Dan Snow's History Hit - 80th Anniversary of the First Arctic Convoy

Episode Date: August 20, 2021

As the Soviet Union reeled from the shock of the German invasion in 1941 it asked for aid from Britain and its allies and the arctic convoys was a key part of the response. Desperate to keep the Soviets in the war and fighting the Nazi war machine Winston Churchill agreed to deliver massive amounts of material aid. Massive naval and merchant fleet operations carried material through the frigid waters north of Norway from Britain to Murmansk. This was an extremely perilous journey though and one that Churchill described as “the worst in the world”. The weather was frequently abysmal with ships covered in ice or totally exposed by the midnight sun, the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine had almost constant access to the convoy route and some of Germany's most powerful surface units, as well as submarines, lay in wait for the convoys. But, despite the difficulties and setbacks, the bravery of the merchantmen and their naval counterparts enabled many millions of tonnes of vital war supplies to be delivered to the Soviet Union and help keep its war effort alive. Dan is joined by Nick Hewitt, Head of Collections and Research at The National Museum of the Royal Navy, to remember the vital work of the Arctic Convoys.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. Just earlier this month was the 80th anniversary of the first Arctic convoy, the first convoy that left British ports, headed up over the top of Norway into the Arctic to keep the Soviet war effort supplied as their armies fell back, reeling before the German onslaught in the summer and autumn of 1941. This was Winston Churchill's response to Soviet pleas for assistance. Stalin had a pretty extensive shopping list when Churchill approached him after Operation Barbarossa began. Stalin hoped the British might be able to open a second front, the British would be able to send troops to the Soviet Union or mountains of supplies. Well, send troops to the Soviet Union or mountains of supplies. Well, this was Churchill's first offer,

this convoy carrying vital war material to help the Soviet war engine rebuild itself and eventually drive back the Germans. The Arctic convoys were described by Winston Churchill as the worst journey on earth. Dark, freezing cold, terrible weather in near constant range of German submarines and aircraft based in Norwegian bases and ports. And in the winter months, that journey had to be completed in almost total darkness. It could be terrifying and thankless. For the anniversary of the Arctic Convoys, we've got a documentary going out on historyhit.tv. It's our digital history channel. It's like Netflix, but just for history documentaries. No messing around with other stuff. Who wants to watch other stuff? Someone came up to me on the street the other day, and they said how much they love watching History Hit TV, but their partner was less happy because

their partner was not a history fan. I said, your partner will be after a few more months of exposure, of brainwashing. They will join the revolution as well. Anyway, if you're a history fan, you need to get to historyhit.tv. You can watch the Arctic Convoy documentary. You can watch any of the other hundreds of documentaries we've got on there, stretching all the way back to the Stone Age. You're going to love that. But before you do that, you can listen to this podcast because this is our special anniversary podcast on the Arctic Con convoys we're talking to one of my favorite naval historians nick hewitt he's head of research and collections at the national museum of the royal navy he has worked alongside me as a tv presenter back in 2016 on the program about the battle of jutland he was a brilliant contributor

to the history hit recent documentary about sinking the bismarck he was absolutely fantastic at that and he's perhaps most well known at the moment for being the lead the person who made lct 7074 the landing craft tank 7074 d-day veteran rescued from being a wreck to now being one of the finest restored ships in britain's national collection so well done nick hewitt for that as well as his many many other achievements so you'll hear from nick hewitt, for that, as well as his many, many other achievements. So you'll hear from Nick Hewitt coming up. Please go over to historyhit.tv, check out the documentary.

And before you do, here's the Arctic Convoys. Nick, good to be with you in my HQ, in the study. Yeah, it's remarkable. I've never seen so many books. It's fantastic. Well, it's certainly good to have you in here. I've talked to you enough while sitting in here and we're just having a beer. I've just broken a chair. So things are off to a great start. I didn't expect that. That was an unusual beginning. I always like to surprise.

Speaking of things that were unexpected, Churchill and Stalin's new sudden friendship, both of them made careers basically berating the capitalist west or salin respectively or the bolshevik revolution and leninist salinism respectively it was quite a sudden as soon as hitler invaded i've been to national archives i've seen the correspondence they strike up a conversation yeah so this is very much a marriage of convenience there is no love lost clearly as you say they've been on opposite sides of the political spectrum for decades but churchill famously goes into parliament he's questioned on it, I'm paraphrasing now, but basically says if Hitler invaded hell,

then I would think very favourably about the devil himself. Britain and the British Empire are holding off the Germans on their own. The Russians are not an ideal ally, but it is an ally, and clearly they have to make some common ground, and the common ground is fighting Germans. It's fascinating because we think, well, yes, sent supplies stalin he wanted troops yeah right from the beginning the russians want a second front the general pattern for the arctic convoys is they always want more than the western allies are able to provide he wants troops he wants a second front

very very rapidly he wants british troops in russia it's you know phenomenal and completely unachievable obviously but if you don't ask you you don't get, right? And what's going on the British side? Because obviously Britain's trying to stockpile its own supplies, keep its own industries and arsenals full and operating. Does Churchill face arguments within his war machine about what to give to the Soviets? Yeah, I mean, there's a real tension there because obviously Britain's fighting an active campaign in North Africa. They're trying to build up reserves in the UK, both to defend the UK, because in 1941 there's still a genuine concern that the Germans might invade. We know all with hindsight now that the Germans didn't have the capability to do that,

and Russia at the same time, but they didn't know that then, not really. And then of course you've got the increased tension around American aid coming in to Britain. They're very reluctant to see that siphoned off and sent to the russians and that gets worse actually as the supply system starts to develop and they do start to send things the absolute worst thing that the british see is desperately needed war supplies piling up on the dock in because the russian internal communication system is so shambolic they can't get the stuff to the front line for a while but the decision is made. Churchill sort of wins an internal battle. And it's August 1941, so it's pretty rapidly after the German invasion.

It's very rapidly, and it's extraordinary that they managed to do that because, of course, the other thing that's in short supply is maritime transport capacity. So, you know, every hull that's being used to go to Russia is a hull that's not going across the Atlantic. We must remember, of course, that the Arctic convoys are not the only route. So you have essentially a land route that goes up through Iran and into the southern end of the Soviet Union. A lot of material, and as the war progresses even more, a huge amount goes through that route. You also have a kind of air bridge through Siberia

from the US once the US is in the war, material going that way as well. But the Arctic convoys are really important, partly because it's the most immediate route it's the quickest way to get stuff there but also it's a very visual signal of support to the russians and that's important signal to send to the russians but it's also an important signal to send to people in the uk because there's a strong labor movement in britain you know there's a lot of sympathy amongst working class people in Britain for the Soviet Union when it is invaded. There were calls for aid to Russia right from the second the Germans invade. And it's a very visual symbol that we're taking risks to support Russia, if that makes sense. Initially, was it primarily symbolic, do you think, those first few convoys?

Were they important? I think there's an interesting question around that. I think there is a lot of symbolism always in the Arctic convoys. Interestingly, though, if you look back to the Cold War, we kind of went too far the other way. And I think there was a conclusion that it was all symbolic and it didn't really matter. And it was Russian T-34s that won the war. The truth is somewhere in the middle.

There's a lot of symbolism, I think, in sending tanks and aircraft, the fighting tools of war, if you like. Frankly, the tanks the British are churning out in 1941-42 are not as good as the stuff the Russians are building themselves. You're sending Matildas and Valentines. But where it gets really important is in the stuff that is just frankly not glamorous. So the one I always like to cite, and I can't remember the number in my head now, but the thousands and thousands of miles of telephone wire, American trucks, railway engines. There's a whole mass of stuff that goes out there that doesn't get filmed in the propaganda films. And on that,

the Russians are absolutely dependent. The fact that they're getting this stuff from the West means they can focus on building T-34s and churning out rifles. What about the journey itself? Talk to me about the hazards of sailing on what I think Churchill called the worst journey on earth. Yeah, the worst journey in the world. It is a really difficult route. Clearly the environmental conditions up there are appalling. It's freezing cold, terrible gales, all that kind of stuff. You only last a few minutes if you go in the water. But the kind of strategic coastline issue is a real problem there. The Germans are obviously sitting in Norway and in the winter months, when the convoys are pushed south by the

ice sheet they are so close to the Norwegian coast they're within easy striking range of German aircraft they're exposed to a wider range of threats probably than maybe anywhere else except possibly the Mediterranean so they're exposed to surface ships they're exposed to air attack they're exposed to U-boats they're exposed to air attack, they're exposed to U-boats, they're exposed to almost everything and they're being funneled through this very very narrow gap between the ice and the northern tip of Norway. Now the advantages they've got in the winter is you've got almost total darkness for the winter months so that's good. You get the summer and the ice pack moves so you've got a bit more maneuvering room but in the summer you've got almost total daylight which makes life very very easy for the Luftwaffe. Nobody is particularly good in the Second World War at hitting ships at night,

nobody's air force is that great at it so the Luftwaffe become a much more potent threat in the summer. So you add all that together there's nowhere they can vary their route, it's pretty obvious where they're going and the environmental conditions are appalling and what you end up with then is each Russian convoy almost becomes a fleet action they have very very substantial parts of the home fleet supporting every single arctic convoy because it's the only way to get them through so in the environmental stuff the images we have of the arctic convoys is people chipping massive icicles off i mean the seawater freezing as soon as it touches the steel on the deck. You've met those veterans, you've read their accounts.

Was it the worst journey? We need to be careful with that. I met at least one veteran who described service on the east coast of the UK in the winter of 3940 as the worst winter he'd ever known because it was a terrible, terrible winter. But the kind of relentlessness of the Arctic run, the dreadful conditions that they had at the other end, the spray would break over the fo'c'sle and it would immediately freeze. So there were things they had to do there

that they didn't do anywhere else, periodically traversing the turrets to make sure they weren't iced up, chipping ice, going out there with steam hoses to blast it off the deck. They're dressed up like mummies, they're so wrapped up in... today we're all familiar now with wonderful kind of equipment for living and working in those kind of conditions. They had a duffle coat, auffel coat and some oil skins, so they're really not prepared for it. And they have fur mittens supplied by the civilian population of the UK. The equipment's not good, the conditions are awful, and it's constant.

So yeah, really, really grim. And not much relief when they get to the other end either. Are the crews assigned to the Arctic Convoys? They don't go, right, you're doing Arctic Convoy this one, and then you're going down to the Med for something. I mean, once you're in for one, do you tend to do several? They tended to do tours up there, but they did rotate ships through. So the Arctic convoys are a home fleet operation fundamentally,

and that's where the difference is. So the Atlantic Western Approaches Command runs that. Western Approaches Command doesn't really have major surface ships. It's mostly escorts. The home fleet runs the Arctic con runs the arctic convoys most convoys and i am generalizing here you have three distinct groups of warships associated with them you have the close escort which is your classic convoy escort of corvettes and older destroyers huddled around the merchant ships protecting them but then they'd usually have a screen of cruisers

so maybe two or three cruisers from the home fleet operating just off the convoy to protect them against any serious German heavy ships that come out. And also there'd be a battleship task group from the home fleet that would also come out as a distant cover, usually as far as Bear Island. So they're a huge and very complex operation. And then you've got the same thing going the other way when they bring the convoys back of mostly empty ships but very valuable hulls obviously. This is the Dan Snow's History. It's the 80th anniversary of the start of the Arctic convoys. More after this. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence.

Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive but to conquer whether you're preparing for assassin's creed shadows or fascinated by history and great stories listen to echoes of history a ubisoft podcast brought to you by history hits there are new episodes every week I guess one of the reasons you've got the capital ships

is you've got good old Tirpitz, the most powerful German battleship remaining, sitting in a fjord in Norway, arguably poised to come out. The lone queen of the north. And again, I think hindsight is a really treacherous thing when we look at Tirpitz. We look back now and we understand the orders that the German Navy were operating

under to not seek major action. And we understand the fear that Hitler had for deploying battleships. And we look back now and think that she wasn't going to come out and fight a surface action. But again, they did not know that at the time. We know the Bismarck action was a success. The British are haunted by how close they came to losing Bismarck and what it cost them to catch her and they're aware of the extraordinary amount of luck they had in taking down Bismarck so there was a huge amount of concern about what would happen if Tirpitz came out and also she hasn't got to get out into the Atlantic to find an Arctic convoy she hasn't got very far to go and the results would have been absolutely devastating so yeah usually one battleship somewhere near the convoy until they get past bear island and at that

point the waters are just too risky they're out of friendly air cover range and also usually home fleet aircraft carrier ironically what we know now is that's what really frightened the germans because of the bismarck experience so both side strategies in the arctic are shaped by that battle with the bismarck there were some of the most significant Anglo-German clashes of these years were in the Arctic, weren't they? I mean, whether it's PQ-17 or Barents Strait, I mean, the convoys did often precipitate quite significant action. Yeah, absolutely. You've got PQ-17, I mean, you could do a whole podcast on. It's an extraordinary story, absolutely incredible, and really really really reveals what a threat Tirpitz

was because the whole disaster starts with a piece of what turned out to be duff intelligence that Tirpitz is out so we should say pq-17 was the code name of a convoy so it's heading off to northern russia yeah so the first convoy to russia is called dervish code name dervish and then they start to run into a cycle where they are pq out to russia and then qp are the convoys back and then after PQ-17 they run PQ-18 but obviously the code name has a bit of a bad press by that point so they then change them to JWs and RAs so those are the code names for the convoys and yeah you get a significant action around that you get another less well-known action really around PQ-18 which also has

devastating losses it just more of it gets fought through but it's hit very very hard by the German Air Force and you have the Battle of the Barents Sea which is a full-on engagement between the German heavy cruiser Hipper and one of the pocket battleships against the British screening force of cruisers that's a proper naval battle that nobody ever really knows about

and you get the Battle of North Cape in Boxing Day 43 when the Scharnhorst is sunk so plenty of serious surface action up there And I want to come back to all those but North Cape is sunk so plenty of serious surface action up there and i want to come back to all those but north cape is that really sort of the death knell of german surface activity yeah very much so it's really interesting north cape it's the last big gun naval battle 14 european waters ever in history and interestingly it is for without the aid of submarines without the aid of aircraft it's a straight up fight between essentially three

british cruisers and the battleship duke of york and the sharnhorst and the sharnhorst is sunk goes down with her colors flying and all guns blazing and that's the end of it then that's the end of german surface threat really because hitler furious orders them all basically stay at home after that no he does that after baron c so interestingly after baron c because baron c is an inconclusive action and essentially the Germans are driven off by three British cruisers, which probably they should have given

a better account of themselves against. At that point, Hitler has a rage about the surface fleet. He orders the entire surface fleet, all the major capital ships broken up and their guns recycled into coastal batteries. Admiral Raeder resigns. Admiral Dönitz takes over. Dönitz is obviously a submarine man,

but he's not stupid. And the single most potent threat to a convoy is the combination between submarines and a surface ship. So although they retire some of the obsolete units and they go to the Baltic and become training units, he does keep a nucleus of capital ships and they're all in Norway. But after North Cape, Tirpitz has been basically immobilized by a succession of attacks from miniature submarines and aircraft Scharnhorst is now sunk Hipper's mechanically unreliable and lives in the Baltic along with Prinz Eugen so they just haven't got the ships to threaten really because by that point in the war the prospect of bringing a ship out of the Baltic and up north is very very difficult for them. And so talk to me again about PQ-17 and why it shows what the risk that

German, even a rumour of German activity provoked, but also the risk that all those convoys faced if they broke up and scattered. I tend to go out on a limb a bit with PQ-17. I don't think, given the information they had, I don't think there's much else they could have done. So PQ-17 is a normal Arctic convoy. It's making its way across to Russia. It has that mixed escort that I described. So there's old destroyers and corvettes and a couple of laughing anti-aircraft cruisers. They're actually banana boats with anti-aircraft guns on them. You know, a real mixed mishmash. And then there's three cruisers in close cover and they are attacked initially by the German air force and they give a very good

account of themselves the escort is perfect for doing that they drive off these German aircraft they shoot a couple down morale is high you know this is 4th of July ironically as you know the American ships in company celebrate 4th of July as the convoy is passing through but then this information reaches London that the Tirpitz is sorting and actually what they initially hear is that the turpitz is sorting with a powerful battle group actually with the abelsheer or might be lutzal one of the pocket battleships anyway and one of the heavy cruisers so it's a very powerful battle group and the germans are actually planning this this is what we tend to forget the germans are planning a sortie they do actually start a sortie but they lose one ship to a mine and then

they lose another one that runs aground and Tirpitz goes out so far and they turn around and go back again the perils we learn from this though is trying to second guess commanders at sea from London so the decision is basically made at the admiralty that the convoy should be scattered which is an entirely appropriate response if you have got a capital ship coming in because a capital ship would overwhelm those fairly flimsy close escorts and then devastate the convoy so you have to make it harder to find because nothing that's a close escort to the convoy is going to stand up to Tirpitz so they order the destroyers of the escort to form up with the cruiser close escort

and go and fight what would have been a pretty forlorn action against Tirpitz and the merchant ships scatter. Unfortunately, of course, Tirpitz isn't at sea. She's gone back. There is no threat from heavy units. And what you've now got is a lot of scattered individual merchant ships in that still fairly narrow belt of water. And they are picked off by German submarines and aircraft individually.

There are some phenomenal acts of heroism and initiative. There's the story of the trawler that took three merchant ships into the ice pack and hid essentially. Incredible stuff. They found one of the merchant ships with them was carrying a cargo of whitewash. So they pulled out the whitewash, they painted the ships white and hid in the ice pack for a couple of days. Others made their way singly to Nevaeh Zemlya, and they kind of formed up there.

So a few of them did get to Russia, but the losses were appalling, and it was a huge, huge disaster and a humiliation. And also the Russians lose faith at this point. The Russians are always very unforgiving. There's never any kind of sense of feeling bad for the losses and the dead sailors maybe we can forgive them for that to be completely brutal about it we're talking about a few hundred merchant mariners when the russians are losing thousands and thousands every day on the eastern front so stalin's immediate response is well when

you're going to send me more stuff because you've lost all my stuff it's a very very difficult occasion it has a significant impact on the relationship between the royal navy and the merchant navy because the merchants say this perspective is the royal navy ran away and left them and it also does impact on anglo-american relations because quite a few of the ships in convoy are american and you know they're fairly significant casualties so it's a complete disaster in terms of its overall strategic impact on the war though really very very limited i would say speaking of that we haven't mentioned the merchant navy so the navy ships are escorting fleets of civilian crude pre-war transport vessels no armor plating no well no proper armament really

by that point in the war they're not all pre-war so you're getting the liberty ships are starting to come through but yeah they're just freighters they are limited by international law about what they can actually have in terms of armament so most of them have got a couple of anti-aircraft guns and an elderly gun on the back end because it can only be defensive armament if it's on the rear of the ship at aft if you're running away you could shoot but you can't have one up forward so very weird stuff and the older ships tend not to be pushed up there the older ships tend to be on the atlantic and the uk coastal convoy routes but there's a right mix and they are crewed essentially by civilians again we look back now and there's

been rightly a big move to recognize the merchant navy as the fourth service and all that kind of thing that was very late in coming in the second world war for an awfully long time they were civilians working for companies and their terms and conditions and pay varied wildly depending on what company they worked for and many authors have written about the most shameful thing for quite a long part of the war is you know if they were torpedoed and went in a lifeboat their pay stopped they weren't being paid until they then got another ship so very difficult conditions for them. Equally, the Royal Navy sailors used to be jealous because when they were being paid,

they were paid significantly more than an RN sailor. But yeah, very difficult, vulnerable. And again, always that issue that if they went in the water in the Arctic, they really wouldn't last very long. I heard a story, it may not be true, but actually almost preferred the winter because you're going to die straight away when you went into the water. In the summer, you might last a minute or two it's a bit grim

i can well believe that there's all sorts of stories around what's the best way to go and some of them would say they actually preferred it to be you know in a tanker that just went up wumpf and that was it wouldn't feel anything there's no good way fundamentally to die at that sea i guess the really strange thing about the ar Arctic is the weather conditions and the environmental conditions which are universally appalling as far as the kind of enemy action for every merchant sailor who's been torpedoed you can find another three who never saw a German because it's the luck of the draw whether yours is the convoy that gets attacked or not but those conditions in the winter especially are pretty much unreplicated although you talk to a sailor on an Atlantic convoy

where the entire upper works of the ship have been stripped off by a wave, everyone has their own story, I think I would say. It's just a reminder, and you've been such a champion of this in the museum and media, of for all that we talk about Stalingrad, we talk about D-Day,

and we talk about Atal-la-Bolge, the maritime environment is so important here. It is. I mean, I've written about this. Control of the seas is why the Western Allies are able to win their bit of the war. I fully accept the what if about could the Soviet Union have won with or without Western aid. I don't know the answer to that question. That was a land war to all intents and purposes.

But the war that the Western Allies fight from the fall of France in the spring of 1940 until D-Day is an amphibious war that uses the sea for supply, for moving armies around. You can move your armies around and fight where the other guy is weak. And that's what they're doing in the Mediterranean. And this is what they're able to do. This is what sea power buys you. It's so vital. But equally, I find that we forget the stories of sailors. They're just not there. They're anonymous in so many general histories, if you like, of how the war is fought. You don't find sailors. And I think some of that is the global scale is quite hard for people to comprehend. And also it's the maritime

dimension that knits those theatres of war together and makes it a world war. You know, if you want to understand why an operation in Asia Pacific isn't possible, it's because the shipping that's required to do it is being used in the Mediterranean or whatever, pick your example. So it's hugely important. The war doesn't work for the Western Allies without sea power. The Arctic convoys go through right to the end of the war? Yeah, in fact, weirdly, the last Arctic convoys are run after the war ends.

It's supplies that they've already agreed to give to the Russians and they've been planned and delivered. So I think there's at least one that goes through after the end of the war. And it does remain dangerous till the end. U-boats are still operating out of Norway right up to the end of the war. Norway's obviously not liberated until Germany surrenders. So there are still threats. The Luftwaffe is pretty much a spent force because they haven't got any fuel,

but the U-boats are still active. And then they run a convoy coming back, dismantling base infrastructure and bringing back UK and US nationals from Russia. So Nick, obviously the debate rages, but what do you think is the real significance of this artery of supplies to the Soviet Union during the Second World War? So I'm going to stick my neck out here and I'm going to say, although there is a material importance to what is delivered, I think the significance is symbolic,

but equally, I think we are overly dismissive of the importance of symbolism in a fragile alliance war. And actually that strong statement to the Russians, not just that we were giving them stuff, but that people were risking their lives and dying to give them stuff was a really important gesture to make. But also there's another dimension that I think other historians have argued, but it doesn't get played up as much as I think it should be, which is later in the war, when sea control is a little bit more assured, there's no doubt that the Royal Navy are using this as an opportunity to bring the Germans out and they see it as an opportunity later in the war when the Russians are less dependent on those supplies the advantage of pulling out German surface ships so you can sink them and giving them a target to encourage them to come out is clear and actually North Cape is a perfect example

of that the convoy is used in effect as bait to polish off one of the last German surface units. So the Arctic convoys are hugely important in a fragile alliance. Delivering what your ally wants you to do is really important and we shouldn't really get hung up on Matilda tanks piled up on the dockside in Murmansk or any of those things.

It's the demonstration of support is vital, otherwise alliances fall apart. Nick, thank you very much. You've got a book coming out soon, so you'll come back on and talk to us about that, I'm sure. Definitely will, yeah. Battle of the Same Bay.

D-Day is a naval battle. D-Day is a naval battle. Here we go. Brilliant. Thanks, man. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history,

our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. pull out project if you did feel like doing me a favor if you go to wherever you get your podcast and give it a review give a rating obviously a good one ideally then that would be fantastic and feel free to share it we obviously depend on listeners depend on more and more people finding out about it depend on good reviews to keep the listeners coming in really appreciate it thank you Thank you.