Explaining History

When the delegates of the Paris Peace Conference met in 1919 a council of ten from the five dominant victorious powers formed into the Supreme Council, but the workings of the group were highly contested and problematic. 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 su...

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, racism and discrimination existed in different forms in both northern and southern states, with a Federal Government often reluctant to intervene or actively complicit. 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 su...

The British mandate in Palestine and Jewish mass immigration placed immense economic pressure on the indigenous Arab peoples. Land ownership became a flashpoint for violent unrest and by 1936 the Arabs rose in revolt against the British. 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...

The outbreak of hostilities in Europe had global consequences and Japan, allied to Britain saw its chance to expand its power in China at the expense of both China and European imperialists 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 show, please subscribe and share. ▸ S...

By 1939, Britain was poorly prepared for the onslaught of the blitz, with weal central administration and most responsibility for air raid protection placed on families and individuals 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 Sho...

Despite a devastating attack on the USA at Pearl Harbour, Japan paid little attention to the safety of its merchant shipping and faced economic devastation as a result. 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 Excl...

The desert war, a battle that Hitler did not want and Mussolini did, became an opportunity for Churchill to show that the fight was being taken to the enemy, even though it had a questionable impact on Britain's fortunes at 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, p...

A devastating air campaign against Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq saw the Arab forces that faced Israel destroyed and the balance of power in the Middle East changed forever. The success of the Israeli attack also sent shock waves through the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Eastern Europe. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert in...

The experience of managing information in the First World War shaped how Britain and Germany would control propaganda in the next conflict. Both sought to influence their own populations and also third parties such as the USA. 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, ple...

As the Luftwaffe's operations in Britain switched from RAF airfields to towns and cities, the first target was East London's docks. In this podcast we hear eye witness testimony from the first day of the blitz 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...

In the aftermath of the First World War, France and Germany sought ways to cooperate throughout the 1920s in order to provide economic stability and security for both countries. This resulted in the foundations for the European Union, but a second world war would derail the project for a generation. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert...

The months that followed the fall of France were crucial in determining the future outcome of the war. Hitler's decision making became more impulsive and his goals for the invasion of the USSR more urgent as the possibility of a US entry into the war loomed large in his thoughts. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We conne...

The rising star of the Zionist movement by the end of the Second World War, Ben Gurion was a mercurial figure with complex and often antagonistic relationships with Chaim Weizmann and Menachem Begin. 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. ▸...

During and immediately after the First World War, a range of plans were devised to distribute and manage German and Ottoman colonies and the process became led by American priorities and values. 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. ▸ Suppo...

Despite Herman Goering's estimates that the RAF would be defeated in under a month, a long battle of attrition raged throughout August and September 1940, resulting in unsustainable losses for the Luftwaffe. 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 s...

In the space of a year the Ottoman Empire was convulsed by two revolutions and a violent civil war between secular modernisers and Islamic traditionalists. The struggle resulted in the overthrow of the political schemer Abdul Hamid II 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...

The Second World War had a dramatic impact on the civil rights struggle, but as a new era in the battle for equality and justice for Black Americans dawned, deep prejudices and entrenched inequality existed. 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 s...

Some fresh perspectives on Stalin's labour camps, revising Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archepelago 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 Commu...

Following the devastating defeat of France, Hitler turned his eyes to Britain, the last obstacle in his conquest of the west. Poor planning and a failure to understand Britain's strengths contributed to a wildly unrealistic approach to defeating and occupying the island nation. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect...

Konrad Adenauer, the first Chancellor of West Germany attempted to suppress the memory of the Holocaust in the new republic. His political opponent, Kurt Schumacher of the SPD was determined to bring the crimes of the Nazis in to the open, but there was little popular appetite for such honesty. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert inter...

The second part of the discussion on Sacco and Vanzetti, based on Eric Foner's 1977 essay 'The Men and the Symbols' 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/explaining...

After decades of decline and gradual European encroachment into the Ottoman Empire, disaffected and angry army officers staged a revolt in 1908, forcing the Sultan Abdulhamid II to accept the reinstatement of a reformist constitution. 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...

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George led the British delegation and also those of the British empire dominions who had fought in the First World War at the Paris Peace Conference. The shrewd political operator and outsider was determined to enhance the power of the British Empire. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We...

Following the military disaster of the fall of France and the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from France, Churchill waited for Hitler's next move and hoped for assistance from the USA 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. ▸ S...

The politically motivated trial of Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti is examined in depth here, courtesy of Eric Foner's 1977 essay The Men and the Symbols. 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 Co...