Explaining History

The development of the Holocaust, from the mass murder of Soviet soldiers who the SS exploited for labour before killing, to the industrialised mass murder of Europe's Jews went through a series of contradictory and chaotic developments between the start of Operation Barbarossa and the Wannsee Conference in early 1942. This episode of the Explaining History podcast is based in Nikolaus Wachsmann's...

Economists, journalists and commentators are currently producing vast amounts of content predicting what they believe lies in store for America and the world in 2025 and what the consequences of Trump's second term will be. In this podcast we explore Grace Blakeley's Substack article: The Economic Consequences of Donald Trump Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each week If you enjoy...

This is part ten of the Explaining History study course based on the AQA A level history module Revolution and Dictatorship: Russia 1917-53. In this episode we explore the power struggle between Stalin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin and discuss the political ideas that Stalin believed in. We examine the ideas of permanent revolution and socialism in one country I will be running a livest...

By the late 1950s ties between the USSR and China were weakening and there was mutual hostility and suspicion between the two powers. Deng Xiaoping in 1960 was involved in advancing China's role as a key player in the shaping of world communist thought. This podcast examines his role and the crises that shape both regimes. Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each week If you enjoy th...

In the aftermath of Germany's stunning victories in 1940, the countries of western Europe were economically exploited by Germany. From the level of individual soldiers who stole and purchased at fire sale cost consumer goods that their families in Germany couldn't possibly afford, all the way to the wholesale expropriation of French, Dutch, Belgian and Scandinavian economies by the Nazi state. Hel...

In this episode we continue to explore the historical practices associated with empiricism, and we're reading from The Houses of History I will be running a livestream Q&A for students on Wednesday November 20th. You can access it here , subscribe to the channel to get your reminder . https://youtube.com/live/knBuNLBD-bU?feature=share (in case the link doesn't work) Help the podcast to continu...

In 1941 the USSR was desperate for American war materiel from trucks to tanks to aircraft and grain but the intensity of German submarine and aircraft attacks on convoys sailing to the Soviet Arctic ports meant that in the summer of 1942 they had to temporarily be suspended and re-routed by the Pacific. In the meantime the complex web of diplomacy, suspicion and mistrust between western allies and...

This is part nine of the Explaining History study course based on the AQA A level history module Revolution and Dictatorship: Russia 1917-53. In this episode we examine how the Russo-Polish War, the Treaty of Rapallo and the Zinoviev Letter impacted on Russia's post civil war foreign policy. Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each week If you enjoy the Explaining History podcast and...

In 1947 US Secretary of State George Marshall announced that the US government would offer unprecedented assistance to the European countries devastated by war in a bid to prevent the expansion of communism and other extremist politics into western Europe. The fear that countries like France might even fall to the communists after the wave of new communist states emerging across eastern Europe was...

In 1959 as the process of communalising agriculture and the forced industrialisation of the Great Leap Forward led to catastrophe on an unprecedented scale, Mao was challenged at the Lushan Conference by Peng Duhai, who denounced him in ways the few party members had ever dared. Mao was temporarily marginalised from leadership of the state but not the party and Deng Xiaoping and Lui Shaoqi were th...

This is part four in our weekly exploration of the practices of historians - Approaches to history. We now examine the empiricist approach, based on pure archival research and a faith that the facts in their purest form can bring us the truth. Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each week If you enjoy the Explaining History podcast and its many years of content and would like to help...

The western world as we understand it, is over. China's advances in key technologies has reached an inflection point that is historically without precedent, soon western countries will offer access to their markets in return for Chinese technology transfers. Listen to this special Friday analysis report on China and the west. This is part seven of the Explaining History study course based on the A...

Drawing from the classic history of war reporting The First Casualty by Phillip Knightley , we explore the history of news, propaganda and misinformation from the Nanjing Massacre and the battle of Shanghai in 1937-8 to Pearl Harbour in 1941. This is part seven of the Explaining History study course based on the AQA A level history module Revolution and Dictatorship: Russia 1917-53. In this episod...

This is part eight of the Explaining History study course based on the AQA A level history module Revolution and Dictatorship: Russia 1917-53. In this episode we explore the aftermath of the Russian Civil War and the challenges that the Bolshevik Regime faced from within the party, the peasantry and the Kronstadt sailors. We also explore how Lenin's changes to the party functioning enabled the ris...

Why do we remember the civil rights movement in the way that we do? Whilst there is rightly a focus on the post war struggle in the 1950s and 1960s, less is written about the darkest part of the 20th Century black American experience in the years between 1895 and 1915. This podcast explores the historiography of the period and particularly the legacy and reputation of Booker T Washington. I will b...

Conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic have a specific ideological fixation on dismantling the state. In America tech fuelled accelerationism has pushed catastrophic idea into the mainstream and it may now become a meaningful reality with predictably catastrophic results. In the UK, it remains a Tory idea and there is little sign of it gaining traction in a population which has experienced 14...

In the late middle ages, the chronicling of history began to change and a more analytical way of thinking about the past emerged. Histories that were written became more than simple hagiographies to great men and were often guides to statecraft, war and diplomacy, the past was being used in order to navigate the present. I will be running a livestream Q&A for students on Wednesday November 20t...

The fear of decline and the widespread belief in its inevitability is nothing new, but part of the explanation as to Trump's recent success is an overall pessimism about the future after five decades of neoliberal economic crises. This podcast explores the relationship between crisis, declinism, neoliberalism and the rise of Trumpism. I will be running a livestream Q&A for students on Wednesda...

In the summer of 1940 following the victories of the Third Reich in Poland, Norway, the Low Countries and France, Hitler turned his attention to Great Britain. The Nazi leader was determined to force Britain out of the war one way or another and recognised that the British would never seek terms from Germany. This podcast episode explores the Luftwaffe's preparations for invasion and Hitler's over...

Today we explore an aspect of far right thought that connects libertarian and fascist thought and action. As we face the prospect of a rising far right across the western world (and beyond, though that is beyond the scope for this podcast), it becomes ever more important to understand the ideological underpinnings of contemporary fascist thought. I will be running a livestream Q&A for students...

I will be running a livestream Q&A for students on Wednesday November 20th. You can access it here , subscribe to the channel to get your reminder . https://youtube.com/live/knBuNLBD-bU?feature=share (in case the link doesn't work) This is part seven of the Explaining History study course based on the AQA A level history module Revolution and Dictatorship: Russia 1917-53. In this episode we ex...

In 1914 the Austro Hungarian Empire faced a multiplicity of enemies, including Russia, Serbia and Italy and had a variety of strategic plans to counter these threats. This, and the multi ethnic nature of the Empire caused complications, delays and threatened the only strategic advantage the Habsburgs had - speed in mobilisation. I will be running a livestream Q&A for students on Friday Novembe...

In a new article for the London Review of Books, economic historian Adam Tooze argues that the era of globalisation that existed up to the great financial crisis of 2008 has finally died and instead an era of great power politics has returned. This existed under Biden equally as it did under Trump's first and now second administration. You can read the article here . UPDATE I will be now be runnin...

During the 1930s over 100,000 American workers left the USA and crossed the Atlantic to the USSR. There they worked in automobile plants and other industrial enterprises of Stalin's Five Year Plans. The crisis of capitalism that was evident through the great depression and the seeming dynamism of Stalin's USSR and its rapid construction of industry convinced many that Soviet communism was the futu...

The British political class has clung on to a fantasy of its own relevance in Washington DC for decades. The special relationship that British Prime Ministers like to refer to (a bond that perhaps existed for Roosevelt and Churchill) has been an article of faith in Downing Street for decades but not in the White House. During the second Trump presidency, it will be exposed as the fiction it is. In...