History Unplugged Podcast

In early 1942, while most of the American military was in disarray from the devastating attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, a single USAAF squadron advanced to the far side of the world to face America's new enemy. Based in Australia with poor supplies and no ground support, the pilots and crew faced tropical diseases while confronting numerically superior Japanese forces. Yet the outfit, dubbed the Kangaroo Squadron, proved remarkably resilient and successful, conducting long-range bombing raids, armed reconnaissance missions, and rescuing General MacArthur and his staff from the Philippines.Today I speak with Bruce Gamble, author of Kangaroo Squadron: American Courage in the Darkest Days of World War II. He was inspired to write this story by his uncle, a navigator in the squadron. A footlocker contained his military papers and other memorabilia, including a handwritten dairy filled with day-to-day details of his tour. And an artifact from this story lives on today to honor its veterans. When a B-17E bomber crashed in a swamp on the north coast of Papua New Guinea in February 1942, the nine-member crew survived, escaped to safety, and returned to combat. But until 2006, the bomber nicknamed “Swamp Ghost” remained submerged in water and tall grass. It has been restored and is now a main attraction in the Pacific Aviation Museum at Pearl Harbor.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Crusades are typically bookended between Pope Urban II's call to reclaim the Holy Land in 1095 and the fall of Acre and the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1291. But two of the most notable religious figures of the 1400s—Pope Pius II and John of Capistrano—show that the lines between these periods were considerably blurred. Take the example of Pope Pius II’s famous 1461 letter to Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II, which he wrote following the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks. The humanist scholar-turned-pope called on Mehmet to convert to Christianity. Yet behind his back Pope Pius denigrated Mehmet as barbarous due to the same Asiatic pedigree and for destroying classical Greek civilization. He simultaneously worked furiously to promote a crusade against the Ottomans. This fifteenth-century project did not come to pass, but scholars in the last two decades have shown that there was no reason to see a discrepancy between Renaissance intellectualism and Holy War. In fact, Pope Nicholas V issued a papal bull on September 30, 1453 (four months after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople) to urge Christian rulers to launch a crusade to save Constantinople and restore the fallen Byzantine Empire. They were called to shed their blood and the blood for their subjects and provide a tithe of their revenue for the project. No such crusade was launched that year, but the call launched a final period of European crusading fervor that lasted until the end of the fifteenth century, what many historians consider an end point for the Middle AgesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Middle Ages was not a thousand-year period of technological stagnation between the fall of Rome and Leonardo da Vinci. It was an incredible period of invention and scientific innovation that saw major technological advances, including gunpowder, the invention of vertical windmills, spectacles, mechanical clocks, water mills, Gothic architectural building techniques, and clocks so sophisticated it took years to cycle through their full calculations, resembling an early mainframe computer more than a timekeeping device.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At the height of the witch burning craze, thousands people, largely women, were falsely accused of witchcraft. Many of them were burned, hanged, and executed, typically under religious pretense. But this phenomena largely didn’t happen in the Middle Ages, and if so it only occurred at the very end of this period. Witch burnings did not begin en masse until the Renaissance period and did not peak until the Enlightenment period in the eighteenth century. Although executions by being burn at the stake were somewhat common in the Middle Ages, they were not used on “witches”—only heretics and other disobeyers of Catholic teachings received this ignominious death. Witch trials and their accusations of weather manipulation, transforming into animals, and child sacrifices, have no documented occurrence before 1400.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Was it really possible to buy your way out of hell in the Middle Ages? If so, how much did it cost? And what did the Catholic Church do with all this money? In this second episode in our five-part series on the misunderstood Middle Ages, we will explore all these issues and more.Additionally, you will find out that indulgences still exist today, although not in the way that you think.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The popular view of the Middle Ages is a thousand-year period of superstition and ignorance, punctuated by witch burnings and belief in a flat earth. But the medieval period, more than any other time in history, laid the foundations for the modern world. The work of scholars, intellectuals, architects, statesmen and craftsmen led to rise of towns, the earliest bureaucratic states, the emergence of vernacular literatures, the recovery of Greek science and philosophy with its Arabic additions, and the beginnings of the first European universities.This episode is the first in a five-part series to explore a revisionist history of the Middle Ages, starting with the Roman Empire’s collapse in the fifth century. We will march through the accounts of Charlemagne’s reign, the Black Plague, the fall of Constantinople, and everything in between. It explores social aspects of the Middle Ages that are still largely misunderstood (i.e., no educated person believed the earth was flat). There was also a surprisingly high level of medieval technology, the love of Aristotle in the Middle Ages, and the lack of witch burnings (those were not popularized until the Thirty Years War in the Renaissance Period).The Middle Ages were not a period to suffer through until the Renaissance returned Europe to its intellectual and cultural birthright. Rather, they were the fire powering the forge out of which Western identity was forged. The modern world owes a permanent debt of gratitude to the medieval culture of Europe. It was the light that illuminated the darkness following the collapse of Rome and remained lit into the world we inhabit today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The American Civil War brought with it unprecedented demands upon the warring sections—North and South. The conflict required a mobilization and an organization of natural and man-made resources on a massive scale. In this episode I talk with Jeffry Wert, author of the new book Civil War Barons, which profiles the contributions of nineteen Northern businessmen to the Union cause. They were tinkerers, inventors, improvisers, builders, organizers, entrepreneurs, and all visionaries. They contributed to the war effort in myriad ways: they operated railroads, designed repeating firearms, condensed milk, sawed lumber, cured meat, built warships, purified medicines, forged iron, made horseshoes, constructed wagons, and financed a war. And some of their names and companies have endured—Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Deere, McCormick, Studebaker, Armour, and Squibb.The eclectic group includes Henry Burden, a Scottish immigrant who invented a horseshoe-making machine in the 1830s, who refined the process to be able to forge a horseshoe every second, supplying the Union army with 70 million horseshoes during the four years. John Deere’s plows “sang through the rich sod, portending bountiful harvests for a Union in peril.” And Jay Cooke emerged from the war as the most famous banker in America, earning a reputation for trustworthiness with his marketing of government bonds.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

2016 was the first election in which a woman won the nomination of a major political party to be president of the United States. But women have been legally running for president as far back as 1872, decades before they could even vote. Since then several dozen women have run for president, almost all of them long shots with nearly no chance of winning. But these long odds do not negate their story and their campaigns tell us much about the times in which they lived.In this episode I talk with Richard Lim, host of This American President Podcast. We look at the lives of these fascinating figures-- Victoria Woodhull, the 1872 candidate who ran a brokerage firm through the patronage of Cornelius Vanderbilt. She was as a 31-year-old spiritualist, radical communist, and possible former prostitute with a remarkably canny ability to reinvent herself-- Margaret Chase Smith, a Republican from Maine and the first woman to serve in both houses of the U.S. congress (she was Senator for 24 years). Smith was an early critic of McCarthyism and a 1964 presidential candidate who fashioned herself as the female Eisenhower. -- Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to the U.S. Congress, a 1972 presidential candidate, and an unlikely friend of George Wallace(!)-- Edith Wilson, the First Lady who essentially acted as de facto president following the stroke of her husband Woodrow Wilson in 1919 until March 1921.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Did you know that in World War Two there were “para-dogs,” or dogs that parachuted along with paratroopers in anticipation of D-Day? Or that carrier pigeons were dropped into France in their bird cages so that French Resistance members could find them and attach messages so they'd be delivered to Allied command in Britain? America’s highest military award, the Congressional Medal of Honor, was awarded to four-hundred-forty deserving members of “The Greatest Generation” that served in World War II. But in 1943, before the war was even over, Allied leaders realized they needed another kind of award to recognize a different kind of World War II hero-animal heroes. Founded in 1943, the prestigious PDSA Dicken Medal is the highest award an animal can achieve for gallantry and bravery in the field of military conflict. It was given to fifty-five animals who served valiantly alongside the members of the Greatest Generation. In War Animals, national bestselling author Robin Hutton (Sgt. Reckless: America’s War Horse) tells the incredible, inspiring true stories of the fifty-five animal recipients of the PDSA Dicken Medal during WWII and the lesser-known stories of other military animals whose acts of heroism have until now been largely forgotten. These animal heroes include: G.I. Joe, who flew 20 miles in 20 minutes and stopped the planes on the tarmac from bombing a town that had just been taken over by allied forces, saving the lives of over 100 British soldiers Winkie, the first Dickin recipient, who saved members of a downed plane when she flew 129 miles with oil clogged wings with an SOS message that helped a rescue team find the crew Chips, who served as a sentry dog for the Roosevelt-Churchill conference; Ding, a paradog whose plane was hit by enemy fire on D-Day, ended up in a tree, and once on the ground still saved livesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

With the election of America's first African-American president in 2008, many feared that the presidency of Barack Obama would bring out the most reactionary elements in society and end his life in assassination. Did Obama's eight years as president bring out more assassination attempts than other presidents or merely those of different ideological stripes? Find out in the final part in this series on presidential assassination attempts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Many tried to kill Bill Clinton during his presidency, including former military officers, white supremacists, and a little-known militant named Osama bin Laden. Most famously, Frank Eugene Corder crashed a Cessna onto the White House lawn. Learn about other attempts on the life of the 42nd president in this episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After his presidency, a deranged man broke into Ronald Reagan’s California home and attempted to strangle the former president before he was subdued by Secret Service agents. This attempt on his life came on the heels on many other attempts on Reagan, the final president to serve his entire presidency during the Cold War.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The only president to be assassinated in the last century was John F. Kennedy. What caused this failure in the Secret Service's typical protection procedures? Was it a perfect storm of bad luck, a lapse in judgement in the protection detail, or something far more nefarious, as conspiracy theorists have insisted for five decades?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In American history, four U.S. Presidents have been murdered at the hands of an assassin. In each case the assassinations changed the course of American history.But most historians have overlooked or downplayed the many threats modern presidents have faced, and survived. In this podcast series we will be looking at the largely forgotten—or never-before revealed attempts to slay America’s leaders.Such incidents include:How an armed, would-be assassin stalked President Roosevelt and spent ten days waiting across the street from the White House for his chance to shoot himHow the Secret Service foiled a plot by a Cuban immigrant who told coworkers he was going to shoot LBJ from a window overlooking the president’s motorcade routeHow a deranged man broke into Reagan’s California home and attempted to strangle the former president before he was subdued by Secret Service agents.In early 1992 a mentally deranged man stalking Bush turned up at the wrong presidential venue for his planned assassination attemptThe relationships presidents held with their protectors and the effect it had on the Secret Service’s missionIn the first episode of this series, we will look at assassination attempts against Franklin Roosevelt. He received thousands of threats on his life during his four presidential terms. The danger only increased in the World War 2 years, with his protection detail fearing an Axis assassin would take him out. There were several near-misses, with a would-be killer's bullet coming with in two feet of his head, or a torpedo nearly sinking his ship while going to the Yalta Conference to meet Churchill and Stalin.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How did an initially small religious movement envelope such enormous areas of the world? That is precisely what the community of believers under Muhammed did, conquering the Persian Empire and crippling the Byzantine Empire in a matter of decades, two global powers who were unable to do this to each other despite their best efforts. This episode looks at the rise of Islam, the most historically significant event of the early Middle Ages, through the perspective of military and social history.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For decades after its founding, America was really two nations – one slave, one free. There were many reasons why this nation ultimately broke apart in the Civil War, but the fact that enslaved black people repeatedly risked their lives to flee their masters in the South in search of freedom in the North proved that the “united” states was a lie. The problem of the 1850s - how (for southerners) to preserve slavery without destroying the Union, or (for northerners) how to destroy slavery while preserving the Union – was a political problem specific to a particular time and place. But the moral problem of how to reconcile irreconcilable values is a timeless one that, sooner or later, confronts us all.” My guest today, Andrew Delbanco, author of The War Before The War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War discusses this topic at depth in this episode. We begin in 1850, with America on the verge of collapse, Congress reached what it hoped was a solution – the notorious Compromise of 1850, which required that fugitive slaves be returned to their masters. But the Fugitive Slave Act, intended to preserve the Union, instead set the nation on the path to civil war.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One person's psychosis can be easily dismissed, but how do we account for collective hysteria, when an entire crowd sees the same illusion or suffer from the same illness? It's enough to make somebody believe in dark magic and pick up their pitchfork, ready to hang an accused witch.Sadly, such paranoia has led to many witch hunts in the past. In today's episode we look at some of the most notorious historical cases of mass hysteria and moral panics. But these cases don't only extend to Puritan-era witch panics. We will also look at cases that hit closer to home—such as economic bubbles and the housing market crash of the early 2000s.This episode includes such cases of mass hysteria as-- Dancing mania, in which German peasants in 1374 spent weeks dancing in a fugue state, with some toppling over dead from utter exhaustion-- The cat nuns of medieval France, where the sisters became to inexplicably meow together, leaving the surrounding community perplexed-- The Salem Witch trials, where 19 were executed due to claims of sorcery-- The Jersey Devil Panic, in which dozens of newspapers claimed in 1909 that a winged creature attacked a trolley car in Haddon HeightsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How would you react if you discovered that your family were deeply embedded within the Third Reich? Today I'm talking with Brazilian-born American Julie Lindahl about her journey to uncover her grandparents’ roles in the Nazi regime and why she was driven to understand how and why they became members of Hitler’s elite, the SS.In a six-year journey through Germany, Poland, Paraguay, and Brazil, Julie uncovers, among many other discoveries, that her grandfather had been a fanatic member of the SS since 1934. During World War II, he was responsible for enslavement and torture and was complicit in the murder of the local population on the large estates he oversaw in occupied Poland. He eventually fled to South America to evade a new wave of war-crimes trials.As she delved deeper into her family’s secret, Julie also found unlikely compassion from strangers whose family were victimized and ways to understand a troubled past.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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He was known simply as the Blind Traveler. A solitary, sightless adventurer, James Holman (1786-1857) fought the slave trade in Africa, survived a frozen captivity in Siberia, hunted rogue elephants in Ceylon, helped chart the Australian outback—and circumnavigated the globe, becoming one of the greatest wonders of the world he so explored.Today I'm talking with Jason Roberts, author of one of my all-time favorite history books: A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler. We get into all the impossible-to-believe stories that come from Holman's life, including:-- Holman retraining his senses to use echolocation to “see” the world around him through sight and touch- -Summiting Mt. Vesuvius as it was on the brink of eruption-- Riding horses at full gallop-- Negotiating peace between the British navy and islanders in Equatorial GuineaSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

History is often looked at through the perspective of a very high-up official. We look at military history through the eyes of a general. We look at political history through the eyes of a president or prime minister. But what if we look at history through the perspective of drugs? Specifically, what if we look at history through the perspective of marijuana? This isn't as gonzo of an idea as you might think. In my days as an Ottoman historian I knew someone doing his thesis on opium smuggling in Interwar Turkey and Beyond. The Opium Wars and the massive trade in opium between South Asia and China over the nineteenth century attest to the prominent role of opium within the history of colonialism and globalization.Today I'm talking with David Bienestock, host of the Great Moments in Weed History about how hashish arrives in Europe via the Napoleonic invasion. In 1798, Napoleon invaded Egypt in a failed attempt to install colonial rule. French soldiers did succeed in enthusiastically adopting the local custom of consuming hashish, a practice with a long, storied history in the Islamic world. When the occupation ended, they brought a taste for cannabis home that lead directly to the formation of Paris’s famed Club des Hashischins, where Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, and Charles Baudelaire drank coffee laced with marijuana.In particular we discuss:-- How the origin of the word “assassin” has to do with authorities looking down on consumers of hashish-- Humanity's 10,000-year history with marijuana-- How Europe first discover hashish during the Napoleonic occupation of EgyptSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Two weeks ago we finished the 25-part series on the 10 most important battles in the Civil War. Some of you had follow-up questions. We ran a poll to so which ones were the most popular. In a recording of a live-streaming Q&A session, James and Scott answer the following questions:How many civilians died due to battles getting close to population centers (e.g., the Gettysburg battle site is close to the town)?What was going on with John Wilkes Booth during the Civil War? Were people at the time aware of events like Harriett Tubman's involvement in the raid on Combahee Ferry? Did that effect public perception? For various generals (both sides), was there any correlation between how well they did in West Point and how well they did as leaders in war?Please describe POW camps in more detail.What do you think about the removal of the statues and the renaming of places that have been named after Confederate soldiers?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ever wondered what cocktail a fourth-century bishop from Asia Minor would order? That would be an obscure question to ask if the bishop in question weren't the historical basis for the Santa Claus myth. But since we are dealing here with Nicholas, bishop of the Greek City of Myra, we will delve into the question of what would be the favored drink of a cleric who gave gifts in secret while also getting into fistfights with followers of Arianism. In this special Christmas episode I'm talking with patristics professor Michael Foley. He is the author of the book "Drinking with Saint Nick." In it he compiles holiday drink recipes; beer, wine, and cider recommendations; and instruction on how to pair them with legends of medieval saints.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What is the greatest extent of classical European reach, and how did they affect or influence the culture of the known world in that period?In today's episode I answer this question—which was submitted by Karl, a listener from Norway. Greek and Roman civilization got much further afield than it had any right to. Forget about Alexander's Hellenistic Revolution reaching all the way to India in the fourth century BC. There's evidence of ancient fleets circumnavigating Africa, Greek explorers whom the Ptolemy's commissioned to travel to Scandinavia, and even Roman jewelry ending up in fifth-century Japanese tombs.Learn how a tangled web of traders, explorers, and diplomats created the first age of globalization, fueled by commerce and transmitted by the Silk Road.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

George Custer, if he is remembered at all, is a cautionary tale of hubris. He grossly underestimated Sitting Bull's forces at the Battle of Little Big Horn and he was killed in one of the American military's worst defeat in its history. This defeat clouds his legacy, which up until then was quite remarkable. During the Civil War he was known as a daring and highly successful cavalry officer. Called the "Boy General" of the Union Army, he whipped the Union army's cavalry corp into shape at the age of 23. A man loved by all, he attended the wedding of a Confederate officer (a friend from West Point) during the Civil War, dressed in Union Blues. He liked the Southerners he fought against, and appreciated his Indian scouts. This all begs the question of what if Custer survived the Battle of the Little Bighorn? What if he became a gun-for-hire? And what if he joined forces with a troupe of cancan dancers, Chinese acrobats, an eyepatch-wearing rebel cardsharp, and a multilingual Crow scout?These questions are answered by today's guest Harry Crocker III who is author of a new alternate history book called Armstrong.Eager to clear his name from the ignominy of his last stand - but forced to do so incognito, under the clever pseudonym Armstrong - Custer comes across evildoings in the mysterious Montana town of Bloody Gulch, which a ruthless Indian trader runs as his own personal fiefdom, with rumors of murder, slavery, and buried treasure.Harry and I get into Old West Frontier life, how to write in the voice of your subject, and everything else about the glorious complexities of late nineteenth century American life.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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In this very final episode, James and Scott discuss the lasting effects of the Civil War and why it is the single most important event in the history of the United States. The Revolutionary War may have answered the question of whether America would become an independent nation, but the Civil War answered the question of what kind of nation it would be.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this epilogue episode James and Scott talk about the Union and Confederate generals whom we've gotten to know so well after the war finished. They became presidents, professors, bankrupt businessmen, assassination victims, and everything in between.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Civil War is now finished but our series is not. Scott and James discuss an aspect of the Civil War that for the most part didn't tie into our main discussion: the naval war. Learn how battles occurred on American Rivers, gulfs, shorelines, and even as far away as Alaska.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As the Civil War came to an end, a big question remained for the North and eventually the reunited United States. What would become of its African-American residents? Would they be given full legal rights or only partial? This question was largely answered by the contributions of African-Americans in uniform. Scott and James talk about their story in this episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We're nearing the end of our Civil War series. It's 1864. Lincoln is re-elected, and Sherman's March to the Sea obliterated the Confederacy's industrial base. But work remains for General Grant. He must contend with his greatest foe, Robert E. Lee. Now that Grant was directing the operations of the Army of the Potomac, Northern expectations were high. Southern expectations were also high. Grant had three objectives: 1) Tie Lee down (Grant told Meade “Wherever Lee goes you will go also.”); 2) Bleed Lee’s army as much as possible; 3) Take Richmond.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From November to December 1864, Gen. Sherman led over 60,000 soldiers from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia in a scorched earth campaign to completely demoralized the Southern war effort. Sherman explained that they needed to “make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's no coincidence that the bird we eat for Thanksgiving and a Middle Eastern country are both called Turkey. One was named after the other, and it all has to do with a 500-year-old story of emerging global trade, mistaken identity, foreign language confusion, and how the turkey took Europe by storm as a must-have status symbol for the ultra wealthy.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the fall of 1864, the Union Army now had full momentum against the Confederacy, pushing deeper into the South than ever before. General Sherman overwhelmed forces led by John Bell Hood. With the fall of Atlanta, Lincoln nearly assured his re-election in 1864.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Following Union defeat at the Battle of Chickamauga, Union forces retreated to the railroad junction of Chattanooga, Tennessee. From November 23-25, 1863, Union troops routed the Confederates at the battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionaries Ridge; the victories forces the Confederate troops back into Georgia, ending the siege of Chattanooga and creating the groundwork for Sherman's Atlanta campaign and March to the Sea in 1864.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Battle of Chickamauga marked the end of Union Maj. Gen. William Rosencran's offensive into southwestern Tennessee and northwestern Georgia and the most significant Union defeat in the Western Theatre. More died here than in any other battle, save Gettysburg. After the battle Union forces retired to Chattanooga while Confederates besieged the city by occupying the surrounding heights.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The 1863 Battle of Gettysburg stopped Robert E. Lee's second invasion of the North. It was the deadliest battle of the Civil War, with over 50,000 casualties during the three day battle, a scale of suffering never seen before or since in America. The Union won victory and had new life injected into its war effort. The Confederacy saw its best chance at striking a deadly blow against the North and demoralizing them slip away.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the late summer of 1918, a division of Massachusetts militia volunteers led the first unified American fighting force into battle in France, turning the tide of World War I. Meanwhile, the world’s deadliest pandemic—the Spanish Flu—erupted in Boston and its suburbs, bringing death on a terrifying scale, first to military facilities and then to the civilian population. At precisely the same time, amidst the surrounding ravages of death, a young pitcher named Babe Ruth rallied the sport’s most dominant team, the Boston Red Sox, to a World Series victory—the last the Sox would see for eighty-six years. In this episode I I talk with Google executive Skip Desjardin about September 1918, a moment in history almost too cinematic to be real.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Historical biopics perform a great service. These movies remind the world of people that would have otherwise fallen into obscurity: Oscar Schindler (Schindler's List), John Nash (A Beautiful Mind), and Solomon Northup (12 Years a Slave).In this episode I am going to talk about six people from history that deserve their own movie. Joining me in this discussion is Jon Hagadorn, host of 1001 Heroes, Legends, Histories & Mysteries podcast.We present to you...A VikingA sixteenth-century spymasterA blind explorerA Russian royalA plane crash survivor who hiked weeks through the AmazonA World War One ace-turned jazz club owner-turned French Resistance fighterSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today's guest is Stephan Talty, author of the new book, SAVING BRAVO, which comes out October 30. Talty tells the never-before-told story of one of the greatest rescue missions not just of the Vietnam War, but the entire Cold War.In 1972, the Vietnam War was a lost cause. Public support in the US had cratered; the soldiers and airmen who returned home were called “mercenaries” and their cars were keyed on Air Force bases. Nixon was searching for a way to leave the battlefield, but thousands of Americans were still fighting for their lives, grasping for some meaning to their service. At the time, few American airmen were more valuable than Lt. Colonel Gene Hambleton. He carried highly classified information and knew secrets about cutting-edge missile technology that didn’t just concern Vietnam but could change the course of the Cold War itself. When Hambleton was shot down behind enemy lines amid North Vietnam’s Easter Offensive, he was left to lie and wait to be rescued in the middle of one of the fiercest ground battles since WW2. With time running out on the hallucinating and half-starved American, his fellow airmen would have to find a way to extract him from a flood of 30,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. It was a rescue mission that, for a moment, put a halt to the US’s futile fight in the war. Vietnam was for many a war without heroes. But the eleven men who went after Hambleton gave their lives for a higher cause. Drawing from access to unpublished papers and interviews with the families of those lost in the mission—many of whom are still waiting for the remains of their loved ones, and answers they feel the government owes them—Talty reveals a remarkable story of bravery, compassion, and humanity, one that will speak to all of us struggling to make sense of an anxious and uncertain time. In addition to its release in October, the book has also just been optioned for film by 20th Century Fox.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to the second part in our episodes on the Vicksburg Campaign, one of the most consequential Civil War battles in the Western theatre and what many historians consider to be the turning point of the war.Grant's Vicksburg campaign is considered one of the most brilliant of the war. With the loss of Pemberton’s army at Vicksburg and later Union victory at Port Hudson five days later, the Union now controlled the entire Mississippi River. The Confederacy was now split in half. Grant's reputation soared, which led to him being appointed as General-in-Chief of the Union armiesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the next two episodes Scott and James will discuss the Siege of Vicksburg. In the summer of 1863, Grant’s Army of the Tennessee came to Vicksburg, located on a high bluff converged on Vicksburg, a Mississippi town on the same river. Union occupation of the town was critical to control of the strategic river. If it fell then the Confederacy would completely lose access to critical supply lines in Texas and Mexico.Grant's six-week campaign began in June. His army came to Vicksburg, which was defended by Confederate General John C. Pemberton's men, who built a series of trenches, forts, redans, and artillery lunettes surrounding the city. Grant's army surrounded Pemberton and outnumbered him two to one. Trapped for six weeks, the residents of Vicksburg were forced to dig caves and eat rats to survive. But, due to Pemberton's diligence and resourceful mind, they continued to trust his command despite dire circumstances.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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The Battle of Chancellorsville is considered Robert E. Lee’s masterpiece. His reputation as a military genius was sealed by fighting an incredibly successful offensive battle despite being outnumbered 2-to-1 and launching attacks on multiple fronts. After another humiliating Union defeat at Fredericksburg, On January 26, Lincoln replaced Gen. Ambrose Burnside with Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker as the new commander of the Army of the Potomac, with 120,000 troops. Hooker's plan was to send his cavalry on a raid behind Lee to cut off Lee’s communication with Richmond. He would leave 40,000 troops in front of Lee near Fredericksburg, and Hooker himself would march up the Rappahannock River and try to go around Lee’s left. If he didn’t defeat Lee at that time, he would at least force Lee to retreat. But Lee managed to achieve victory despite splitting up his forces into vastly inferior numbers and fighting the Union on multiple fronts. The outcome was 17,000 Federal casualties to 13,000 ConfederatesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Following McClellan's disastrous Union loss at Antietam, Lincoln replaced him with Ambrose Burnside, who planned to march to the city of Fredericksburg, getting there before Lee and possibly marching all the way to Richmond. But once they confronted the Confederacy at the battle of Fredericksburg the Federals made 14 total charges that were all repulsed. One Federal general wrote “It was a great slaughter pen. They may as well have tried to take Hell.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The entire point of the Civil War was to end slavery, right? Not exactly, and definitely not at the beginning of the War. The North went to war strictly to save the Union and had little interest in abolishing slavery in the South. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 only came about due to a complex convergence of political, social, and cultural interests, which we will address in this episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Battle of Antietam—an 1862 clash between Robert E. lee's Army of Northern Virginian and George McClellan's Army of the Potomac—was the deadliest one-day battle in American history, with a total of 22,717 dead, wounded or missing. It came after Lee thwarted McClellan's plans to lay siege to the Confederate capitol of Richmond and tried to seize the momentum by crossing north into Maryland.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.