Explaining History

Following the failure of Germany's last bid to defeat Britain, France and America in the west, a counter offensive took advantage of the Kaiser Army's weakness. The decisive moment, politically and militarily came on August 8th 1918 with the Battle of Amiens, after which Germany's leaders saw the war as unwinnable.

In 1933, as Hitler consolidated his power, he signed an agreement or 'concordat' with the Catholic Church, removing the power of the Papacy from German politics. Within months, however, the deal was abandoned and persecution of the church began. This podcast explores the reasons for the Nazis betrayal of the church.

For the first time in its history, British popular music became radically politicised in the mid 1970s as a result of the rise of far right racist groups in Britain. This radicalism lasted long into the 1980s, ending with the advent of New Labour.

What factors led to the destruction of Yugoslavia and the death of 140,000 people over a decade? This podcast examines the mounting tensions that communism's failure unleashed.

By the late 1960s anxieties over rapid social change and racial tensions promoted a conservative backlash against the perceived permissiveness of the decade. Richard Nixon and then Ronald Reagan used the criminalisation of drugs to present themselves as defenders of American values but the consequences of their policies in America and beyond have been catastrophic.

In the decade and a half before the Spanish Civil War, a bitterly divided society existed in constant conflict. Wealthy landowners and industrialists, supported by the army and civil guard viewed the peasantry as a subhuman 'other' and feared the threat of communism. Subscribe to the Explaining History YouTube Channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXutxjOzJ8vTGHkVWikl0NQ

In 1946, following the formation of a Hindu dominated transitional government in India, inter ethnic violence broke out in Calcutta. Hindus and Muslims killed their neighbours in days of rioting, but the violence continued for two years, during and after the partition.

Throughout the Second World War, Britain saw its colonies as sources of available manpower, food and finance. As Britain's fortunes changed throughout the conflict, so did its attitude to the present and future of the rest of the empire.

A review of Dr Alex Kay's excellent biography of SS Colonel Alfred Filbert. You can buy the book here: http://www.foyles.co.uk/witem/biography/the-making-of-an-ss-killer-the-life,alex-j-kay-9781316601426

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.

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.

When American public opinion became deeply anti communist in the second half of World War Two, America's liberal journalistic elite and Stalin apologists were left dangerously exposed. Changes in popular discourse would see them fall victim to post war anti communist purges.

Did Britain have a sexual revolution in the 1960s? All indications suggest that momentous change occurred in attitudes to pregnancy, marriage, divorce and homosexuality in that decade. However, in reality Britain had experienced a long century of changing attitudes to sex and private life.

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.

In the second half of the 1930s, after explosive economic growth during the five year plans the USSR was convulsed by murderous political violence. The phenomenon of Stalinist terror has occupied the writing of historians for decades and in this podcast we examine two perspectives.