The War Office

In 1958, the 2nd Taiwan Strait Crisis broke out between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC). Cold War tensions had increased an already tense situation between the PRC, based on the Chinese mainland, and the ROC, in Taiwan. As the Communists gained the upper hand in the Chinese Civil War, the Chinese Nationalists, often called the Kuomintang, retreated to the island of Taiwan in late-1949. The so-called Two-Chinas remained in conflict for decades.

The crisis of 1958 was not the first time the two sides came into conflict in the Taiwan Strait. Beginning in September 1954, in what became known as the First Taiwan Strait Crisis, full-scale combat broke between the ROC and PRC, as Mao Zedong wanted the PRC to invade Taiwan. American intervention, and guarantees to protect the ROC moving forward, brought the crisis to an end.

After the beginning of the Great Leap Forward in the PRC, tensions flared up again in the Taiwan Strait. In August 1958, PRC artillery shelled the ROC controlled islands of Kinmen, also known as Quemoy, and the Matsu Islands. These islands are closer to the Chinese mainland coast than Taiwan. Dogfights also broke out pitting PRC MiG-15 and MiG-17s against ROC F-86 Sabres. Despite the MIG’s advantages in climbing ability and heavy cannons, the Sabres gained a new advantage in these dogfights; the AIM-9B “Sidewinder” air-to-air missile.

The Second Taiwan Strait Crisis wound down on 6 October when the PRC Mao’s government asked for a ceasefire. The crisis came to an end on 2 December 1958 after the U.S. Seventh Fleet was withdrawn and the ROC military reinforced their garrisons on the offshore islands. Yet this is not the end of the artillery bombardment as Mao orders the shelling of the islands to continue on odd-numbered days. The shelling will continue periodically for the next 21 years until the United States normalizes relations with the People’s Republic of China in 1979.

Thanks to:

Kendall Carll, the author of the article ‘Revisiting the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis: Strategic Lessons for Today’ and is a recent graduate of Harvard College.

Dr. John Franklin Copper, who is the author of Taiwan: Nation-State or Province?; China Diplomacy: The Washington-Taipei-Beijing Triangle; and Historical Dictionary of Taiwan (Republic of China);. He is the Stanley J. Buckman Distinguished Professor of International Studies (emeritus) at Rhodes College in Tennessee.
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On 13 October 1977, Lufthansa Flight 181, heading from Majorca in Spain to Frankfurt, West Germany was hijacked by four militants from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or PFLP. In response to the hijacking, the West German government dispatched GSG-9, Grenzschutzgruppe 9 or Border Guard Group 9 in English, which was created following the tragedy at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was a Marxist organization and an offshoot of the better-known Palestinian Liberation Organization. The PFLP was also connected to the Red Army Faction, a far-left militant group which had launched kidnappings and guerilla attacks in West Germany. The hijackers of Flight 181 are led by Zohair Akache, who went by the pseudonym Captain Martyr Mahmoud. Once they take control of the aircraft, the militants demand the release of Red Army Faction members held in West Germany.

The hijacked aircraft first flew to Rome and then Larnaca Airport in Cyprus followed by a refueling stop in Bahrain. The aircraft was next flown to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on October 15. The aircraft carrying the GSG-9 team has been following along and arrives in Dubai ready to storm Flight 181 and free the hostages. Ultimately this raid is called off and Flight 181 leaves for Aden in South Yemen on October 16. It is here that Captain Jürgen Schumann is shot dead by Akache, leaving Co-Pilot Jürgen Vietor alone to fly the aircraft.

Flight 181 arrives at its final destination of Mogadishu, Somalia on October 17. It is here that the rescue mission took place. Using the cover of darkness, Operation Feuerzauber, Magic Fire in English, started at 1am local time on October 18, 1977. Thirty GSG-9 Operators, led by Ulrich Wegener, stormed the aircraft. All the passengers and crew were rescued alive by GSG-9. Akache and Wabil Harb are killed aboard the aircraft while Hind Alameh later dies of her wounds. Suhaila Sayeh is wounded but survives and later serves time in a German prison.

Unlike the events of 1972, the rescue of the Lufthansa Flight 181 hostages was a success. As a result of the rescue mission, the work of GSG-9 shaped West Germany’s counterterrorism identity for decades.

Thanks to:

Dr. Martin Rupps, author of ‘Showdown Against RAF Terror: Helmut Schmidt’s Crisis Management in the German Autumn

Chris McNab, military historian and author of Storming Flight 181: GSG 9 and the Mogadishu Hijack 1977.
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New episodes will be released every Tuesday morning. If you enjoy the episodes, please help us grow the podcast by subscribing, liking, sharing, commenting, and listening to future releases.
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On 5 September 5th 1972, eight militants of Black September, a Palestinian militant group with ties to the Fatah faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, burst into one of the apartments of the Israeli delegation to the 1972 Munich Olympics. At gunpoint they take many Israeli hostages. One of the hostages was able to escape and two were killed in the apartment building after attempting to fight back against the militants.

The militants demand the release of 328 imprisoned Arabs and non-Arabs, including members of the German Red Army Faction, or they will begin shooting hostages. The West German police fail to rescue the hostages or to reach an agreement with the Black September militants to release the hostages in the Olympic Village. As a result, the militants and the remaining nine hostages were taken by helicopters to Fürstenfeldbruck Airfield, a remote Luftwaffe base about 12 miles west of Munich. Shortly after the arrival at the airfield, a shootout breaks out.It ends with all nine remaining Israeli hostages killed along with one West German police officer. During the shootout five of the eight perpetrators of the massacre are killed. Over the course the hostage taking at the Olympic Village and shootout at the airfield, eleven Israeli Olympic team members are killed.

These events played out on televisions all across the world displaying the poor handling of the situation by the West German government and police. This leads to changes as on 26 September 1972, in direct response to the poor handling of the hostage rescue attempt at the airfield, the West German government establishes Grenzschutzgruppe 9, or Border Protection Group 9, which is better known today as GSG-9. Five years after Munich, GSG-9 will be called upon to resolve another hostage crisis playing out on the world stage, the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 181.

Thanks to:

Professor Ofer Ashkenazi, author of ‘Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany’, and member of the 2023 Commission to investigate the Olympics attack in collaboration with the Leibniz Institute.

Dr. Aviva Guttmann, lecturer in Strategy and Intelligence at Aberystwyth University and author of Operation Wrath of God: The Secret History of European Intelligence and Mossad's Assassination Campaign.

Professor David Clay Large, author of ‘Munich 1972: Tragedy, Terror, and Triumph at the Olympic Games’ and ‘Nazi Games – The Olympics of 1936’. He is a senior fellow at the Institute of European Studies at University of Califorinia Berkeley and a professor at the Fromm Institute at the University of San Francisco.
You can listen to The War Office on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or The War Office Podcast YouTube Channel.

New episodes will be released every Tuesday morning. If you enjoy the episodes, please help us grow the podcast by subscribing, liking, sharing, commenting, and listening to future releases.
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Operation Overlord was one of the pivotal events of the Second World War. The Germans had been preparing for an Allied landing in Europe for many years. One of their attempts to keep the Allies out was the Atlantic Wall. This was a series of concrete emplacements, guns, barbed wire, and other obstacles located from the Arctic Circle in Norway to the Franco-Spanish border. Pas-de-Calais was heavily defended where as Normandy had less defences. This was a critical element in choosing the location of landings.

German commanders had a large influence on what unfolded when the Allies landed. Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt and General Erwin Rommel had different opinions on the best strategy to defeat the Allied landings. Rommel wanted German armour close to the coast to quickly defeat the Allies on the beaches while Rundstedt wanted the armour to defeat them inland. Hitler could not decide between the two approaches so a comprise was reached that didn't work out well for the Germans.

The largest question related to Operation Overlord is how much did the Germans know before the actual landings began? The Allied deception plans played a major role in keeping the Germans in the dark. The plans were well crafted and highly complex. It involved spies, fake divisions, and getting the Germans believe their false assumptions about when and where the landings would happen.

Operation Overlord was one of the most complex military operations in history and this podcast episode dives into how the Germans planned to defeat and how the Allies worked to confuse the Germans.

Thanks to:

Jonathon Trigg, historian and author of The Defeat of the Luftwaffe: The Eastern Front 1941-45, A Strategy for Disaster, Barbarossa Through German Eyes, and D-Day Through German Eyes.

James Holland, historian, co-host of the 'WW2 Pod: We Have Ways of Making You Talk' and author of Normandy '44: D-Day and the Battle for France, Brothers in Arms: One Legendary Tank Regiment's Bloody War from D-Day to VE-Day, and Cassino '44 Five Months of Hell in Italy.

Dr. Klaus-Jürgen Bremm, historian and author of Normandy 1944: The Decisive Battle For Europe
You can listen to The War Office on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or The War Office Podcast YouTube Channel.

New episodes will be released every Tuesday morning. If you enjoy the episodes, please help us grow the podcast by subscribing, liking, sharing, commenting, and listening to future releases.
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By the end of June 6, 1944, D-Day, thousands of Allied troops had landed in Normandy, France. They were supported by tanks, artillery, and thousands of tons of supplies. How did the Allies pull off one of the largest military operations in history?

In this podcast, we explore how the Allies came together to plan Operation Overlord. The Transportation Plan, in which the bombers of the US Eighth Air Force and British Bomber Command attacked railways and bridges across France, limiting the Germans’ ability to reinforce Normandy once the landings had begun. Despite disagreement on the best course of action, the plan led to one of the most successful bombings campaigns in history. Also, the French resistance provided crucial support for the landings with the gathering of intelligence and the sabotaging of German defences and logistics. Finally we explore why the Allies chose June 6, 1944 as the date to launch Operation Overlord and the role the volatile weather of the English Channel played in this decision.

Careful planning, bravery, difficult choices, and just a bit of luck made the Normandy landings a success. With the Allied return to France, the beginning of the end of Nazi Germany was insight.

Thanks to:

John Curatola, Senior Historian at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana and author of Armies Afloat: How the Development of Amphibious Operations in Europe Helped Win World War II.
You can listen to The War Office on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or The War Office Podcast YouTube Channel.

New episodes will be released every Tuesday morning. If you enjoy the episodes, please help us grow the podcast by subscribing, liking, sharing, commenting, and listening to future releases.
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