Explaining History

Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo on June 28th 1914, Austria demanded concessions form Serbia. Germany's support would prove pivotal in transforming a Balkan crisis into a European 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...

By 1940, the British had no other way of taking the fight directly to the enemy than aerial bombing. In the four years that followed, bombing became a controversial but essential aspect of the allied war effort, even though targeting civilians became a specific objective Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the pa...

In the mid 19th Century China experienced a prolonged crisis as a result of the loss of the two opium wars with Britain. An attempt to economically revolutionise the country in the guise of the Self Strengthening Movement resulted in rapid economic development, but also fierce resistance from China's traditionalists. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical convers...

The 20th Century was an age of political and artistic manifestos and visions, but the 21st Century is largely devoid of them. This podcast explores the factors that have led to their decline 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 t...

Reviewing the new biography of Ronald Reagan, US president and figurehead of the conservative revolution. 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 ▸...

A combination of factors in the aftermath of the First World War - ethnic nationalism and racism, capitalism in crisis and resurgent class conflict made peace in Europe fragile and temporary. 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...

Review of Laura Trevelyan's biography of the Winchester repeating rifle 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 & Continue...

In this podcast, I examine the facade of economic growth in Nazi Germany and using the work of historians Adam Tooze and Richard J Evans, examine the far less impressive reality 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 &...

In the immediate aftermath of the First World War, hopes of an economic boom in Britain were shortlived. Instead, the country was plunged into economic crisis, union unrest as the Conservative Party rose to dominance. 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 subsc...

This Wednesday's review is Gotham Rising, a cultural history of New York in the 1930s, by Jules Stewart 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 ▸ Jo...

In 1966, Mao returned from four years in the political wilderness to enact the Cultural Revolution, inspiring millions of young people to carry out an assault on traditions and authority figures across China. In reality, Mao was engendering the first phase of a civil war that would rage until his death a decade later. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conver...

Exhausted by the Second World War, Britain was desperate to hold on to influence in the Middle East and yet policy makers were anxious to withdraw from Palestine as quickly as possible. At the same time, Britain was engaged in another hurried departure from India. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to t...

This week's book review is an excellent and incisive analysis of the cultural history of black power in America by Rafael Torrubia. 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...

In the decades before the First World War, the role that public opinion and the press in forming the foreign policy of European powers became considerably more decisive. This podcast explores how and why. 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 shar...

The monthly book review returns, with a review of Battles for Freedom - the essays of Eric Foner for the Nation magazine 1977-2015 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...

In the late 1970s, after a decade of economic stagnation, western economies, accompanied by China, began the first steps towards the abandonment of the Bretton Woods system and social democracy. They replaced it with the current model of global economics, neoliberalism. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the pas...

In 1947 the last of the Nuremberg trials began. The accused were German industrialists from the chemicals cartel IG Farben. Prosecutors charged them with using slave labour at their bunawerk factory during the Second World War - Auschwitz Monowitz. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If y...

The development of British national identity in the 20th Century is intimately connected with conflict. War has provided a unifying force that has held together an inherently fissile union throughout the century. 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...

Stalin and his chief henchman Lavrenti Beria poured resources from a devastated USSR into the creation of an atomic bomb from 1945 onwards. The development of the bomb rested on Soviet espionage and the ability of scientists to experiment and work without ideological controls. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect...

In 1944 at Bretton Woods in the USA a new model of the world economy that would provide postwar stability and prosperity was devised. However, the compromises and plans of the USA meant that the system created a fatal flaw, leaving it to unravel by 1971. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present...

Between 1958-1962 Mao's second five year plan, known as the Great Leap Forward, resulted in economic chaos and a famine that killed over 40 million people. It was in part inspired by Mao's attempts to eclipse Soviet leader Khrushchev as the leader of the communist world. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the pa...

In a slight change from our regular episodes, I've interviewed study specialist and coach Lucy Parsons to offer her knowledge on how to prepare for history exams and what skills are needed to excel at A level. Coming on Friday: Berlin and Willy Brandt. You can find out more about Lucy's academic coaching @ http://lifemoreextraordinary.com Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century th...

After three decades of unprecedented global economic growth from the Second World War onwards, the economy of the first world experienced prolonged economic crisis throughout the 1970s and 1980s. This podcast explores the long and short term causes of the crisis. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to th...

Throughout the interwar period French politics polarised between right and left, but unlike Germany, the political centre ground managed to hold. On the right, a series of anti communist, pro Catholic, nationalist and militarist parties and societies proliferated, but it took a German invasion in 1940 to create a fascist government in France in the guise of the Vichy regime. Explaining History hel...

By 1941 Japan was facing acute economic crises due to the long drawn out war in China and the American oil and scrap metal embargo. The surprise attack on Pearl Harbour seemed to many Japanese a way out of the crisis. 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 subsc...