Stopping the Panzers with Marc Milner
After D-Day, Canadians stopped the only Panzer counterattack that mattered, a story only pieced together 70 years later. Our first guest, Marc Milner, joins us on Juno Beach & Beyond: Canada’s Second World War Podcast to share “the critical role Canadians played in the planning, in the deception, and in the actual fighting on the ground” in Normandy.
Infantrymen of the 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade examining a disabled German PzKpfW V Panther tank, Authie, France, 9 July 1944 (Source: Lieut. H. Gordon Aikman / Canada. Dept. of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada / PA-114367).
Guest Biography
Marc is one of Canada’s leading military historians. After completing his doctoral dissertation on the Royal Canadian Navy in the Battle of the Atlantic, he worked for the Department of National Defence on the official histories of the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Royal Canadian Navy. More recently, Professor Milner’s research at the Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society at the University of New Brunswick focuses on Canada’s Battle of Normandy. In 2006, he published D-Day to Carpiquet: The North Shore Regiment and the Liberation of Europe. In 2014, he published Stopping the Panzers: The Untold Story of D-Day, our topic of discussion.
A feature-length article on Stopping the Panzers is available from Legion Magazine.
The following links offer more information on the topics discussed in this episode:
Events
Weapons & Formations
Anti-Tank Guns and Projectiles
The “Pocket Corps”: Canadian Army Units in the Normandy Landings
People
Locations
Villons-les-Buissons, Buron & Authie
Credits
Juno Beach & Beyond is hosted and edited by Alex Fitzgerald-Black, the centre’s Digital Projects Coordinator.
Fury (2014) urban warfare scene from the Evil Power YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yt1l4OctxM
Mackenzie King’s speech to British Parliament from the British Pathé YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SlEvclY5LE&t=48s
Artillery firing sounds from the CBC News: The National YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsCSQ4uWR1Y
Female veteran’s voice (Eileen Green, née Short) Courtesy of The Memory Project, Historica Canada: http://www.thememoryproject.com/stories/383:eileen-green-nee-short/
Winston Churchill’s “Finest Hour” speech from Jonathan Thomas’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB5wZtV1MWM
Spitfire sound effect from Jason Kirby’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgZI4tAoMN0
Dramatic Interlude by Alexander Nakarada | https://www.serpentsoundstudios.com
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Dispatches from Juno shares all the news, events, and stories from the Juno Beach Centre in France and Canada. Interested in contributing a story to the blog? Email the editor at jbca@junobeach.org.
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