Explaining History

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.

Democrat presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt hoped the USSR could become a key part of the post war worlds they were involved in developing. Both men were willing to overlook many of the violent excesses of Lenin's Bolsheviks and later Stalin, assuming that a more liberal and moderate Russia might emerge.

At the start of the First World War the threat of civil war in Ireland between home rule nationalists and protestant unionists in the north began to recede. Two years later, however, a revolt in Dublin on Easter Monday 1916 against the British was crushed and fifteen of the rebels executed. This podcast explores the causes and consequences of the Easter Rising.

In the second half of the 19th Century there was a dramatic increase in women's political publishing. Newspapers, books, leaflets and pamphlets exploring the struggle for suffrage and equal rights before the law helped shape the movement before and during the First World War

In the second half of the 19th Century, the development of a new and diverse range of magazines, leaflets and books written by educated and wealthy Victorian women for a female audience had a radicalising effect on the women's movement. The desire for equality before the law led to a pressure for female suffrage and a minor publishing revolution developed in support of these goals.

In the first two years of the First World War, British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith was a distant and detached character, leaving major decisions to the War Office, Winston Churchill and Horatio Kitchener. By 1915 two crises, munitions shortages and Gallipoli had resulted in his subordinates political demise and the creation of a coalition government.

This month's Explaining History Book Review features The Dark Heart of Hitler's Europe by Martin Winstone. To buy the book click on the link below: http://www.ibtauris.com/Books/Humanities/History/History%20earliest%20times%20to%20present%20day/20th%20century%20history%20c%201900%20%20to%20c%202000/The%20Dark%20Heart%20of%20Hitlers%20Europe%20Nazi%20Rule%20in%20Poland%20Under%20the%20General%20Government.aspx?menuitem={DFF51E2F-C0BA-4928-ACC4-415188DCDEE8} Also you can get Julia Routledge's: The Genocidal Century here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Genocidal-Century-Mass-Killing-20th-ebook/dp/B00PCMAV1E/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1421680875&sr=1-1

In 1919 America experienced a post war explosion of racial violence. Black communities in over 30 cities across the USA were attacked by mobs, angry at the new economic opportunities that had opened up to black people as a result of the First World War.

During the First World War, nearly a hundred thousand poor Chinese labourers dug British trenches on the western front. Their government hoped that the war would provide opportunities to revise crippling treaties imposed on her by Britain and France and claim back territory lost to Germany and Japan. When Chinese hopes were dashed at the Paris Peace Conference, the long term political consequences in China were immense and dominated the next three decades.

Benito Mussolini dominated Italy for two decades and was able to rule partly because of the relationship he had with the Italian people. To many ordinary Italians he was an immensely popular figure and many viewed him as down to earth and in touch with the lives of Italy's working poor. This podcast explores his cult of personality.

How did allied war production of aircraft, tanks, ships and guns determine the outcome of the Second World War? Why was German military output so much lower? This podcast explores this issue and the importance of mass production during the war.

The Potsdam Conference was the last major meeting of the allied powers and took place after the surrender of Germany. The conference was a key event in the development of the Cold War and drew up the conflict's battle grounds in Europe and Asia

For a detailed analysis of this and the Jewish Holocaust, read Julia Routledge's excellent new ebook The Genocidal Century: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Genocidal-Century-Mass-Killing-20th-ebook/dp/B00PCMAV1E/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1415438292&sr=1-1

This month's book review features three titles on Britain and the world's experience of the turbulent 1970s. * State of Emergency and Seasons in the Sun by Dominic Sandbrook. * Strange Rebels by Christian Caryl http://www.amazon.co.uk/State-Emergency-Were-Britain-1970-1974/dp/0141032154/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417102355&sr=1-3&keywords=dominic+sandbrook http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seasons-Sun-Battle-Britain-1974-1979/dp/0141032162/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417102370&sr=1-1&keywords=dominic+sandbrook http://www.amazon.co.uk/Strange-Rebels-1979-Birth-Century/dp/0465065678/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417102416&sr=1-1&keywords=strange+rebels

Harold Wilson was Britain's Prime Minister from 1964-1970, a period in which optimistic visions of a new country faltered and faded. By the end of the decade the modern, meritocratic and scientific country that he promised in 1964 had not materialised. This podcast explores Wilson and the challenges he and Britain faced.