Explaining History

China was the first country to be invaded by an Axis power and historian Rana Mitter has argued that its wartime experience is one of the most obscured and misunderstood in the west, though Chinese losses dwarfed those experienced by European and American combatants. Only the USSR suffered more during the war than China, but the immediate civil war that engulfed China and the victory of the communist party in 1949 meant that the Chinese wartime experience was lost under the complexities of Cold War politics.

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 Content

Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory

▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation

Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast

Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com

▸ Read Articles & Go Deeper

Website: explaininghistory.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Robert McNamara was John F Kennedy's choice to fix the sprawling bureacracy at the Department of Defence. McNamara employed an economist's mind to problems, had greatly increased the destructive power of the USAAF during the Second World War by using data and intelligence to firebomb Japanese cities more effectively, and became the first non family member to run the Ford Motor Company. Kennedy wanted business people in government to bring the dynamism of the American corporate world to the state (whether this was ever really achieved is a matter of debate). McNamara brought the same managerialist approaches to the war in Vietnam, with limited success, as much of the conflict defied his kind of quantified approach. Whilst McNamara understood kill ratios and other statistics, he and the rest of the government understood virtually nothing about the politics and society of the country they sought to protect from the north and the real motivations of the Vietnamese peasants.

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 Content

Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory

▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation

Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast

Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com

▸ Read Articles & Go Deeper

Website: explaininghistory.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Eisenhower found McCarthy distasteful but had not desire to enter into a political fight with him. He thought that this would diminish the presidency and give lie to the idea that America was a harmonious post war society. He hoped that the public mood would change and when McCarthy was finally defeated the evidence suggests that attitudes were transitioning away from hysteria anyway. It was his decision to conduct televised hearings into suspected communist subversion in the army that eventually led to his political demise, and in this podcast we explore how Eisenhower was able to play a role at the 11th hour.

Explaining History Podcast listeners are eligible for a 10% discount on all history book orders from Story Tellers Bookshop (email [email protected] and quote Explaining History)

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 Content

Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory

▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation

Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast

Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com

▸ Read Articles & Go Deeper

Website: explaininghistory.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

By 1939, the Royal Navy had lost a decade of growth, after budget cuts during the Great Depression and the closure of shipyards resulted in an older fleet than that of its enemies. The navy's role as the defender of the sea lanes that bound the empire together meant that it was for much of the war, Britain's primary line of defence against the Axis powers. The British were vulnerable as a net importer of food to U-Boat warfare and following the failure of the Battle of Britain and the decision by Hitler to shelve plans for an invasion indefinately, attacks on British merchant shipping was the means by which the Nazi regime believed the British could be brought to their knees. This podcast explores the challenges of strategy and military hardware that the British were presented with at the start of the war.

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 Content

Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory

▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation

Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast

Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com

▸ Read Articles & Go Deeper

Website: explaininghistory.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When Richard Nixon won his second presidential term in 1972 defeating George McGovern in 1972, he was at the height of his popularity. The previous year he had captured the public mood when he addressed the nation's fears about the growing economic stagnation that America had begun to experience at the end ofthe 1960s. He had successfully negotiated with both Mao and Brezhnev earlier that year and offered many Americans the prospect of a withdrawal from Vietnam without humiliation. The break in at the Watergate hotel had not attracted many headlines by the time of the January 1973 inauguration, but within seventeen months, Nixon's presidency was over and he left the White House in disgrace.

Explaining History Podcast listeners are eligible for a 10% discount on all history book orders from Story Tellers Bookshop (email [email protected] and quote Explaining History)

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 Content

Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory

▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation

Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast

Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com

▸ Read Articles & Go Deeper

Website: explaininghistory.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Despite a decade of social conflict prior to the First World War between German trade unions and bosses, the declaration of war by Germany against Russia in the summer of 1914 led to a temporary but significant period of social unity in the Reich. The SPD, Germany's Social Democratic Party, showed its loyalty to the Kaiser's government by voting for his war credits to fund the army, and were recognised by the Chancellor Bethman Hollweg as a pliant and passive organisation that did not need to be repressed. National minorities in Silesia, Alsace Lorraine and Schleswig Holstein did not fare quite as well, with their leaders facing arrest and imprisonment at the start of the war.

The Explaining History Podcast listeners are eligible for a 10% discount on all history book orders from Story Tellers Bookshop (email [email protected] and quote Explaining History)

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 Content

Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory

▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation

Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast

Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com

▸ Read Articles & Go Deeper

Website: explaininghistory.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies drove their tanks into Prague in 1968, crushing the nascent pro democracy movement led by Alexander Dubcek, the last pretense of there being anything emancipatory about Soviet Communism disappeared. Instead, the USSR and its sattelite regimes were shorn of any ideological credibility and now faced sullen and uncooperative populations across the eastern bloc whose only interest in communism was whether it could economically deliver. The next two decades were an exercise in economic failure for the Soviet Union and its satellites, and an opportunity for Western banks, that had injected debt into Eastern Europe, as Soviet backed regimes desperately tried to modernise their economies, but became ensnared in a financial game that the west and its institutions were far better at playing.

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 Content

Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory

▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation

Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast

Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com

▸ Read Articles & Go Deeper

Website: explaininghistory.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the summer of 1940 the British faced supply shortages in the Middle East and were vastly outnumbered by Italian forces in Libya. Archibald Wavell, one of Churchill's least favourite generals, came under intense pressure from his Prime Minister for a swift and impressive victory. HIs opposite number Count Graziani quickly realised the Italian Army was poorly equipped for desert war, and despite its size would struggle to achieve a decisive victory. The Indian Fourth Division was deployed in this context and intensively trained by Major General Richard O'Connor to fight the desert battles to come. This podcast is the first of several where I will examine the realities of desert warfare for Indian soldiers.

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 Content

Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory

▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation

Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast

Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com

▸ Read Articles & Go Deeper

Website: explaininghistory.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the summer of 1940, German successes in Europe had been based on a very particular model of interaction between air and ground forces. The planned invasion of southern England and the seizure of London envisioned by Hitler presented the German airforce with entirely new problems. Some German commanders believed that the Luftwaffe alone could defeat the British, but it was Eric Raeder, the head of Hitler's navy, who wanted an amphibious invasion to showcase the power of the Kriegsmarine. Hitler offered a peace deal to the British, certain that it would be rejected, and instead embarked upon his first great failure, the Battle of Britain and the subsequent bombing campaign known as the Blitz.

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 Content

Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory

▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation

Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast

Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com

▸ Read Articles & Go Deeper

Website: explaininghistory.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

During the forced programme of industrialisation in the late 1950s in China, known as the Great Leap Forward, China's peasants came under intense pressure from the violent Maoist state to produce impossible grain quotas. Villages had already undergone the process of communalisation, where the basic structures of communal and even family life were torn apart and peasants were taken from the land in huge numbers to work on poorly planned vanity projects. In villages, kitchens and cooking utensils were taken from homes and communal kitchens were established, giving the state ultimate control over food supply in rural China. This podcast draws from the excellent account of the famine, Tombstone by Yang Jisheng.

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 Content

Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory

▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation

Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast

Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com

▸ Read Articles & Go Deeper

Website: explaininghistory.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.