The President of General Motors export arm, James Mooney, stood in his hotel room practising his Nazi salute in front of the mirror. Should his sieg heil show

Tag words: William (“Billy”) Crapo Durant; William Durant; Opel; Hitler; Ford Model T; Volkswagen; Wilhelm Keppler; Nazi Party; Opel Blitz; Alfred Sloan; President Roosevelt; New Deal; Führer; SA storm troopers; Standard Oil; IG Farben; Blitzkrieg; Albert Speer; Ju88; President Dwight D Eisenhower; M-4 Sherman tank; Buick; Pershing tank; Cadillac; P-38 Lightning; Chevrolet; Oldsmobile; M3 White Half Track; Bofors

“America never contributed anything to the world but chewing gum and Coca-Cola” said Otto Dietrich, the Nazi Press Chief and head of propaganda in 1942.

But then all of the Nazis fantasies came true with a new amazing drink developed by the Coca Cola company in Nazi Germany called Fanta – it didn’t win the war for them but it made losing a lot easier.

Tag Words: General John Clifford Pemberton; Ulysses S Grant; Pemberto’s French Wine Coca; Pemberton Chemical Company; Drink Coca-Cola; Coca-Cola; General Eisenhower; Robert Woodruff; Fanta; General Georgi Zhukov; Great Patriotic War;

The last time I told you the story of 19 year old Sergeant Daniel Culler. His B-17 bomber, “Hell’s Kitchen”, had just forced landed in Switzerland. He planned to set the plane on fire by pumping out its fuel and then firing a flare into it to stop it falling into German hands. The rumour going around on the American air bases was that the Swiss were swapping American and British planes that fell into their hands for new German military aircraft for their armed forces. Swiss soldiers had prevented him carrying through his plan, and saved his life. He hadn’t noticed that he was soaked in petrol. But with what was going to happen to him as a prisoner of the Swiss, there were undoubtedly long periods of time when he wished that he was dead. This programme, Dan’s story as a prisoner of the Swiss, makes for chilling listening. The Swiss behaved in totally unexpected ways towards some of the Allied airmen that they interned, not as prisoners-of-war because the Swiss were neutral, that the Nazis would have admired.

Tag words: Geneva Convention; General Barnwell Rhett Legge; Straflager Wauwilermoos; Captain André-Henri Beguin;

In the great 1949 movie, “The Third Man”, set in the immediate post war rubble of the then once great city of Vienna but now reduced to rubble from bombing and combat during World War II, Orson Welles, playing the lead character, Harry Lime, talking to the newspaper man and his friend from the past, Holly Martines, played by Joseph Cotton, gives the briefest and most brutal put down of a country that has ever been delivered. The country, is Switzerland, and he says something remarkable about that country. 

During World War II Switzerland was supposed to be neutral, but was it?

In the summer of 1944, there were plenty of stories going around that the men of the American bomber forces, facing what seemed certain death before they could complete a tour of duty of 25 missions, were flying their undamaged planes to land in neutral Switzerland or Sweden to get out of the war. These stories were now reaching the commander of the American Army Air Force, Hap Arnold, and they were a serious concern to him and a situation that he would not tolerate.

And there were other much darker stories about the Swiss more than willingly co-operating with the Nazis. A forgotten story. Aren’t they the best kind. So let’s see what was going really going on in the country where the lawns, even on the mountains, are kept tidy by people armed with and using nail clippers.

Tag words: William Joyce; Lord Haw Haw; Joseph Goebbels; Collier’s magazine; General Carl Spaatz; Bomber Mafia; Norden bombsights; Memphis Belle; Ira Eaker; Allen Foster Dulles; OSS; CIA; Dean Acheson; President Harry Truman

Miss Dior – such a popular and well loved perfume. The very essence of femininity – or is it? Perhaps it’s the very essence of the free spirit too, the free scent of France – maybe even of the world. And what did Dior have to do with melting clocks?

But in 1940 France was humming to a different tune. The sounds of German footsteps on the pavements. Shopping in the stores for that legendary French fashion that the officers of the German Wehrmacht., SS and other German officials were looking for who were lucky enough to get a posting to Paris. Where they could get that oh so oooh la la gift, for their wives, their mistresses and their girlfriends.

Tag words: Miss Dior; melting clocks; Dior; Sidney Toledano; John Galliano; House of Dior; Buchenwald; Belle Epoque; Jacques Bonjean; Galerie Jacques Bonjean; André Breton; Pierre Collé; objets d’art; Salvador Dali; The Persistence of Memory; Julien Levy; Museum of Modern Art; MOMA; Retrospective Bust of a Woman; Robert Piguet; Lucien Lelong; kinetique; Christian Dior; Pierre Balmain; Carven; Fath; Desses; Lanvin; Nina Ricci; Costello; Patou; Cristóbal Balenciaga; Catherine Dior; Carlingue; Ravensbruck concentration camp; Mitzah Bricard;

In this Danger Zone programme I’m going to tell you about the Spanish fashion designer who met 6 enormous thugs sent to his Paris studios by Adolf Hitler. Hitler wanted Berlin to become the fashion capital of the world. He wanted this designer to relocate there from Paris. Balenciaga sent them packing saying to

But there were also dark shades suggesting collaboration with the Nazis.

Who was he? Well I’ll tell you in a minute. But since he was a Spanish designer working in Paris I should play something suitable. And about perfect is the Torreadors song from Carmen. A song about bullfighting in Spain written by a French composer – that ticks all of the boxes.

Tag words: Adolf Hitler; Cristóbal Balenciaga; Nazis; Basque; Getaria; Marquesa de Casa Torres; Queen Victoria Eugenie; Queen Mother Maria Christina; Spanish Civil War; Wladzio Jaworowski d’Attainville; La Maison Blaenciaga; Eisa Costura; Florette Chelot; Mary Blume; Velásquez; Third Reich; Gloria Guinness; Mussolini; Lucien Lelong; Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture Parisienne; Franco; Ingebirgitt Hannah Hoess; Brigitte Hoess; Rudolf Hoess; Auschwitz; Bill Clinton; Al Gore;

He was like Dick Whittington. In 1835 a young boy of 14 set off walking to Paris looking for a job and to learn a trade. Today his company, Louis Vuitton, is a $42 billion dollar a year brand in a conglomerate with Moët and Hennessey. But what of its past that it doesn’t want to talk about. A past during the dark days when France was occupied by the Nazis. Follow me back to the time when Adolf Hitler ruled Europe and it didn’t look like that was going to change.

I can tell you that you were very unlikely to have heard Edith Piaf singing one particular song after May 1940 that she sang once only after the Nazis had occupied Paris. The songs lyrics tell of happiert times for the French – a time when they were confident of beating the Boche again. Some of the lyrics go “I can’t stand Hitler, the Nazis seem to forget that we were the people who slammed them in the first world war”. Edith Piaf had recorded that song after World War 2 had started but before the shock of the collapse of France just 8 months later. Probably by accident one day after Paris was occupied by the Germans, French radio presenter, Pierre Hiegel, accidentally played the “B” side of one of Edith Piaf’s records and THAT song went out on the air. It seems that nothing happened to him. He was a lucky man.

Tag words: Dick Whittington; Louis Vuitton; Moët and Hennessey; Nazis; Adolf Hitler; Boche; Edith Piaf; Pierre Hiegel; Clemence Emilie Parriaux; Monsieur Maréchal; Empress Eugénie de Montijo; Napoleon III; Tuileries Palace; Château de Saint-Cloud; LV; Maréchal Phillippe Pétain; Battle of Verdun; Third Republic; Gestapo; Vichy; Julius Caesar; Unsinkable Molly Brown; Château d’Yquem; Veuve Clicquot; Marc Jacobs; Guerlain; Pierre-François Guerlain; Chalimar; TAG Heuer; Edouard Heuer; Techniques d’Avant Garde; Bvlgari; Sotirios Voulgaris; la dolce vita; Fendi; Sephora;

Audrey Hepburn. Princess Diana. Kate Moss. What famous woman style icon isn’t known for her little black dress. For Hepburn, it was her Hubert de Givenchy in 1961, for Princess Diana it was Christina Stambolia in 1994, also known as “The Revenge Dress,” and Kate Moss is always wearing a show-stopping LBDs. So, where’s its power come from?

The LBD possesses what so many women want to achieve with their style: effortless elegance. If effortless elegance seems like a paradox, it’s because it is, and, like many evergreen fashion trends, it relies on tension. The Paste website says that the LBD doesn’t give the woman who wears it anything to hide behind—the dress insists that its wearer shine. Coco Chanel said that “Scheherazade is easy. A Little Black Dress is difficult”. Chanel, of course, is credited for having originated the LBD. But in 1940, when the Germans occupied much of France, including Paris, Coco Chanel did something that you might find surprising.

Tag words: Audrey Hepburn; Princess Diana; Kate Moss; Hubert de Givenchy; Christina Stambolia; The Revenge Dress; Coco Chanel; Little Black Dress; LBD; Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel; Cistercian convent orphanage; Etienne Balsan; Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich; Ernest Beaux; Chanel No 5; Igor Stravinsky; Wertheimers; Théophile Bader; Galeries Lafayette; Pierre Wertheimer; Société des Parfums Chanel; Hugh Richard Arthur Grosvenor; La Pausa; Pablo Picasso; Serge Diaghilev; Winston Churchill; Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage; Joseph Goebbels; The Ritz; Ritz Hotel; Herman Goring; André Palasse; Baron Louis de Vaufreland; Nazi Germany; Brian Wallace; General Walter von Schellenberg; Heinrich Himmler; Félix Amiot; Karl Lagerfeld; Marcel Haedrich; Marie-Claire; Little Coco; 'Ko Ko Ri Ko;

It’s 1939 in Germany and the future is looking bright – although there’s just a possibility of war. But in the 6 years since their new and charismatic leader, Adolf Hitler, was elected things have just have been getting better and better (though not so much if you’re a Jew though). Unemployment had been at 30% when Hitler came to power. By 1938 there wasn’t any.

German self esteem and pride has reached an all time high. Hitler has taken back the Ruhr. Austria had been enthusiastically absorbed into the new empire that is going to last for a thousand years. The Germans in the Sudetenland district of Czechoslovakia, after a tense confrontation with England and France, have become part of the new empire. Hitler has even gone on to take over the rest of Czechoslovakia. It wouldn’t be long now before he gets Danzig back and even maybe the bits of Prussia that Germany had been forced to give to Poland at the end of World War I.

So when you turn your radio on at the end of a long day (working hours in Germany had stretched out to 60 hours a week by now – but there’s a lot to do) you might have heard this popular song (everyone had radios - Hitler wanted to be able to reach his fellow Germans whenever needed for his important messages).

The Nazis especially put a premium on smart uniforms.

Tag words: Adolf Hitler; Hugo Boss; Nazis; Heinrich Boss; Luise Boss; Nazi Party; German Labour Front; Reich Air Protection; Brownshirts; SS; Waffen SS; Josefa Gisterek; Auschwitz; Buchenwald; Eugen Holly; Chris Hemsworth; GQ Awards; Russell Brand;