Explaining History

Harold Wilson was the most successful Labour prime minister of the 20th Century, but was the subject of plots to remove him from power by the military, business and intelligence elites. No coup attempt against Wilson was ever launched in Britain, but his sudden resignation in 1976 followed years of speculation that he had been spied upon by the intelligence services. This podcast explores his often frictional relationship with Britain's intelligence services and the record of other Labour leaders, who were frequently viewed as illegitimate by Britain's upper classes and the security state.

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.

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When Mao Zedong, China's 'great helmsman' died in 1976, the China that emerged after destructive reign began to be de-Maoified economically but also culturally. By the early 1980s a cutlure of Mao criticism was prevalent in the arts, television and cinema, along with critiques of the Mao era communist party. This podcast examines the processes of De-Maoification and how China changed throughout the 1980s, and the significance of this in the 21st Century.

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.

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By 1944 it was clear that there was no future for the Third Reich, but unlike other regimes that have faced overwhelming odds, Germany fought on to the end. Historian Ian Kershaw wrote a groundbreaking book in 2011, The End, which explained why the Third Reich chose the path of Gotterdammerung (downfall). This is the first of several podcasts where we explore Kershaw's thesis.

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.

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By the late 1960s there were huge opportunities for Richard Nixon to capitalise on the growing discontent across America towards the counter culture. Millions of Americans looked on with disdain at a generation of anti war protesters and young men and women who actively rejected the lifestyles of their parents generation. Nixon, and every Republican president and presidential candidate since has tried to tap into the social conservatism of small town and rural America. In the late 1960s Woodstock, the Manson murders and the trial of the Chicago Seven created prisms through which many Americans could see their country, and two different nations emerged, seeing different things.

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.

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Following the disastrous chaos and violence of the cultural revolution, Deng Xiaoping, one of Maoist China's inveterate survivors and a hate figure for Mao himself, began a series of changes of global significance in 1978. Deng's four modernisations (agriculture, industry, education, science and defence), and the policy of opening up China to foreign investment were the product of two fears. Firstly, that a disorderly, anarchic China would eventually see the collapse of party rule, and secondly, that South East Asian capitalism in Taiwan, South Korea and Japan, would eclipse China and leave the country in a highly vulnerable state. Deng's reforms were an integral component in the creation of late 20th and early 21st Century capitalism, bringing hundred of millions of workers into a global economy that saw free market transitions in both the east and the west.

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.

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The Republican Party and the right of the American liberal establishment colluded in the immediate post war years to wage war against the American left. The Republicans saw it an opportunity to undermine the New Deal years and their liberal collaborators view of the illiberalism of the Soviet Union justiified any and all political crack downs on those they viewed as Soviet agitators in the USA. The chief target for accusations of subversion was the Communist Party of the USA, but actual Soviet intelligence work against America almost always bypassed the party, meaning that the claims of suberversion were hollow.

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.

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By 1937 the Soviet newspaper Pravda (its editorial board pictured above), was a key part of the mechanisms of denunciation and terror. It presented lurid tales of corruption and embezzlement that most Soviet citizens knew happened in the party constantly, weaponising their anger against those accused in the show trials. The purpose was to build a mass popular base for Stalin's attacks against the party itself. This podcast explores how the paper operated as part of the wider culture of denunciation.

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.

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This is the first of a multi part exploration of protest music in America during the late 1960s, beginning with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's Ohio, written to mourn the killing of four students by the National Guard at Kent State University in Ohio, in May 1970. By the late 1960s, the pressure of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement had led to a progressive radicalisation of the new left and also a reactionary backlash from America's lower middle classes, who flocked to Nixon in 1968 and his promise to restore order to a seemingly anarchic country.

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.

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Fear and solidarity defined both Austro Hungarian and Germany societies in August 1914. The pace of mobilisation meant that over three million soldiers in Germany alone were in uniform in just twelve days. Soldiers said emotional farewells to loved ones and took last minute photographs with sweethearts, and both German and Austro Hungarian economies were plunged into crisis by the disruption of war, with families losing most of their income from the loss of a breadwinner. This podcast looks at the lived experience of German and Austro Hungarian people during the first days of the First World 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.

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History as entertainment has shaped, for many, the understanding of the past. Mythologisation of key moments of the past crafts powerful and often misleading national stories that provide simple and often comforting notions about the past. In his new book Fake History, Otto English takes many of these fantasies to task, and today we explore one of the most enduring myths of all, the fantasy figure that is Winston Churchill.

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.

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