This Week on History Happy Hour: Five centuries of German military history in one hour! Our guest is Peter Wilson, author of Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples since 1500. (A Daily Telegraph 2022 Book of the Year.)

The military impact of Germany has been enormous, but is the belief in a special German gift for warfare true or a fallacy? We’ll explore the military, technological, and political aspects of Germans on the move since 1500.

PETER WILSON is Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire and The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy. He has appeared on BBC Radio and has written for Prospect, the Los Angeles Times, and the Financial Times. President of the Society for the History of War and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, his work has been translated into Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, and Spanish.

This Week on History Happy Hour: Humor helped the British soldier survive the terrible ordeal they faced in the trenches during WWI. They may have been up to their knees in mud and blood, but many were still determined to see the ‘funny side’, rather than surrender to utter misery.

Chris and Rick welcome Peter Hart (third time!) and Gary Bain, From Pete and Gary’s Military Podcast, to talk about their new book Laugh or Cry: The British Soldier on the Western Front. Glimpses of the awful truth through the dark humor of the soldiers who were there.

PETER HART worked as the Oral Historian of the Imperial War Museum from 1981-2020. He has interviewed thousands of veterans, and is the author of many military history books on the First & Second World Wars. This is his third appearance on History Happy Hour.

GARY BAIN joined the Junior Leaders and served in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps working with the Intelligence Corps before leaving the army and rising in civilian life to be Head of Commercial at Transport for London. He is the co-host, with Peter Hart, of the popular Pete and Gary Military History Podcast.

This Week on History Happy Hour: This week on History Happy Hour: What exactly can pie tell us about American history? It’s no half-baked question! Chris and Rick welcome Rossi Anastopoulo, author Sweet Land of Liberty: A History of America in 11 Pies.

We’ll serve up the delicious details on how pies are woven into our history, from the first Thanksgiving to the lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro North Carolina. Pies, after all, are a subject as American as...apple pie. Which, turns out, is not American in origin at all. So there's lots to learn.

ROSSI ANASTOPOULO is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in TASTE, Saveur, Food52, Bon Appetit, and Eaten Magazine. She works as the blog editor for King Arthur Baking Company and is based in Los Angeles. Rossi is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a Morehead-Cain scholar.

This Week on History Happy Hour: In the dark days after WWI, a new movement swept over Italy. Fascism promised to build a 'New Roman Empire' and make Italy great again. Soon came violence, black shirts, and Benito Mussolini.

Chris and Rick welcome John Foot, author of Blood and Power: The Rise and Fall of Italian Fascism, the disturbing story of Italian fascism from 1915 to 1945 – and the ways in which it still reverberates to this day.

JOHN FOOT is a Professor of Modern Italian History at Bristol University. He has written seven books, including The Archipelago: Italy since 1945 and Calcio: A History of Italian Football. He contributes to the Guardian, Independent on Sunday, London Review of Books, and the TLS. He has appeared in a number of TV documentaries.

This Week on History Happy Hour: When it comes to WWII, a huge amount of attention is (rightly) focused on D-Day. But the following days and weeks, as Allied troops try to break-out of the Normandy Beachhead against fierce German resistance, is often given short shrift. In April, Chris and Rick will be two of the four historians conducting the Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours 2023 Masterclass, which will dive into just that story.

This week they welcome fellow historians Matt Broggie, Erik Flint, and Hugh McDonald Buchanan talk about the fascinating aspects of the breakout, Normandy to Paris, and the sites we will be visiting on the trip.

MATT BROGGIE has been working with Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours since the 70th Anniversary of D-Day in 2014. He has extensive knowledge of WWII battlefields and has been published in WWII History Magazine. He was a U.S. and World History professor at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee and also taught soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division through the university’s campus at Fort Campbell. Matt is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Birmingham in England.

ERIK FLINT is the Director of the Lewis Army Museum at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. A veteran of 30 years in uniform, Erik deployed twice to Iraq as a Combat Historian for the U.S. Special Operations Command History & Research Office and is currently a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve where he is a lead Command and General Staff Officer Course instructor.

Hugh McDonald-Buchanan is a professional tour guide specializing in military history. A former investment banker, he has been certified as a London Blue Badge Guide.

This Week on History Happy Hour: Prior to World War II, Josephine Baker was the highest-paid female performer in Europe, renowned for her singing and dancing, her beauty and sexuality. When the Nazis seized her adopted city, Paris, she vowed to stay and fight. Overnight, she went from performer to Resistance spy.

Chis and Rick welcome renowned historian Damien Lewis about his new book Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy. Lewis has spent ten years researching the story and unearthing new details about Baker’s wartime exploits.

DAMIEN LEWIS is a number one bestselling author whose books have been translated into over forty languages worldwide. For decades he worked as a war and conflict reporter for the world’s major broadcasters, reporting from across Africa, South America, the Middle and Far East, winning numerous awards.

This Week on History Happy Hour: A bold new look at World War II from one of Great Britain’s most respected and honored historians. Chris and Rick welcome Richard Overy, author of the monumental new book Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945.

He argues that we need to seek a different and broader perspective to truly understand the origins and aftermath of the costliest war in human history. The Wall Street Journal calls his book “the finest single-volume history of World War II,” while the New York Times calls it “History at its best.

RICHARD OVERY is Professor of History at the University of Exeter and one of Britain’s most distinguished historians and an internationally renowned scholar of World War II. He is the recipient of the Hessell-Tiltman Prize, the Wolfson History Prize, the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize and is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Historical Society. His many works include The Bombing War, Dictators and The Morbid Age.

This Week on History Happy Hour: A year after the Civil War, a band of Union and Confederate veterans dusted off their guns. Not to fight each other, but side by side to undertake one of the most fantastical missions in military history: to seize the British province of Canada and to hold it hostage until the independence of Ireland was secured. This motley crew of revolutionaries, including a one-armed war hero, an English spy, and a radical who staged his own funeral, launched their unlikely assault from Buffalo - with unexpected results.

Chris and Rick welcome Christopher Klein to talk about his new book: When the Irish Invaded Canada.

CHRISTOPHER KLEIN is the author of four books, including Strong Boy: The Life and Times of John L. Sullivan, America’s First Sports Hero. A frequent contributor to History.com, Christopher has also written for The Boston Globe, The New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, Harvard Magazine, Smithsonian.com, and AmericanHeritage.com. He lives in Andover, Massachusetts.

This Week on History Happy Hour: Few outlaws in the Old West achieved such lasting and far-reaching fame as Billy the Kid. But how do you separate the man from the myth? Our guest this week has left no stone unturned in his twenty-year quest to tell the complete the flesh-and-blood human being named Henry McCarty, alias William H. Bonney.

Chris and Rick welcome James B. Mills, the author of Billy the Kid, El Bandido Simpático. A rising young writer from Australia, Mills has won the praise of many veteran western historians for his groundbreaking work.

JAMES B. MILLS was born in 1983 and resides in Australia. He has studied the American frontier and numerous other areas of history since childhood. He has published numerous articles for True West and Wild West magazines.

This Week on History Happy Hour: The remarkable story of WWII combat infantryman Phil Larimore, who fought at Anzio and later in France and Germany, as reconstructed by his son, Walt Larimore, co-author of At First Light: A True World War II Story of a Hero, His Bravery, and an Amazing Horse

A lieutenant in the Third Division, Phil Larimore saw intense fighting in the most difficult conditions in the southern campaign, but it is what happened in the war’s final days that makes his story special.