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During the 1950s, Britain, France the USA and the USSR all conducted great power politics and diplomacy in the Middle East, competing to court and undermine rising nationalist movements in Egypt, Sudan, Jordan and beyond. This podcast explores the wider context of these interactions and their culmination in the Suez Crisis 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, pleas
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A popular view of the July crisis that led to the start of the First World War was the excitement and enthusiasm across Europe for war. Examining Alexander Watson’s Ring of Steel, we discuss the validity of this view and the motivations of the crowds that filled the streets of Berlin and Vienna in July 1914. This podcast also explores the motivations and loyalties of Germany’s largest party the Social Democrats. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversati
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In the mid 1950s, Anthony Eden and Guy Mollet, Britain and France’s respective prime ministers initially showed little determination to overthrow Colonel Nasser of Egypt. However, mounting French problems in Algeria and Britain’s dependence on ‘holding out’ in Egypt against further imperial decline, and the small and conspiratorial groups of ministers, intelligence chiefs and senior military figures that surrounded both governments began to shift thinking towards war. Explaining History helps yo
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In 1956 the British Government, led by Anthony Eden, embarked on a disastrous military adventure with France and Israel that divided the country, split both political parties and was conducted despite the misgivings of the navy and air force. The agreement to attack Egypt was decided by the three main powers at a villa at Sevres weeks before the invasion. Britain wished to removed an irritant in the form of Colonel Nasser, the nationalist leader of Egypt who had nationalised the Suez Canal, the
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As the allied powers deliberated at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, David Lloyd George encouraged the Greek prime minister Venizelos to seize the former Ottoman city of Smyrna. The consequences for the city, once a bastion of religious and cultural tolerance, would be tragic, but to the British simply consequence of a wider imperial game in the near east. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the
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At the start of the First World War, Egypt and the Suez Canal were vital to the functioning of the British Empire and were under huge pressure from an Ottoman offensive. However, it was Muslim, Seikh and Hindu Indian soldiers from a British India riven with nationalist revolutionary politics that were deployed to hold the British Empire together in the Sinai. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the
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In 1947 US President Harry Truman was forced to commit to the defence of Greece and Turkey against the possibility of communist victories in the Greek civil war and the threat of Soviet pressure on Turkey. The British had been forced to end their commitments to both countries, placing the eastern Mediterranean in danger and as a result the flow of Middle Eastern oil to Europe and America. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interview
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Despite British setbacks and failures in Greece and an overstretched force in North Africa, Churchill was determined to seize Syria from the French Vichy collaborationist regime. The fighting to take Damascus was far harder and more difficult that Churchill had anticipated. 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 Exc
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A series of strategic errors, missed opportunities and disasters handed Germany victory in Greece and Crete and led to two further allied evacuations. However, the fall of Crete was the most costly airborne operation ever mounted by Germany. 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: pa
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The impulsive decision by Mussolini to invade Greece dragged the Balkans into the Second World War, with terrible consequences for Greece, Albania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Romania. His inept campaign led Hitler to wage war in Greece and the Balkans to prevent the region from becoming a foothold for the British. 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