Codebreaking at Bletchley Park – Book tour interview with Jan Slimming

Jan Slimming codebreaker girls

Codebreaking at Bletchley Park – Book tour interview with Jan Slimming

Check out this book here   https://amzn.to/3yrIEkM

Interview Timeline

Jan Slimming is a publishing professional who was six when she first heard of Bletchley Park, but it was decades later that she was compelled to research and write about this little-known part of her mother’s life. We spoke about the book, her mother’s code-breaking career and her father’s WWII captivity. Codebreaker Girls: A Secret Life at Bletchley Park (Pen and Sword Military, 2021)

0:38 – Jan talks about why she wrote about her mom’s WWII work at Bletchley Park.

5:39 – Jan talks about what the book focuses on.

10:44 – Jan talks about everyone at Bletchley Park being billeted nearby.

12:34 – Jan talks about the training or lack of among the Park personnel.

14:35 – Jan talks about how her parents met.

16:46 – Jan talks about the skills they used for code breaking.

20:49 – Jan talks about her mother’s relatives who also worked in code breaking.

23:24 – Jan talks about what her mom did after the war.

24:51 – Jan talks about her mom not talking about working for the India office.

26:49 – Jan talks about how she broke the book down.

28:31 – Jan talks about her research.

31:26 – Jan talks about touring Bletchley Park.

35:18 – Jan talks about going back to England for her research.

38:25 – Jan talks about wanting to know if her mother was assigned to finding the 18th division.

40:23 – Jan talks about her mother going through a nervous breakdown after the war.

45:45 – Jan talks about other people who had relatives at Bletchley Park reach out to her.

52:39 – Jan goes into detail about touring Bletchley Park.

53:54 – Jan talks about security at Bletchley Park.

57:30 – Jan talks about her mother meeting Ian Fleming and knowing Alan Turing.

1:00:21 – Jan is on Pen and Sword and on Facebook at Jan Slimming Author.

Links of interest

https://amzn.to/3yrIEkM

https://penandswordbooks.com/codebreaker-girls.html#.YQyka0ApCUk

https://www.facebook.com/Codebreakersdaughter

Contact Information

For more “Military History Inside Out” please follow me at www.warscholar.org, on Facebook at warscholar, on twitter at Warscholar, on youtube at warscholar1945 and on Instagram @crisalvarezswarscholar. Or subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify Please see historyrabbithole.com for a list of my dozen or so blogs and podcasts. You’re sure to find something you like.

Guests: Jan Slimming

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: Books, audio interviews, author, podcast, Pen and Sword, Espionage, WWII, Britain,

Check out this book here   https://amzn.to/3yrIEkM

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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How the OSS supported Yugoslav independence movements in WWII – Interview with Blaz Torkar

Blaž Torkar is an assistant professor of history at the Military Schools Centre of the Slovenian Armed forces. He researches the history of intelligence services, Allied military missions in Yugoslavia during WWII, the Yugoslav People’s Army and Territorial Defense, and the Slovenian War of Independence in 1991. He wrote a book on the OSS in Yugoslavia during WWII and we spoke about the book, the OSS, and Yugoslavian resistance movements. Mission Yugoslavia (McFarland, 2020)

 

Tags: Books, audio interviews, author, academic, videos, McFarland, Espionage, WWII, United States, Germany, Russia, Britain,

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How the OSS supported Yugoslavia independence movements in WWII – Interview with Blaz Torkar

Blaz Torkar Mission Yugoslavia OSS

How the OSS supported Yugoslavia independence movements in WWII – Interview with Blaz Torkar

Check out this book here   https://amzn.to/2ZDmiwM

Interview Timeline

Blaž Torkar is an assistant professor of history at the Military Schools Centre of the Slovenian Armed forces. He researches the history of intelligence services, Allied military missions in Yugoslavia during WWII, the Yugoslav People’s Army and Territorial Defense, and the Slovenian War of Independence in 1991. He wrote a book on the OSS in Yugoslavia during WWII and we spoke about the book, the OSS, and Yugoslavian resistance movements. Mission Yugoslavia (McFarland, 2020)

K. Lyn Wurth talks about her novel about Calamity Jane https://wp.me/p7CDU9-56U

Laird Thompson talks about how he helped discover cosmic voids http://spacewalksmoneytalks.com/p/748

1:05 – Blaz talks about his interest in the OSS in Yugoslavia.

2:18 – Blaz describes the OSS and SOE.

4:12 – Blaz talks about the resistance movements in Yugoslavia.

5:56 – Blaz talks about Churchill’s ULTRA reports.

8:54 – Blaz talks about OSS support to the Yugoslavian resistance movements.

11:11 – Blaz talks about problems between the US and the movements they supported.

12:54 – Blaz talks how the OSS did some fighting in Yugoslavia.

14:06 – Blaz talks about Soviet advisors in Yugoslavia in 1944.

14:36 – Blaz talks about the physical security used for the operations

16:03 – Blaz goes into details about how operations were run.

18:15 – Blaz talks about the Yugoslavs who worked for OSS.

20:39 – Blaz talks about prisoner exchanges for OSS members.

22:10 – Blaz talks about Americans captured by the Germans.

23:22 – Blaz talks about partisans who killed Americans.

23:52 – Blaz talks about the resistance in Serbian areas. [Note: Blaz noted later that he accidentally neglected to mention the first Serbian resistance at the start of the country and region’s occupation.  He states by email that at the beginning of the occupation of Serbia in 1941 the resistance largely spread but it it was brutally suppressed by the Germans.  Then resistance continued in Serbia in 1944.]

25:18 – Blaz talks about the impact the OSS had.

27:18 – Blaz talks about the archives he used.

28:38 – Blaz talks about speaking with OSS and SOE veterans.

29:39 – Blaz talks about the airfields used to fly OSS and Soe into Yugoslavia.

30:26 – Blaz talks about how the partisans kept these airfields secret.

34:56 – Blaz talks about the Americans picked for these missions.

35:24 – Blaz talks about some of the exceptions to whom the OSS recruited.

36:00 – Blaz talks about how OSS and MI-6 were treated in Yugoslavia.

36:55 – Blaz talks about how many missions were working in Yugoslavia but they refused to send troops there.

39:55 – Blaz talks about the OSS sending people into the wrong areas of Yugoslavia.

41:23 – Blaz talks about German spies among the partisans.

42:42 – Blaz talks about how he focused on northern Yugoslavia missions.

43:41 – Blaz talks about the strongly preserved memory of this fighting even today.

45:49 – Blaz talks about the memorials to US and British soldiers.

46:42 – Blaz talks about Yugoslav preservation of allied memorials.

48:28 – Blaz talks about the discussions of the Yugoslavia post-war regimes.

49:30 – Blaz talks about Yugoslav history books highlighted Soviet help.

51:24 – Blaz talks about the so called betrayal of Churchill by Tito.

54:13 – Blaz talks about the recruited Yugoslavs and what they did after the war.

59:26 – Blaz is currently working on a book on WWI in Slovenia and Italy.

1:02:08 – Blaz be found on Amazon and McFarland.

Links of interest

https://amzn.to/2ZDmiwM

https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/mission-yugoslavia/

K. Lyn Wurth talks about her novel about Calamity Jane https://wp.me/p7CDU9-56U

Laird Thompson talks about how he helped discover cosmic voids http://spacewalksmoneytalks.com/p/748

Contact Information

For more “Military History Inside Out” please follow me at www.warscholar.org, on Facebook at warscholar, on twitter at Warscholar, on youtube at warscholar and on Instagram @crisalvarezwarscholar. Or subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify Please see historyrabbithole.com for a list of my dozen or so blogs and podcasts. You’re sure to find something you like.

Guests: Blaz Torkar

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: Books, audio interviews, author, academic, podcast, McFarland, Espionage, WWII, United States, Germany, Russia, Britain,

Check out this book here   https://amzn.to/2ZDmiwM

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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