The History of the Twentieth Century

The History of the Twentieth Century episodes:

• 04.21.2024

  364 The Man with the Iron Heart

  Reinhard Heydrich was one of the most vicious of the Nazis. So much so that the Czechoslovak and British governments decided that he needed to be eliminated.

  
• 04.14.2024

  363 Midway

  The Japanese execute their attempted ambush at Midway, and it fails catastrophically.

  
• 04.07.2024

  362 Scratch One Flattop!

  The US Navy sent two of its carriers into the southwest Pacific to thwart the Japanese campaign to take New Caledonia and isolate Australia. The Japanese responded by sending two of their own. The carriers engaged each other in the...

  
• 03.31.2024

  361 I Could Never Be So Lucky Again

  Shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack, President Roosevelt asked the military to find a way to strike back at the Japanese Home Islands. It took an unorthodox approach to make this possible.

  
• 03.17.2024

  360: Now You Belong to the Japanese Army

  For India, like Australia, the entry of Japan into the war meant it was no longer a distant, European struggle. By May 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army was at the Indian border.

  
• 03.10.2024

  359 Order 9066

  In 1942, many Americans feared a Japanese invasion of the West Coast of the US or Canada was imminent. Regrettably, these fears led to the belief--unsupported by facts--that the ethnic Japanese population on the West Coast represented a dangerous fifth...

  
• 03.03.2024

  358 The Wannsee Conference

  Sometime in the autumn of 1941, a decision was made among the Nazi elite to murder every Jewish person in Europe--or within reach, anyway. No record exists of how that decision was made, but we have a very detailed record...

  
• 02.25.2024

  357 No Retreat

  The winter of 1941-42 was not a happy one for the German Army. On the Eastern Front it was battered by a record cold winter and a Soviet counteroffensive. In North Africa, a British offensive pushed Erwin Rommel and his...

  
• 02.11.2024

  356 Happy Time

  After the sinking of Bismarck, the Germans abandoned surface raiding in the Atlantic and turned to their greatest naval strength: submarine warfare.

  
• 02.04.2024

  355 Reap the Whirlwind

  The Luftwaffe's bombing campaign over England did not force a British capitulation. Can RAF Bomber Command force a German capitulation?

  
• 01.28.2024

  354 The Fall of Singapore

  The Japanese Army's greatest victory; the British Army's greatest defeat.

  
• 01.21.2024

  353 A Date Which Will Live in Infamy

  The attack on Pearl Harbor ended the political division in the US between interventionists and isolationists. Now the US was united as never before.

  
• 01.07.2024

  352 Climb Mount Niitaka II

  The Japanese attack the US naval base at Pearl Harbor.

  
• 01.02.2024

  351 Climb Mount Niitaka I

  The Japanese give up on peace talks with America and began prepare for war.

  
• 12.25.2023

  350 The Land of Abundant Wildlife

  The defining features of the nation of Panama are its abundant wildlife and that it is the place where the world's two largest oceans are at their closest.

  
• 12.24.2023

  349 Why Do the Winds and Waves Rage So Turbulently?

  The upper levels of Japanese government (and, more important, the military) increasingly came to the view that war with the United States was necessary if Japan was to survive.

  
• 12.17.2023

  348 Five Minutes to Midnight

  At the end of the rasputitsa, the mud season, the German Army had one final, narrow opportunity, to win the war against the USSR before winter.

  
• 12.03.2023

  347 The Green Folder

  Even before the first German soldier crossed the frontier into the USSR, the Nazi government in Berlin had a plan for administering occupied Russia.

  
• 11.26.2023

  346 The Battle of Smolensk

  The German invasion of the USSR went brilliantly for the first 2-3 weeks, but instead of collapsing as expected, the Red Army only got stronger.

  
• 11.19.2023

  345 Operation Barbarossa

  On June 22, 1941, Germany began an invasion of its erstwhile trade partner, the USSR. 

  
• 11.12.2023

  344 America First

  The Dust Bowl ravages the central United States, Charles Lindbergh's infant son is kidnapped, the America First movement opposes US involvement in the war.

  
• 10.29.2023

  343 The Balkan Detour

  Germany executes its invasions of Yugoslavia and Greece, and the Axis encourages an anti-British coup in Iraq.

  
• 10.22.2023

  342 Operation Marita

  As Germany made preparations to assist its ally Italy in the war against Greece, a coup in Yugoslavia prompted Adolf Hitler to order the invasion of that country as well. 

  
• 10.15.2023

  341 A Crime against the Future

  In summer of 1940, even as the Battle of Britain was just getting started, Adolf Hitler was already laying plans for war with the Soviet Union.

  
• 10.08.2023

  340 The ULTRA Secret

  After the fall of Poland, British Intelligence's codebreaking operation at Bletchley Park became the center of efforts to decrypt messages from the Germans' supposedly unbreakable Enigma machine.

  
• 09.24.2023

  339 The Enigma Machine

  The British had been hugely successful at breaking German codes in the First World War. The Germans were determined not to let that happen again. This time they had Enigma, a code machine that produced messages that could not be...

  
• 09.17.2023

  338 The Battle of the Atlantic

  The navy Germany had at the outbreak of the Second World War was only a small fraction of what the Allies had arrayed against it. But the Fall of France and the entry of Italy into the war changed things...

  
• 09.10.2023

  337 The Tizard Mission

  In 1940, the British government was in the frustrating position of funding research on a number of promising projects that would be valuable to the war effort, but with the Battle of Britain in full swing, British factories had to...

  
• 09.03.2023

  336 Όχι

  Italy's invasion of Greece was disastrous. With the British also advancing in North Africa, and a surprise air attack disabling three Italian battleships, it was no longer possible to pretend that Italy was a equal of Germany.

  
• 08.20.2023

  335 Pay Him in His Own Coin

  Benito Mussolini wanted to prove that Italy was an equal partner with Germany in the Axis alliance, so he began a war with Greece.

  
• 08.13.2023

  334 Stalemate

  Germany found that it could not defeat the British on their home island; the UK was unable to fight the Germans in Europe. So what next?

  
• 08.06.2023

  333 The Hand That Held the Dagger

  When France collapsed, Roosevelt redoubled his effort to aid Britain. But there was also a Presidential election to think about; Roosevelt won an unprecedented third term.

  
• 07.30.2023

  332 God Help Us All

  America was preoccupied with domestic issues during the run-up to the war. When the war came, the Roosevelt Administration looked for ways to aid the Allies despite the limitations of the Neutrality Act.

  
• 07.16.2023

  331 Caped Crusaders

  More on various genres of pulp fiction, and how they led to the development of comic books.

  
• 07.09.2023

  330 Amazing Stories

  Pulp fiction was an important form of entertainment in the twentieth century, peaking in popularity around 1940. Pulp fiction came in a variety of genres and was the birthplace for a new one: science fiction.

  
• 07.02.2023

  329 Dawn of a New Day

  The 1939-40 New York World's Fair.

  
• 06.25.2023

  328 The Battle of Britain

  When the Churchill government showed no willingness to talk peace, Germany attempted the world's first purely aerial military campaign, to weaken Britain in preparation for invasion, or perhaps even to defeat the enemy entirely by air.

  
• 06.11.2023

  327 Radio Detection and Ranging

  Theories of strategic bombing in the 1930s suggested that it alone might be enough to win a war. But the development of radar meant that the bomber might not always get through after all.

  
• 06.04.2023

  326 War in the Air

  We examine the advances in aviation technology between the World Wars.

  
• 05.28.2023

  325 After the Fall

  The world reacts to the Fall of France.

  
• 05.21.2023

  324 Plan Red

  After the Dunkirk evacuation, the next stage of the Western offensive began, aimed at capturing Paris and defeating France.

  
• 05.07.2023

  323 Operation Dynamo

  After German armor cut off the Allied First Army Group in Belgium, the Royal Navy attempts an evacuation of the trapped forces from the port of Dunkirk.

  
• 04.30.2023

  322 Plan Yellow

  After months of delays and a diversion into Denmark and Norway, Hitler finally gets his Western offensive.

  
• 04.23.2023

  321 Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat

  The Allied debacle in Norway sparked a revolt in the British Parliament against the Chamberlain government's conduct of the war.

  
• 04.16.2023

  320 Operation Weserübung

  Improbably, the nation of Norway finds itself the front line of the Second World War.

  
• 04.02.2023

  319 Winston Is Back!

  In the final year before the war began, Winston Churchill's denunciations of Nazi Germany began to seem prescient, but Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain fiercely resisted calls to invite Churchill into the Cabinet until war came. Then Churchill became First Lord...

  
• 03.26.2023

  318 The Calm Before the Storm

  Adolf Hitler wanted to attack in the west immediately after the fall of Poland, but unfavorable weather kept postponing the offensive. Then a copy of the plan fell into Allied hands.

  
• 03.19.2023

  317 The Winter War

  With the other Great Powers involved in their own wars, Stalin and the USSR are now free to claim the territories Germany granted to their "sphere of influence."

  
• 03.12.2023

  316 Nazism Unleashed

  When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, it freed the Nazis from having to worry about international opinion. Hitler and his followers could now do as they pleased.

  
• 02.26.2023

  315 Lessons Learned IV

  With the narrative at the beginning of the Second World War, we pause to consider what lessons can be learned from the past twenty years.