Explaining History

Anti communism became a defining aspect of American politics during the 1940s and 1950s, not just for the right wing of the Republican Party, but also for the Democrats and the liberal intelligentsia and journalists the traditionally supported the party. They shifted to the right throughout the period, and whilst some decried McCarthy's methods, others began to lend them tacit and then vocal support. Liberals saw communism as antithetical to their beliefs and believed it could and should be resisted, particularly in the emerging battlegrounds of South East Asia. 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 ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Margaret Thatcher was deposed by her party in 1990, but the legacy of her ideas in some form lingers on. The Tory Party itself has abandoned any pretence of interest the operating of free markets and is led my the antithesis of her views on social conservatism. Instead of the offspring of a lower middle class shop keeper who values financial prudence and views the economy like a household budget, the party is led by an Etonian with an almost complusive dishonesty who has frittered more money on fantasy projects than any British leader, ever. However, it is in the public imagination that Thatcherism exists in zombie form. Popular culture regurgitates an endless series of Thatcherite nostrums about competition, enterprise, thrift, individualism and the merits of privatisation. This podcast explores the context of her rise to power and the shortcomings of her reign. 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 ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the first year of the war, from September 1939 to September 1940, Germany's military forces fought four seperate European campaigns (Poland, Scandanavia, France and the Low Countries, Britain), three of which could be described as blitzkrieg, rapid, armoured 'lightning wars' using aircraft and armour. The fourth campaign, the Battle of Britain, fought in the summer and autumn of 1940 was a failure, despite Lufwaffe hopes that a war could be won from the air alone. This podcast explores the use of terror bombing in one of these four campaigns, against France and the Netherlands. 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 ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Second World War was a national humiliation for France, enduring occupation, collaboration with the Nazis and Vichy complicity in the Holocaust. The violent purge of collaborationists after the war saw tens of thousands of mainly low level members of Vichy and the French civilians who had been friendly with the occupying Germans assaulted, imprisoned or killed. High profile collaborators like Peirre Laval were tried and executed, whereas other fascist figures evaded justice and re-emerged as part of the new Cold War alliance from 1947 onwards. 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 ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The conquest of the Soviet Union was an idea that had been at the forefront of HItler's thoughts since the 1920s. Exploiting the resources of Russia and the Ukraine for the benefit of Germany was not a new concept and it had most recently been tried during the last year of the First World War. Hitler and Himmler had grand visions of a transformed landscape, full of vast German cities, relying on Russian slaves to work the land for German farmers. When the USSR didn't collapse quite as readily as expected, these utopias crumbled, and the plan for a 'final solution' to the Jewish question, which had been scheduled to be addressed after the war, became the number one wartime priority. 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 ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1937 many Soviet citizens had traumatic memories of collectivisation, anti Kulak campaigns and famine from the period 1928-33. Many could sense that a new time of crisis was emerging and saw the arrest of party members as the beginnings of a dramatic change. Few had any knowledge of how indescriminate and far reaching the terror would become, as the regime searched endlessly for imagined enemies within. 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 ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the decade before the FIrst World War, Germany and Austria-Hungary put little effort in to coordinating their military strategies in the event of a war on two fronts. Germany's chief of General Staff Helmuth Von Moltke assured Austria that the plans inherited from Alfred Von Schlieffen, his predecessor, would offer the best chance that the central powers had of overcoming unfavourable odds. The plans were out of date by 1914, however, and both Germany and Austria-Hungary went to war basing their futures on flawed assumptions. 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 ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The landslide victory for Eisenhower and the Republican Party in the 1952 Presidential Election showed Democrats that a right of centre, socially conservative America in the grip of an obsessive anti communism would decide their political fate for decades to come. The continuing Korean War and the loss of China to communism three years earlier shaped American attitudes to communism and its perceived threat. 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 ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

History teaching is within the confines of a curriculum and under the pressure of examinations is riven with unfortunate compromises and unintended outcomes. The question of the civil rights movement in America is a case in point. Textbooks in the UK tend to focus on the 1950s and 1960s, centring mainly around the story of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in the south. The narrative becomes more complex after the passage of the Voting Rights Act 1965 and then after 1968 most textbooks shift to an examination of the black power movement and nod towards progressive changes that happen during the 1970s. We learn that America saw a generation of black sports stars and entertainers in the 1980s and a smattering of politicians, judges and civil servants. Most students are left with the firm impression that the civil rights struggle ended in success, that black America’s problems were largely resolved by the advent of civil rights and freedoms and that liberalism triumphed. Would that it were.Most UK teaching of the civil rights movement ignores the fact that many of the gains of the 50s and 60s were stripped away in the 80s and 90s by Reaganite welfare cuts and urban decay in black neighbourhoods (the blame for the resulting deprivation and criminality being dumped on impoverished black communities), and mass incarceration under Bill Clinton. The explosion of anger against endless police brutality last summer has reawoken interest in Britain on the subject of systemic injustice and state violence against black Americans and here I talk with Larry Auton Leaf about the problems of teaching a truncated and ahistorical view of the civil rights movement. 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 ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In early 1942 the American Eighth Air Force existed on paper only. Within twelve months it was a formidable fighting force in daylight raids over Germany and by 1945 was mounting the first two thousand bomber raids. In this episode of the Explaining History podcast, we hear from military historian David Dean Barrett about the 'Mighty Eighth' and the strategic bombing of Germany. 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 ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.