++++Content warning for violence and sexual violence, not one for youngsters or those of a senitive nature to these topics ++++

The Curse of the Dodgy Microphone! We've been trying to find ways to record remotely, and Pip had a bit of trouble this time, but you'll pull through, we believe in you!

In this episode Jonny leads Pip through some of the key moments of the Battle of Berlin, from the Red Army entering the city on April 21 to the surrender of the Berlin garrison on May 2. We look at the human cost of the battle and give an insight into what it was like to live through it.

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🎟️ You can get in touch and book Jonny or Pip for a tour of Berlin via www.whitlams-berlin-tours.com.

Don't forget to subscribe for more Berlin history every two weeks!

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You can find Jonny online on YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky, and TikTok!

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Mixed and Produced by Alex Griffiths
https://www.instagram.com/alexgriffiths_music/
https://alexgriffiths.bandcamp.com/
 
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📚 Sources:

Berlin: The Downfall 1945, Antony Beevor

Bloody Streets, Aaron S. Hamilton

A Woman in Berlin, Anonymous

80 years ago the Battle of Seelow Heights was the final hurdle for Stalin’s Red Army before reaching Hitler’s fascist capital, Berlin. Before the Battle of Berlin could begin, Soviet troops needed to cross the Oder river, break through several lines of German defences, and capture all the small towns and villages on the approach to Berlin.

In this episode, Jonny tells Pip all about the four-day fight that opened the gates to Berlin in April 1945.

Listen out for:

• Zhukov’s mistakes and Stalin’s anger
• The blinding Moscow searchlights
• German kamikaze pilots and tanks protected by spring mattresses
• Huge numbers of soldiers, chaos in command, minefields, and artillery

Look out for the next episode on the Battle of Berlin!

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 💸 Donations keep us running.

Click below to support the show.
 
 🤩 Donate €50

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😄 Donate €10 

🙂 Donate €5

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🎟️ You can get in touch and book Jonny or Pip for a tour of Berlin via www.whitlams-berlin-tours.com.

Don't forget to subscribe for more Berlin history every two weeks!

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You can find Jonny online on YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky, and TikTok!

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Mixed and Produced by Alex Griffiths
https://www.instagram.com/alexgriffiths_music/
https://alexgriffiths.bandcamp.com/
 
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📚 Sources:

Berlin: The Downfall 1945, Antony Beevor

Bloody Streets, Aaron S. Hamilton

We continue our discussion about Ravensbrück concentration camp and to reflect on the 80 year anniversary of its liberation with Pablo aka Berlin con Pablo, who's been guiding Spanish language vistiors to Berlin for many years!

We each bring a story of an individual woman's survival of Ravensbrück: Neus Català, Yevgenia Lasarevna Klemm, and Odette Sansom.

This was a tough one to record because of the sheer horror of the content and apologies everyone, it's not our best audio quality. But we hope you get something from these incredible and at moments truly devestating stories of endurance, survival and bravery.

CONTENT WARNING: Discussions of concentration camp, torture, death.

Sources:

Ravensbruck: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women, Sarah Helm

KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nikolaus Wachsmann

Ashes in the Sky by Carme Martí

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You can get in touch and book Jonny or Pip for a tour of Berlin via www.whitlams-berlin-tours.com.

Don't forget to subscribe for more Berlin history every two weeks!

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Donations keep us running. If you like the show and want to support it, you can use the following links:

Donate €50 •• Donate €20 •• Donate €10 •• Donate €5

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You can find Jonny online on YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky, and TikTok!

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Mixed and Produced by Alex Griffiths
https://www.instagram.com/alexgriffiths_music/
https://alexgriffiths.bandcamp.com/

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Spring 2025 marks the 80th Anniversary of the end of World War II. 

We're kicking off this season, focused on WWII, by discussing Ravensbrück concentration camp, the only camp purpose built for women under the Nazi regime. 

In this first of two parts, we take a look at whom this camp was built for, who ran it day to day, and how it changed dramatically over the course of it's life. We also discuss the concentration camp system more generally, contextualising it along side our knowledge as guides of the former concentration camp Sachsenhausen.

(ALSO, apologies Pip mixed up Sylvia Salvesen, who was from Norway not Sweden!)

CONTENT WARNING: Discussions of concentration camp, torture, death.

Sources:

Ravensbruck: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women, Sarah Helm

KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nikolaus Wachsmann

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You can get in touch and book Jonny or Pip for a tour of Berlin via www.whitlams-berlin-tours.com.

Don't forget to subscribe for more Berlin history every two weeks!

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Donations keep us running. If you like the show and want to support it, you can use the following links:

Donate €50 •• Donate €20 •• Donate €10 •• Donate €5

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You can find Jonny online on YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky, and TikTok!

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Mixed and Produced by Alex Griffiths
https://www.instagram.com/alexgriffiths_music/
https://alexgriffiths.bandcamp.com/

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Dearest Listener! 

Please enjoy this very special bonus episode! We welcome Dirk Hoffmann-Becking, from The History of the Germans Podcast. If there’s something this man doesn’t know about the Wittelsbachs, I sure as hell don’t want to hear about it!

Dirk takes Jonny and I from the earliest context surrounding the founding of Berlin and introduces us to some real characters like Henry the Fowler, all round nice guy, Uta von Ballenstedt, popped collar, cold hard stare, medieval FOX; As well as the painfully incontinent and hateful Saint Bernard of Clairvaux…AND he’s here and he’s less cuddly than you might think, it’s Albrecht the mutha hugging BEAR!

You can find more of Dirk’s fantastic content here: 

https://historyofthegermans.com/

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You can get in touch and book Jonny or Pip for a tour of Berlin via www.whitlams-berlin-tours.com.

Don't forget to subscribe for more Berlin history every two weeks!

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Donations keep us running. If you like the show and want to support it, you can use the following links:

Donate €50 •• Donate €20 •• Donate €10 •• Donate €5

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You can find Jonny online on YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky, and TikTok!

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Mixed and Produced by Alex Griffiths
https://www.instagram.com/alexgriffiths_music/
https://alexgriffiths.bandcamp.com/

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‼️👉 Click here to sign up! 👈‼️

Link not working? Look up “Pay What You Want Tour - International Women's Day Special with Pip Roper” on eventbrite.com

Pay What You Want Tour - International Women's Day Special with Pip Roper

It’s international Women’s Day! Come along for a special tour led by Pip Roper of History Flakes, Gender Historian and highly experienced Berlin Tour Guide. Learn about some of our more famous figures, Marlene Dietrich, Rosa Luxemburg, that most beloved Queen Luise, and discover some lesser know stories like that of the first ordained female Rabbi Regina Jonas, Angela Davis' relationship to the GDR, and more!

We’ll discuss some of our most celebrated female figures, lament over some of the worst and weave together the stories of progress and challenges through the lens of this great city’s women, all while exploring Berlin together on a special one-off tour.

Jonny will come and join, too - we're both really excited to meet our Flakes family.

See you there!

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Josephine Baker...Josi Bakes as we've taken to calling her, respectfully. Fizzing with energy, talent, and pure GUMPTION. The only African American woman to be inducted in the Pantheon of France. Her story takes us from the poverty and violence of segregated St. Louis, to the scandalously modern revues of interwar Europe. Beloved in Berlin, but finding herself most at home in Paris, she would tirelessly work for the French resistance during the Second World War, only to return to rejection and racial prejudice in the united states, until being one of only 2 women to speak at the 1963 March on Washington. All that whilst being what seems to be a genuine delight. Strap in as Pip bursts with info on Josephine Baker.

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You can get in touch and book Jonny or Pip for a tour of Berlin via www.whitlams-berlin-tours.com.

Don't forget to subscribe for more Berlin history every two weeks!

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Donations keep us running. If you like the show and want to support it, you can use the following links:

Donate €50 •• Donate €20 •• Donate €10 •• Donate €5

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You can find Jonny online on YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky, and TikTok!

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Mixed and Produced by Alex Griffiths
https://www.instagram.com/alexgriffiths_music/
https://alexgriffiths.bandcamp.com/

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Sources

Deautsche Welle Docu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nHUh_yjLaA&t=2337s

Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy, Damien Lewis

Femininity the Primitive, and Modern Urban Space: Josephine Baker in Berlin 
Nancy Nenno 

Josephine Baker Was the Star France Wanted—and the Spy It Needed, Lauren Michele Jackson

Josephine Baker's Rainbow Tribe by Merlind Theile in Spiegel International

Redacted History Podcast: Josephine Baker: From Jim Crow, to Broadway to World War II

You're Dead to Me Podcast: Josephine Baker

Join us for a discussion with Berlin tour guiding legend Matti Geyer, as we tackle the sad, mad and certainly very bad Stella Goldschlag. Born and raised to a secular Jewish Berlin family, she would take advantage of her ability to pass as 'aryan' to aid the Gestapo as a chief ‘Greifer’ or ‘catcher’ of Jewish people during the Nazi period. We talk about her role alongside that of husband Rolf Isaaksohn, and discuss why it might be that his actions as well as 30 other Greifer in Berlin are largely forgotten, whilst Stella’s story has become infamous.

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Love the smooth radio voice and historical insight of Matti Geyer? Find his tours online at www.toursofberlin.com

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You can get in touch and book Jonny or Pip for a tour of Berlin via www.whitlams-berlin-tours.com.

Don't forget to subscribe for more Berlin history every two weeks!

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Donations keep us running. If you like the show and want to support it, you can use the following links:

Donate €50 •• Donate €20 •• Donate €10 •• Donate €5

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You can find Jonny online on YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky, and TikTok!

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Mixed and Produced by Alex Griffiths
https://www.instagram.com/alexgriffiths_music/
https://alexgriffiths.bandcamp.com/

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Sources

Stella, by Peter Wyden

The Myth of the She Devil, Helena Kennedy

How to build a new country

Step 1: No, not like that!

Step 2: Stalin, do you like your birthday present?

Step 3: We must make Stalin a nice birthday present, this time while singing a catchy song.

Step 4: Oh, Stalin, are you dead?

This episode Pip & Jonny explore how the grand buildings on Karl-Marx-Allee, formerly Stalinallee, came to be. The story of these momentous buildings is filled with hard work, hope, optimism, and trying to impress daddy. 

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Tours
Want to book Pip & Jonny for tours? You can get in touch via the Whitlam's Berlin Tours website.

You can find Jonny online on YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky, and TikTok!

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Donations keep us running. If you like the show and want to support it, you can use the following links:

Donate €50 •• Donate €20 •• Donate €10 •• Donate €5

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Sources 

Die Stalinbauten Story by Christian Gruenler

Die Stalinallee - Prachtboulevard für Arbeiter, radioWissen

What happened when civil rights activist, one-time FBI’s most wanted, scourge of J Edgar Hoover, Angela Davis met the GDR? A lot actually. Want to find out? Join us as we dive into Angela’s early years and into her eventful 20s, growing up surrounded by threats of death and violence in the southern US to studying in Paris, Frankfurt and Berlin. And discover why she holds cult statues for an entire generation of children and youngsters who grew up under the leadership of the GDR. Oh… and there’s a Mitford sister in there, just for laughs! (Pip mispronounces Marcuse, but she’s only just met him and she knows now, ok?!)

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Tours
Want to book Pip & Jonny for tours? You can get in touch via the Whitlam's Berlin Tours website.

You can follow Jonny online on Instagram, Threads, BlueSky, TikTok, and more!

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Donations keep us running. If you like the show and want to support it, you can use the following links:

Donate €50 •• Donate €20 •• Donate €10 •• Donate €5

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Sources 

The LRB Podcast States of Shock Pankaj Mishra and Adam Shatz

Maria Schubert
Solidarity! Angela Davis and the GDR https://www.goethe.de/ins/us/en/kul/art/one/22172301.html

Black History for White People- podcast April 6 2022

Autobiography: https://decolonisesociology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/angela-davis-autobiography.pdf

GDR Solidarity Goethe article https://www.goethe.de/ins/us/en/kul/art/one/22172301.html#drittens

Sov Union and Angela- “You Are Not Alone”: Angela Davis and the Soviet Dreams of Freedom Maxim Matusevich

"Schwarze Schwester Angela" – Die DDR und Angela Davis. Kalter Krieg, Rassismus und Black Power, 1965–1975, Lorenz, Sophie- Review by David Spreen.

Time Magazine article April 3, 1972 12:00 AM EST: https://time.com/archive/6639469/east-germany-st-angela/ 

'Comrade Angela Davis': An icon in East Germany, Rayna Breuer -DW

„Free Angela Davis!“ – Black Power und die

Jugend der DDR - Maria Schubert

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/05/angela-davis-on-the-power-of-protest-we-cant-do-anything-without-optimism 

Color–blind and Color–coded Racism: Angela Davis, the New Left in Hungary, and “Acting Images” by Kata Krasznahorkai

Who’s Afraid of Angela Davis?: An American Icon and the Political Uses of Youth Literature in the GDR, Ada Bieber

Sarah E James, The Friendship between East Germany and Angela Davis, Frieze,