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Comprised mainly of teenagers in the late 1930s, the Death’s Head Division guarded the camps and brutalised prisoners, but many believed they had been recruited for more active military service in the name of the Fuhrer.Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit the Explaining History Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=763386 Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations an
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For a century Afghanistan had been a theatre for the ‘great game’ of espionage between the British and Russian empires, but on the eve of the Second World War the country was in an unenviable situation. Fearing Soviet aggression and occupation, the Afghans looked to British India for assurances of its security but found few concrete promises.Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit the Explaining History Patreon page here: http
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By the winter of 1941 the Japanese public, military planners and government were in broad agreement about the necessity of war against America, Britain, France and the Netherlands. However, the war was based on a number of strategic assumptions that would in time devastate the Japanese.Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit the Explaining History Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=763386 Explaining History help
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For the Chinese people, the Second World War began in 1937, with Japan’s ruthless invasion of the mainland and the destruction of cities such as Nanjing and Chongqing. This podcast explores the west’s historical amnesia on the topic of Chinese wartime suffering and resistance. Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit the Explaining History Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=763386 Explaining History helps you und
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Despite impressive victories against the allied powers during the First World War, by 1918 the Ottoman Empire was exhausted by fighting and the advantage was shifting towards Britain in the Middle East. General Edmund Allenby skilfully encircled Ottoman armies in late 1918, seizing Damascus and Beirut.Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit the Explaining History Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=763386 Explain
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In the immediate aftermath of the German revolution, radical forces on the left and right were discontent with the development of a centre left Weimar Government. In January 1919, the army and freikorps violently suppressed the revolutionary movement of the Independent Social Democrats, also known as the Spartacists.Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit the Explaining History Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u
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Stalin’s decision to ban private trade and to create state monopolies was carried out in haste with little planning during a period of immense economic upheaval. The results were chaotic and led to one of the most intense periods of economic hardship since the Russian Civil War.Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit the Explaining History Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=763386 Explaining History helps you un
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Days after the November armistice was signed, the Red Army launched its bid for the Baltic States and only local anti communists, former German soldiers and German mercenaries stood in their way. The consequences for Latvia were horrendous, with warcrimes on both sides and civilians bearing the brunt of the violence.Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit the Explaining History Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u
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Whilst Leningrad’s citizens starved, Soviet party bosses enjoyed food, warmth and comfort. Laying siege to the city, the demoralised and ever more brutal German Army started to see by the spring of 1942 the impossibility of Hitler’s dreams in Russia.If you’re able to support the Explaining History Podcast, you can fund it through Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=763386 Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We co
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Years of inconsistency in America’s foreign and defence policy throughout the 1930s had left deep confusion at the highest levels of government about what kind of war might be fought against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan and what kind of war machine was needed. It was only in early 1941 that these questions began to be answered and American mass production began in earnest.Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit the Explaini