With the invasion of the Ruhr backfiring on them, the French electorate swung to the left and put a new coalition in power. The wealthy elites of the country, ever sensitive to the specter of Socialism, did not take the change well. Just as the Ruhr crisis was being wound down, a financial one back at home was started. 

Bibliography for this episode: 

1. Adamthwaite, Anthony Grandeur and Misery: France 1914-1940 Arnold, 1995

Questions? Comments? Email me at [email protected]

Having won both war and peace, France then faced the challenge of actually enforcing that victory. Namely, they had to secure their finances and that meant turning the screws to the Germans and extracting every dime they could from them. Easier said than done, as the Germans were flat broke and France's erstwhile ally, the British, were half-hearted at best in helping get the money. The quest to secure financing would provide a demonstration to just how far France could go in exerting its new status as continental Europe's top power. 

Bibliography for this episode: 

1. Adamthwaite, Anthony Grandeur and Misery: France 1914-1940 Arnold, 1995

Questions? Comments? Email me at [email protected]

Today we get introduced to France, the land of wine, cheese, and staggering loss. A lot of what happens in the decades we cover revolves around France and its ability, or inability, to control events happening in Europe. So to start off, this episode provides the context that France finds itself in during the interwar era. And also just what the cost of winning WWI actually entailed for the nation. 

Bibliography for this episode: 

1. Adamthwaite, Anthony Grandeur and Misery: France 1914-1940 Arnold, 1995

Questions? Comments? Email me at [email protected]

Today is the last episode on Italy before the Great Depression and is also our first biography episode! Benito Mussolini is remembered mostly for his ineffectualness, and is often seen as the bumbling sidekick to the much more dangerous Adolf Hitler. And while that certainly isn't exactly wrong, it also focuses on those last years when everything got away from him. His early life, presented here, shows him to be a much more complex figure, both intellectual and savage. Starting from virtually nothing, this episode covers his journey from poverty to early 1919, when he formally launched his Fascist movement. It was in these years that the personality that would decide the fate of tens of millions took shape. 

Bibliography for this episode: 

1. Bosworth, RJB Mussolini Oxford University Press, 2002

Questions? Comments? Email me at [email protected]

Once the business of taking power in Italy was completed, the Fascists began to turn inward. Mussolini starts to distance himself from the old guard Fascists, the businessmen of the country successfully defend their economic privileges in exchange for their support, and even the Catholic Church comes around. Plus I cover a grab-bag of Italy's foreign adventures in this period. 

Bibliography for this episode: 

1. Bosworth, RJB Mussolini's Italy Penguin Group, 2005

Questions? Comments? Email me at [email protected]

After the March on Rome, Mussolini found himself in charge as Prime Minister, but the Fascists were still a minority party. But now that any viable opposition had demonstrated that they were unwilling to resist him in any meaningful way, he began the work of breaking apart Liberal Italy and bending the political system to his will. 

Bibliography for this episode: 

1. Bosworth, RJB Mussolini's Italy Penguin Group, 2005

Questions? Comments? Email me at [email protected]

Just when it looked like Fascism in Italy was going to be a non-starter, they decide to change the rules. Instead of being a strictly political party the Fascists begin to double-down on political violence and sign-on as muscle for business owners threatened by populist activity. With the official stance of the government being to wait the crisis out, Mussolini makes the most of his opportunity to destabilize democracy and march to power. 

Bibliography for this episode: 

1. Bosworth, RJB Mussolini's Italy Penguin Group, 2005

Questions? Comments? Email me at [email protected]

The Socialists are riding a high, the Liberals are getting worried, and the Fascists are trying to find their niche in today's episode. Join me as I get into the strife within Italy after the unsatisfying conclusion to WWI. Long story short, the establishment didn't have the answers and it became a race to see which populist would win over the nation. 

Bibliography for this episode: 

1. Bosworth, RJB Mussolini's Italy Penguin Group, 2005

Questions? Comments? Email me at [email protected]

On today's episode we'll be covering Italy's experience in WWI and the political aftermath of the war years. Italy's military history in the twentieth century gets treated as kind of a joke, but there were very real consequences to all the disasters, which helped set the stage for Fascism to take root. The experience also caused an upsurge in populist politics in general, something the Italian elites were not prepared for or capable of accommodating. 

Questions? Comments? Email me at [email protected]

On today's episode I get started on the miniseries covering Italy up to the Great Depression. The bulk of the first part of this show will be establishing context for each nation, and how they came to make the critical decisions that led to so much fighting later. There are a lot of reasons to cover why democracy in Italy failed and Fascism was able to take root here before anywhere else. Today I'll be providing a basic sketch of Italy, and where so many seeds of later misfortune were planted. 

Questions? Comments? Email me at [email protected]