Explaining History

In order to rule China, Mao knew he needed to dominate the peasantry. In order to do this he divided Chinese peasant villages, creating new social classes in an otherwise socially conservative world that had little experience of such concepts. Mao created a landlord and poor peasant class and gave the latter free reign to terrorise the former (and in many cases educated them to do so). The result...

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the new Labour government nationalised Britain's utilities, rail but most importantly its vast coal industry, creating more state employees of a national industry than anywhere else in the industrialised world. The decision to own the once mighty coal industry was part based in Labour's founding traditions but also in a shift towards economic and...

During the 1930s, the pressures on families in the USSR was immense. Men, women and children faced extreme economic hardship and political uncertainty, which in some cases had the effect of making families more cohesive and intimate, and in others tore families apart. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past...

During the 1930s, social class in Great Britain was experiencing a gradual transition away from the dominance that the landed aristocracy had enjoyed during the 19th Century. Instead, a new bourgeoisie was emerging, divided between an upper and lower middle class with different expectations and experiences, but similar political loyalties. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century t...

Even before 1933, the Nazis were aware that radio offered then unprecedented opportunities to shape public thought. However, the use of radio did not quite have the power to create the type of existential and cultural revolution that Goebbels and Hitler had envisaged. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past...

This is the first of a series of podcasts on the development of anti communism in the 1940s in the USA and the role that the Republican Party played. By 1945 a fear of communism and also the suspicion that the Democrats had been too easy on communists led to the development of deep changes in the public perception of communism and fears that communists might be operating in the USA. Explaining His...

This podcast is a continuation of a series on the origins of fascism and it examines the development of fascist ideas in interwar Italy and Germany. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share. ▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content Become...

Strategic bombing of the enemy's home front began in earnest in the second half of the First World War, with London facing a near collapse of its air defences in early 1918. This podcast focuses on the development of German strategic bombing and the British and French anti aircraft responses. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert intervi...

During the 1920s and 1930s, communist parties across Europe and beyond fell under the control, often voluntarily, of Comintern, the Soviet body dedicated to foreign subversion. This podcast explores the prominence that Comintern agents rose to in Eastern Europe after the Second World War how non 'Moscow Communists' were viewed with suspicion by Moscow. Explaining History helps you understand the 2...

During the Stalin era, those accused of counter revolutionary crimes and their family members were desperate to be relieved of the stigma of being a class enemy and the punishments that accompanied it. One approach to dealing with the threat of being disenfranchised was to renounce ones class origins, even if this meant renouncing ones family, community, spouse or religion. Explaining History help...

During the interwar years Britain became a dramatically more democratic society, following the extension of the franchise in 1918 and 1928. British society began to change gradually with the challenges of modernity and mass democracy, but many traditional deferential values endured. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We co...

At the end of the Second World War, Czech prime minister in exile Eduard Benes petitioned both western allies and the USSR to expel all ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia. This permission was granted and the result was the ethnic cleansing of the Sudetenland. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the pr...

The second in my reports on the current political crisis here in Great Britain. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share. ▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory ▸ Join the Community & C...

By 1945 the political landscape in America was changing in ways that would be far less favourable to Truman than the previous years had been to Roosevelt. An impressive and far reaching domestic agenda for reform was sabotaged by conservative and business interests on Capitol Hill throughout the seven years of his time in office. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through cri...

This is an unprecedented podcast for Explaining History, but in 2019 here in Britain we're in uncharted constitutional territory. I try not to engage too much in political podcasting because I wanted the podcast to connect with a broad audience but I feel it would be intellectually dishonest to talk about political history each week and ignore the crisis in Britain at the moment. To listeners arou...

Continuing the study of the background to European fascist thinking, this episode focuses on the impact of the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche on fascist thinking and ideas. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share. ▸ Support the Show & Get Ex...

The Stalinist regime, in the mid 1930s brutally purged towns and cities of those they considered to be socially deviant. Beggars, gypsies, prostitutes and thieves were exiled and sent to labour colonies and camps in a bid to change them into 'productive' soviet citizens and to socially change the nature of soviet towns and cities. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through cr...

In the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War, the beginnings of dramatic and brutal social change in China were evident in Mao's attitudes towards the urban poor. Those deemed socially unproductive, beggars, rickshaw pullers, hawkers and prostitutes were sent to re-education camps. The ultimate goal of the regime was to socially re-order urban life and to eliminate politically unwanted and seemingly...

This podcast continues the examination of Britain's social, economic and political circumstances on the eve of the First World War. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share. ▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content Become a Patron: patreo...

Following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7th 1941, the strategic decision making of America, Japan, Germany and Britain shaped the eventual outcome of the war itself. Japanese military planners realised they had begun a war they had no chance of winning and while Churchill rejoiced in this fact, he was also aware that a 'Japan first' strategy might divert badly needed American ai...

A new feature on the Explaining History Podcast, Talking History is our opportunity to hear from teachers, researchers, writers and academics about the history books they value and how they have engaged with them. Today's guest is history teacher Siobhan Profaska who has chosen The Five by Hallie Rubenhold to discuss. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conver...

The origins of Stalin's imitators, admirers and henchmen in Eastern Europe is explored in this podcast. Walter Ulbricht of East Germany, Boleslaw Beirut of Poland and Matyas Rakosi of Hungary respectively were the first generation of post war Stalinists to rule Eastern Europe, but their long association with Soviet communism from 1919 onwards through Comintern made them trusted and loyal candidate...

By the eve of the Second World War, Great Britain had been economically eclipsed by the USA, but it was still the most industrialised and urbanised nation in the world and experienced a transition away from heavy to light industry. In the fields of aviation, mass media and scientific discovery, Britain continued to be a world leader. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through...

Seizing political power was just the beginning of the Nazi programme, creating a profound and lasting cultural change among Germans to undo the perceived corruption of Germanic culture by the Weimar Republic was the longer struggle. Hitler's war on liberal democracy and socialism was in his view a bid to reclaim the essence of German identity from false and foreign ideas. Explaining History helps...

This is the second in a series on the development of fascism in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. In this podcast we examine the legacy of racial thinking, imperialism and the interaction of romantic nationalism and racial thought. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy th...