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Stalin and his chief henchman Lavrenti Beria poured resources from a devastated USSR into the creation of an atomic bomb from 1945 onwards. The development of the bomb rested on Soviet espionage and the ability of scientists to experiment and work without ideological controls. 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
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Between 1958-1962 Mao’s second five year plan, known as the Great Leap Forward, resulted in economic chaos and a famine that killed over 40 million people. It was in part inspired by Mao’s attempts to eclipse Soviet leader Khrushchev as the leader of the communist world. 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 Exclus
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Throughout the interwar period French politics polarised between right and left, but unlike Germany, the political centre ground managed to hold. On the right, a series of anti communist, pro Catholic, nationalist and militarist parties and societies proliferated, but it took a German invasion in 1940 to create a fascist government in France in the guise of the Vichy regime. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect
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In November 1963, shortly before he was assassinated, John F Kennedy ordered the overthrow of President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam. Diem, a corrupt authoritarian had become an embarrassment and his lack of support meant the likelihood of a communist takeover in Vietnam was steadily growing. 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.▸ Suppo
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Harlem was the epicentre of black cultural and intellectual life in the inter war decades. Competing radical nationalist and communist parties struggled with each other to attract members from with black community. Each attempted to address the problems of discrimination and prejudice that black Americans faced. 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
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After 1936 the Spanish Civil War became the focal issue for Europe’s socialist and communist parties. The rise of Hitler to power had made anti fascist struggle the most important battle for communist movements, especially as Stalin had encouraged political divisions between communist and social democratic parties in the run up to 1933. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy t
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At the end of the Second World War, intense ethnic hatreds had been reawoken in Yugoslavia and Josef Tito’s victorious communist partisans took advantage of internecine feuds and attempted to suppress them in order to establish Yugoslavia as a communist state. 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 Content
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In March 1933 the arrest of thousands of communists, socialists and trade unions saw the birth of Hitler’s concentration camp system. However, the idea that the camps were a product of an ordered and planned seizure of power should be revised as new evidence suggests that the camps grew out of chaos and the autonomous actions of the SA.****The new A level history series that gives teachers some fresh perspectives and new energising ideas for their lessons will start on October 19th with the firs
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In 1949, following the creation of the Soviet controlled German Democratic Republic, Walter Ulbricht, the German Communist Party leader unleashed a wave of repression against the last surviving Jews. The repression was inspired by events in the USSR and the Middle East and help to highlight the moral and ideological pragmatism of the GDR. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy
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In the 1960s a diverse movement of protest and activism closely associated (but not limited to) the hippy movement developed in the USA. The politicised parts of the counterculture demanded the overthow of capitalism but did not look to the USSR as a possible replacement – Soviet communism had long since been discredited.Webinar Links (discount code: WF0009023)Modern Britain: http://www.hoddereducation.co.uk/Event/562Germany 1945-91: http://www.hoddereducation.co.uk/Event/561Nazi Germanyhttp://w