In public life, Canadian Dr Winthrop Bell was a Harvard philosophy professor and wealthy businessman. As MI6 secret agent A12, he evaded gunfire and shook off pursuers to break open the emerging Nazi conspiracy in 1919 Berlin. His reports provided the first warnings of right-wing conspiracies in the German establishment, eventually leading to Hitler and the National Socialists.
In the 1930s, after reading Hitler's speeches and books, Bell was warning of the Holocaust. But his warnings fell on deaf ears until the outbreak of war.
For this episode, I am joined by Jason Bell.
Jason is a professor of philosophy at the University of New Brunswick. He has served as a Fulbright Professor in Germany and was the first scholar granted exclusive access to Winthrop Bell’s classified espionage papers. Jason is also the author of Cracking the Nazi Code: The Untold Story of Canada's Greatest Spy, which recounts Bell’s story.
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224 - The Theory and Practice of Command in the British and German Armies
223 - Landing Craft Infantry
222 - The D-Day Scientists Who Changed Special Operations
221 - Training the Indian Army
220 - The Archer: Reversing to Victory
219 - D-Day Tourism
218 - Target Hong Kong
217 - How the Luftwaffe Lost the skies over Germany
216 - The Latvian Legion
215 - The Power of Japanese Propaganda
214 - Stan Hollis VC and the Green Howards on D-Day
213 - The British Empire and Commonwealth’s War Against Imperial Japan
212 - Invisible Generals
211 - HG-76: Taking the Fight to Hitler's U-boats
210 - The Battle for Italy, 1943
209 - Hospital Trains of WWII
208 - 2SAS and Bill Sterling
207 - Tank Warfare in North Africa, 1942-43
206 - The Extraordinary Life of Journalist Wallace Carroll
205 - Victory to Defeat: The British Army 1918-40
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