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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 1916 a British officer, Thomas Edward Lawrence and an Arab prince, Feisal of Mecca led a guerrilla army of Bedouin against the Ottoman Empire in Arabia. In the 1920s Lawrence became an international celebrity due to his wartime exploits and he has remained a mythologised figure for much 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 a
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In the post war decades the dream of new affordable housing came true for millions of white Americans. Black, Latino, Jewish and other ethnic minority families were excluded from the new utopia of the suburbs and instead many lived in increasingly deprived inner city ghettoes. 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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In the second half of the 19th Century a quiet publishing revolution was taking place. Victorian ladies with education and wealth were able to produce new newspapers, pamphlets and books demanding equal political and legal rights for women. 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: pat
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Between 1918 and 1939 France’s overseas colonial empire, like Britain’s, grew with the acquisition of Ottoman territories as mandates. France’s empire was ruled using different ideas and institutions to Britain but both systems struggled to hold together during economically and politically turbulent decades. 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
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In 1947, two days after India became an independent nation, the plans to partition the country into a Hindu India and Muslim East and West Pakistan were announced. British policies of divide and rule, combined with hastily drawn up boundaries and a lack of a real understanding about the possible outcome led to ethnic violence on an enormous scale. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If
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In 1945, after the devastation of a long war across Asia, Britain’s hold over her Indian empire was greatly weakened. The new Labour Government was notionally committed to Indian independence, but it was the inability of Britain to continue ruling and the development of India as a powerful new military force in the region that made independence an inevitability. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to t
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Following the death of US president Franklin Roosevelt, his successor, Harry Truman entered the Oval Office in the last days of World War Two. The inexperienced and untested president charted a new course in US diplomacy, ending his predecessor’s accommodation of Soviet demands. One of the key moments in the development of the Cold War began in April 1945 with Truman’s presidency. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We co
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In 1974 the government of Edward Heath was defeated in an election called to give Heath a mandate against the trade unions. His nemesis was the miners union organiser Arthur Scargill. In 1984 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher inflicted a crushing defeat on the union movement, a victory long in the planning by the Conservative Government. 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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In August 1945 two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan ending the Second World War in Asia. However the bombs did not end conflict across the region, instead they ended Japan’s involvement as an imperial power. Fighting continued in Asia throughout the next three decades as the new fault lines of the cold war emerged and European powers sought to regain control of their colonies. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We conn