Explaining History

Germany and Austria were outnumbered in terms of troops and cavalry by nearly 2:1 in 1914 and desperately needed to win a rapid war on the western front if they stood any chance of victory. For both powers a long drawn out conflict would result in social unrest, economic ruin and revolution. For both powers, following the failure to encircle and destroy the French and British armies in 1914, this...

In 1934 a new interior minister in the right wing government that took power in late 1933, Salazar Alonzo, declared a state of emergency and the right wing CEDA movement that supported the government demanded extreme action against striking peasants and workers. A new fascist party, the Falange, formed in early 1934 to wage a bloody war against the left, believing in the 'bullet and the fist' as t...

Administrative exile had been used by the Tsarist regime against political dissidents and the revolutionary intelligentsia, however the mass deportation of entire ethnic and social groups was a new phenomenon under the Stalinist regime. This podcast explores the exile and deportation of class groups and nationalities and the mass dekulakisation campaigns. Explaining History helps you understand th...

During the Second World War, the fate of British and French mandates in the Middle East was a constant pressure on war time diplomacy and on American domestic policy. The legacies of the Anglo-French carve up of the Middle East after the war and the pressures placed on both empires by the Axis powers gave Jewish nationalism and the careerism of Roosevelt's chief rival Wendell Wilkie new opportunit...

Hitler's vision of a new Germany, built in vast neoclassical grandeur, required stone to be quarried and bricks to be manufactured in vast quantities. Three camps, Flossenburg, Mauthausen and Orianenburg were created to supply these materials. They were significantly different from the existing network of camps and far more lethal in the 18 months before the outbreak of the Second World War. Liste...

In the late 19th Century a series of intellectual and ideological movements coalesced into the beginnings of fascist thought. Romanticism, nationalism and racial thinking created the intellectual climate for authoritarian creeds based around race, identity and a rejection of materialism and modernity to develop. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversation...

In 1945 Truman inherited from Roosevelt a more prosperous America, but one which had moved politically to the right. Rising living standards and the Republican Party's successful capture of anti communist sentiment made for a difficult environment for New Deal liberalism to thrive in. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We...

During the 1930s the Nazi regime attempted to exploit prisoners for their labour but there were few examples of successful profiteering and as the decade wore on prisoners were mainly forced to build the infrastructure of the Nazi camp system itself. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If...

Initially, Mao proceeded with caution against the social enemies of the Communist Party, using the tools of state repression left behind by Chiang Kai Shek's Kuomintang. Assigning a new legal social class status to all Chinese citizens saw many later condemned to forced labour, imprisonment Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interview...

During the four years of the First World War, intelligence gathering from informants, captured soldiers, aerial reconnaissance and signals traffic developed in sophistication. In addition, the methods used to keep secrets secure kept up as an intelligence 'arms race' changed the nature of information gathering and warfare. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical c...

In the inter war years as air policy developed in Britain, 'air policing' of the British Empire was a strategy adopted by the RAF in order to wage aerial warfare against colonised peoples in Africa and Asia. The same principals were applied later to Germany, in the flawed belief that strategic bombing would work in a similar way Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through crit...

By the late 1920s alinist fears of subversion by enemy social classes saw the disenfranchisement and expulsion from jobs and homes of members of the former bourgeoisie. This policy had both supporters and opponents in local and national government. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If y...

In November 1933 the reactionary movement CEDA became the a key part of a new right wing government. CEDA actively proposed a violent fascist coup and began to prepare a militia to achieve this. The socialist party the PSOE threatened revolution in response but in reality lacked the determination or the means to carry it out. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critica...

The development of air power in the USA from 1938 onwards in the shape of the B-17a four engine bomber was not matched by an official air doctrine, but a belief in the importance of mass bombing of industrial areas was emerging from planners, air force generals and junior officers throughout the decade. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and exp...

In the USSR during the Stalinist era, class origins defined all aspects of an individual and by the end of the decade were a matter of life and death. This podcast explores how 'former people' from enemy classes were treated and excluded from society. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. I...

The Marshall Plan was the most successful use of American soft power in the country's history. By offering $13 billion in economic aid to rebuild western Europe, America stabilised half the continent and created new markets for American corporations. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If...

By 1939 the Camp SS, normally responsible for controlling prisons such as Dachau was equipped and trained to fight at the front line. This podcast explores the evolution of its role. 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...

At the start of the First World War, Egypt and the Suez Canal were vital to the functioning of the British Empire and were under huge pressure from an Ottoman offensive. However, it was Muslim, Seikh and Hindu Indian soldiers from a British India riven with nationalist revolutionary politics that were deployed to hold the British Empire together in the Sinai. Explaining History helps you understan...

In four years between 1958-62 a catastrophic famine in China killed 40 million people and a quarter of those died in Szechuan, a food rich province. This podcast explores the wilful blindness of Mao and the corruption of the communist party that cost so many lives. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to...

After two short years of social reform under the socialist PSOE party in Spain a new right wing government came to power led by the conservative party CEDA. In the following two years poverty, hunger and violence tore apart the modest gains made by Spain's peasants and workers Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect...

By the end of 1946 a guerrilla war was being waged by the new Democratic Republic of Vietnam against the colonial French in the south, but developments over the next three years would radically expand the scope of the conflict to make it the 'first total war of the anti colonial era'. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We...

Hi everyone, I'm sending out this podcast today to invite you all to collaborate in the creation of a new podcast focusing on contemporary political, social, environmental and other crises, challenges and debates. Please get in touch if you'd like to become involved. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past t...

In 1947 US President Harry Truman was forced to commit to the defence of Greece and Turkey against the possibility of communist victories in the Greek civil war and the threat of Soviet pressure on Turkey. The British had been forced to end their commitments to both countries, placing the eastern Mediterranean in danger and as a result the flow of Middle Eastern oil to Europe and America. Explaini...

The island fortress of Singapore was meant to be an unassailable bastion of British imperial power in Asia. Its fall in February 1942 was the biggest humiliation for the British of the entire war and doomed the British empire in Asia. 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 s...

In 1945 a Labour Government swept to power at the end of the Second World War, it had an agenda of domestic social reform but considerable foreign policy commitments. Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin was an advocate of National Service to meet Britain's military manpower needs. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect t...