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Episode details

Radio 4,30 Nov 2009,30 mins

Churchill and Spain in World War 2

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Available for over a year

Mike Thomson presents the series using documentary evidence to throw new light on past events. Mike uncovers Winston Churchill's paper trail of secret deals, bribes and broken promises in wartime Spain. If Spain entered the war, Britain's supply lines would have been cut and Gibraltar and the entire North Africa campaign put in peril. Desperate to stop this happening, the prime minister paid Franco's top generals multi-million pound bribes. Churchill believed disaster could only be averted by using vast sums of money and a shady entrepreneur known as the Last Pirate of the Mediterranean.

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