Explaining History

In 1973 the Conservative Party and the right of the Labour Party voted to join the European Economic Community or 'Common Market' as it was known. Despite opposition on the right and left, the decision to join was ratified by a referendum in 1975, but the political divisions foreshadowed endless political conflict over the issue of European integration in later decades. Explaining History helps yo...

By 1950 the French political establishment was in a state of despair about its prospects in Vietnam. The newly reorganised army of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam had inflicted defeats on France in 1950 ad Cao Bang on the Vietnam/China border. The involvement of the USA in the war brought badly needed military and financial aid, but placed an intolerable burden on French national pride. Explain...

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the popularity of international, multilateral organisations such as the UN and the Bretton Woods institutions in America was high. Wartime cooperation was looked upon favourably by most Americans, even though there was a considerable minority who favoured a return to isolationism. The Republican Party and right wing journalists and thinkers saw i...

This is the second in our two part interview special with historian David Barrett, whose new book 140 Days to Hiroshima examines the decision making regarding the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. This time we examine the factionalism within the Japanese wartime leadership, the impact of the second atomic bomb on the regime's decision making and the role of Emperor Hirohito. You can...

In the 1930s, Ronald Reagan had been a Roosevelt Democrat supporter and had believed that the role of government in alleviating the crisis of the Great Depression was vital. By the early 1950s, Reagan, a failing actor was moving to the political right and had embraced the Hayekian obsession with reducing the size of the state. As a spokesman for the company GE he toured the USA, speaking to workin...

America's war in the Pacific had begun with Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbour and within six months the US Navy inflicted a devastating defeat on Japan at the Battle of Midway. American admirals and aviators learned the rules of naval warfare quickly, despite the fact that Japan initially outclassed America in naval warfare and aviation. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Cent...

In the 1930s the deteriorating world situation presented all major political parties in Britain with profound dilemmas, whether to back pacifism, collective security or appeasement. The peripheral British Union of Fascists advocated peace with Nazi Germany in order to allow Hitler to wage his war against Europe's Jews. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conve...

In 1942 Heinrich Himmler appointed a new administrator to the head of his concentration camp network, Oswald Pohl. Pohl saw the key to his personal advancement the utilisation of slave labour for arms manufacture. By late 1942 and in early 1943 it was clear that the tide of war was turning against Germany and Pohl believed that the brutal extraction of work from prisoners could contribute to victo...

By 1935 the Soviet regime appeared to relax its stance towards citizens deemed to be class enemies and their children. Stalin said: "A son does not answer for the father." However, persecution of former Kulaks and former members of the Tsarist order continued regardless, as many Soviet employers or teachers did not wish to appear lenient towards 'social aliens' in case the political mood changed a...

This special episode of the Explaining History Podcast features historian David Barrett, whose new book 140 Days to Hiroshima examines the decision making regarding the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. This is the first of two interviews with David and it explores the decisions by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and President Truman to use the bomb instead of an amphibious landing in the...

In the late 1970s, as Britain, America and other wealthy countries were developing free market solutions to the problems of inflation and low growth, China selected aspects of capitalism to incorporate into its economy, while maintaining the fiction that it was a communist society. This podcast explores how China transformed the world economy in the 1980s as a result. Explaining History helps you...

By 1949 the development of a communist state in China radically changed the fortunes of France in Vietnam, a shift in dynamics that made the war for France virtually un-winnable. In 1950, a well armed Democratic Republic of Vietnam Army inflicted devastating losses on the French along the Chinese border, supported by Chinese supplies and training. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th C...

By the summer of 1942 the Japanese military was drunk on the victories it had achieved in the previous six months of war. It had over run Singapore, Malaya, Burma and Indochina, and it had dealt America a huge blow at Pearl Harbour and had seized the American protectorate of the Philippines. It was precisely this arrogance and risk taking that would result in a series of naval disasters and defeat...

Between 1915 and 1918 all sides in the First World War used poison gas against one another, but it was Germany that was the biggest pioneer of battlefield chemical weapons. The last year of the war saw the highest intensity of gas use as the desperation by all sides for a breakthrough intensified. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert in...

The Communist Party of Great Britain was established in 1920 and was heavily influenced by Comintern, the Communist International organisation in Moscow. Lenin was interested in shaping the party in Britain and other European countries, imposing the principal of democratic centralism on party members. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and exper...

Fascist bombing campaigns and planned coups, leading up to a massacre in Bologna in 1980 brought the threat of splinter group fascism to the Italian government's attention. The MSI (Italian social movement) attempted to broaden its appeal and mask its overtly fascist politics during a period where there was widespread revisionism about the legacy of Mussolini and an attempt to partly rehabilitate...

In the aftermath of the Second World War a set of global institutions allied with a social democratic shift in several leading world economies to create a relatively stable post war economic order. The long and bitter memories of the 1930s and the destruction of the Second World War gave rise to this post war new order. By the 1970s this had started to fall into decline and provide opportunities f...

In the 1960s, splinter groups from the right wing Italian Social Movement began to believe that only a military coup in Italy could save the country from the threat of communism. By the late 1960s they began actively planning and carrying out bombing campaigns across Italy in order to 'prepare the population' for direct rule by the army. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century thr...

As the allied powers deliberated at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, David Lloyd George encouraged the Greek prime minister Venizelos to seize the former Ottoman city of Smyrna. The consequences for the city, once a bastion of religious and cultural tolerance, would be tragic, but to the British simply consequence of a wider imperial game in the near east. Explaining History helps you understan...

The Nazis always intended to wage a war of annihilation in the Soviet Union and both soldiers and civilians would die in unprecedented numbers. In the Nazi camps Soviet soldiers were left to starve, but the Soviet political officers, the commissars, were targeted for immediate execution wherever they were discovered. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical convers...

In the mid 1960s a series of plots were considered, with varying degrees of organisation and commitment, to overthrow the Labour governments of Harold Wilson using the army. Even though a coup failed to transpire, the plots showed that deeply reactionary forces in the army, the City of London and the aristocracy were resistant to the modest reforms of the decade and the social change that accompan...

Between the the late 1940s and late 1950s, as Cold War politics swept Europe, the Italian Social Movement, a neo fascist party, tried to merge into the wider parliamentary political right. Using electoral pacts with the other parties of the right, they saw their electability gradually improve, but faced angry resistance on the streets from those with long, bitter memories of Mussolini's crimes. Ex...

The coordination and control of the German press by the Nazis took several years to complete as prior to 1933, the German newspaper industry was among the most diverse and vibrant in the world. A process of intimidation and self censorship, combined with Nazi confiscation and theft destroyed German press independence within three years. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century thro...

In the aftermath of the Second World War, a centre right Christian Democratic Party emerged and by 1947 the Communist Party of Italy had been expelled from its coalition. The far right was able to reinvent itself in the Italian south, but were much diminished by the end of the 1940s. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We c...

When the poorly defended British colony of Burma was attacked by Japan in December 1941 it quickly collapsed. For many Burmese, it was a moment of opportunity and for the British a desperate bid for escape and survival. Racial colonial attitudes soon showed themselves as the million Indians who had served the British in Burma were abandoned by their colonial masters and at least 50,000 died as the...