Explaining History

By Nick Shepley

The Explaining History Podcast, created and hosted by Nick Shepley, offers a comprehensive exploration of 20th-century history through weekly episodes. For over a decade, this podcast has been prov

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FAQs about Explaining History:

How many episodes does Explaining History have?

The podcast currently has 790 episodes available.

Explaining History episodes:

August 05, 2022 The Soviet State and the Peasants (Part Two)
The world of the Soviet peasantry was complex and seemingly contradictory, and did not easily fall into the class stratification that the new Soviet regime believed could define all social categories. The lower to middle peasants, the Serednyaks, who would both work for others and sometimes hire labour themselves presented the regime with a conundrum - were they workers or were they exploiters? The outcome of these questions would determine how this group would be treated by the regime, a fact that would have dire consequences during the era of collectivisation.
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27min
July 23, 2022 Displaced Persons in Germany -1945
When the Second World War in Europe ended in May 1945, some 40 million people, German and non German were displaced in the four occupied zones of the country alone. This podcast is the first of two recordings that explore the desperate circumstances of former forced workers, prisoners of war, displaced German civilians and camp survivors.
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27min
July 10, 2022 The Soviet State and the Peasants
In the decade after the October Revolution the relations between the Soviet government and the peasantry declined as Stalin, Lenin and Trotsky all percieved that a new 'capitalist' peasantry was emerging in the guise of the Kulak class.

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28min
June 28, 2022 Stalin and Poland - 1939
This podcast explores Stalin's plans for Poland in the run up to the outbreak of the Second World War, and Neville Chamberlain's flawed diplomacy in the aftermath of the fall of Czechoslovakia. Stalin's secret diplomacy with both the western allies and the Nazis and his determination to see Poland destroyed as a state shaped the events between March and September 1939.
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31min
June 14, 2022 Journalism, Propaganda and War - Explaining History special
In this episode we hear from writer Mary McNeil, who discusses her new biography Century's Witness - which examines the life and career of Wallace Carroll, an American journalist and contemporary of William L. Shirer and Edward Murrow.
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44min
May 25, 2022 Mobilising the Habsburg Empire: Austria-Hungary and war in 1914
Austria Hungary, a patchwork empire of nationalities, saw a surprising enthusiasm for war in the summer of 1914 from non Austrian subjects. Across the empire, subject peoples who still had loyalties to the empire as a whole volunteered to fight, overwhelming the offices of military recruiters. The Habsburg empire was far more suspicious of its own population than was in any way warranted, but succeeded in squandering the opportunities for greater social harmony through the closure of the Austrian parliament, the Reichsrat. Whilst this had a limited effect in 1914, the need for cooperation and plurality later on in the war would be paramount.
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23min
May 17, 2022 The Nanjing Massacre 1937-38 (Part One)
In the winter of 1937-38, Japan launched an assault of previously unprecedented brutality against a Chinese civilian population in the nationalist capital of Nanjing. Japan's desigs for China and South East Asia rested on being able to break the power of China's Guomindang nationalists, who were more inclined to build alliances with European powers or America. The Japanese invaders wanted China to be reoriented towards Japan as the power that would lead China along with the rest of Asia. A symbolic display of violence and destruction at Nanjing would demonstrate to China that further resistance was futile.
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25min
May 16, 2022 Update: Sinn Fein, Northern Ireland and the prospects for reunion
Two weeks ago Sinn Fein achieved something that had previously been considered politically impossible in Northern Ireland, it gained a majority in the Northern Ireland Assembly elections and is now likely to form a government. This edition of the update explores the ramifications for Northern Ireland, Britain, the Irish Republic and the EU of this momentous event and the ongoing problems caused by Brexit.
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25min
May 11, 2022 Empire, Fascism and War 1931-39
In today's episode of the podcast, I explore Richard Overy's arguments in Blood and Ruins and discuss his ideas around the necessity for expansionism during the 1930s among the three Axis powers, Germany, Italy and Japan. The great depression triggered ideas of expansionism as a solution to economic hardship and eugenic beliefs about growing, vital populations taking the resources of 'lesser' peoples.

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28min
May 09, 2022 Rebuilding Germany - 1945
Even before the war had officially ended, German cities began the process of clearing debris and rubble and rebuilding. Often, municipal authorities didn't wait for allied authorisation, they simply organised the clearances and began to move the millions of tonnes of brick and stone that had been left in the wake of allied bombing and Soviet shelling. In some instances, vigilante groups ordered former Nazi officials to carry out the clearance work, but before the allied occupation it had been slave labourers who had been used after repeated bombing raids from 1940 onwards.
Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/explaininghistory.
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24min

FAQs about Explaining History:

How many episodes does Explaining History have?

The podcast currently has 790 episodes available.

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