Prisoners Of War
Australian commercial radio
Australian commercial radio · 1930–1960
10 EpisodesSeasonalPGSince 1930
The run
- Network
- Australian commercial radio
- Years active
- 1930–1960
- Surviving broadcasts
- 10
- Genre
- docudrama
A Collection of Aussie Radio Shows No 182 Prisoners of War More than 30,000 Australians became prisoners of war (POWs) between 1940 and 1945. The Germans and Italians captured Australians during the Mediterranean and Middle East campaigns, and also at sea in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. Members of RAAF aircrews, who had bailed out during operations over Germany, occupied Europe or North Africa, also became POWs. Of the 8,000 Australians taken prisoner by the Germans and Italians, 265 died during their captivity. During the Pacific war, the Japanese captured 22,000 Australians: soldiers, sailors, airmen and members of the army nursing service, as well as some civilians. They were Public-domain transfers from the Internet Archive.
Source collection
Internet Archive audio collections
Rights
Public domain — no renewed US copyright
Cataloguing
Air dates and notes from the Archive item record
The shape of the run
What survives, year by year
3 dated broadcasts across 97 years on the air, with 96 years where nothing is known to survive. Brightness is transfer quality; empty cells are months lost to time.
Episodes
Start here
Listen to the run in order
Restored broadcasts from 2026, in original transmission order.
- 1. The Long Silence · 2 Jun 2026
- 2. A Room Above the Street · 9 Jun 2026
- 3. Signal at Midnight · 16 Jun 2026
A Room Above the Street
4 Aug 2026 · 38 min
The episode listeners keep sending to people who never listen to podcasts.
The Long Silence
28 Jul 2026 · 53 min
A quiet beginning that turns, halfway through, into something else entirely.
Dead Air
21 Jul 2026 · 16 min
The one everybody argues about.
Sign Off
14 Jul 2026 · 31 min
Short, complete and unexpectedly devastating.
The Case of the Missing Hour
7 Jul 2026 · 46 min
The episode listeners keep sending to people who never listen to podcasts.
Night Broadcast
30 Jun 2026 · 1h 1m
We go back to the beginning and read everything again.
The Last Train Out
23 Jun 2026 · 24 min
Three interviews, one archive reel, and a question nobody wanted asked.
Signal at Midnight
16 Jun 2026 · 39 min
Recorded on location, with the room left in.
Also on Australian commercial radio
Australian commercial radio in 1930–1960
Other series the network carried while Prisoners Of War was on the air.
Same seasons
docudrama on the air then
Series in the same genre whose runs overlapped this one.
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