Episode 2: What if the Bullet Missed JFK?

At one o'clock in the afternoon on November 22, 1963, Walter Cronkite announced to a stunned nation that the 35th president of the United States was dead. Slain by an assassin's bullet, John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s tragic death would go on to inspire some of the most enlightened legislation of the era and, in his absence, plunge the nation into one of the most traumatic conflicts in its history. But what if the events that sunny day in late November had gone a little differently — the car been driving a little faster or the order to remove the bubble glass rescinded. What if, on that fateful day in Dallas, the assassin’s bullet had missed JFK.

Skull Session: What if Germany won The Battle of Britain?

Each episode of the World that Wasn’t comes with its own Skull Session, a companion piece that explores the themes and ideas of the previous show through fan feedback, message boards and books. In this podcast we hear what YOU think would happen if the Germans won the battle of Britain and also explore the alternate historiography -  books, films and documentaries on the subject to get a fuller picture of the alternate events of 1940. With dramatizations of Kenneth Macksey’s book: Invasion, recaps of the operation sea lion war game at Sandhurst in 1974 and the plan by German state secretary Erhard Milch to invade Britain hot on the heals of the Dunkirk evacuation, this is a must listen addition to episode one.

Episode 1 : What if Germany Won The Battle of Britain?

On the 4th of September 1940 in a long address at the Sportpalast Hitler shifted the Luftwaffe’s attention away from military targets to focus instead on London and other major English cities in retaliation for the Royal Air Force’s night bombing raids over Germany.  This shift in strategy would prove to be the unraveling of Hitler’s campaign to invade Britain, giving the RAF precious time to recover from the relentless bombing raids on airfields and manufacturing plants. While London took the full force of Hitler’s fury, the RAF were able to regroup, rebuild and remount a last ditch effort to drive the Luftwaffe from British skies. But what if this pivotal battle had gone a different way? What if Hitler had stayed the course and continued to bomb already exhausted military targets, gaining dominance of the skies over the last resistant force in Europe? What would the repercussions have been for the world if the RAF had lost The Battle of Britain?