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In the immediate aftermath of the Chinese Civil War and the seizure of power by the Chinese Communist Party, Mao Zedong began a violent struggle for control of China’s countryside. In a bid to develop a rural powerbase for himself and his party, Mao encouraged communities to tear themselves apart in cycles of denunciation and revenge. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the
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In the immediate aftermath of the First World War, British anxieties over revolutionary tensions in India were high. The action of a lone British general at Amritsar in April 1919 shattered the fragile peace between the colonising British and the colonised Indians, radicalising the independence movement throughout the inter war period. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy th
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When Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz between 1940 and 1943 was tried for his crimes in 1947 he was open and revealing about the process of genocide at the camp and the attitudes of the SS men under his command to their work. The testimony raises as many questions and challenges for Holocaust historians as it answers. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, p
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In 1878 tensions over the Balkans were close to exploding into a major European war. German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck held a conference in Berlin to resolve the tensions, but the result was simply the postponement of war, not its prevention. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive ContentBecome a Patron:
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In 1922, during the turbulent early years of the Weimar Republic a social research institute was established in Frankfurt. It was set up by Marxist intellectuals and the alumni of the school had a massive impact on 20th Century thought, examining the workings of mass society, consumerism, culture, totalitarianism and the unconscious. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the
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One of the biggest forced movements of populations in human history occurred in the final months of the Second World War and long into the post war era. Eastern European countries expelled their German populations and some estimated 12 million people were added to the millions of refugees in Europe at the end of the war. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please
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Democrat presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt hoped the USSR could become a key part of the post war worlds they were involved in developing. Both men were willing to overlook many of the violent excesses of Lenin’s Bolsheviks and later Stalin, assuming that a more liberal and moderate Russia might emerge. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please sub
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At the start of the First World War the threat of civil war in Ireland between home rule nationalists and protestant unionists in the north began to recede. Two years later, however, a revolt in Dublin on Easter Monday 1916 against the British was crushed and fifteen of the rebels executed. This podcast explores the causes and consequences of the Easter Rising. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to th
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In the second half of the 19th Century, the development of a new and diverse range of magazines, leaflets and books written by educated and wealthy Victorian women for a female audience had a radicalising effect on the women’s movement. The desire for equality before the law led to a pressure for female suffrage and a minor publishing revolution developed in support of these goals. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We c
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In the first two years of the First World War, British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith was a distant and detached character, leaving major decisions to the War Office, Winston Churchill and Horatio Kitchener. By 1915 two crises, munitions shortages and Gallipoli had resulted in his subordinates political demise and the creation of a coalition government. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the presen