History Happy Hour

This Week on History Happy Hour: A new look at the presidency of Harry Truman. Chris and Rick welcome Jeffrey Frank, author of The Trials of Harry Truman: The Extraordinary Presidency of an Ordinary Man, 1945-1953 . It is the first in-depth examination of Truman’s Presidency since David McCullough’s Pulitzer-winning Truman thirty years ago. Harry Truman presided over a tumultuous perio...

This Week on History Happy Hour: Tank warfare on the battlefields of Europe. Chris and Rick welcome Peter Hart, author of the book Burning Steel. Peter’s book tells story of a single British tank regiment, the 2nd Fife and Forfar Yeomanry, that saw action from Normandy to the Battle of the Bulge. Peter has done intensive oral histories with the soldiers. Their personal recollections, raw and...

This Week on History Happy Hour: We turn our attention to the Cold War and the dark art of espionage as we focus on the story of one of that era’s most effective spies. Chris and Rick talk to Tim Tate, author of Agent Sniper: The Cold War Superagent and the Ruthless Head of the CIA. It tells of the rise and fall of Polish espionage officer Michael Goleniewski, one of the CIA's most effe...

This Week on History Happy Hour: Chris and Rick welcome back Joe Balkoski, one of the most respected WWII historians there is, and a personal favorite of ours. Joe literally wrote the book(s) on D-Day, as well as a highly -detailed five-volume-history of the storied 29th Division. This week we'll talk about his book From Brittany to the Reich, which chronicles the war weary division’s a...

This Week on History Happy Hour: We sometimes think of World War II as "the good war." But there were some for whom no war was worth fighting. This Sunday we look at WWII through the eyes of 60,000 British conscientious objectors who refused to take up arms and whose stories have been almost entirely forgotten. This week Chris and Rick welcome Tobias Kelly, author of Battles of Conscience: British...

This Week on History Happy Hour: A fascinating close-up look at Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, the two most legendary and consequential American Indian leaders. They triumphed at the Battle of Little Bighorn and led Sioux resistance in the fierce final chapter of the "Indian Wars." Our guest is Mark Lee Gardner, author of The Earth Is All That Lasts: Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and the Last Stand of...

This Week on History Happy Hour: The forgotten story of American privateers during the Revolution - daring freelance captains whose high-seas adventures proved essential to winning the war. Nearly 2000 privateering ships set sail - capturing an astonishing 1800 British vessels. Chris and Rick welcome Eric Jay Dolin, author of the new book Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution. Fro...

This Week on History Happy Hour: Lord Charles Cornwallis is best known as the British commander forced to surrender his army to George Washington at Yorktown, a shocking loss that led Britain to negotiate an end to the American Revolution. Far from being disgraced by his defeat, however, Cornwallis went on spend the next 25 years as a successful soldier and statesman, ruling India and Ireland and...

This Week on History Happy Hour: During WWII, a top-secret facility 15 miles from the White House conducted intelligence and espionage operations kept secret for more than 50 years. The facility at Fort Hunt was known only by its codename: PO Box 1142. Here, fifteen German generals and thousands of other high value Nazi prisoners were bugged and questioned by American interrogators, many of whom w...

This Week on History Happy Hour: Rick and Chris talk to the former Supreme Commander of NATO…about books! Admiral James Stavridis shares his love of the sea and some of the sources of that affection in a new book, The Sailor’s Bookshelf. He looks at fifty books that illustrate the history, importance, lore, and lifestyle of the oceans and of those who "go down to the sea in ships." He...

This Week on History Happy Hour: A pivotal WWII conflict hardly anyone knows about. In August 1939, as Hitler prepared to launch his panzers against Poland, the Soviet Union launched a major offensive against the Japanese Army. It was headed by General Georgy Zhukov, who later became the Society Union’s premiere WWII commander. The obscure battle of Khalkhin Gol was the climax of an undeclar...

This Week on History Happy Hour: The incredible story of Maximilian and Carlota, the European aristocrats who stumbled into power in Mexico—and faced the bloodiest of consequences. In the 1860s, Napoleon III of France made his grand power play in the Americas, persuading a young Austrian archduke and a Belgian princess to leave Europe and become the emperor and empress of Mexico, while the U...

This Week on History Happy Hour: The Battle of Midway, eighty years ago next month, marked a turning point in the Pacific war. In the space of just five minutes, American dive bombers inflicted cataclysmic damage on a much larger Japanese Fleet. The seemingly improbable victory is sometimes referred to as a miracle. But it was much more than luck – years of effort led to the moment of victor...

This Week on History Happy Hour: Travel back in time to ancient Sparta, a tiny Greek village that somehow transformed itself into an awesome military superpower. What was it about the Spartans’ unique society that so fascinated and frightened their contemporaries 2500 years ago, and continues to resonate today? Chris and Rick welcome Philip Matyszak, author of Sparta: Rise of a Warrior Natio...

This Week on History Happy Hour : Britain’s King Edward VI famously gave up the throne for the woman he loved, a Baltimore divorcee. But what came next was anything but a fairy tale. In fact, it is a story that involves Nazis, murder, treachery and betrayal. Chris and Rick welcome Andrew Lownie, author of Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke & Duchess of Windsor. Drawing on new...

This Week on History Happy Hour : The story of German tycoons who made billions off the horrors of the Third Reich and World War II – and were never brought to justice because of political expediency. Many of the dynasties they started continue to control swaths of the world economy today, owning iconic brands such as Porsche, Volkswagen, and BMW. Chris and Rick welcome Dutch journalist Davi...

This week on History Happy Hour : Benjamin Franklin may be the most brilliant and innovative of our founding fathers. During his long life he invented bifocals, captured lightning with a kite, and so much more. Yet his most surprising innovation may have taken shape on his deathbed. Franklin made an incredible parting gift to the working-class people of Boston and Philadelphia—a deathbed wag...

Something different this week on HHH. Chris and Rick have spent the week traveling the D-Day beaches with fellow Stephen Ambrose Tour historians and a small group of guests. On several evenings there were extended conversations about D- Day issues and questions that arose from our travels. This week's show contains excerpts from those conversations. It's a deep dive into some esoteric D-...

This week on History Happy Hour: After the outbreak of World War I, German sabotage agents set out to destroy neutral America’s war-making abilities by unleashing a campaign of terror and destruction. A network of saboteurs and spies, scientists and diplomats worked furiously to wage a secret war on the American homeland long before the United States ever entered the war. This campaign culmi...

The ongoing war in Ukraine is the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II, and brings to mind many striking parallels with the events of 1939-1945: Germany’s invasion of Poland, the Soviet Union’s invasion of Finland, the strategic importance of Ukraine itself and the desperate plight of refugees. Russian leader Vladimir Putin has been compared to Stalin and Hitler, while Ukrai...

From 1914-1918, soldiers from all over the world found themselves in this remote part of the Western Front, battling to control this forbidding piece of French woodland. French, Germans, Italians, Austrians and, eventually Americans all came to know the horrors of fighting in the Meuse Argonne. It was here, in 1918, that America launched its final offensive of the Great War. Battles that saw Charl...

This week on History Happy Hour: It’s been called “London’s House of Spies,” and suffice it to say, that for much of the twentieth century, St. Ermin’s hotel was at the epicenter of British intelligence efforts through two world wars and the subsequent Cold War. Used by various intelligence agencies during World War II, the top floor became the home of the Secret Inte...

Ubique (Everywhere), the motto of the Royal Artillery Regiment, is an apt description of the World War II service of the South Nottingham Hussars. A part-time cavalry unit before the war, upon mobilization in 1939 the “South Notts” traded their chargers for guns and served with distinction from Tobruk across North Africa to Sicily and then all the way across Europe and into Germany; in...

Robert E. Lee is acclaimed by many as one of the greatest generals America has produced, yet his fame was achieved while commanding an army in open rebellion against the United States. Admired for his integrity, he fought to defend his home state and the South's "peculiar" institution of slavery. Born into a bankrupt and disgraced family he went on to join the highest strata of Virginia'...

This week on History Happy Hour: General George S. Patton. The debate still rages: Was he a brilliant combat commander or the most over-rated general of the war? A legendary leader or a legend in his own mind? Whatever you think of Patton, there is no getting around the fact that he is one of most-chronicled figures of World War II. Historian Kevin Hymel is weighing in with a book that seeks to ad...