The Danger Zone (DZ)

The Danger Zone (DZ)

By Paul FordyceHistory
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The Danger Zone (DZ) episodes

  • DZ Season 024 Part 03 Did Australia Produce the Best Tank of World War II? The Sentinel. Jason Belgrave. Final Part.
    In November 1940 during the dark days of World War II, when it looked like Hitler had won the war, Australia, which didn’t even have a car industry, decided to design and build a tank. It turned out to be one of the best tanks in the world at that time. This incredible, success, story is told for the first time, in
    detail, in a book written by Cairns’ own, Jason Belgrave, assistant manager at the Australian Armour and Artillery Museum at Smithfield. And I have him here
    with me for this programme to tell us about his book and to finalise, from my two previous programme, this amazing story of the Australian tank that they
    called Sentinel.
    The book is available at the Australian Armour and Artillery Museum, as well as from their on-line store, and also from the publishers, Jabiru Publishing. Tag words: Australian Armour and Artillery Museum;
    14 min
  • DZ Season 024 Part 02 Did Australia Produce the Best Tank of World War II? The Sentinel. Jason Belgrave.
    In November 1940 during the dark days of World War II when it looked like Hitler had won the war, Australia, which didn’t even have a car industry, decided to
    design and build a tank. It turned out to be one of the best tanks in the world at that time. This incredible, successful, story is told for the first time in detail
    in a book written by Cairns’ own, Jason Belgrave at the Australian Armour and Artillery Museum at Smithfield. And I have him here with me for this programme
    to tell us about his book and to continue, from my previous programme, this amazing story of the Australian tank called Sentinel. The book is available at
    the Australian Armour and Artillery Museum, as well as from their on-line store, and from the publishers, Jabiru Publishing. Tag words: Australian Armour and Artillery Museum
    27 min
  • DZ Season 024 Part 01 Did Australia Produce the Best Tank of World War II? The Sentinel. Jason Belgrave.
    In April 2016, the Australian government entered into a very weird contract with the French company, DCNS to convert DCNS’s nuclear powered submarine model into diesel powered submarines for the Royal Australian Navy. DCNS had to know that even if they were able to get a submarine that had been designed as a nuclear powered submarine into a working diesel powered submarine the results would most likely be pitiful. The Australian government experts who went with this French submarine really had to know that too. 
    It would have been easier for Australia to buy a tank and convert it into a jet fighter.
     So you have to marvel at how, in November 1940 during the dark days of World War II when it looked like Hitler had won the war, that Australia, which didn’t even have a car industry back in the day, decided to design and build a tank. It turned out to be one of the best tanks in the world at that time. This incredible, successful, story is told for the first time in a book written by Cairns’ own, Jason Belgrave at the Australian Armour and Artillery Museum at Smithfield. And I have him here with me for this and the next two programmes to tell us about his book and this amazing story of the Australian tank called the Sentinel.
    Tag words: Jason Belgrave; Australian Cruiser Tank; Sentinel; Colonel William Douglas; Tiger Moth; Wirraway; Australian Armour and Artillery Museum;
    26 min
  • DZ Season 023 Part 01 Before the War in the Ukraine - There Was Russia v Finland - the Winter War. First and Final Part

    There’s nothing worse than a bad neighbour. Your life can go completely down the toilet. Sometimes moving away is an option – and that’s an option often worth taking. But sometimes you don’t even have that choice. For example, if you’re Finland or the Ukraine, and your neighbour is Russia. Or you’re Tibet, or Vietnam, or India, and your neighbour is China. 

    Today’s programme is about a tiny country that was being monstered by its neighbour Russia and all of the problems that brought with it – and the surprising outcome for a country that was determined to fight for its freedom – like the Ukraine when it was invaded by Russia in 2022.

    Tag words: Hitler; Stalin; Latvia; Estonia; Lithuania; Finland; Leningrad; St Petersburg; Red Army; Molotov; Väinö Tanner; Otto Kuusinen; President Roosevelt; Helsinki; Klim Voroshilov; Simo Häyhä; The White Death; NKVD; Nazi Germany; League of Nations; Neville Chamberlain;

    19 min
  • DZ Season 022 Part 12 Big Brands and the Nazis - Disney. Final Part.

    Taika Waititi claimed to have made Oscar history as the first indigenous New Zealander, Maori, to win an Oscar. Well it turns out that he’s half indigenous.

    His mother is Jewish. Sometimes he uses her surname as a professional name – Cohen. Shopping for the best ethnicity has become an important part of our
    world today. Ironically this isn’t so different to the issues discussed in his Oscar winning movie JoJo Rabbit – set in Nazi Germany where, like the people who love identity politics today, ethnicity was a big thing. Some things never change do they. JoJo Rabbit is a movie from the Disney studios – poking fun at Hitler,
    the Nazis and anti-semitism. Funnily enough all the things that Walt Disney loved and admired – Hitler, the Nazis and anti-semitism. If he was running the studio today this movie would not have been made. Today’s programmes looks at Walt Disney and the Nazis – then and now.

    Tag words: JoJo Rabbit; Nazis; Johannes Betzler; Stephen Marchant; President Donald Trump; Mickey Mouse; Donald Duck; Third Reich; Walt Disney; Ub Iwerks; Steamboat Willie; Goofy; Snow White; Joseph Goebbels; Hitler; Charles Lindbergh; Leni Reifenstahl; Triumph of the Will; 1936 Berlin Olympic Games; Olympia; Kristallnacht; Art Babbitt; German American Bund; Pearl Harbour; Fantasia; Guadalcanal; Übermaus; Stalingrad; Bambi; The Third Reich Is All-Reich With Me; Pluto; Gestapo; President Franklin Delano Roosevelt;

    21 min
  • DZ Season 022 Part 11 Big Brands and the Nazis - Exxon Standard Oil
    One of the ritziest hotels in New York before and during World War 2, was the Hotel Pierre. It was a real life Café Americain from Casablanca. Filled with doubtful and flashy characters with Nazi-Fascist-Vichy backgrounds and connections. The hotel had been bought by John Paul Getty after a waiter had been rude to him when he was a guest. Getty bought the hotel so he could sack him. When Getty bought control of it he first employed an Austrian baron, then a German war veteran and an ex-U boat captain as managers. Among the residents living in luxury suites at the Pierre, on no visible income, was Countess Möhle. She spent her time making herself attractive to US Army officers. She was in a perpetual state of wide-eyed curiosity about military matters. Without Standard
    Oil, the greatest oil company in the World, giving Hitler a helping hand, World War 2 in Europe couldn’t have happened. Here’s this amazing true story.
    Tag words: Hitler; Heinz Guderian; Achtung Panzer; Standard Oil; Exxon; BP; Esso; IG Farben; Vacuum Oil Company; Ernst Kaltenbrunner; Adolf Eichmann; Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler; John Rockefeller Jr; John D Rockefeller; William Farish; Asuchwitz-Birkenau; Kilgore Committee;
    28 min
  • DZ Season 022 Part 10 Big Brands and the Nazis - Airbus
    This company designed the most produced fighter aircraft of World War II for the Nazis. The first operational jet fighter – faster and more heavily armed than
    any Allied fighter. Became part of the first modern European consortium to design jet passenger aircraft and many other types, is a serious challenge to
    Boeing’s monopoly. Made the first commercially viable digital fly-by-wire aircraft and the largest commercial airliner in the world. Another thing the world can thank Adolf Hitler for - Airbus. Listen to this fascinating and shocking story.
    Tag words: de Havilland Comet; Comet 1; Super Constellation; Boeing 707; European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company; EADS; DaimlerChrysler Aerospace; Messerschmitt-Boelkow-Blohm; MBB; Dornier; Messerschmitt; A300B; Ottobrun; Willy Messerschmitt; Me109; Me262; Albert Speer; Hitler; Auschwitz; Aron Tenenbaum; Airbus; Boeing 747 Jumbo; A380;
    27 min
  • DZ Season 022 Part 09 Big Brands and the Nazis - Krispy Kreme Donuts and Prêt-à-Manger

    What have Krispy Kreme Donuts, Prêt-à-Manger, Kylie Jenner Cosmetics, Coty Cosmetics, Calvin Klein Cosmetics, Dr Pepper, Jacobs Dowe Egberts (Moccona

    Coffee for instance) and Durex Condoms got in common? The Nazi Party and the holocaust. Don’t believe me? Then you’d better stay tuned in. And by the way –
    there are lots of songs with the words “Krispy Kreme” in the lyrics.

    Tag words: Nazi Party; Adolf Hitler; JAB; Albert Reimann Senior; Albert Reimann Junior; German Workers’ Party; Munich Putsch; Benckiser; Third Reich; Emilie Landecker; Alfred Landecker; Belzec; Sobibor; Paul Werneburg; Endsieg; Krispy Kreme Donuts; Kylie Cosmetics; Coty; Calvin Klein Cosmetics; Prêt-à-Manger; Dr Pepper; Jacobs; Dowe Egberts; Moccona Coffee; Durex Condoms;

    23 min
  • DZ Season 022 Part 08 Big Brands and the Nazis - Porsche

    Ferdinand Porsche – the man behind the amazing iconic German brand who brought new standards of excellence to racing and sports cars, invented and manufactured the world’s first hybrid car in 1898 as well as designing an all electric car. He designed the first Volkswagen beetle or Adolf Hitler. Designed the legendary World War II German Tiger tank, as well as the world’s heaviest tank ever, the 200 ton super heavy tank, the Maus. After the war he founded the iconic Porsche company. What a story! Stay tuned.

    Tag words: Ferdinand Porsche; Béla Egger Electrical company; Staatsgewerbeschule; Jakob Lohner & Co; Emperor Franz Joseph; Egger-Lohner; electric car; Semmering-Bergrennen race; Lohner-Porsche; hybrid; Emil Jellinek; Daimler Moteren Gesellschaft; Adolf Hitler; Volkswagen Beetle; Kubelwagen; Schwimmwagen; Tiger tank; Ferdinand; King Tiger; Jagdtiger; Maus; Cisitalia; Type 356;

    21 min
  • DZ Season 022 Part 07 Big Brands and the Nazis - Skoda

    In 1945 it looked like Nazi Germany had lost the war, but there was a huge BUT - the new Škoda flying saucer looked unbeatable and light years ahead of anything the Allies could put into the skies against it. It could fly at 2900 kph. The fastest Allied plane could only fly at less than half that speed. It could stop

    in mid-flight and hover. It could fly in any direction from wherever it was. It would have shot every Allied plane from the skies and given Germany total air supremacy. Final victory in World War II seemed to be in reach for the Germans. This Danger Zone programme looks at the Škoda company and the crucial part it played for Nazi Germany in World War II.

    Tag words: Volkswagen; Audi; SEAT; Bentley; Bugatti; Lamborghini; Porsche; Ducati; Scania; MAN; Václav Laurin; Václav Klement; Czech Republic; Czechoslovakia; Skoda-Hispano-Suiza; Joseph Vollmer; PzKfw III; PzKfw 35(t); PzKw 38(t); A7 tank; Adolf Hitler; Sudetenland; Neville Chamberlain; Reinhard Heydrich; Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; Wansee; Edvard Beneš; Skoda Works; Albert Goring; flying saucer; climate change; Iron Curtain; Communists; Lada; Estelle sedan; Prague; Prasna Brana; Velvet Revolution;

    25 min

About The Danger Zone (DZ)

From the publisher's feed

Paul conducts the guided tour at the Australian Armour and Artillery Museum, Cairns every Saturday at 10:30 am. Paul’s tour’s like what Carlsberg says about their beer, probably the best tour of an…