Podcast Episodes

American Volunteers and the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War

When US volunteers from the International Brigade returned to America after two years of bloodshed and slaughter in Spain, they received a frosty welcome from a suspicious FBI and police. Much of the…

Published on 7 years, 11 months ago

Woodrow Wilson and the founding of the League of Nations

In the aftermath of the First World War, utopian visions of a future world without war informed a generation of diplomats, politicians and peace makers. The horrors of the First World War meant that …

Published on 7 years, 11 months ago

Cold War assumptions and the beginning of the Korean War

Mao, Stalin, Truman and MacArthur's calculations, along with the ambitions of Kim Il Sung and Syngman Rhee turned Korea from a Cold War sideshow into the first hot war of the long Cold War age.

Expla…

Published on 7 years, 11 months ago

The development of Nazi economic policy 1920-32

Incoherence was one of the defining features of Nazi economic thinking, as competing economic tendencies within the party and externally were suborned to Hitler's racial ideas.

Explaining History hel…

Published on 7 years, 11 months ago

Churchill and the Russian Civil War 1919

At the height of the allied intervention in Russia, David Lloyd George wavered in his enthusiasm for the mission but his political ally and friend Churchill had no such doubts and did everything in h…

Published on 7 years, 11 months ago

Marx's legacy and the German Social Democratic Party

Following his death in 1883 Marx was elevated the position of a secular prophet of history by the guardians of his legacy the German Social Democratic Party. The 20th Century Marx is a very different…

Published on 7 years, 11 months ago

British, American and Chinese Neoliberalism 1978-80

In the last years of the 1970s a fringe economic ideology captured the centre ground in Britain, America and China, transforming the world economy and shifting the balance of power from labour to cap…

Published on 7 years, 11 months ago

Barbarossa Part Two: Hunger and annihilation

Hitler, his ministers and many of his generals fully intended to fight a war of racial annihilation in Russia unlike anything previously seen. This podcast explores the economic and racial thinking b…

Published on 7 years, 11 months ago

Allied Divisions over Russia - 1919

The question of whether or not to negotiate with Russia and what form the allied intervention in the Russian Civil War should take divided Britain, France and America at the Paris Peace Conference. T…

Published on 7 years, 11 months ago

A plan for 2018: Free Historical Literacy For All...

I am working on a plan and I need everyone's input to create a historical literacy course in these frighteningly confused times. Please listen and then give me your thoughts.

Explaining History helps…

Published on 7 years, 11 months ago