Explaining History

At the start of his second term in office Nixon saw an opportunity in the return of American POWs in Vietnam to present a positive and patriotic narrative at the end of America's most divisive conflict since the American Civil War over a century earlier. Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit the Explaining History Patreon page...

The dramatic increase in standards of living for British working class people from the mid 1950s onwards was accompanied by anxieties that an entire way of life and working class culture would be lost. Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit the Explaining History Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=763386 Explaini...

Comprised mainly of teenagers in the late 1930s, the Death's Head Division guarded the camps and brutalised prisoners, but many believed they had been recruited for more active military service in the name of the Fuhrer. Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit the Explaining History Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/use...

When Hitler invaded the USSR in June 1941, the changing strategic picture presented Britain and America with opportunities and hazards. A deal with Stalin was in the minds of both Roosevelt and Churchill, but the American public was far more reticent and divided on the issue. Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit the Explainin...

For a century Afghanistan had been a theatre for the 'great game' of espionage between the British and Russian empires, but on the eve of the Second World War the country was in an unenviable situation. Fearing Soviet aggression and occupation, the Afghans looked to British India for assurances of its security but found few concrete promises. Explaining History is funded through advertising and do...

By the winter of 1941 the Japanese public, military planners and government were in broad agreement about the necessity of war against America, Britain, France and the Netherlands. However, the war was based on a number of strategic assumptions that would in time devastate the Japanese. Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit th...

The mid term elections in 1946 were a disaster for the Democratic Party, which faced fraudulent accusations of communist sympathies from their Republican rivals. Both Democrats and Republicans learned that 'red baiting' was a useful tactic and could be weaponised against political enemies. Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit...

When half a million supporters of the Spanish Republic fled from Franco's murderous nationalist armies in 1939 to France, they faced hostility and imprisonment, first at the hands of the French and later at the hands of the invading Germans. Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit the Explaining History Patreon page here: https:...

Second in the series of discussions on Italy's departure from the Paris Peace Conference. Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit the Explaining History Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=763386 Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connec...

In the hidden world of the Nazi camps, Himmler's desire for order presented the sadists who worked as camp guards with strict regulations on prisoner treatment. Himmler desired order above all things, ensuring that the brutal violence meted out to prisoners was centrally organised and directed. Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas,...

A combination of free market economic liberalism and social conservatism, was Margaret Thatcher an 'inconsistent ideologue'? Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit the Explaining History Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=763386 Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversatio...

When Italy attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando had immense ambitions to acquire new territories. The disappointments Italy endured would speed fascism's path to power. Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit the Explaining History Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=763386 E...

In 1955, psychoanalyst Erich Fromm examined the emotional realities behind the lives of Americans experiencing unprecedented material wealth. His findings formed his book the Sane Society. It concluded that despite the advances in prosperity, modern society actually was far from sane and generated much emotional suffering and neurosis. Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations...

In the decade after 1945 American life was transformed by cheap housing, cheap fuel and the biggest increase in material well being in human history. Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit the Explaining History Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=763386 Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century thr...

For the Chinese people, the Second World War began in 1937, with Japan's ruthless invasion of the mainland and the destruction of cities such as Nanjing and Chongqing. This podcast explores the west's historical amnesia on the topic of Chinese wartime suffering and resistance. Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit the Explaini...

In the 1930s Woodie Guthrie became the authentic voice of the dispossessed, drifting American diaspora in the drought afflicted heartlands of the USA. However, he was part of a long tradition of American folk and protest music. Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit the Explaining History Patreon page here: https://www.patreon....

Despite impressive victories against the allied powers during the First World War, by 1918 the Ottoman Empire was exhausted by fighting and the advantage was shifting towards Britain in the Middle East. General Edmund Allenby skilfully encircled Ottoman armies in late 1918, seizing Damascus and Beirut. Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and...

In the immediate aftermath of the German revolution, radical forces on the left and right were discontent with the development of a centre left Weimar Government. In January 1919, the army and freikorps violently suppressed the revolutionary movement of the Independent Social Democrats, also known as the Spartacists. Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content,...

Stalin's decision to ban private trade and to create state monopolies was carried out in haste with little planning during a period of immense economic upheaval. The results were chaotic and led to one of the most intense periods of economic hardship since the Russian Civil War. Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit the Explai...

Days after the November armistice was signed, the Red Army launched its bid for the Baltic States and only local anti communists, former German soldiers and German mercenaries stood in their way. The consequences for Latvia were horrendous, with warcrimes on both sides and civilians bearing the brunt of the violence. Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content,...

Strange Fruit was the first popular song that reached a mainstream audience which addressed the question of violence against black people in America and it made Billie Holiday, its original singer, a star. The song lived far beyond her death in 1959 and shaped protest music America throughout the 20th Century. Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journa...

Whilst Leningrad's citizens starved, Soviet party bosses enjoyed food, warmth and comfort. Laying siege to the city, the demoralised and ever more brutal German Army started to see by the spring of 1942 the impossibility of Hitler's dreams in Russia. If you're able to support the Explaining History Podcast, you can fund it through Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=763386 Explaining Hist...

Years of inconsistency in America's foreign and defence policy throughout the 1930s had left deep confusion at the highest levels of government about what kind of war might be fought against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan and what kind of war machine was needed. It was only in early 1941 that these questions began to be answered and American mass production began in earnest. Explaining History is...

When Russia left the First World War in 1918, the generals and politicians of the Central Powers were convinced that victory was in sight. Germany's determination to end the war quickly resulted in the Ludendorff Spring Offensives that failed disastrously and within months the final cost of the war led to collapse not of Britain and France but of Germany and its allies. Explaining History is funde...

Rising living standards, new scientific innovation and a faith in progress were prevalent in America in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. However, social progress was segregated and enjoyed mainly by white Americans, creating the conditions of future conflict in the 1950s and 1960s. Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and idea...