, you probably say
nobody would believe that story. You can't do that again, folks.
Speaker 2: The book is called The Walls Heavy Years, The Greatest
Intelligence Operation of World War Two, by doctor Helen Fry.
Speaker 3: It's really a fascinating and something you don't usually read
in the history books, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you doctor Fry, as you mentioned, he
got a lot of access to Hitler's secrets. I guess
anything that stood alfree as we were doing a research
and he said, how could this be?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, with the Walls Have Ears. One of the big
pieces of intelligence they get on Hitler's secret weapons on
the V one and the V two and even the
V three towards the end of the war. And I'd
never heard of a V three, So of course we
had information coming out from behind enemy lines. We'd had
bits and pieces about a possible secret weapon. But the
penny finally drops when Hitler's generals at Trent Park and
after the fall of Stalingrad. Of course, the Russian campaign
was ended in defeat for the Germans after you know,
they invaded in June forty one. But of course that
whole campaign collapses and Stalin Grad finally falls in early
nineteen forty three, and those generals that have already been
captured are sat in the house. They've got delayed news
that this has happened. One of them says, it's quite humorous. Really,
he says, I wish I'd shot myself and they captured,
so you've got everyday life and conversations which can be
really fascinating. But one of them says they're thoroughly depressed
and gloomy. And one of them says, that's it, We've
lost the war. And actually it's General foun Toma who
is captured in North Africa brought to Trent. Parker says, no,
we haven't. We've got the secret weapon that is going
to turn the tide of the war. And now we
take this intelligence seriously. And in my book I trace
from these bugged conversations about the secret weapon. They mentioned
Penny Munda, where Hitler's developing it on the North German coast,
and there is now a directly you can see it
in the files between that and Churchill ordering the bombing
of Pinnimunda in August nineteen forty three. And I've done
some more analysis for my next book about Kendrick actually Spymaster,
and you begin to realize that if we hadn't knocked
out that site in August nineteen forty three, we actually
could have lost the war. We certainly couldn't have mounted
the D Day landings. And in knocking out this site,
I think it's just the final thing I would say
on this point, unless you have other questions, that it
was knocked out in August forty three. But the first
V one, that massive super weapon, did not land on
London until a week after D Day June forty four.
That's nine months. And my question to the audience is
to think, what if we hadn't discovered this in time?
And it is now recognized that without this intelligence we
Germany could have won the tech war, and that's true
for the V one, V two, V three atomic bomb program.
We're picking up all of this stuff. When I say
we the British intelligence services in close collaboration and working
partnership with the American intelligence. So it's awesome stuff. This
new research.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's amazing stuff and stuff you don't see on
the textbooks, that's for sure.
Speaker 3: I guess that's kind of a goad.
Speaker 4: Yeah that I was going to say, actually you don't
because it's still so very new. The files were only
declassified about ten years ago, and it takes time. I
mean I got to them just within quite accidentally, just
within a few months that they've been declassified. And some
of it's so dense, you know, the conversations are very
technical in many cases that I think his stories, if
they pull them up, would just send them back again. Think, oh,
but you've got to persist. And the reason I persisted
was because of what we call a secret listener, and
these were German Jewish refugees who were taken up by
Kendrick's unit to sit in what were known as m
rooms with their headsets on, like we've got our headsets
on now in the m rooms, recording the conversations at
those three sites. And I promised him, you know, he
said to me, Fritz Lostig sign the Official Secrets Act.
At the end of the war we went into civilian life.
Did we do anything that made any difference to the war,
He said, I sat in the countryside for three years. Yeah, safe,
I lost comrades on the battlefields. Did we do anything
that made a difference. Nobody told us. They just thanked
us at the end of the war. It was all
hush hush. And now the files have been declassified. I
promised him I would look at them and I would
answer that question. And even I was staggered by the
sheer volume of intelligence we were getting. We were getting
it nowhere else than these sites. And it is true
to say that with blatch Sheep and the code breaking,
you know, without that, we couldn't have won the war.
That's I know, it's a very brief assessment, but that's
what I argue in the book, and I hope readers
will be convinced.
Speaker 3: Again, Folks definitely recommend the book.
Speaker 2: It's a fascinating read, and I'll definitely give you a
different perspective of history. The Walls have ears the greatest
intelligence operation of World War Two.
Speaker 3: And I guess I have a couple of questions, not necessarily.
Speaker 2: Directly about the book, but maybe a little bit a
little bit about it and a little bit about process.
Speaker 3: I know, when I've spoken to other authors.
Speaker 2: At least in the US, I've spoken to a few
obviously in the UK as well, but when I've spoken
to the US, it's complicated to get these files, these
classified files or declassified files. They have to do a
lot of work. At least they have to go to
special places to go access them. How is it for
you in the UK? Is it the same processes it
take a lot of work to get them when they
give you classified or is it simpler?
Speaker 4: No, it's the whole research process is a detective process.
It's a journey and you never know when you start
out how long it's going to take. You obviously have
to scope what files have been declassified. We don't have
access to classified files. Nobody has that privilege, with a
couple of exceptions from Keith Jeffrey who wrote the fficial
History of m I six example, or Christopher Andrew who
wrote the ficial History of m I five. But generally
historians have no access, so they have to work with
what's in the National Archives in London. But also I
was lucky enough to interview surviving veterans who are actually
no longer with us, and you also rely occasionally on
relatives coming out of the woodwork saying I've got this
suitcase of papers, and I have no idea what my
dad did or what my mother did, and you begin
to piece together. So it is a process, and with
intelligence history you can never get a totally full picture
because there's still stuff I guess that can never be
really east. But I'm okay with that. I used to
think when I was younger that we had to tell
the whole story. And with a lot of history books
and with other kinds of history, I think we can
can make huge progress. But with intelligence history, sometimes you're
working on stuff later on, a few years down the line,
and you come across something hidden deep in the files
that connects to something earlier. So there's always a process
and a journey of understanding, and it's not always a
complete picture because of course it was so top secret.
Speaker 3: That's a great point. That's hard too. And when you
go on back in time to get.
Speaker 2: Get the whole stories, it's almost impossible in a lot
of ways.
Speaker 3: There's so much going on. Even in our own.
Speaker 2: History books, right we only hear get snippets of stories.
We could actually have a whole course on each each
chapter in one of those history books if you really
wanted to push it let.
Speaker 3: Me ask you this. Actually, you know what, I'll keep
this for the end.
Speaker 2: I'll keep this question, okay, the end, which is just
it's an opinion question if did Hitler really die?
Speaker 3: But we'll get to that link. Oh gosh, that seems
to be a conspiracy that still lives today for some
strange yes, it does. As a historian, how I get
your take? We're switching over to a group that I
hadn't heard about before.
Speaker 2: Am I nine, a History of the Secret Service for
Escape and Invasion in World War Two. This is her
other book, folks, and she has several books you might
want to check out. This is a thrilling history of nine,
the World War Two organization that engineer the escape of
Allied forces from behind enemy lines.
Speaker 3: So let's find out all about this, doctor five. What'sm
I nine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So this is on the spectrum of military intelligence.
And so we've mentioned already, haven't we m I five
and mi I six, And people are very familiar with
those British intelligence institutions. But for us, it goes from
m I one all the way up to m I nineteen,
and each each had their own you know, brief and
it has changed since foundation I mean the services in
nineteen oh nine, British Secret Service and British Intelligence Services.
The Military Intelligence Band that I nine specifically is in
charge of prisoners of war, whether it's our prisoners in
prisoner of war camps or trapped behind enemy lines, or
whether it's enemy prisoners of war. And the idea, of
course Kendricks unit we talked about earlier originally fell within
MI I nine. M I nine became so big it
branched into I nine and m I nineteen in nineteen
forty two. So this is this gives you an idea
of what's ramping up in terms of intelligence. So I
nine proper then is left with our prisoners of war
trying to get intelligence from our personnel, but also to
bring them back to escape or to evade capture in
the first instance, to train them before they go into action.
So there was a three training course for all personnel,
and the Americans did exactly the same. To think, because
if you're captured, if you've just bailed out of an aircraft,
you might not think logically, or you might not be
so security conscious because you can give yourself away very easily.
And so nine gave a three week training course so
that you had a chance to evade, capture or escape.
And the important thing is to get our personnel back
to fight another day. And if you think about pilots
in particular, they're very expensive to train, but it actually
takes up to three months. You can't be losing your
pilots because the German Air Force could quickly gain superiority
and then well, yeah, imuntine invasion of Britain for example,
of the United Kingdom, so very very high priority, and
the Germans didn't seem to have an equivalent the Americans did.
The Americans had, American intelligence had mish X, rather obscure
and name for it. But they were doing exactly the
same thing. They were bringing Allied personnel back from Western
Europe and of course from the Far East, the Middle
East wherever they were trapped potentially in enemy occupied territory.
And Emma and I went on to save over thirty
five thousand Allied personnel and to bring them back. It's
a huge legacy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is. That's amazing. It's amazing just listening to
you how large the breath World War two is. I mean,
there's so much going on.
Speaker 2: At least I haven't heard a lot of it that
that's happened through it. No matter how much you read,
there's just so much happening everywhere. Now in this book,
you know, you drew a lot on declassified files I
can normally do and eyewitness testimonies. Was this one a
little bit more heavy on the eyewitness testimonies or declassified files?
Speaker 3: You think.
Speaker 2: I use?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's the same for both of them.
I used. I went to the primary sources because there
have been books before on I nine, but not for
forty years. And there were two men in MI I
nine who were the giants at our end in Britain.
One of them was Airy Neve, who famously was blown
up by the IRA, wasn't it? And Thatcher's government and
Jimmy Langley. They wrote books, one of them with Mdr Foot,
but they didn't have access to declassified files. So Yale
University Press sort of, you know, put it to me,
wouldn't it be good to write an updated version of
the m I nine and what more can we discover?
And then we kind of sat there and realized it
had been forty years since anyone had written its history,
and forty years and the file to come out in
the meantime. So what I've done, and I think it's
worked very well, is you've got the organization of m
I nine in the background, in the American equivalent, but
within that, and it's done chronologically. I've told and woven
the stories, the key stories escape routes across Europe. I
concentrate primarily on Western Europe because it's a huge topic. Otherwise,
so that people get an understanding of the achievements, not
only the organization. It's not dry that I am. I
intered in the human stories. Those thousands of men and
women who acted as helpers, guides, couriers, who saved are personnel.
Their acts of bravery really shined through and they are extraordinary.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And I know you even mentioned Mary Lindell.
Speaker 2: I think, yes, one of the females, one of the
only females I think right.
Speaker 3: In regards to parachuting or something like that.
Speaker 4: Perrier, well, yeah, there was Vitres Truand who was parachuted
into Holland. But Holland was a very tricky situation. She
was captured. Nine had a top secret section called IS
nine or Intelligence School nine. It stood for also under
the umbrella known as Room nine. Hundred and this they
love all these obscure names. It's the same thing. But
Room nine hundred was sending agents behind enemy lines, and
Beatrice Truda was one of them behind enemy lines in
the same way as we think of SE the Special
Approations Executive. Everybody knows about SOE and the courageous agents
men and women. And you have the Americans too, don't you.
There were parachute behind enemy lines, drop behind any lines,
all sorts of ways, landed by boat, whatever. But m
I nine, under its top secret section, Room nine hundred
percenting its own agents, and Mary Lindell was another one
who worked. She also we believe had some links with
MI six SIS as it's also known, so she was
also sort of working with them. But she went on
to save known as the Cockleshell Heroes, and they were
the condos that were on top secret mission to Bordeaux
canoe down the river to place limpet mines on the
German ships in the port of Bordeaux. Two of them
were successful, actually, but only two of them got back.
The rest lost their lives. So it's hugely dangerous mission.
Of twelve of them involved, and Mary Lindell surveys. Sorry
Mary Lindell rescued the only two survivors of that mission,
and her bravery against steely Nerve is really worth reading about.
In the book She Was Fearsome.
Speaker 2: It was an amazing There's so many incredibly strong, brave
females in the world of espionage and World War Two
and over the years, it's amazing as you listen to
some of these stories.
Speaker 3: Again, folks.
Speaker 2: The book is called them I nine The History of
the Secret Service for Escape and Invasion in World War
Two by doctor Helen Frye. We also talked a little
bit about her other books, Through the Walls, Heavy Ears.
She's got over twenty books, that's right, twenty books focusing
on intelligence and POW's and World War Two. So if
this is your genre, definitely recommend the books. If you
haven't read the genre, I highly recommend the books. It's
kind of hard not to recommend the book.
Speaker 3: Doctor Frye.
Speaker 2: I guess as we get away from these last two
books now, just a couple of questions in regards to.
Speaker 3: Things in society people always kind of wonder about. I guess,
is there are there any movies out there?
Speaker 2: And I know this might be a little tricky because
you're overseas, over there across the pond, as they say.
But are there any movies that stand out for you
that you say that's pretty spot on or that's way
off the mark in regards to World War Two?
Speaker 4: Well, there was one that came out recently actually called
A Call to Spy and it is available on like
the Netflix platform and others. And for me, that seemed
very very close to a story about female agents in
France dropped into France. And usually those stories are quite similar,
you know, previous films, but this one, there's something special
about this one, and you get a close understanding of
the difficult decisions which face the lady who sent the
female agents in particular, and well and she sent male
agents into France was one Vera Atkins, And you get
a sense the film has very the first time has
focused on her and three of her agents, and I
think we finally, very subtly get an understanding of the
challenges she faced and how it worked behind the scenes,
and then that's woven into the brave story of people
like yak Nor Khan. And I always forget the name
of the American one that where it was dropped in
with the wooden leg. Her name escapes me immediately. I remember,
since you finished the interview, it'll come to me. Virginia Hall.
There you go. Yeah, very brave woman. In fact, she
was smuggled out of France over the Pyrenees by the
M I nine networks. Oh really interestingly. Yeah, it's a
fantastic scene in the film A Call to Spy, and
I hugely recommend it where she is struggling and you
just get the sense of, oh my gosh, how difficult
it was to get out over the Pyrenees. And there
she is struggling with her wooden leg, but she does
make it, she escapes, and yeah, you get a sense
of the bravery. And to me, it feels as though
that film was kept very close to reality, and it
felt very real. Yeah. So I enjoyed that film very
much and I'm a huge fan of it.
Speaker 2: Oh, I have I have to look at that card, Despi.
I guess I'd be remissing. I don't mention it. What
are your thoughts, as I know you're more of a
historian per se than solely focused on spies, but what's
your take on James Bond?
Speaker 4: That's not controversial at all? Okay, a couple of things
about James Bond. I think I've grown to enjoy the
films more as I've got older. I love the more
recent ones. I think they're fantastic. Yeah, I do. And Okay,
he's always blowing up. The big buildings are falling on
top of him almost and he's leaping between, you know,
doing the impossible. But we expect that that's what we
want from our James Bond. Our Ian Fleming's character's the
license that's gone further. But interestingly it is quite a bit,
certainly in the early stuff which comes from Ian Fleming's
wartime career. So there's me merely thinking he's been quite
a genius in you know, these novels. But the escape gadgets,
for example, they're part of m I nine, and Fleming
was linked to m I nine. I think for me
it's also fun. I don't sit there and watch the
James Bond films and think, oh, I've read that in
the files. I do sit there and I enjoy them,
but I think now i'm older, I think I enjoy
them because you get a sense that in places they
are very close to the truth. But as with everything,
it's walls and mirrors and you don't know which bits
are absolutely true, but you just get a feeling that
it is rooted in that world. And of course it's
gone beyond that world. It's for our entertainment, But I
do love Fleming stuff. Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 2: My other question is one of my favorite shows from
the UK was Foyle's War.
Speaker 4: I love Foyle's War. If anybody's listening that has any influence,
please we want more of Foyle's War.
Speaker 3: Yeah, bring back Michael Kitchen. What's your take on that.
That seem to be pretty accurate or is it?
Speaker 4: Yes, Yeah, it's very accurate. In a couple of places
they change the locals, but there is a scene, for example,
an interrogation scene. It's very close to the truth. And
that tips over into another book I did on the
London cage as it was called cage slang interrogation quarters.
So yeah, he does meticulous research and he's quite open
I believe about the fact that some of it is
based is being inspired by stuff he's read in the
National Archives.
Speaker 3: Amazing, amazing.
Speaker 4: Across the whole series.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and how.
Speaker 2: He takes that personal human side of that time, that's
the amazing thing for me. Because you see, it wasn't
just about the war, it was about everything else that disrupts,
love lives.
Speaker 3: Yeah, family, everything was just amazing.
Speaker 4: And Foyle himself says very little. If you think about
how many lines he says, it's all about his face
and his movements, and he's just a glance and it
says it all. We all understand what it means. But yeah,
if your viewers can get hold of if they haven't
seen Foyle's War, yeah, it's absolutely brilliant. And the twists
and things.
Speaker 3: Yeahs, I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: I had a lot of murders in that area of Hastings,
didn't they in World War Two? According to Foyle's War.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like a serial killer on the loose over there.
Speaker 4: I know, it's fantastic stuff. I loved it. I loved it.
Speaker 3: I guess my last question, I guess we'll wrap up
with Hitler. Is he really dead or not? I can't believe.
Speaker 2: I know where people still believe Elvis Presley over here
is possibly still alive, and JFK is somewhere as well.
Speaker 3: Hitler. It was interesting because I think even Discovery Channel
or HBO what are those cable channels took it.
Speaker 2: A step further last year when they started doing a
documentary on Hitler and his general's over in Argentina.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he got crazy.
Speaker 4: What do you say, Well, it's not something I've personally
researched myself about the whole crep of Nazi flight and
those that got out to Argentina, etc. But yeah, I mean,
of course Hitler would be dead now, he'd be far
too old to be still alive, so that we know.
So answer to your question, is he dead? The answer
is yes. Do I think he made it out of
the bunker? No, I think he died in the bunker,
But there's always you know, you never know for sure
because you know that could be turned on its head.
But based on the current evidence we have, yes, it's
I think, yeah, he died in the bunker. In fact,
I interviewed a veteran who is still alive, and he
was involved in counterintelligence in that period at the end
of the war. He was on he came over on
the Kinder transports. He's of the young, slightly younger, he's
still in his late nineties now, and he said, there's
absolutely no doubt that Hitler died in the bunker, because
I asked him. I said, look, this is flying around
and there's absolutely no question, according to him, that Hitler
died in the bunker. So yeah, I'm not a fan
of conspiracy theories.
Speaker 3: I'm not either, but sometimes make for interesting chats.
Speaker 4: I guess, well, look it gets us thinking and reassessing evidence.
I think that's always important that we that we're challenged
at times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely again, folks of the books, doctor Helen
Frye f r Y.
Speaker 2: The book is m I nine, a history of the
Secret Service for escaping invasion in World War Two. The
other book we talk briefly about as well in the
beginning of the show. Again briefly is because they're only
touching the tip of the iceberg, folks, it's called The
Walls Half Ears. Another great book she just mentioned. I
think it's The London Cage. But she has over twenty books,
lots of books focusing on intelligence and POWs. So if
you're into the espionage world, these are the books for you.
Speaker 3: Doctor fry Thank you so much for.
Speaker 4: Being here, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: Fabulous stuff, folks, Thank you for listening. Make sure to share, subscribe. Hey,
if you're on Apple, give us those five stars. We
truly appreciate it. Thanks for listening. Everybody