History Unplugged Podcast

Growing up in New York as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, Nina Siegal had always wondered about the experience of her mother and maternal grandparents living in Europe during World War II. She had heard stories of the war as a child from her mother and grandfather, and read Anne Frank’s diary in school, but the tales were crafted as moral lessons — to never waste food, to be grateful for all you receive, to hide your silver — while the details of the past went untold to make it easier to assimilate into American life. When Siegal moved to Amsterdam as an adult, those questions came up again, as did another horrifying one: Why did seventy five percent of the Dutch Jewish community perish in the war, while in other Western European countries the proportions were significantly lower? How did this square with the narratives of Dutch resistance she had heard so much about? Siegal decided to get into the archives and look at wartime diaries of Dutch citizens from all walks of life and eventually wrote “The Diary Keepers World War II In The Netherlands, as Written by the People Who Lived Through It.” Siegal joins us to discuss a part of history we haven’t seen in quite this way before. We look at stories of a Dutch Nazi police detective, a Jewish journalist imprisoned at Westerbork transit camp, a grocery store owner who saved dozens of lives, and several others into a braided nonfictional narrative of the Nazi occupation and the Dutch Holocaust, as individuals experienced it day by day.

There are countless ways Shakespeare has made his way into unexpected corners of American life. It starts at the top with our presidents. Shakespeare is a longtime ally of America’s Commanders-in-Chief: Thomas Jefferson took a pilgrimage to his house, John Adams took lessons from King Lear about child usurpers, and JFK thought that the Bard spoke so directly to the U.S.’s Cold War challenges that he was more American than British. But Shakespeare speaks to many other classes of people. In 1849, a riot broke out in New York between working class and aristocratic theatre fans over which actor did the best Hamlet, and 31 were left dead.Today’s guest is Barry Edelstein, a seasoned director of Shakespeare and host of the new podcast Where There’s a Will: Finding Shakespeare. . From a Henry V performance in a maximum security prison to a look at how Shakespeare assists children on the autism spectrum, we explore why the Bard’s works permeate our history and culture, and what that says about him, and about our society.

Some remember Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency as a time of peace and prosperity, but in reality, it was an era of constant global crises. In this episode preview from This American President, host Richard Lim explores how Eisenhower skillfully navigated the perils of the Cold War.To continue listening to This American President, check out:Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3RNJS4jSpotify: https://spoti.fi/3jTClEjParthenon: https://www.parthenonpodcast.com/this-american-president Hear more episodes of This American President:Theodore Roosevelt and the Pursuit of Greatness: https://apple.co/3IgUAx9 / https://spoti.fi/3E0zoZvZachary Taylor, America's Only Homeless President: https://apple.co/40OuGaW / https://spoti.fi/3DUzzFBThe Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland: https://apple.co/3xdIUER / https://spoti.fi/3ltBmLF

In 1861, just as the Civil War began, the leaders of the Confederacy soon realized they were outmatched when it came to military might, especially in terms of Naval power. (For example, the U.S. Navy had 42 commissioned ships as of the start of the year—the Confederacy had 1.) And the Northern states had much more industrial might in order to get more ships built. With such a stark advantage, the Union was able to form a naval blockade that could choke the Confederacy militarily, and also economically.The leaders of the Confederacy realized that the only way to outfit a strong navy was to receive support from aboard—namely, from the still-neutral Great Britain. Neutral though its leaders claimed to be, public sentiment in Britain at the time leaned toward the Confederacy. The Southern leaders dispatched the charming and devious Captain James Bulloch to Liverpool to lead the way to clandestinely acquire a cutting-edge fleet of ships (and weapons) that would break President Lincoln’s blockade of Confederate ports, sink Northern merchant vessels, and drown the U.S. Navy’s mightiest ships at sea. The profits from gunrunning and smuggling cotton—Dixie’s notorious “white gold”—would finance the scheme.Opposing him was the American consul named Thomas Dudley, a resolute Quaker lawyer and abolitionist. Knowing that the state of the Union was at stake, he was determined to stop Bulloch by any means necessary in a spy-versus-spy game of move and countermove, gambit and sacrifice, intrigue and betrayal. If Dudley failed, Britain would likely ally with the South and imperil a Northern victory.The battleground for these spy games was the Dickensian port of Liverpool, whose dockyards built more ships each year than the rest of the world combined, whose warehouses stored more cotton than anywhere else on earth, and whose merchant princes, said one observer, were “addicted to Southern proclivities, foreign slave trade, and domestic bribery.”To tell this story is today’s guest Alexander Rose, author of “The Lion and the Fox: Two Rival Spies and the Secret Plot to Build a Confederate Navy.”

One of the lowest points of World War 2 for the Allies was autumn 1943, when bombing runs from England to Germany were ramping up. Hundreds of B-17s flew out to strike military targets, but they flew unescorted due to being the only planes with enough range (fighters could only make it from England to Belgium and back) and were sitting ducks for German fighters. Losses were as high as 25 percent. Flight crews were grounded and murmured mutiny.But what change everything was the revolutionary P-51 Mustang fighter. It had a top speed of over 400 mph and fly over 2,000 miles – outrunning and outlasting any other fighter in the war. But not many know the story of how it gained its reputation—how it nearly didn’t make it to the skies at all. Today’s guests are David and Margaret White, author of “Wings of War: The World War II Fighter Plane that Saved the Allies and the Believers Who Made It Fly.”We discuss how the P-51 Mustang airplane was not only used in the war, but how it was created, the roadblocks that almost prevented it from taking flight against the Luftwaffe, and how it ultimately won the war.

No British General of the Revolutionary War has been written about more than John Burgoyne. That’s because of his surrender of his army at Saratoga, New York in 1777, widely seen as the turning point in the Revolutionary War. He is considered a reckless lout, and there’s plenty in his life story to support this characterization. He gambled heavily and possibly had to flee England as a young man to escape his debtors. His father-in-law eventually paid Burgoyne’s debts and got him another commission in the army, just in time for the 7 Years War. There he served admirably and became a war hero. But 300 years after his birth, the many lives of Burgyone -- dashing cavalry colonel of the Seven Years War, satirical London playwright, reformer Member of Parliament, gambler in the clubs on St James’s Street – have been forgotten.Today’s guest is Norman Poser, author of From the Battlefield to the Stage: The Many Lives of General John Burgyone. We look not only at the Saratoga campaign, but also elements of Burgoyne’s eventful life that have never been adequately explored. He was a socialite, welcome in London’s fashionable drawing rooms, a high-stakes gambler in its elite clubs, and a playwright whose social comedies were successfully performed on the London stage. Moreover, as a member of Parliament for thirty years, Burgoyne supported the rule of law, fought the corruption of the East India Company – he was a sworn enemy of Clive of India whom he denounced with all his might – and advocated religious tolerance.

"How might the British have handled Hitler differently?” remains one of history’s greatest "what ifs."Many fault the Neville Chamberlain administration of the 1930s with trying to appease the Fuhrer by any means necessary. But they failed, still got a war, and earned a reputation for cowardice. Or as Winston Churchill said to Chamberlain, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.” But what if we haven’t given Britain enough credit for trying to stave off the war in ways that weren’t dishonorable?It turns out they did, and they got very creative. One method involved using a handful of amateur British intelligence agents who wined, dined, and befriended the leading National Socialists between the wars. With support from royalty, aristocracy, politicians, and businessmen, they hoped to use the recently founded Anglo-German Fellowship as a vehicle to civilize and enlighten the Nazis.At the heart of the story are a pacifist Welsh historian, a World War I flying ace, and a butterfly-collecting businessman, who together offered the British government better intelligence on the horrifying rise of the Nazis than any other agents. They infiltrated the Nazi high command deeper than any other spies, relaying accurate intelligence to both their government and to its anti-appeasing critics. Having established a personal rapport with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, they delivered intelligence to him directly, paving the way for American military support for Great Britain against the Nazi threat.To tell this story is today’s guest, Charles Spicer, author of “Coffee With Hitler.” His book is based on eight years of research among letters, intelligence reports, and other primary sources, many of which have been lost or overlooked by historians.While these men didn’t succeed in their goal, they did feed critical intelligence to the British Establishment and gave them a very clear understanding of the threat that Hitler posed. That’s why when war did finally break out, Britain wasn’t caught asleep at the switch. It had spent years arming itself and training for the outbreak of hostilities. More could have been done – and that’s always the case when it comes to total war – but we have these men to credit for trying to avoid and neutralize an enemy that was unavoidable and immovable.

What if one book could contain the sum of mankind’s knowledge? Scholars and chroniclers have tried to write this book since antiquity, penning several so-called universal histories (perhaps the best was Rashid al-Din’s “Compendium of the Chronicles” that was commissioned by a Mongol Empire daughter state in 14th century). This goal was reached in 1768 with the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica was published in Scotland by Enlightenment thinkers who believed that human thinking could be categorized. It became a fixture of American households in the 19th century and occupied the bookshelves of every library and school in the United States until very recently.Today’s guest is Jill Lepore's show, host of the show “The Last Archive,” about the US's post-truth crisis -- of how we know what we know and why it seems lately as if we can't agree on anything at all. She both reckons with the present moment through her historical expertise and also presents solutions that are forward and current.

How far can a single leader alter the course of history? Thomas Carlyle, who promoted the Great Man Theory, says that talented leaders are the primary – if not the sole – cause of change. This view has been challenged by social scientists who understand that leaders are not only constrained by their societies, but merely products of them. Whatever this interplay between a personality and his society, it raises the question of whether dictators are as unconstrained as they seem, and if so, how do they attain that power?Today’s guest is Ian Kershaw, author of Personality and Power. We look at an array of case-studies of twentieth-century European leaders – some dictators, some democrats – and explore what was it about these leaders, and the times in which they lived, that allowed them such untrammelled and murderous power, and what factors brought that era in Europe to an end?

The most disruptive and transformative event in the Middle Ages wasn’t the Crusades, the Battle of Agincourt, or even the Black Death. It was the Mongol Conquests. Even after his death, Genghis Khan’s Mongol Empire grew to become the largest in history—four times the size of Alexander the Great’s and stretching from the Pacific to the Mediterranean. But the extent to which these conquering invasions and subsequent Mongol rule transformed the diverse landscape of the medieval Near East have been understated in our understanding of the modern world.Today’s guest is Nicholas Morton, author of “The Mongol Storm: Making and Breaking Empires in the Middle East.” We discuss the overlapping connections of religion, architecture, trade, philosophy and ideas that reformed over a century of Mongol rule. Rather than a Euro- or even Mongol-centric perspective, this history uniquely examines the Mongol invasions from the multiple perspectives of the network of peoples of the Near East and travelers from all directions—including famous figures of this era such as Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, Ibn Khaldun, and Roger Bacon, who observed and reported on the changing region to their respective cultures—and the impacted peoples of empires—Byzantine, Seljuk and then Ottoman Turks, Ayyubid, Armenian, and more—under the violence of conquest.

On January 16, 1944, the submarine rescue vessel USS Macaw ran aground at Midway Atoll while attempting to tow the stranded submarine USS Flier. The Flier was pulled free six days later but another three weeks of salvage efforts plagued by rough seas and equipment failures failed to dislodge the Macaw. On February 12, enormous waves nudged the ship backward into deeper water. As night fell and the Macaw slowly sank, the twenty-two sailors on board—ship's captain Paul W. Burton, his executive officer, and twenty enlisted men—sought refuge in the pilothouse but by the following afternoon, the compartment was almost entirely flooded. Burton gave the order to open the portside door and make for the foremast. Three men succeeded but most of the others were swept overboard. Five of them died, including Burton. Three sailors from the base at Midway also lost their lives in two unauthorized rescue attempts.Today’s guest is Tim Loughman, author of A Strange Whim of the Sea: The Wreck of the USS Macaw. He traces the ship's service from its launch on San Francisco Bay to its disastrous final days at Midway. It tells a war story short on combat but not on drama, a wartime tragedy in which the conflict is more interpersonal, and perhaps intrapersonal, than international. Ultimately, for Burton and the Macaw the real enemy was the sea, and in a deadly denouement, the sea won. Highlighting the underreported role auxiliary vessels played in the war, A Strange Whim of the Sea engages naval historians and students alike with a previously untold story of struggle, sacrifice, death, and survival in the World War II Pacific.

Some anthropologists once believed that humanity lived in a peaceful state that lacked large-scale warfare before the arrival of large civilizations and all its wealth inequality and manufacture of weapons. But archeological findings have shown over and over that warfare dates back as far as homo sapiens themselves (such as the Bronze Age Battle of Tollense River, about which we known nearly nothing, save that 5,000 soldiers fought each other with primitive weapons).Throughout history, warfare has transformed social, political, cultural, and religious aspects of our lives. We tell tales of wars—past, present, and future—to create and reinforce a common purpose. Today’s guest is Jeremy Black, author of “A Short History of War.” We examine war as a global phenomenon, looking at the First and Second World Wars as well as those ranging from Han China and Assyria, Imperial Rome, and Napoleonic France to Vietnam and Afghanistan. Black explores too the significance of warfare more broadly and the ways in which cultural understandings of conflict have lasting consequences in societies across the world.

Over 300 men were executed by the British Army for desertion and cowardice during the first World War. In this episode preview from Vlogging Through History, host Chris Mowery explores the process for executions and the stories of the men involved.To continue listening to Vlogging Through History, check out: Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3X3USwk Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3WX5A7EParthenon: https://www.parthenonpodcast.com/vlogging-through-history Discover more episodes of Vlogging Through History: The History of the Medal of Honor: https://apple.co/3iqhU17 / https://spoti.fi/3vLt9V7The Tragic Lives of U.S. Presidents: https://apple.co/3Xa63Dm / https://spoti.fi/3VYHTdUAlvin York: An American Legend: https://apple.co/3GTHRjf / https://spoti.fi/3QpT3Hc

Considered by many to be one of the best-known criminal defense lawyers in the country, Clarence Darrow became nationally recognized for his eloquence, withering cross-examinations, and compassionate support for the underdog, both in and out of the courtroom.Though his fifty-year-long career was replete with momentous cases, specifically his work in the Scopes Monkey Trial and the Leopold and Loeb Murder Trial, Darrow’s Nightmare zeroes in on just two years of Darrow’s career: 1911 to 1913. It was during this time period that Darrow was hired to represent the McNamara brothers, two union workers accused of bombing the Los Angeles Times building, an incident that resulted in twenty-one deaths and hundreds more injuries.Along with investigative journalist Lincoln Steffens, Darrow negotiated an ambitious plea bargain on behalf of the McNamara brothers. But the plan soon unraveled; not long after the plea bargain was finalized, Darrow was accused of attempting to bribe a juror. As Darrow himself became the defendant, what was once his shining moment in the national spotlight became a threat to the future of his career and the safety of his family.Today’s guest is Nelson Johnson, author of Darrow's Nightmare: The Forgotten Story of America's Most Famous Trial Lawyer: (Los Angeles 1911–1913). Drawing upon the 8,500-page transcript saved from the two trials, Johnson makes Darrow’s story come to life like never before.

When the United States was founded in 1776, its citizens didn’t think of themselves as “Americans.” They were New Yorkers or Virginians or Pennsylvanians. It was decades later that the seeds of American nationalism—identifying with one’s own nation and supporting its broader interests—began to take root. But what kind of nationalism should Americans embrace? The state-focused and racist nationalism of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson? Or the belief that the U.S. Constitution made all Americans one nation, indivisible, which Daniel Webster and others espoused? Today’s guest is Joel Richard Paul, author of Indivisible: Daniel Webster and the Birth of American Nationalism. We look at the story of how Webster, a young New Hampshire attorney turned politician, rose to national prominence through his powerful oratory and unwavering belief in the United States and captured the national imagination. In his speeches, on the floors of the House and Senate, in court, and as Secretary of State, Webster argued that the Constitution was not a compact made by states but an expression of the will of all Americans. As the greatest orator of his age, Webster saw his speeches and writings published widely, and his stirring rhetoric convinced Americans to see themselves differently, as a nation bound together by a government of laws, not parochial interests. As these ideas took root, they influenced future leaders, among them Abraham Lincoln, who drew on them to hold the nation together during the Civil War.