Monthly Archives: May 2016

In 1966, Mao staged a return to public life and attempted to wrest back control of the Chinese Communist Party following the disaster of the Great Leap Forward. He had been a marginal figure for four years since 1962, and in the mean time more pragmatic and less ideological figures such as Liu Shaoqi andContinue reading “The origins of Mao’s Cultural Revolution”

In August 1939 the Nazi Soviet Pact shocked the world. Two dictators and sworn enemies, who were under no illusions about future conflict with each other signed a non aggression pact and trade deal. It contained a secret clause about the division and occupation of Poland, a state which neither viewed as legitimate and StalinContinue reading “The Nazi-Soviet Pact”

Hi student listeners and readers, here’s a few thoughts on the exams you’ll be sitting over the next few weeks. It’s a short recording to help you think in a way that’s going to benefit you and hopefully leave you feeling less stressed and more focused.

By 1946 General Douglas MacArthur was installed as America’s imperial viceroy in Tokyo, with more power over the Japanese than any US president before or since has had over the American people. His tenure in Japan led to a revolution in the practices of government and the development of a modern constitutional monarchy. He wasContinue reading “MacArthur and Japan”

The horrors of the fall of Berlin in April and May 1945 have been depicted in films and documentaries such as Oliver Hirschbeigel’s Downfall (2004). That Hitler spent his final days in a bunker and died by his own hand are facts that are widely understood and the mental image of a besieged and dying regimeContinue reading “The Fall of Budapest”

In the middle of the 1930s the official policy towards the Jews in Poland began to change. The liberal approach to the large Jewish population pioneered by Josef Pilsudski, the father of the nation, died with him in May 1935. What came in its place was a plan to export Poland’s Jews to Palestine, thenContinue reading “Poland, Palestine and Zionism”

Hi all, apologies for the lack of posting, it’s a busy time of year for a history teacher, but without further ado, here are two recent videos. The first is on the subject of Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee for the Presidential Election of 1964. Goldwater lost to Lyndon Johnson, who won by the biggestContinue reading “Hippies and Conservatives”