-
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. The Bolshevik response to the western powers was equally mercurial and ambig.uous 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 & Ge
-
On June 22nd 1941 Nazi Germany and its allies launched the largest invasion in history against the Soviet Union. The attack on the USSR had consequences that would be felt for the rest of the 20th Century. 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: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join th
-
Despite impressive advances against the Axis powers in 1940 and 1941, the organisation and leadership of Rommel’s Afrika Korps devastated Britain’s position in North Africa by the summer of 1942. Inflexibility and weak leadership led to one of Britain’s greatest wartime humiliations, the fall of Tobruk. 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 shar
-
The prolonged crisis of the Russian Empire throughout the 19th and early 20th Centuries that resulted from the advance of modernisation led to the creation of revolutionary tensions not just from the left but from the right. Extreme anti semites, Slavophiles and defenders of Orthodoxy merged into the fascist Union of Russian Peoples and their street fighters the Black Hundreds. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We conne
-
The British, aware of their imminent loss of world power in Asia, encouraged the partition of India. Military planners and politicians hoped that a Muslim state, favourable to British interests and opposed to the USSR would emerge in the shape of Pakistan 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 ContentBecom
-
The annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany presented the country and its exiles with the first of several crises. The disastrous outcome of the war for Nazi Germany meant that not just Germany’s but Austria’s fate would be decided in London, Washington and Moscow 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 Conte
-
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
-
With ever more alarming new unfolding in Europe and the fate of Britain hanging in the balance, Franklin Roosevelt decided to stand for re-election for a second time, breaking with tradition that a president serves a maximum two terms. Facing him was the former Democrat Wendell Wilkie, a political outsider who rejected isolationism just as Roosevelt did. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the prese
-
The formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain had direct organisational, financial and ideological input from Lenin himself. He saw it as essential to have a political foothold in Britain, following the British decision to intervene against the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil 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 subscribe and share.▸ Support the
-
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