Explaining History

Throughout the 20th Century Romania has endured the twin catastrophes of fascism and communism. During the Second World War Romania was deeply involved in the holocaust and the development of an aggressive nationalism that remained undiminished throughout the communist era was chiefly to blame. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert inter...

Margaret Thatcher was a politician convinced that a return to 'family values' after two decades of seeming moral decline in the 60s and 70s was part of the key to restoring British fortunes. Throughout the 1980s, however, this manifested itself in a prolonged attack on gay rights, during a time when the existence of the HIV virus and AIDS was associated in the press with the LGBT community. During...

In February 1943, after one of the longest coldest winters of the war, the news that the German 6th Army had been lost at Stalingrad shocked the nation. In response Joseph Goebbels, the public face of the regime made the most important speech of his career announcing a new time of struggle and total war. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and ex...

During the First World War the racist terrorist organisation the Ku Klux Klan reformed and by 1924 boasted four million members. However five years later it was once more a political irrelevance. 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. ▸ Supp...

In August 1961 East German and Soviet forces created a wall around West Berlin, preventing East Germans from fleeing to the west. The failures of Soviet Communism and the attractions of a prosperous west had led a fifth of the population to migrate. This podcast explores the crisis and how the wall led to a gradual stabilisation in the Cold War in Europe. Explaining History helps you understand th...

In the early 1970s John Lennon embarked on a brief and rather inglorious career as a political activist while based in America. His activism was an indication of the wider radicalisation of the decade and can help us to examine the prevalence of the counter culture in 1970s America. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We co...

In 1966 after four years of existing at the margins of the Chinese Communist Party following the disasters of the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong returned. He claimed that revisionist and right deviationist elements within the party were derailing the revolution and only the millions of Red Guards and the Chinese workers and peasants could put China back on track to socialism. The result was the ca...

Erich Fromm, one of the most overlooked intellectual figures of the 20th Century wrote insightful critiques of consumerist capitalism and explanations of the appeal of Nazism. His work also explored the dilemmas of being human in an increasingly alienating world. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to th...

By the early 1960s the once cordial relations between the USSR and The People's Republic of China had been replaced by suspicion and animosity. Two rival interpretations of communism vied for supremacy across the communist world and East Germany came to back the Soviet Union against the Chinese.https://explaininghistory.selz.com/item/55ad4404b7987212602077ee?mode=edit Explaining History helps you...

by early 1918 the Bolshevik's revolution was in serious danger of being overthrown. Instead of elite troops the new government possessed poorly disciplined Red Guards. By 1921, the army was over three million strong and had defeated its enemies, but at immense political cost to its creator, Leon Trotsky. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and ex...

When the Nazis' occupation of Greece ended and a gradual withdrawal turned into a desperate retreat from the Red Army, a civil war in Greece began. The British occupied Athens in a bid to restore King George II and prevent a communist takeover, but it proved to be one of Churchill's most controversial initiatives of the war and the beginning of a conflict that would last until 1949. Explaining His...

Towards the end of the Second World War, zionist terrorist Menachem Begin and the paramilitary organisation Irgun instigated their own war against the British authorities in Palestine. They sought to establish a Jewish state there and saw the British as an obstacle to this ambition Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We con...

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s the British became increasingly aware that they were vulnerable to air attack, especially after the rise of Nazism in 1933. The policy of evacuating children from the inner cities to counter this threat began in 1939, but at considerable physical and emotional cost to the children involved. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical con...

During Stalin's First Five Year Plan (1928-1932), the Russian population experienced greater material hardship and shortages than at any time since the Russian Civil War. Mass industrialisation led to food and housing shortages, resulting in misery and protest among the urban population. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews....

Lyndon Johnson had an antagonistic relationship with the Kennedy brothers but was indispensable to John F Kennedy as a political fixer. Following Kennedy's death he became President of the USA and won a landslide victory a year later. This podcast explores the career, ambitions, struggles and crises of Lyndon Johnson. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conver...

In the second half of the 1970s Americans developed a profound disillusionment with politics and a skepticism towards the office of president. The impact of Watergate and the apparent weakness of Nixon's two successors combined with an overall economic gloom and American humiliation in Vietnam and the Middle East. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversati...

In March 1918 in Britain, Parliament voted to enfranchise property owning women for the first time. This podcast explores the wartime decisions that led to this moment of radical electoral reform. 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. ▸ Sup...

The massive increase in government spending, borrowing and currency devaluation that occurred during the First World War by all powers led to a global surge in inflation. This growth in prices had major implications for both the combatant powers and the empires they governed Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect th...

In 1936 a British Christian Zionist army officer, Orde Wingate, was posted to the British Mandate in Palestine to help quell the Arab revolt. Wingate's passionate support for the Jews in Palestine led to him organising a brutal counter insurgency against the Arabs with the Jewish defence organisation the Hagannah, laying down the tactics later employed by the Israeli Defence Force. Explaining Hist...

As the Tsarist empire collapsed and Russia's new rulers, the Bolsheviks, negotiated with Germany at Brest Litovsk, the most important territory to both powers was Ukraine. The fate of the nation and its wealth of food and mineral resources would decide the outcome of the war for both empires. http://www.mrbsemporium.com Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conv...

In the mid 1930s, the Soviet Union claimed that living standards in the USSR had surpassed those in the capitalist world. For a brief period during the Second Five Year Plan the regime's focus was on creating a consumer culture of department stores and choice for Soviet citizens. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We conne...

Between 1956 and 1957 Mao Zedong took the unprecedented step of encouraging criticism amongst the people of the Chinese Communist Party. The deluge of anger and rage towards the party was overwhelming and swiftly inspired a brutal reaction from the dictator and a crack down against dissent. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interview...

In 1961, the city of Berlin, divided between East and West since 1945 saw a more permanent division erected. A wall that cut the city in two prevented East Germans from crossing from East to West enticed by the promise of a better life. * Support Explaining History here: please take a moment to look at my project https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/explaining-history and pledge whatever you can - there...

In 1945, at the end of the Second World War, the Labour Party swept to power on a mandate of social reform. Six years later, despite the creation of an almost universally popular National Health Service, the party was defeated in the 1951 election and spent 13 years in opposition. What explains their success and failure in one term in office? Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Centur...

In January 1945 the city of Budapest was surrounded by the Red Army and Hitler's occupying forces made a desperate and futile last stand. The siege of the city by the Red Army is often overshadowed by the subsequent downfall of Berlin, but the consequences for the inhabitants were no less savage. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert int...