Ep 61 – X Company Season 2 – The Dieppe Raid, Enigma Machines, Ian Fleming and David Stirling Nods

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we take on Season 2 of X Company, the tense Canadian WWII drama set at Camp X. This season brings higher stakes, deeper trauma, and a brutal reckoning with the Dieppe Raid. We talk Alfred’s Magneto cage, the complexity of Faber and Sabine’s marriage and a certain “code machine that looks like a fancy typewriter”. Yes, the Enigma makes an appearance. Plus: tortured romances (literal and metaphorical), and Aurora absolutely going off-script.

We also get into the real-life inspirations behind the season, from David O’Keefe’s Dieppe theory to the heartbreaking Canadian casualties. And no one is safe, emotionally or narratively. Not even Tom.

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Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Welcome to Rosie the Reviewer. We're your host.
I'm Sam. And I'm married to.
And we like World War 2 media and we want to talk about it.
Welcome back to Rosie the reviewer.
This week we are talking about Season 2 of the TV show X
Company for it was created by Mark Ellis and Stephanie

(00:22):
Morgenstern, started airing in 2015 for three seasons on the
CBC. And it follows 5 fictional
recruits at Camp XA Real training camp for covert agents
during World War 2 on the North Shore of Blake, Ontario in
Canada. And just to briefly recap from
Season 1 where we last left everyone, Alfred has been
captured by the Germans, Renee is alive, and Faber has killed

(00:44):
his sun. And of course, the overarching
plot for Season 2, The Deep Raid, is on the horizon.
Yay. I feel like season 2 is sort of
more rooted in history then season 1 was.
Like there's some stuff going onthat's not literally what
happened in real life, but it's at least based on stuff that

(01:05):
happened in real life, which I think is pretty cool.
And this is my favorite out of all the three seasons.
How do you feel about it? Yeah, it definitely has a more
direct historical underpinning, which is fun, and the stakes are
super high. The Season 1 sort of set us up
and we got to know all the characters and now we're really
in the thick of it. We're trying to figure

(01:27):
throughout is father a good guy or a bad guy, which is going to
be end up being a huge plot line.
Renee is alive, So what does that mean for the group?
Alfred's been captured, So what does that mean?
And there's lots going on in this season.
It's pretty action-packed. And you also read some more
stuff for this episode right on the D operate.
I did. I read Unauthorized Action

(01:47):
Mountbatten and the D Upraid by Brian Loring Villa.
I believe he was a professor at the University of Ottawa.
I want to say yeah, just becauseI wanted to know more about the
machinations behind D Up. I guess I feel like there's been
so many explanations over the years that just kind of felt
like they fell short. And I think that if any national

(02:07):
consciousness has been scarred by what happened at D Up, it's
ours, obviously in Canada's. And I think that there's still
this sense of wanting justification and reassurance
that we didn't leave over 900 dead Canadians on the beach and
in the water for nothing. They really get into that this

(02:28):
season and they touch on some stuff that did happen in real
life. And I'm excited to talk about
it, I feel. Like the the outbreak in terms
of storytelling, especially fromAmerican points of view, has
been vastly overlooked. I'm really glad we covered these
shows like Glens from about it and hopefully some people

(02:49):
listening to this podcast will also learn a little bit more
about it because I didn't know athing about the upright other
than it was a big landing and a lot of people died so.
Yeah, obviously, obviously big time on this side of the water
in Canada anyway. But I think you're right that
probably outside of Canada, a lot of people, it's certainly

(03:09):
not something that looms large in their memory of World War 2.
Maybe also logically, the biggest landing I know about is
Market Garden because it happened in the Netherlands.
The other stuff I've learned about Normandy, but not about
the app. So it's good that we're talking
about it. Yeah.
So let's get into the second season.

(03:39):
In episode 1, Comebacks is on lockdown because Alfred has been
captured and as we know with hisphotographic memory, he is very
likely to give up information ontheir interrogation because they
also don't know how well he willdo in his interrogation.
So the team is kind of left stranded in France.

(04:00):
They cut off our communication with them and Alfred, we find
out, is being tortured by our friend France Faber in a
interesting looking cage which is in the middle of a room.
It's very strange and he's the only person are in the near
facility too, which is kind of weird.
But the start you're seeing is pretty intense.

(04:23):
I just don't understand. It's like he's Magneto.
Like why is he in a cage in the middle of the room?
Why is he not in a standard prison cell?
Make it make sense. Because he's like the biggest
catch. Fabulous.
I forgotten that, I guess. Also it looks cool if he's in
the middle of the rush. Yeah, we get this scene back at

(04:44):
Camp X where Christina and Sinclair and everybody are
frantic because anything that Alfred has seen, even for the
fleeting a second, he will remember.
So he's seen maps, he knows the identities of agents, he knows
all about plans. He knows tons of stuff.
And they're like, well, all betsare off.
Everything that we have is burned.

(05:05):
I really like how in Season 1, when we first see Alfred get
taken into compacts, they make apoint of flashing all the little
bits of information in your face.
And it's a pretty remarkable thing really, to have that as a
character thing, to just know everything.
And I think, I don't know if they do at this point, but in

(05:28):
the beginning they very much underestimated him as an agent
too. He was very clumsy and kind of
shy and scared and all that. So they're like, you might just
give it all up. Breathe out now.
Yeah. Meanwhile, Siobhan, who is our
Irish nurse who turned out to bea double agent, she gets a
chance to redeem herself becauseTom's been wounded.

(05:51):
But she then decides she wants to redeem herself even more.
And she tries to pull a triple agent stunt situation where she
goes back to the Nazis and doesn't tell them that she has
revealed her true identity to Harry.
But forced, if you'll recall. Forced father's little sidekick
sniffs her out and so she kills herself rather than give up the
group. Yeah, man, she just walks in

(06:13):
front of her mouse like it's no big deal.
It's super violent and abrupt. Obviously Harry had some kind of
feelings for her in the first season and then he was mad at
her, but he doesn't seem too pleased about her kind.
I mean, he wouldn't be, of course, but it's still, it's
pretty shocking even for him. Yeah, for sure.

(06:33):
I guess even if you know that you shouldn't like someone,
maybe your feelings still get tangled up in it anyway, you
know? Yeah, I thought for sure that
Tom at the end of Season 1 was agoner, but he's still here.
He is absolutely pulled through.Will he lasts?
So that's the real question. But anyone left in the show?
Literally y'all like no spoilersbut they really will kill anyone

(06:58):
in the show. No one is safe, so if you have a
fave, start praying. A plane comes to drop Sinclair
to help them out because they need to free Alfred, because
obviously he holds the key to all the secrets.
And Alfred is remarkably well against the torture from fibre.
And there's actually a moment between them where they seem to

(07:20):
connect about losing someone andit's important for what's coming
up later. So that's why I thought I'd
mention it. But so I'm still wounded.
It's in pretty critical condition, but they managed to
get him out on the plane that gets the others in, so he gets
to safety in Canada. Yeah, and then we don't see Tom

(07:41):
for a bit, which I have a hunch he was perhaps filming something
else. Really.
Do we not see him? And I'm so too.
He's gone for a couple episodes I think.
He's clearly made a really big impression on me.
Well, you can't like them all, you know.
I do like them. That's the whole problem of the

(08:03):
show, is that I think I don't like someone and then they stick
around and I sort of like them and then something happens to
them. Yeah, y'all.
Mark was like, I don't think I really like Tom.
And then I was like, well, the actor leaves to go beyond
Schitt's Creek at a certain point, so you won't have to deal
with him for that long. And then a few episodes later,

(08:25):
she's like, Oh no, I'm starting to like Tom.
I was like, Yep, they I gotcha. Well, episode 2 Alfred gets
tossed into the same cell as Renee, our fearless leader who
we thought was dead for most of season 1.

(08:46):
The torture is getting worse andthey start using Renee against
him. There's this terrible scene
where they Duff a gasoline covered rag into Renee's mouth
and they're going to light it onfire to get Alfred to talk.
It's brutal. I wouldn't if I held it against
him if they had actually done it.
This show seems to be that kind of show to just do it.

(09:06):
Yeah, absolutely. I didn't like this thing very
much. I was very anxious for all of
it. This show has done such a good
job of showing that they will commit indiscriminate and brutal
violence and no one is safe thatI was like, oh, they're going to
Molotov cocktail this man right in front of us, I'm sure.

(09:27):
I think the only reason that they don't is because they're
interrupted, right? So we get to see a little bit of
Sinclair in action. He's on the ground with the team
to do some damage control, at least he tries to, and he makes
contact with an s s bureaucrat, kind of a before the war front
of hers. It gets him to agree to help

(09:49):
free Alfred in exchange for getting the man's pilot's son
Claus transferred from a RussianPRW account to a Canadian one,
which is supposed to be less brutal than the.
Russian one I think we do know that there's a shocking number
of German Pows did not make it back from Russian POW camps and
the reverse was also true. They were not very nice to each

(10:10):
other in that respect. So he's probably right and this
close thing tie a ribbon around it because it's going to come
back and feature later, but their.
Sons kind of like play together and then all that sort of stuff
before the war. So there's like this really
sweet story behind them, even though once a Nazi, or at least
a bureaucrat, and the other onesCanadian, and you can tell that

(10:34):
there's some real actual love going on between these two
families. Yeah, you also know that because
that's the case and it's the show that it's not going to end
up Grant. Of course, people are going to
have to make some pretty deep, dark decisions.
The team are able to ambush the Germans and get Renee and Alfred
back. And lest you think that Faber

(10:57):
didn't have the stomach for violence because he didn't
Molotov cocktail Renee, he killsforced his sidekick in a fit of
rage. You just take some right out.
Is this for first Test? Hey look, I did you a favor by
telling them about your son. That's definitely a factor and I
think he also holds force responsible for losing Renee and

(11:19):
Alfred. And he just loses his shit and
murders him. Yes.
So yeah, no such thing as a goodNazi, right?
No, no, I guess there's really isn't.
So back at Compact, Sergeant Christina Brillant believes that
Mayu, who's the British commander, is trying to
undermine Sinclair, but she finds out that he's actually

(11:43):
trying to protect him. I can't really remember what
from he's protecting him, but I do love the like the inner
politics of Compact. Yeah, we get some background
stuff happening on the ground, and there is a potential where
you might think that that stuff's less interesting than
the stuff that's happening with the spies, but I don't think it
is. I think all the subplots are

(12:04):
pretty interesting. And it's all pretty balanced
too, like I feel like they each get given plenty of time in the
hall, so it's quite good. Yeah, I think what had happened
in this Dean was that because Sinclair was not there, Mayhew
is making like decisions kind ofbehind his back that Christina
thought that she kind of, like caught him in the act of doing.

(12:25):
Yeah, like. In his name, I think he was.
He was signing documents in his name.
That's it, Yeah. Episode 3 The group now that
they have Alfred and Renee back,they have to try and get Alfred,

(12:46):
Renee and Sinclair back across the demarcation line so they can
be taken to safety. They have to be debriefed,
Renee's in rough shape and Sinclair has to get back and
take up his CEO duties again. Yeah, Renee, he's both
physically and mentally not in avery good shape.
Aurora is trying to reconnect with him because she loves him,

(13:06):
but there's not really much going on beyond him trying to
just stay alive. He's just like, Nope, can't do
it. I want to talk to you.
Bye. Yeah, he's definitely not the
person they all remember. No, in Canada we got some back
and he's walking around hobblingand here's an idea to help the
team. And we also find out that him

(13:28):
and Christina have done a littlehanky panky and are kind of
sleeping together and have a little romance going on.
Yeah, I do like it because the vibe is very much like Co
workers with benefits. I don't think that they were
planning for this to be a romance that was written in the
stars. And I was like, good for
Christina. They do make it feel like that I

(13:49):
guess until until something happens to some spoilers.
Yeah, it turns out Renee broke under torture and revealed a
shit ton of information to the Nazis.
He tells us to Aurora, it's hardbecause she's definitely holding
him responsible and doesn't think that he should have

(14:09):
revealed all this information. But also, we know he's been
tortured for like a year, so it would be more surprising if he
hadn't revealed information, honestly.
And so, yeah, the reunion is really complex and nuanced, I
guess. And then they're trying to
escape the Germans, and the walls are closing in on them.
And Renee does not want to get taken prisoner again.

(14:31):
He just absolutely will not do it.
And so Aurora kills him to prevent that from happening.
With a knife it's a very up class impersonal bad.
She's holding him and then knocked him and it's just, I'm
smiling, but it's not because I'm happy about it.
It's such a brutal thing. Yeah, she tells Sinclair that

(14:51):
Renee broke under torture because he revealed probably a
bunch of information about safe houses and shit that, you know,
they need to know about so they can change those things.
But she doesn't tell the group, and she also definitely doesn't
tell anyone that it was her thatkilled Renee, which will come
back to haunt her. As do many other things in the
show. Yeah.
So Alfred Goffers forever Sinclair asked why the Nazis

(15:15):
were able to take him alive. Because if you remember from our
previous episode, Aurora had a chance to take effort out to
shoot him because the worst thing is for him to be captured
and review all this information,right?
So she was ordered to kill him. She had a chance and she has a
shot on him and she doesn't takeit.

(15:37):
But Africa was for her with Sinclair, I think feel by
feelings a little bit for sure. And Alfred then by Sinclair gets
told about the Yep operation andthe plan that they have, like
Alfred is proven to some information that the rest of the
team isn't. Necessarily, and in this episode

(16:00):
they reference German Subs used to cruise up to Saint Lawrence
and try and drop guys on land sothat they could infiltrate
Canadian society. But also there were some POW
camps because a lot of captured German Pows were kept in camps.
And so they would try and land guys to help these guys bust out
of the POW camps. And then the idea was that they

(16:22):
would come back and get in the submarine and take them away.
And it would be like a big morale thing.
And I don't know how successful any of them ever were.
But the fact that it got referenced in this episode I
very much liked because that waspart of what my grandpa did in
World War Two. He was working on the big guns
that were keeping watch for the submarines at night as they came
into the Saint Lawrence and try and take them out.

(16:43):
So remind me, what is it, Saint Lawrence?
It's a big river, all right. I knew this at some point and
then I kind of forgot, so thanks.
Yeah, so they would come from the Atlantic into the big gulf
of the Saint Lawrence, and then the river goes down and meets up
at the Great Lakes. Right.
And also this guy, he looks so, so motherfucking evil right from

(17:06):
the start. You're like, that guy is evil.
Oh yeah, the the potential German mole that we learn more
about next episode. Yeah.
Yeah. In episode 4, Sinclair is trying
to talk the pilot PLW, son of the German bureaucrat.

(17:29):
Nice word again from 2 episodes to go into working for the
Allies. His name is Klaus Farmer and
he's played by Vincent's Vagner.He likes Sinclair.
You can tell that he's kind of glad that he's there, but he
doesn't necessarily immediately respond to Sinclair's request.
And Tom lends a hand before he had back offices to rejoin a

(17:54):
team and leaves a letter, I think, for Christina.
Yeah, something like that, I think.
Yeah, I'm going to have to make it the rating for this show
bureaucrats out of town, as is my custom of choosing words that
you think. You're so mean.
I I think it should be somethingelse.
I don't know what. You, but not bureaucrats.

(18:17):
Oh, you just said it perfectly so now I can't use it.
Anyway, in France, Alfred switches places with a British
POW to gain access to a POW camp.
He has this plan that he's goingto help these key officers break
out so they can train the local resistance to be ready for the
DF raid. So they can be on the ground and
while the raid is happening, they can try and sabotage the

(18:39):
Germans from behind, kind of thing.
The British Pows are led by George Sterling, played by Jamie
McLaughlin, and they're assistedin their training by a
resistance fighter named Miri, played by Sarah Alicia Garcia,
who is living in the local convent.
She is not a nun. She's just hiding out.
And when I watched this, I wondered, do we think George
Sterling is a little wink at David Sterling of SAS Rogue

(19:00):
Heroes fame? Immediately thought this also
also because they were trying tobreak out of the person.
And I think yeah, this has got to be the whole thing.
The whole person has got to be anod to David's turnage.
Prison escapes. Yeah, and also how stupid is
Alfred 1st 14 places without BRW.

(19:22):
I know he's kind of brilliant, but at the same time I'm like,
didn't you just get captured andreleased?
Do you not want to stay for yourman for a?
Minute. Well, he's probably like,
listen, they got me out last time, they'll just Get Me Out
again. We also get a bit more of a look
into the relationship Sam has with his wife Sabina, played by

(19:44):
Olivia Mattis. And things are kind of falling
apart between them. They're kind of drifting apart.
She's not having a great time. And obviously the team spots an
opportunity. Like they see this happening and
they're like, be together between this, right?
One of the things that I think this show does a really good job
of is the reason why Faber is remotely sympathetic is because

(20:08):
of his family. And he's obviously killed his
son in the previous episode, buthe did it to keep him from being
taken away and exterminated by the Nazis.
And this has a huge impact on his relationship with his wife.
Like, how could it not? But at the same time, they
clearly have such a loving marriage that you're like, oh,

(20:28):
my God, behind closed doors, youwould think he would also be a
Dick. And then it's like, no, as it
turns out, big time family, man.And that makes it, you know,
really just a really interesting, fascinating thing
to watch. Definitely.
I also really like Sabrina in season 2.
I like her lesson season 3, but I think in season 2 she is naive

(20:50):
but principal at the same time. So I quite like it, and it's
good to see complex women in shows like this, like we don't
get them enough, another show. So are you for that?
For sure. And I think Sabina is also a
representative of she's very sheltered and she's LED a very
privileged life. Her father is higher up in the

(21:12):
military, which we learn about later, I think maybe in Season
3. So she's never had to endure
significant hardship before. And she's kind of in the dark
about what the Nazis are up to. Like, she knows what she's read
in the newspapers and all the propaganda, but she really
hasn't asked too many questions about it.
So we also are getting that piece of it of the German

(21:34):
civilian who just kind of kept their head down and didn't ask
too many questions. Right.
Like it doesn't they make her seem like she's almost a victim
of her circumstances and I'm notshe's not a victim.
Obviously she's not a real victim in this situation.
Like you said, she just accepts her life the way it is without

(21:56):
looking around her and seeing that things are not the way they
seem to be. And it's at first I thought it
was kind of, they made her kind of dumb.
But it's not dumb if that's all you've ever known in life.
And why would you distrust the people who've shown you love and
have given you happiness? And you've got no reason to
distrust them, so why would you?But of course, it won't last

(22:17):
very much. It sure will not.
And of course, in this episode too, we start to wonder if
potentially the Germans have a mole inside Camp X Dun Dun Dun.
I didn't feel this very strongly.
I think it's because we see the guy very briefly at the end of
the last episode, like for two seconds, and then I already kind

(22:39):
of forgot about him again. So at the end of the episode I
was like, wait, what? What's going on?
Yeah, he's pretending to be a doctor and he goes into the camp
so he can make contact with Klaus, the son of the of
Sinclair's bureaucrat friend, and they're potentially planning
shenanigans, but we don't know exactly what yet, I think.

(23:00):
No, we're finding out in the next episode or the episode
after. I don't know.
Anyway, in episode 5, the team and their newest recruits are
training resistance fights are in the world, including Mary and

(23:22):
George, and Mary is pretty easy to cast.
Lady I I really like Mary, but also, once again, you're not
allowed to like anyone at this show.
Absolutely named. Aurora and meanwhile, having
spotted the opportunity in the last episode, is our quest to
establish a relationship with Sabina, whose founder's wife and

(23:44):
Sam was put a little note here emphasizing that there's a very
rude scene when I'm talking German and an accented English.
And I've done it before, I thinkin the torture scene with Alfred
and France Farmer. And it's such a weird like make
up your mind to speak German with subtitles like you do in
the rest of the episode. We've talked about this, we

(24:06):
talked about this in the last episode, I think, where the
characters will speak in an accent when they're meant to be
speaking French or German or whatever.
But this scene was especially weird to me because they spoke
in German for like 6 lines of dialogue, and then they switched
to English with a German accent.And I was like, dude, just do
the whole scene in English with a German accent.
Like it's just more jarring if you include some German and then

(24:28):
they switch. Yeah.
And I feel like for Aurora, especially if she is playing a
character, so the accent actually helps you like
distinguish her between when she's playing the character,
character that she's playing forSabina and went to the Aurora.
So I agree with you, just stick with English.

(24:50):
If you're going to switch between the two, just do one of
the two. Yeah, this was the most
egregious example to me. That's why I made a note of it.
I was like, why did they do that?
I know both of these actresses speak fluent German, so it feels
like almost a little bit of a boast.
Like look at us speaking perfectGerman.
I feel like they figured either everyone speaks German and

(25:13):
French or no one does. And I think that like, I would
guess that probably Neil's actorand Tom's actor and Harry's
actor probably don't speak French and or German.
So they were probably like, well, we're just going to have
them all do the weird accented English thing.
I applaud them for acting in a language that isn't theirs.

(25:35):
I feel like this is a difficult thing to do so.
That's true. Tom makes contact with a Doctor
Who is smuggling Jews to safety in order to work with him.
But actually it turns out the doctor is killing the refugees
and taking their money, reminiscent of Black Book.
And Tom convinces the others that instead of the Doctor, they

(25:58):
can run the smuggling network, but they'll like, actually do
it. This plot line mask it hit me
quite hard. I almost wonder if I should have
seen it coming because at the start of it, there's like a
couple of Germans leaving the doctor's office, and the doctor
seems to be playing both sides alittle bit.
And he says he doesn't even maintain his cover, But it's a

(26:21):
bit suspicious. And also the way he gets rid of
these people is very gruesome. Like he just chops people up
into pieces and keeps them in a similar.
Yeah, it's. Gross.
There is in. Episode 6 Harry makes a plan to
assassinate a German general despite Aurora's orders telling
him not to because she fears repercussions, and Aurora uses

(26:45):
Sabina to gain information aboutthe general's whereabouts.
So things are kind of heating upfor the team in this episode.
Yeah, Aurora does not like Harry's plan, but she feels
compelled to help him with it, to make it go off as smoothly as
possible and reduce the likelihood of potential
repercussions. But the team is having a really

(27:06):
hard time with her leadership. They don't really know what
happened with Renee. They just know that he died near
her, I guess. She's obviously really fixated
on this angle. She's working with Sabina and
Faber, and the rest of the team is just kind of like, well,
she's not really present as a leader.
And so Harry in particular is taking advantage of that.

(27:27):
And also, Harry feels so guilty about what happened with the
nurse, still with Chiffon, that he wants to kind of prove
himself, and he's very angry also.
So there's something brewing underneath his skin.
His face is hardened, the actingis hardened, like it's very
dense. Yeah, for sure.
They go on with the assassination and they are able

(27:49):
to frame a Nazi for it. And of course, the Gestapo
doesn't want to admit that someone from the Gestapo was,
quote, UN, quote, involved. And so Faber is directed to kill
an entire French village in retaliation for, quote, UN,
quote, resistance involvement. Yeah.
I mean, obviously, this was something that the Nazis really
did time and time again. And Faber tries to make the call

(28:11):
to save some of the villagers. He originally decides that
they're not going to kill the kids.
And then someone's like, well, who's going to take care of the
kids? And he's like, OK, we won't kill
the women either. We'll just kill all the men.
But the fact that so many innocent men and civilians will
be killed anyway just drives thepoint home of you can't be a
good Nazi. And I think that's like super

(28:32):
crucial as we move more and moreinto this season and we do know
more about Faber and potentiallywe can sympathize with him a
little bit more. And Harry feels responsible for
all this, of course, because he planned the assassination.

(28:53):
Episode 7 Leo and Alfred suggesthitting a local order plant
that's to be refitted to build tanks.
Aurora is a little bit leery after what happened in the front
village, but OK. Sit on the condition that there
will be no civilian casualties. And of course there's no
guarantee in any of these situations that there's not

(29:13):
going to be any civilian casualties.
So very wishful thinking. But Miri and Neil have started a
relationship. When they try to hit the
factory, everyone in their forest camp gets captured but
Miri manages to rescue Tom, Neiland Harry.
But unfortunately all their their British POW friends and
everything are all taken away bythe Nazis.

(29:34):
Sad. Also in this series, in season
2, Neil is still plagued by his trauma of having killed a German
radio operator and he sees him in his dreams telling him that
making him break is cruel. So Neil is still having a bad
time with all the killing. And Mary's like, tell me about

(29:58):
it, love me. And then he's like, Nope.
I feel sometimes in TV shows after a few episodes or a season
go by the characters. Sometimes just magically, you
know, characters who have died never get mentioned again or
characters who have trauma. It just never comes up again.
And I like that in this show, things that happened a long time
ago still reverberate and and impact current events the way it

(30:19):
would be in real life at. Least they do in season 2.
In season 3 it's no longer as obvious I said as in season 2,
but at least it's still in season 2.
So meanwhile, Aurora has gotten pretty close with Sabina and she
uses that relationship to steal her keys.
Alfred discovers in Farmer Safe write a lot of papers about them

(30:41):
as a team, so if ever knows a lot more about them than they
think. And as he's kind of lurking
around, like spying on Aurora ina church, being very conspicuous
to everyone except for Aurora herself, he learns that Aurora
killed Renee because he tells Sabina about it.
So now, now it's about Renee. But he doesn't seem too upset

(31:06):
about it. But he's the only one.
He's like, sweet, she killed herold boyfriend, now I can get in
there. No, I'm kidding.
That's not the vibe at all, but funny to think about.
Yeah, and then quite a strange turn of events, at least from a
logic point of view and from a smart thing.
So new point of view Aurora has to being a leaf time together

(31:28):
without telling anyone to get ona train.
Yeah, I like that as our female lead, Aurora gets to fuck up and
be messy because obviously she'sgone a little off the rails
after she had to kill Renee. She feels like maybe if she had
managed things differently, things would be different.

(31:49):
And so she's trying to go off onthis side quest to maybe redeem
herself and figure things out onher own.
And of course, her not working with the team is going to cause
problems for everybody, but she can't really see that right now.
She's going to do this reckless thing and hope for the best.
I feel like she's also trying tofind a way to get some good

(32:14):
stuff happening for the team again and kind of find a way to
get them all on track together again.
So that's another thing. And I like that.
Well, what she's doing, it's a little bit reckless.
It doesn't feel stupid. It's maybe, but it's not like a
dumb thing to do. She's clearly thought about it.
She thinks she can turn Sabina. Yeah, and as you say, the team

(32:40):
has had a string of unfortunate happenings.
It's kind of just one thing after the other.
And broadly, 1942 was not a great year for the Allies,
generally speaking. So I think this this reflects
that she wants to do something that feels like it'll actually
make a difference, and it's a big swing.
Spider Alert It's not going to get much better for the Allies

(33:02):
anytime soon. Yeah, we're coming up real close
on D app Y'all breathing down its neck.
Episode 8 Sabina gives Aurora this big fancy necklace.
It's obviously very expensive, and Faber gave it to her as a

(33:25):
gift. And we know that big fancy
necklace was stolen from a Jewish family.
There's this whole weird thing with the provenance where
Faber's boss sort of cageily gives him this necklace.
That's what happened, right? It comes from his boss, who's
like, you should take this necklace as a reward for all the

(33:46):
good stuff that you've done. And Faber's like, well, isn't it
supposed to go to the Reich? Like, I don't want to get in
trouble. And we sort of get the vibe that
his boss is maybe doing it as aninsurance policy where like, if
Faber steps out of line in the future, the boss can be like, go
check his house. He has this expensive necklace
that he's stolen and didn't giveto the Reich or whatever.
I don't think anything ever really like, comes with that

(34:08):
plot line. But that's kind of the vibe that
we're at. So he gave the necklace to
Sabine because he couldn't really turn it down.
And Sabina gives it to Aurora. And Aurora, they're in the
train, and they're having this very frank heart to heart.
And Aurora tries to explain the truth to her about everything

(34:28):
that's happening, what the Nazisare doing and the concentration
camps and all that stuff. But Faber shows up to get
Sabina, and he recognizes Aurora.
So oh shit, so now Sabina is theonly one in the room who doesn't
know that Aurora is a spy? This scene is so tense and
uncomfortable, guys. And Sabina is like still this

(34:49):
very at this point, still very naive and not really believing
Aurora immediately. She's like, no, I got that for
my husband. He gives it to me as a gift.
And then I think Aurora shows her like the initials on the
necklace as proof that this necklace belongs to or belong to
Jewish people. Like it's obviously stolen.

(35:12):
It's a race against time to get word back to comebacks, because
France and the Castelfa are planning an attack against
Hydra. The signal tower basic compacts
through which crucial international Allied
communication passes. Please don't destroy it.
Meanwhile, the deal planning is imminent and they must make
their way there. Alfred tells the group that

(35:33):
Aurora killed Renee. Like it's not a fun time right
now. That goes over like a lead
balloon. I love that Faber is the bad guy
in this. It's like not only is he trying
to chase the team down, but it'salso him behind the nefarious
plan to attack Hydra. It's always Faber pulling the
strings. Yeah, realistically, he's not up

(35:55):
high enough to make those goals.I think that we don't want to
introduce a bigger evil than Faber at this.
Yeah, well, as we know the new Doctor at Camp X, he's a Gestapo
mole. He makes contact with Klaus and
recruits him to participate in this attack on Hydra.
There's a very tense scene whereKlaus has this.

(36:19):
It's like a piece of, I don't know, it's like an explosive
where if you snap it, it'll explode and destroy everything
for whatever distance around him.
And he's just about to snap it and Sinclair's trying to talk
him down. And it's clear that he won't be
talked down. And then Sinclair says Christina
and she shoots that man in a heartbeat the second and that

(36:41):
she hears Sinclair say her name.It is super badass.
I agree Christina is like the best character in the show.
Like she's tiny in this, but she's so cool.
Yeah, I really loved that scene for sure.
So we're getting to the meat of the season, we're getting to the
app. In episode 9, it's five hours

(37:02):
before the app. Alfred explains that they will
be using the app attack as a cover for a raid on a German
long raid radar session. Aurora, who's been on the train,
returns, but everyone else thinks she's being very
suspicious. Like the scene between her and
father in the last episode was very tense.

(37:25):
I don't know if I think it's very realistic, but she
threatens to expose Sabina as a a double agent basically, and he
lets her go. I'm like, would you really let
her go? But I guess he does.
That's father's thing, right? His one weakness is that he
loves his wife more than he loves his job.
So when Aurora's like, oh, I'm going to tell everyone that she

(37:48):
was hanging out with me and I'm a spy, so they're going to think
that y'all are both SUS. He's like, great, don't do that.
Maybe you should go away. So we're as late and they're all
very like, upset with her for being so late.
Yeah, the D app raid is coming. It took place, well it was
supposed to take place before sunrise on the 19th of August

(38:09):
1942. And Alfred is on a side quest
during the raid to steal the secrets of the Enigma code.
He's trying to steal some code books and the new 4 rotor enigma
machine. The Germans had a three rotor
Enigma machine and then earlier in 1942 the Brits had cracked
the code, or at least partially,so they knew where EU boats were

(38:31):
and they could kind of track theGerman movements.
But then the Germans got a four rotor machine and they were back
to square one in the dark again.So that's what Alfred's doing.
He's going to try and steal an Enigma machine.
Faber is on to them though, because he hears that the raid
is happening and he's like, waita minute, it's weird that they
only landed a couple thousand guys.

(38:53):
It's way too small for an invasion.
What are they doing? So he gets suspicious and he has
the Enigma machine moved before Alfred can get to it.
I totally miss the fact that he moved it.
I must have been half asleep when watching this episode or
something. For those of you who don't know,
I think most of you will, but the Enigma machine is a German

(39:13):
Coke machine and it looks like afancy typewriter with lights on
it. And let's all rotors that kind
of determine the the combinations.
And there's many millions of possible combinations in the
skull machine. It's so brutal, like every
submarine had one. So and they used to change the

(39:33):
code books the combinations veryoften.
So even if they cracked it once,then they would just get onto a
new combination of things. And it's just was impossible for
the airlines to crack. So that's what they were trying
to do at, but to park in London or outside London, I think.
Is it outside London? No, it's not.

(39:54):
It's somewhere in the UK, but that's one.
An undisclosed location. It's probably, I think it's near
Milton Keynes, British Bear, if you're a Formula One fan, that's
where Red Bull is. So that's why I know.
But Oh my. Goodness, don't bring your
Formula One. Don't bring your Formula One
into this. You talk about the documentary

(40:23):
that you've that reporting by your story and who's also a
baseball player. I thought this was funny because
you like baseball. No, I didn't know he was a
baseball player. I did know he was Canadian.
Yeah. So this side quest of Alfred's
to steal an Enigma machine and related codes and code books
etcetera. Intelligence is based on a

(40:46):
documentary that came out in 2013, perhaps called World War
Two top secret DF Uncovered. And it focuses on the work of
military historian David O'Keefe, who suggests that Ian
Fleming of James Bond fame formed a commando unit that was
tasked with infiltrating German naval HQ at DF during the raid

(41:08):
with the hope of stealing Germancode books in A4 rotor Enigma
machine. And he posits that that this was
the real reason for the raid. And then the raid itself was
kind of like a diversionary tactic.
And similarly, there's an American professor named Leah
Garrett who published a book in 2021 called X Troop, the Secret
Jewish Commandos of World War 2,which details how it was

(41:32):
supposedly 5 refugee Jewish German agents who were trained
to carry out this mission. So there's lots of scholarship.
Obviously Dieppe went disastrously wrong, so there's
been a lot of ink spilled about it.
And while I haven't read Garrett's book, obviously we did
watch the documentary and I readanother book about DF.
And I do of course think that it's true that different units

(41:54):
sent into combat that day were assigned to gather intelligence
if they were able, which is kindof an obvious goal of any raid
that the British would have planned on a German occupied
port. But I'm not convinced I've seen
a smoking gun that suggests it was the primary reason for the
DF raid. The documentary is very fleshy
and it makes it seem like it's this big, and it is.

(42:15):
For years this information was unknown.
But I've also, just before this podcast, listened to an
interview with David O'Keefe andhe's less adamant about it being
the reason for the diabrade, butit's definitely a key part of
the diabrade. It makes it seem like he's less
convinced that the diabrade was set up to be like a diversion

(42:38):
for this thing, more like it's an important piece of it but not
the the crucial piece. But the documentary definitely
looks that way. It's also the way it was edited.
I think it's like a true crime reveal thing going on.
Oh yeah, very much. The scream would go black and
words would just flash up on thescreen, like research,

(42:59):
breakthrough or whatever. Just really.
I do wonder what the book's like.
I wonder if it's as nuanced as Ihope it is.
Yeah, I think when you study history, and not that I'm a
historian, but I have an undergraduate degree, so I
perhaps know slightly more than the layman, I think generally
speaking, you avoid making sweeping conclusions based on

(43:21):
one or two small pieces of evidence.
You can, of course, present those pieces of evidence and
extrapolate potential meetings, but for him to come across a
couple of mission reports that suggests that Fleming was nearby
on a boat during Dieppe, to suggest that that implies that
the whole point of the raid was this intelligence gathering
mission. Like to me is a leap.

(43:43):
And I haven't actually read his work.
So as you say, he's probably a little more circumspect on
paper. Like this documentary was
probably a bit more flashy than he might have intended.
Yeah, I don't know. We talked a little bit about
this offline before recording aswell, and I thought one of your
most confounding reasons for it not to be the reason that the

(44:06):
upgrade was executed was the fact that Churchill didn't
mention it in his warmer Mars. You think he would if it was.
Yeah, in the Villa book that I read, he mentions that when
Churchill was working on his memoirs, or not his memoirs,
sorry, his history of the SecondWorld War from his perspective,
in 1950, he wrote to Mountbatten, who was the head of

(44:29):
combined operations at the time of the D Up raid.
And Churchill wrote to him and was like, hey, why did we do D
Up again? Who approved that?
And Mountbatten was very, he didn't have specific information
in his reply. And so Churchill tried to do
some and was not able to come upwith a satisfactory answer

(44:49):
because Churchill was technically out of the country
in the couple of weeks before D up.
So Mountbatten was like, oh, well, you know, I brought it to
the chiefs of staff and they okayed it.
But there's no, we don't have any record of decision on paper
that that happened. And so Churchill being out of
the loop surprises me if it was an intelligence mission because
Churchill was so directly involved with the special

(45:11):
operations executive. In December 42, they had a
meeting with Churchill, Mountbatten, the chiefs, the
staff, where Churchill sort of came after Mountbatten for, you
know, did you really get authority to do this raid?
Why was it approved, blah, blah,blah.
And the chiefs of staff also censored Mountbatten for not
communicating with the intelligence services in
December of 42. So to me, it's surprising that
that would happen. Like are we to infer that

(45:33):
neither Churchill or any of the chiefs of staff were in the loop
this as an intelligence mission if it was 1, and I personally
think it's more likely that if intelligence services saw the
raid as a means to achieve theirown ends, this was incidental.
Yeah, like the upgrade was goingon anyway, and I just saw it as
a chance to also gather information.

(45:54):
That and intelligence. That seems to be the more
logical explanation for it for the people who don't know a lot
about the upgrade. The upgrade was meant to go
ahead. Was it 6 weeks before it
eventually happened and they cancelled it?
And then apparently Mountbatten mostly on his own, it was like,

(46:15):
yeah, go ahead, go do it now. They had been planning
essentially Mountbatten got promoted I think in 1941, and he
had been a a captain of several ships in the Navy, but all of
those ships had sank. So not even sure he was that
great of a captain. But anyway, he was close with
the royal family and he had the back think of some very powerful

(46:37):
figures like Lord Beaverbrook who basically owned the media in
Great Britain. And so he got promoted into this
job where perhaps he was under trained and was a little new and
didn't necessarily know what he was doing.
But he had been given all of these resources to plan a series
of raids. And so there was 2 raids that
went off and I think February, March 1942, but those have been

(46:58):
largely planned by his predecessor.
So they went off under his watch.
But he knew that people in the know would know that they
weren't really his work. And so he had planned Operation
Rudder, which was kind of the predecessor for the D Up raid.
And then it got cancelled in early July.
And then they made the decision to remount it without

(47:19):
appreciably changing anything asOperation Jubilee in August.
And there was tons of problems and flaws with that plan.
And we saw that play out on August 19th, 1942.
Yeah, the MI seemed to have bad info on on the app in general.
They thought there wouldn't be alot of German resistance.

(47:39):
There was. They thought the beaches would
be more accessible. They weren't.
They had pebbles and the tanks couldn't get off the beach.
But it was just a basically a classified.
The original plan, too, was not a direct frontal assault on the
beach. They were going to flank it from
the sides after a prolonged aerial bombardment.

(48:00):
But then the Air Force were like, we don't want to commit
any bombers to this because we need them for our other
bombership that we're doing. And then the Navy was like, we
don't really want to commit any capital ships to this because we
need them to run convoys to Russia and do XYZ, all this
other stuff. And so the plan ended up being
frontal assault with very littleair and naval support.

(48:23):
And it's like, well, perhaps this plan should not have gone
ahead once it was so dramatically changed from what
it was originally supposed to be.
So they learned a lot from what not to do for upcoming like
normally. Right, but an expensive way to
learn that you shouldn't launch a frontal attack on a fortified

(48:45):
position. They left like 900 men on the
beach that we're just dead and there were like 2000 people
captured or something. And there's so many people dead.
I feel like the general consensus on whose fault this
was. Mountbatten obviously gets a bad
rap, especially in the book thatyou read, and a lot of it is on

(49:07):
him. But I feel like the general
consensus is that everybody fucked up.
Everybody in higher class just made bad choices even on the
day. Like some of the choices made on
the day are so weird. Yeah, well, I mean, and there's
just so many different moving parts.
Churchill really wanted raids togo ahead because basically in

(49:29):
1942 at this point, the British have suffered the fall of
Singapore, the fall of Tobruk. It hasn't been a very winning
time for them in the past littlewhile.
So they could use a win. There's tons of pressure from
the British public and from the political establishment to do
something. And so Churchill has these grand
plans for, okay, we're going to invade Norway.
And everyone's like, well, that's a terrible idea because

(49:52):
the Germans have heavily fortified it.
And then they're like, well, we're going to do Operation
Torch at the time called Gymnastand November.
And that is what they ended up doing.
But at the time they didn't knowthat to invade North Africa.
And the Americans were like, we think that North Africa is kind
of a British imperialist thing. We don't really want to be
involved with that. Meanwhile, you have the Soviets

(50:12):
who are neck deep in it with theGermans on the Eastern Front.
And they're like, hey, it would be cool if y'all opened a second
front. So there's all these different
pressures, but everybody wants different things.
And so this idea of leading a series of raids where the armed
forces would get to get some practice in and get some combat
in and potentially it would be amorale booster in concept is not

(50:36):
the worst idea, but in practice,it just didn't work out.
They just didn't have a a plan that would actually work.
And then I think the snowball started rolling.
And by the time it got to actually carrying out this plan
that had pretty low odds of success, by all accounts, it was
almost too late to cancel it. They they had cancelled so many

(50:56):
raids before that they were like, well, I guess we're going
ahead with this one. I mean, and you can see by the
way that the Chiefs of Staff didn't leave a record of their
approval, but they clearly knew something was up.
So they didn't want to tacitly approve it, but they also didn't
want to tacitly disapprove it. So I don't know.
It was a whole thing. It's very complicated, but.
I guess we'll never really find out the whole truth.

(51:18):
I feel like there's too many people we're going to be
complicit to the failure for it to be completely resolved.
The unfortunate thing is that atthe time there were a lot of
Canadian troops who had been in Britain since 1939 and hadn't
seen any action yet. And back home, the idea of

(51:40):
sending people overseas was veryunpopular with French Canadians.
And so Mackenzie King, who is the Canadian Prime Minister, had
done a referendum being like, hey, you know how I promised no
conscription? Would you guys be cool if I
reneged on that promise? And everyone in English Canada
was like, yeah, that'd be fine for us.

(52:00):
And everyone in French Canada was like, fuck no.
So he was like, well, we had already had a crisis in World
War One about this. So he was very, very leery about
anything that would cause Canadians to have high
casualties, anything where there'd be this huge demand for
Canadian troops overseas that might force him to bring in
conscription. And so when they heard about the

(52:22):
plan to invade North Africa, they were like, absolutely not.
We're not going over there because we don't want to do this
piece meal thing where you throwCanadians in here or there or
whatever. We want to fight all together
and we want to be instrumental in victory in Europe.
So after they had refused to fight in North Africa and they
heard this idea for this raid onthe coast, they're like, that's
perfect. Our guys get to get in some
combat experience and it's goingto be a morale booster for us

(52:45):
here at home too. And probably the casualties
won't be too high because it's just supposed to be a raid.
And so the Canadians got involved in this.
But unfortunately, the Canadian commander who would have had
veto power over the project, he's being leaned on by all
these much more powerful dudes who are like, we have to do
this. Like, we have to carry it off.

(53:06):
It's fine, It's fine. It's fine.
Don't worry me. And they all have way more
experience than him. So he's like, OK, like, we have
evidence that he had his doubts,but he didn't feel like he could
really push back. Everybody is a loser except for
the Germans, I think, in this situation.
Yeah, because honestly, I think the Germans learned lessons that
worked out for them, like they learned more about fortifying

(53:28):
their beach positions and that kind of stuff.
So really, probably not great. Yeah, like, thankfully for
Normandy, Allies went on and took aerial photos of the
beaches to make sure that they wouldn't run into the same
trouble as they did. And Yep, so they did learn from
it. But at what cost?
Like the cost is right too high obviously.

(53:49):
Well, and The thing is that theyknew that that harbor was
heavily fortified. That's why the year they had
originally planned to have this heavy bombardment precede the
landings. But then that didn't end up
happening. And they were like, well,
hopefully we just overcome that by landing in the dark and
taking them by surprise. And then they were late too, so
they didn't exactly end up arriving in the dark, so they

(54:12):
lost the element of surprise. They sure did, and the Germans
pretty much immediately rallied and killed everyone.
Insight. Great.
So there's a quote from the bookI read called Unauthorized
Action Mountbatten in the Upgrade by Brian Loring Villa,
where he says Diab may have beenthe biggest raid in history and
the largest air battle of the Second World War.
But it also won the dubious distinction of being the most

(54:35):
tragic and in ratio to participating forces, the most
costly allied offensive of the war.
And this is certainly true. As per the Canadian Forces, it
was the the the most costly and blood for US. 6086 soldiers went
out, including almost 5000 Canadians. 3623 were killed,
wounded or taken prisoner. The Canadians suffered a 68%

(54:59):
casualty rate, including over 900 dead.
It's wild to me the accusation that that still lives a little
bit, that these soldiers were just used as practice for
another raid for like the biggerallied invasion.
It's so brutal. There's a quote from one of the

(55:19):
guys who was there in the villa book where he basically says
that, you know, we went in and we didn't win, but we did our
best and we don't want to hear about basically being used as
bait or whatever. And I'm like, yeah, that's like,
of course it's going to be your reaction.
You don't want to think that a whole bunch of your friends died
for nothing and you don't want to be perceived as a victim or

(55:44):
you know somehow how foolish forhaving gotten involved in this
situation where all these lies were thrown away.
Like you want to feel like it had meaning And like ultimately
I don't know how much meaning itdid have, but.
No, that's the one thing I like about.
Well, I like more things, but it's one of the things I like
about the documentary because there's an interview with people

(56:08):
who were in the app who survivedafter being taken prisoner.
And this man, he things about all his fallen brothers.
And to him, the idea of there being an intelligence rage to
give it meaning is really helpful for him in that moment.
And I quite like that, even if it's not the main point of the

(56:31):
the operate. It's good that they gave some of
these men who really suffered because of the the operate, the
sense of closure and the sense of meaning in what was for them
a very tragic. So I like that about it.
Yeah, for sure. And I definitely of course
understand what would drive a historian like David O'Keefe to

(56:53):
try and find that meeting and create that closure for those
guys. For sure.
One thing I did want to recommend to people, if you go
on the Juno Beach Center website, there is a section
called D App in their own voices.
You can just Google it. That's how I found it.
And it's has a few different interviews with people who were
involved, including a resistancefighter, I think, and the

(57:14):
fighter pilot and that kind of stuff.
And it's very moving. And also, if you want to check
out the documentary, whether or not you agree with the
historical conclusions drawn, I agree with you that the
interviews in it are quite evocative.
I will put a link to what you just mentioned on the website
just to make it easy for people.Anyway, there's one more

(57:43):
brilliant point to this episode,in case you forgot we were
talking about X Company as you did in real life.
The sideways in the episode immediately Aurora just rally
the others into a last ditch attempt on the radar station.
Anyway, and I do like the scene because she's like, look, I'm
going to go ahead and go in there, but I'm not going to make

(58:06):
you, I'm not going to order you to go in there as well.
And that's when I come back together again And they're like,
of course we'll go. Yeah, it was nice to see the
team come back together for sure.
In episode 10, it's kind of likeA2 parter.
It picks up right where 9 left off.
Neil and Tom, with the help of four Canadian soldiers from the
beach, cut the phone lines to the radar station so that it'll

(58:28):
be forced to broadcast basicallyunencrypted on the radio, and
they'll be able to listen into that.
And this is actually based on a true story about a British radar
expert named Jack Misenthal, wholed a team of 11 Canadian
soldiers in an assault on the German Freya radar station.
During the deep raid, they encountered stiff resistance,
you might imagine, and this is when Nissenthal developed the

(58:50):
plan that we see in the show to cut the German phone lines
around the radar station, forcing them to broadcast the
radar findings over the radio, allowing the Allies to listen
in. Only Nissenthal and one of his
men made it back to the beach, but because of his work, the
Allies were indeed able to intercept radio communications
about German radar positions, which incidentally allowed them
insight into Freya's abilities, as Nissenthal had predicted.

(59:13):
And he later worked on the development of radar jamming
technology, which is pretty cool.
I love this and after this is rooted in actual history again.
I wish every episode had that. I guess it does in a way, Like
many of the details are actuallytrue in real life.
Meanwhile, Aurora and Alfred have gone off together to try

(59:33):
and blackmail fabric into helping them.
But first they make out about it.
They have to be into a little smooch because Renee is dead and
buried. And yes, I'm kidding.
They're very polite about it. They have this theme in the show
where Alfred doesn't say Aurora's name because it feels
and tastes weird to his little synesthesia brain.

(59:58):
And then she asked him, what didit feel like when you said my
name? He says her name in some other
episode. She's like, what did it feel
like? And then he kisses her.
It's. Quite sweet.
I'm not gonna lie, it was kind of cute.
It's not like super aggressive, it's just sweet.
It's not too heavy. This whole relationship, it does

(01:00:19):
lead a little bit more into the soakiness of the show that the
rest of the show really doesn't have.
Like it's a pretty serious show,but this element of it is quite
a light hearted and sweet. Yeah, I guess it's nice that the
people involved still get to be people, even though so much of
their lives are committed to this work that they're doing.

(01:00:43):
Unfortunately for the Tom loversin our midst, Tom goes over a
Cliff trying to buy hairy time to get a message to the British
and Canadian ships to get away while the Luftwaffe are
refueling. And yeah, tell us, tell us about
the scene on the beach. No, that's what I said in chat

(01:01:04):
when this happened. I was like, no, Tom, I started
to like you. And also we see him go over.
We don't see him fall, but then we see Neil.
Poor Neil Neils got to deal withall of the death people in the
show. We see him go over to him and
he's still alive, which is kind of the worst part of it, I

(01:01:24):
think. And then he's like, tell me what
to do, Tell me had to say here. And it's very sad and he's very
anguished and I might have crieda little.
Yeah, it was a huge bummer, y'all.
And then immediately they have to go back to work because they
almost get caught by a German soldier and they have to pretend
to be locals. They see all the dead soldiers

(01:01:44):
on the beach too and the same. We're just as brutal.
I think Harry attacks a stray German and I thought Harry was
going to get killed here, but atthe same time I was like, no
way, they just killed off Tom. They can't also, in this moment,
immediately tell Harry. Yeah, I think his reaction is

(01:02:05):
really understandable too. I mean, if you go and look at
pictures of Dieb now, they're still very shocking to look at.
Just the scale of senseless death, I guess.
Yeah, and there's something about the the Pebble do that
makes it extra drying and I don't know why, but the just the

(01:02:25):
mega big pieces of Pebble, that's not a word of rock, I
guess. They just seem so brutal to like
these people had nowhere to go. They were just sitting ducks.
Yeah, but we also find out in this episode that the British
have been choosing not to believe in the German superior
radar technology, which I learned about in a recent

(01:02:48):
episode of of the podcast Cautionary Tales, when the
Germans were just clearly figuring out what the British
were up to at every turn. Churchill was like, man, during
the Dunkirk evacuation, did we accidentally leave behind one of
our radar machines? And they did.
But what had happened was the Germans found it, took it apart,
and they were like, ours is better.

(01:03:10):
So the Germans already had way better radar technology than the
British. And then there just seems to
have been this willful decision not to acknowledge that for far
long, longer than there should have been during the Second
World War. I feel like the Germans at the
beginning of the war, until probably the halfway point at
least, were better at many things.

(01:03:32):
Like even the carp machines, like the make my machine, it
took, it took the British after they failed to take information
from the app, it took them another six months I think to
crack the Make my machine. So the Germans, as much as we do
not like them in World War 2, they kind of knew what they were
doing for the longest time untillike the Allies got their shit

(01:03:55):
together. Yeah, for sure.
Also in this episode, Faber makes a last minute choice to
help him out. He's like, I guess I will help
you because they did my son dirty.
So here I am. I'm going to be a double agent.
Enjoy. Yeah, and gosh, the whole thing

(01:04:15):
about Faber and his son, you know, it's so much of what
drives him to potentially work against the Nazi war machine and
maybe help these guys, although it's still kind of up in the
air. We don't know how committed he
is, but all of this is because of this son that he lost and
it's going to come back later inthe third season.

(01:04:35):
It never really leaves us, this motivation of his.
I can't remember which episode it is where he talks about it,
but he's talking about his son who had Down syndrome, and he
talks about how Uli only had one, one big feeling at a time,
and it was like just the most beautiful thing.
You could always tell when he was happy or when he was sad or
whatever. And then that is going to come

(01:04:58):
back at the end of Season 3 whenFobber's commitment to the cause
is really tested for the last time.
So this happens in this episode actually when Aurora and Alfred
guard to try and persuade him towork on our side.
He breaks down about early and then he says no get the fuck out
of my house. At the very end of the opposite.

(01:05:20):
He's like guess I changed my mind.
I did not trust him yet. At this point I was like I do
not trust this man at all. Like he's just going to turn
around and screwed over. But.
And to be very honest, I'm stillnot entirely sure he's on.
That was the one thing I didn't want to spoil because Myanmar

(01:05:41):
are the same, like we feel the same about spoilers.
We can still enjoy a show or a movie if we know how it ends.
And sometimes I enjoy it even more because I can see what the
foreshadowing is and I can be like, oh man, that's so neat.
That's going to tie into XYZ later and I can tell how all the
themes are going to come together.
But that was the one thing I didn't want to spoil because it
just feels so intrinsic to the show.

(01:06:01):
I mean, that's the whole point is is probably going to come
down on their side or not, I wonder.
And I'm not sure if you feel thesame way, but because I've seen
so many pieces of media, not just World War 2 media, but just
in general, I enjoy a lot of like crime and spy stuff and
like storytelling a lot. So I kind of think I know how

(01:06:23):
it's going to end just from a storytelling perspective.
I know where the show needs to take it for it to be a decent
ending. Are you reading anything?
Yes, yesterday I was waiting foran appointment, so I started a

(01:06:44):
new book on my phone and it's called In Byron's Wake.
The Turbulent Lives of Lord Byron's wife and Daughter,
Annabella Milbank and Ada Lovelace by Miranda Seymour And
Ada Lovelace is widely considered the first computer
programmer because she developedan algorithm for the computer
developed by Charles Babbage, who is known as the inventor of

(01:07:05):
the computer. Cool, that's a different kind of
book. Yeah, I'm excited.
I think they were two women who potentially could have lived in
the shadow of Lord Byron becausehe was such a personality.
But the reason why Ada became soinvolved in computers and
mathematics was because her mother did not want her to turn

(01:07:26):
out like her father. Don't feel like your dad.
Be smarter. Yeah, yeah, I'm still reading.
I'm nearly finished with and that's not true.
I'm not nearly finished. I'm somewhere into the book
called The Spy Who Loved by Carmeli, and it's funny because
we've both read Agents of Vector.

(01:07:49):
Molly, an agent. So Elspieta Zoraka, she was a
woman who did not give a shit about men.
And this book is about Christine.
What's her last name? I've forgotten her last name
about a spy who loved men very much and he was very much loved
by men. So they're like polar opposites

(01:08:10):
almost. And it's really interesting.
And I can't wait to talk to Claire Molly about it.
Amazing. Spoilers and that's it for me,
and I'm not reading anything else.
I'm kind of feeling a little bitaround with all the books I'm
supposed to read. I know I got AI have a list.
Can you believe we've done more than 60 episodes at this point?

(01:08:32):
It's crazy, truly. Was yeah.
So I guess that was our episode about season 2 of Ex Company.
We will be back next week with season 3.
But for now, thank you for listening.
You can follow us and find us wherever you get your podcasts.
You can follow us on Instagram if you'd like at Rosie Dev

(01:08:53):
reviewer podcast. Or you can visit our website,
rosiedevreviewer.com For more information and lots of Robert
Howland if you enjoy that kind of thing.
And don't forget to send this episode to your Canadian friends
because it's an it's an awesome Canadian show.
So do watch it. Thanks for listening.
Bye.