Al Murray

We've got a tiny bit of that, but let's set the scene properly.

Because this naval battle for Norway, as we said earlier on, is hugely consequential.

The Royal Navy, in the intervening war years, the Admiralty's basically decided, well, we can cope with one global emergency at a time.

Two is biting off more than we can chew, but strategically we can handle, we can deal with the Germans if it comes to it.

We can deal with that.

From a naval point of view.

From a naval point of view.

Expect to fight them in the North Sea, you know, and those other naval episodes we've done recently have been after the fall of France when the Germans have control of the Atlantic coast and the Admiralty's best laid plans are completely...

have been completely overturned by the German army, in effect.

But also deny.

Denying the Germans' manoeuvre is as important as...

actually fighting them and taking them to battle is less important than denying them freedom to seize.

So if you can bottle them up, if you can make them decide not to come to you and fight, that's what you do.

But what's quite interesting about that is you have an awful lot of very Nelsonian officers who don't want to bottle people up, who aren't interested in a standoff for the Kriegsmarine, a sort of attritional tick, tick, tick of war.

They want to fight them.

Well, I mean, I think if you're a regular listener to this,

German strategy doesn't always make sense.

It's not a straight line.

It's not a straight line.

Sometimes it doesn't even appear to be a strategy.