The History of the Twentieth Century

We take a break from the historical narrative this week as listener Brent asks the questions that (hopefully) you wanted answered.

We conclude the four-part series on military moves in 1916 in the Great War with Brusilov's Offensive and the Battle of the Somme.

Austria begins an offensive against Italy, Russia gears up a counteroffensive in Galicia, and the British and German Navies have it out in the Skagerrak.

The fighting continued at Verdun as the Russians prepare an offensive of their own to relieve the pressure on France. A German U-boat mistakenly sinks a passenger ferry in the English Channel, triggering another controversy over submarine rules of engagement.

The third year of the war opens with Britain and Germany as the mainstays of their respective alliances. The German Chief of Staff tries a bank shot: cripple Britain by wounding France.

Turkish forces defeat a British force attempting to take Baghdad, but that doesn't stop the British and the French from divvying up the postwar Middle East. Also, the Russians advance, the Italians don't.

Venustiano Carranza is gaining momentum in the struggle over the future of Mexico, but Pancho Villa is not ready to give up. The Germans hope to lure the US into intervening, then Pancho Villa decides provoking the US is also in his interests.

In the neutral United States, the economy is booming and so is the motion picture business. And the most famous name in pictures is Charles Chaplin.

Allied commanders on the Western Front spent 1915 developing new strategies for the Great War, and attempted to implement them in their autumn offensive.

With numbers of new volunteers declining every month, the British government wrestles with the issue of conscription. Across Europe, all the Great Powers are feeling the manpower and other shortages created by the war.

After the overthrow of Victoriano Huerta, the revolutionary forces in Mexico begin fighting among themselves, and Huerta himself conspires with the Germans to return to power.

Albert Einstein needed ten years to flesh out his special theory of relativity into a general theory of relativity, but when he finished, he changed our understanding of the nature of reality itself.

German East Africa stood strong against British attempts to capture the territory. The key to capturing the German colony was to contest German control of Lake Tanganyika.

Political instability and mounting foreign debts lead to US military intervention on the island of Hispaniola.

By the summer of 1915, both the Central Powers and the Allies were keen to get Bulgaria to join the war on their side. The Central Powers won the bidding war, and Bulgaria became the fourth (and last) member of the Central Powers.

By the spring of 1915, it was clear that the war would last for a long time and that it would be taking an economic toll on all the nations involved, and there would likely be political consequences as well. In Britain, the debate centered on whether the government was doing enough to support the French, and in particular, whether British soldiers were being supplied with enough artillery shells t...

In early 1915, with the Western Front in a stalemate, Winston Churchill becomes the leading voice behind a plan to do an end run around the Germans and knock the Turks out of the war.

In the spring of 1915, just before the sinking of Lusitania and in international women's conference aimed at ending the war through private diplomacy, Germany uses poison gas on the Western Front.

The sinking of Lusitania and the deaths of 128 Americans was a shock. While there was little support in the US for war against Germany, there was a strong feeling that *some* kind of response was necessary. It was up to Woodrow Wilson to figure out what that would be.

Germany searches for a way to break the British blockade; Britain looks for a decisive battle.

In 1914, Germany and Britain held adjacent colonial territories in East Africa. When the Great War began, Britain attempted to seize German East Africa.

Another look at race relations in the USA. The formation of the NAACP and the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League and the re-founding of the Ku Klux Klan. And the release of D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation."

Germany claimed Southwest Africa as a colony in 1884. This episode reviews the history of the colony through the Great War, when it was seized by South Africa.

In 1914, the war in the West ground down to a stalemate. There seemed no sign that 1915 would be any different. Allied commanders experimented with new tactics to deal with this new warfare.

The beginning of 1915 sees the Central Powers under something like a giant siege. What can be done to break out?