History Happy Hour

This week on History Happy Hour: We celebrate America’s 250th birthday to talk about the founders’ drinking! A perfect take for HHH! Historian Brook Barbier returns to the show to talk with us live about the role that alcohol played in spurring building, and winning the American Revolution and how it shaped the nascent United States. Plus – cocktail recipes! (We’ll try some...

This week on History Happy Hour: Along with Guadalcanal in the Pacific, and Stalingrad in Russia, the Allies victory in North Africa was one of three Axis defeats that changed the course of the war in early 1943. The Africa campaign has sometimes been branded a side show, but it destroyed 40% of the Luftwaffe’s planes, ended Axis sea power in the Mediterranean and led to the surrender of 250...

This week on History Happy Hour: The Declaration of Independence came to life in a boarding house in Philadelphia under the hand of Thomas Jefferson, captured the spirit of the American cause, and lives to this day. Scholar Michael Auslin has written a history of the Declaration of Independence that starts with its writing and winds through a long afterlife of 250 years. We’ll talk with him...

This week on History Happy Hour: World War II was unprecedented in its scope and ferocity. The heroism of the men and women who won the war may be well documented, but we know too little about the pain and hardships the veterans endured upon their return home In this encore episode, we discuss this with David Nasaw, author of the new book The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II. Dav...

This week on History Happy Hour: To mark the 82nd Anniversary of D-Day, we will bring you a ninety-minute special edition of History Happy Hour looking back on the Normandy landings. Two of our favorite historians will join us to take your questions about D-Day – its planning, execution and aftermath. Joe Balkoski wrote the book Beyond the Beachhead about the 29th Division, which landed on t...

This week on History Happy Hour: September 1943, the people of Denmark banded together to rescue nearly all of their Jewish citizens from a NAZI roundup by ferrying them to sanctuary in Sweden. Why were the Danes able to do what no other country could? In this encore episode, we discuss this little-known, true story with guest Tim Brady, author of A Light in the Northern Sea: Denmark’s Incre...

This week on History Happy Hour: Chris and Rick are in Berchtesgaden to present an encore episode about The Hispanos of frontier New Mexico after the war with Mexico in 1848.  Make sense?  Probably not, but that’s the way it goes! We’ll present our conversation with James Mills, author of In the Days of Billy the Kid . Mills dives into the lives of four men little known to hi...

This week on History Happy Hour: Chris and Rick explore the story of two B-24 navigators from the same Illinois town, who find themselves in a famous bombing raid over Ploesti - and the woman who connects them.   Our guest is Jan Cress Dondi, author of The Navigator’s Letter: The Story of Two WWII Airmen, a Doomed Mission, and the Woman who Bound Them Together . Drawing on family letter...

This week on History Happy Hour: Chris and Rick welcome Robert Edsel, author of the book “ Monuments Men,” to talk about his latest book “ Remember Us: American Sacrifice, Dutch Freedom, and a Forever Promise Forged in World War II .” We’ll talk about the occupation and liberation of the Netherlands, as well as the extraordinary, 80-year commitment of Dutch citizens t...

This week on History Happy Hour: The shocking untold story of the British royal family’s centuries-long investment in slavery and continued profiting off its legacy—from Elizabeth I to the present. Acclaimed historian Dr. Brooke Newman reveals the true story of the enslavers who were supported by members of the royal family in her new book The Crown’s Silence: The Hidden History...

This week on History Happy Hour: What drove the thinking of Hitler and his followers? How did ordinary Germans come to embrace an ideology of hate and destruction? In this encore episode, Chris and Rick talk with Laurence Rees , award-winning historian and author of the new book The Nazi Mind: Twelve Warnings from History . Drawing on decades of research and previously unpublished interviews, Rees...

WE HAD A SCHEDULING ISSUE WITH THIS WEEK'S GUEST AND HE DID NOT APPEAR.  WE WILL TRY TO RESCHEDULE . This week on History Happy Hour: President Truman’s choice to drop the atomic bomb is the most debated decision in the 20th Century. But what if he, himself, did not fully understand the decisions being made until after the atomic bomb was used. Chris and Rick will talk to historian...

This week on History Happy Hour:   The little-known story of FBI agents who went undercover to hunt down U.S. traitors on foreign soil during World War II. The goal: to identify and capture U.S. citizens plotting against their own country in the shadows of war-torn Europe. To accomplish this, a small group of federal agents assumed new identities to infiltrate underground networks, interrogat...

This week on History Happy Hour: We travel back to the six critical months before Adolf Hitler seized power, when the Nazi leader teetered between triumph and ruin. As financial backers withdrew, the Nazi Party threatened to fracture. Hitler talked of suicide. The New York Times declared he was finished. Yet somehow, in a few brief weeks, he was chancellor of Germany. In this encore episode, we ta...

This week on History Happy Hour: Eighty years ago, Japan surrendered to the Allies after three of the most devastating bombing attacks of the war – two nuclear weapons and the fire-bombing of Tokyo. What was the decision-making process in this endgame of World War II?  Was it just the atomic bomb that brought about Japan’s surrender? In this encore episode we’ll chat with Ri...

This week on History Happy Hour: In 1993 two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down, and in the ensuing Battle of Mogadishu eighteen Americans and hundreds of Somalis were killed. But very few appreciate that this was just one day in a two-and-a-half-year operation—the most ambitious attempt in history to rebuild a nation. Why and how did it go so wrong? In this encore episode we explore this...

This week on History Happy Hour: It was a marvel of 1930s engineering, a line of underground forts containing hospitals, modern kitchens, telephone exchanges, and even electric trains. The fortifications were invulnerable to the heaviest artillery and to chemical warfare. Yet they fell to the Germans in just a few weeks. Kevin Passmore has written The Maginot Line – A New History . We’...

This week on History Happy Hour: Author Dan King interviewed more than 100 Japanese veterans while living in Japan, and has written a series of books telling the story of the war from their POV. We’ll talk to him about his latest book, The Iron Graves of Saipan, about the men of the 9th Japanese Tank Division. Their story begins with training, chow halls, talent shows, pranks, and USO shows...

This week on History Happy Hour:   In 1864, General Sherman commenced his march across Georgia. By the time he reached Savannah, some 20 thousand enslaved people attached themselves to his army.   Chris and Rick explore this seminal moment that laid the foundation for Reconstruction with Bennett Parten, author of S omewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman's March and the Story of America&#0...

This week on History Happy Hour: In 1945, the US Congress recommended awarding the Medal of Honor to 432 recipients. Not a single Black soldier made the list. Not Vernon Baker, who single-handedly eliminated three enemy machineguns and an observation post. Not even Lieutenant Charles Thomas, who led his platoon to capture a strategically vital village in 1944 in spite staggering losses. It took mo...

This week on History Happy Hour: During WWII, 27 Tuskegee Airmen were reported missing in combat. The remains of most were never found. Chris and Rick explore their lives, their fates and the impact of their loss with NPR Investigative Reporter Cheryl Thompson. She is the daughter of a Tuskegee Airman, and author of the book Forgotten Souls: The Search for the Lost Tuskegee Airmen . Cheryl Thompso...

This week on History Happy Hour: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson were two African-American giants whose lives would forever be altered by the Cold War, and would explosively intersect before its most notorious weapon, the House Un-American Activities Committee. It is a complex story that tallies the sometime fearsome cost of standing against racism. Our guest is Howard Bryant, author of the dual...

This week on History Happy Hour: It sits on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago: The U-505.  The June day in 1944 that this German submarine was captured was the first time the U.S. Navy boarded and captured an enemy vessel since the War of 1812. It was carried out in swashbuckling style by a top-secret Navy task force. In this encore episode, Chris and Rick discuss its d...

This week on History Happy Hour: During WWI, The White Lady network helped Britain by acting as couriers, radio operators and spies to facilitate the end of German control. And, when war broke out again two decades later, the leaders of the network regrouped and established a successor: The Clarence Service. We will talk with HHH Alum Helen Fry to chart the history of these pivotal intelligence ne...

This week on History Happy Hour:  Forty years after the publication of Eugene Sledge’s memoir With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa, his son Henry has written The Old Breed: The Complete Story Revealed . We’ll talk with Henry Sledge about his conversations with his father that form the basis of this book, as well as his reflections on his father’s war.     Hen...