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The UN’s inaugural session convened on 10 January 1946 in a war-scarred London, only months after the UN Charter took effect in October 1945. In a symbolic choice, the Assembly met in Westminster’s Methodist Central Hall – a building still bearing shrapnel scars from the Blitz – to underscore Allied unity and a commitment to peace. A bronze plaque in Westminster Hall still commemorates this moment. As one contemporary reported, “the first meeting of the General Assembly… was held in London” . Delegates from 51 nations (including five Soviet and British dominion states) poured into Westminster Central Hall for this…
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By spring 1945 the tide of World War II had turned decisively. Nazi Germany would surrender within weeks, and even as fighting raged on in the Pacific the Axis defeat was seen as imminent. In this atmosphere U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt died (April 12) on “the eve of complete military victory in Europe,” just months before Japan’s defeat . His successor, Harry Truman, knew that the postwar settlement could not wait for total victory. Addressing the San Francisco meeting, Truman declared that delegates’ task was singular: “You are to write the fundamental charter” of a new organization whose “sole…
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The Yalta Conference of early February 1945 took place in a devastated World War II Europe. By that point Allied victory in Europe was all but certain – Soviet armies were closing on Berlin from the east, while American and British forces were pushing in from the west . Yet the war against Japan still raged in the Pacific, and the three leaders (Churchill, Roosevelt, StalinStalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician, dictator and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. Read More) gathered in Livadia…
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By the late summer of 1944, World War II’s momentum had decisively shifted in favor of the Allies. In Europe, Allied armies had landed in Normandy, liberated Paris, and were pressing toward Germany’s borders, while Soviet forces swept westward across Eastern Europe . The “halcyon days” of mid-1944, as historian Michael Howard called them, saw the looming defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, prompting Allied leaders to turn their focus from winning the war to securing the peace . Amid the optimism, serious questions arose: How would a shattered world be rebuilt, and what kind of international order could…
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By late 1943 the course of World War II had decisively shifted. After the Soviet victory at Stalingrad (Feb. 1943) and the crushing of German forces at Kursk (July 1943), the Axis powers were retreating on all fronts. In Italy the Allies had invaded Sicily and toppled Mussolini, and in the Pacific the U.S. was advancing from Guadalcanal to Bougainville. With the pendulum swinging to Allied advantage, the “Big Three” (Churchill, Roosevelt, StalinStalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician, dictator and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953.…
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Join us on The Explaining History Podcast as we welcome Dame Vikki Heywood, former Executive Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Court Theatre, to discuss her dazzling debut novel Miss Veal and Miss Ham. Set against the sleepy veneer of a 1951 Buckinghamshire village post office, this intimate tale reveals the hidden passions and unspoken resilience of two women whose lives span from the suffragette movement to the aftermath of World War II.In this episode, we explore:A Day o
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Continued from yesterday’s episode, we read again from Adam Hochschild’s brilliant book Spain in Our Hearts, about the overwhelming odds faced by the International Brigades in Spain as they crossed the Ebro River in the Republic’s last attempt to hold off the fascist generals and attract the support of the British and the French. The agreement at Munich over the fate of Czechoslovakia signalled that the British and French had no interest in fighting to save Spain from Hitler’s proxies. *****STOP
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The economic realities of a failing war in the east accelerated the timetable for genocide at the highest levels of the Third Reich, but in July 1942 Heinrich Himmler also intended Auschwitz Birkenau to be a site for extracting slave labour from prisoners. He intended this because of the impeding economic and production crises that would engulf the Third Reich as it faced an alliance of America, the USSR and the British Empire. This podcast episode explores the intentions of the SS leader and o
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In this episode, we hear from with award-winning author, journalist and broadcaster Ben Arogundade about his latest book, Hollywood Blackout.Drawing on a century of film history, Hollywood Blackout explores how the Academy Awards have both resisted and reflected changing social forces — from the Nazi invasion of Europe to the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, #OscarsSoWhite, and #BlackLivesMatter. Arogundade reveals how external political and cultural shocks shaped who was celebrated at the Oscars
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At the height of the Third Reich’s war production there were nearly five million additional German and foreign workers in the war economy. Despite the efforts made by Albert Speer to rationalise the war economy and make it more efficient, there was still too few workers to compete with the combined military production of the allied powers. Workers from Germany, from occupied western countries and from allied countries like Italy and Hungary were recruited though non German workers were paid less