History Happy Hour

This week on History Happy Hour: We travel back to the six critical months before Adolf Hitler seized power, when the Nazi leader teetered between triumph and ruin. As financial backers withdrew, the Nazi Party threatened to fracture. Hitler talked of suicide. The New York Times declared he was finished. Yet somehow, in a few brief weeks, he was chancellor of Germany. In this encore episode, we ta...

This week on History Happy Hour: Eighty years ago, Japan surrendered to the Allies after three of the most devastating bombing attacks of the war – two nuclear weapons and the fire-bombing of Tokyo. What was the decision-making process in this endgame of World War II?  Was it just the atomic bomb that brought about Japan’s surrender? In this encore episode we’ll chat with Ri...

This week on History Happy Hour: In 1993 two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down, and in the ensuing Battle of Mogadishu eighteen Americans and hundreds of Somalis were killed. But very few appreciate that this was just one day in a two-and-a-half-year operation—the most ambitious attempt in history to rebuild a nation. Why and how did it go so wrong? In this encore episode we explore this...

This week on History Happy Hour: It was a marvel of 1930s engineering, a line of underground forts containing hospitals, modern kitchens, telephone exchanges, and even electric trains. The fortifications were invulnerable to the heaviest artillery and to chemical warfare. Yet they fell to the Germans in just a few weeks. Kevin Passmore has written The Maginot Line – A New History . We’...

This week on History Happy Hour: Author Dan King interviewed more than 100 Japanese veterans while living in Japan, and has written a series of books telling the story of the war from their POV. We’ll talk to him about his latest book, The Iron Graves of Saipan, about the men of the 9th Japanese Tank Division. Their story begins with training, chow halls, talent shows, pranks, and USO shows...

This week on History Happy Hour:   In 1864, General Sherman commenced his march across Georgia. By the time he reached Savannah, some 20 thousand enslaved people attached themselves to his army.   Chris and Rick explore this seminal moment that laid the foundation for Reconstruction with Bennett Parten, author of S omewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman's March and the Story of America&#0...

This week on History Happy Hour: In 1945, the US Congress recommended awarding the Medal of Honor to 432 recipients. Not a single Black soldier made the list. Not Vernon Baker, who single-handedly eliminated three enemy machineguns and an observation post. Not even Lieutenant Charles Thomas, who led his platoon to capture a strategically vital village in 1944 in spite staggering losses. It took mo...

This week on History Happy Hour: During WWII, 27 Tuskegee Airmen were reported missing in combat. The remains of most were never found. Chris and Rick explore their lives, their fates and the impact of their loss with NPR Investigative Reporter Cheryl Thompson. She is the daughter of a Tuskegee Airman, and author of the book Forgotten Souls: The Search for the Lost Tuskegee Airmen . Cheryl Thompso...

This week on History Happy Hour: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson were two African-American giants whose lives would forever be altered by the Cold War, and would explosively intersect before its most notorious weapon, the House Un-American Activities Committee. It is a complex story that tallies the sometime fearsome cost of standing against racism. Our guest is Howard Bryant, author of the dual...

This week on History Happy Hour: It sits on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago: The U-505.  The June day in 1944 that this German submarine was captured was the first time the U.S. Navy boarded and captured an enemy vessel since the War of 1812. It was carried out in swashbuckling style by a top-secret Navy task force. In this encore episode, Chris and Rick discuss its d...

This week on History Happy Hour: During WWI, The White Lady network helped Britain by acting as couriers, radio operators and spies to facilitate the end of German control. And, when war broke out again two decades later, the leaders of the network regrouped and established a successor: The Clarence Service. We will talk with HHH Alum Helen Fry to chart the history of these pivotal intelligence ne...

This week on History Happy Hour:  Forty years after the publication of Eugene Sledge’s memoir With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa, his son Henry has written The Old Breed: The Complete Story Revealed . We’ll talk with Henry Sledge about his conversations with his father that form the basis of this book, as well as his reflections on his father’s war.     Hen...

This Week on History Happy Hour: Thomas Paine was a man whose words helped launch a revolution. In January 1776 he wrote Common Sense, which helped inspire the Continental Congress to declare Independence. In late November that same year, while serving in George Washington’s army during the Colonies’ most desperate hour, he picked up his pen again. “These are the times that try m...

This Week on History Happy Hour: In his new book The Greatest Force , author Marcus Gibson argues that RAF Bomber Command was the No.1 factor in Germany’s defeat. Rather than being too costly in terms of crew lives and civilian casualties, he argues that the impact of bombing fully justified the effort put into it.   Chris and Rick explore this challenging topic with him. Sunday at 4PM...

This Week on History Happy Hour: In March, HHH audience member Doug McCord visited a local museum in Nelson, New Zealand, where he was deeply moved by an art installation. Created by local artist Sue Heydon, it explored her father’s journey as a WWII prisoner of war. Captured during the 1941 Greek campaign, George Heydon spent more than four years in POW camps. We will talk to Sue about her...

This Week on History Happy Hour: She led a gang of horse thieves. She participated in stickups and robberies across Texas and Oklahoma. She was romantically involved with two of the west’s most feared outlaws. Many considered this extraordinary woman the most dangerous female in the west . In this encore episode, Chris and Rick will explore her fascinating story with Dane Hucklebridge, autho...

This Week on History Happy Hour: One of America’s most critical needs in WWII was to build a merchant fleet that could carry soldiers and supplies to theaters around the globe. To build enough ships fast enough that U-Boats couldn’t sink them all. To lead its effort, the US turned to a man who had never built a ship – but he nevertheless created a network of shipyards that built...

This Week on History Happy Hour: Along with Guadalcanal in the Pacific, and Stalingrad in Russia, the Allies’ victory in North Africa was one of three Axis defeats that changed the course of the war in early 1943. The Africa campaign has sometimes been branded a side show, but it destroyed 40% of the Luftwaffe’s planes, ended Axis sea power in the Mediterranean and led to the surrender...

This Week on History Happy Hour:  World War II was unprecedented in its scope and ferocity. The heroism of the men and women who won the war may be well documented, but we know too little about the pain and hardships the veterans endured upon their return home.   We’ll discuss this with David Nasaw, author of the new book T he Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II. &nb...

This Week on History Happy Hour: It wasn’t just the Marines that fought in the Pacific – the Army actually did most of the fighting and dying in the war against Japan.   Historian John McManus returns to History Happy Hour to discuss volume two of his WWII Pacific War trilogy. In Island Infernos , he explores the U.S. Army’s dogged pursuit of Japanese forces, island by islan...

This Week on History Happy Hour: In September 1943, the people of Denmark banded together to rescue nearly all of their Jewish citizens from a NAZI roundup by ferrying them to sanctuary in Sweden. Why were the Danes able to do what no other country could?   Rick and Chris discuss this little-known, true story with guest Tim Brady, author of A Light in the Northern Sea: Denmark’s Incredi...

This Week on History Happy Hour: In 1940, French painter Henri Matisse was ill, recently divorced, and full of doubt about his own career. But when the Germans invaded, he and his family defiantly refused to evacuate Nazi-occupied France. Chris and Rick discuss what happened next with HHH alum Christopher Gorham, author of Matisse at War: Art and Resistance in Nazi Occupied France. Christopher C....

This Week on History Happy Hour: The Hispanos of frontier New Mexico spent decades engaging in various forms of resistance against the corruption, exploitation, and violent oppression that frequently plagued their homeland following the conclusion of the Mexican-American War in 1848. Chris and Rick welcome James Mills, author of In the Days of Billy the Kid . Mills dives into the lives of four men...

This Week on History Happy Hour: In 1915 Winston Churchill resigned as Lord of the Admiralty in the wake of the Dardanelles disaster. Struggling to deal with the fallout, he accepted a commission and headed for the front lines – where he began the most extraordinary comeback in political history. In this encore episode, Chris and Rick discuss this pivotal year in Churchill’s life with...

This Week on History Happy Hour : What drove the thinking of Hitler and his followers? How did ordinary Germans come to embrace an ideology of hate and destruction? Chris and Rick welcome Laurence Rees, award-winning historian and author of the new book The Nazi Mind: Twelve Warnings from History. Drawing on decades of research and previously unpublished interviews, Rees examines the twisted ideas...