History Unplugged Podcast

As the popular narrative goes, the Civil War was won when courageous Yankees triumphed over the South. But an aspect of the war that has remained little-known for 160 years is the Alabamian Union soldiers who played a decisive role in the Civil War, only to be scrubbed from the history books. One such group was the First Alabama Calvary, formed in 1862. It went on raids that destroyed Confederate communications and also marched with Sherman’s forces across the South. They aided the fall of Vicksburg and the burning of Atlanta.Today’s guest is Howell Raines, author of “Silent Cavalry: How Union Soldiers from Alabama Helped Sherman Burn Atlanta—and Then Got Written Out of History.” As Raines has pieced together, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s decisive effort to burn Atlanta was facilitated by an unsung regiment of 2,066 yeoman farmers and former slaves from Alabama—including at least one member of Raines’s own family.So why have the best-known Civil War historians, including Ken Burns and Shelby Foote, given only passing – or no – attention to this regiment of southerners who chose to fight for the North – a regiment that General Sherman hailed as one of the finest in the Union? We explore this question through an account of Alabama’s Mountain Unionists and their exploits, along with investigating why they and others like them were excised from the historical record.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Veterans of World War 2 are called the Greatest Generation for their uncommon courage and self-determination. Whether this descriptor is true or part of America’s self-mythologizing during the 20th century is a challenging question, one that Andrew Biggio, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, worked to answer.Biggio found that many were brave, but they were all ordinary men who also shared in humanity’s weaknesses and flaws while responding to the call of duty. Biggio is today’s guest and author of “The Rifle 2: Back to the Battlefield.” He shares first-person accounts from the last of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who fought the most dreadful war in history.The idea for his first book “The Rifle” was simple: travel across the country with a 1945 M1 Garand, the basic U.S. fighting rifle of World War II, ask combat veterans of that war to sign it, and listen carefully as the sight, touch, and feel of that rifle evoke a flood of memories and emotions. In this follow-up book, Andrew Biggio once again reveals the astonishing effect his M1 Garand had on the old warriors who held it.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the midst of the Great Depression, punished by crippling drought and deepening poverty, hundreds of thousands of families left the Great Plains and the Southwest to look for work in California’s rich agricultural valleys. In response to the scene of destitute white families living in filthy shelters built of cardboard, twigs, and refuse, reform-minded New Deal officials built a series of camps to provide them with shelter and community.Today’s guest is Jonathan Ebel, author of “From Dust They Came: Government Camps and the Religion of Reform in New Deal California.” We look at the religious dynamics in and around migratory farm labor camps in agricultural California established and operated by the Resettlement Administration and the Farm Security Administration. Ebel makes the case that the camps served as mission sites for the conversion of migrants to more modern ways of living and believing. Though the ideas of virtuous citizenship put forward by the camp administrators were framed as secular, they rested on a foundation of Protestantism. At the same time, many of the migrants were themselves conservative or charismatic Protestants who had other ideas for how their religion intended them to be.By looking at the camps as missionary spaces, Ebel shows that this New Deal program was animated both by humanitarian concern and by the belief that these poor, white migrants and their religious practices were unfit for life in a modernized, secular world.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For nearly two centuries, the beating heart of electoral politics was on the back of a train. William Jennings Bryan spoke to an estimated 5 million people from a train car in his 1896 presidential campaign. Yet memories of the pivotal role campaign trains played in American elections fade with the passing of each generation. Also forgotten are the stories documented by the reporters who traveled with hundreds of whistle-stopping politicians including Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan.Today’s guest is Edward Segal, author of “Whistle-Stop Politics: Campaign Trains and the Reporters Who Covered Them.” Campaign trains were an American invention that enabled politicians to connect with as many voters as possible in the country’s largest cities and smallest towns.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Joseph Seligman arrived in the United States in 1837, with the equivalent of $100 sewn into the lining of his pants. Then came the Lehman brothers, who would open a general store in Montgomery, Alabama. Not far behind were Solomon Loeb and Marcus Goldman, among the “Forty-Eighters” fleeing a Germany that had relegated Jews to an underclass.These industrious immigrants would soon go from peddling trinkets and buying up shopkeepers’ IOUs to forming what would become some of the largest investment banks in the world—Goldman Sachs, Kuhn Loeb, Lehman Brothers, J. & W. Seligman & Co. They would clash and collaborate with J. P. Morgan, E. H. Harriman, Jay Gould, and other famed tycoons of the era. And their firms would help to transform the United States from a debtor nation into a financial superpower, capitalizing American industry and underwriting some of the twentieth century’s quintessential companies, like General Motors, Macy’s, and Sears. Along the way, they would shape the destiny not just of American finance but of the millions of Eastern European Jews who spilled off steamships in New York Harbor in the early 1900s, including Daniel Schulman’s paternal grandparents.Today’s guest is Dan Schulman, author of “The Money Kings: The Epic Story of the Jewish Immigrants Who Transformed Wall Street and Shaped Modern America.” We trace the interconnected origin stories of these financial dynasties from the Gilded Age to the Civil War, World War I, and the Zionist movement that tested both their burgeoning empires and their identities as Americans, Germans, and Jews.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the summer of 1944, a handpicked group of young GIs—including such future luminaries such as Bill Blass, Ellsworth Kelly, Arthur Singer, Victor Dowd, Art Kane, and Jack Masey—landed in France to conduct a secret mission. From Normandy to the Rhine, the 1,100 men of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, known as the Ghost Army, conjured up phony convoys, phantom divisions, and make-believe headquarters to fool the enemy about the strength and location of American units. Every move they made was top secret and their story was hushed up for decades after the war's end.The unit’s official US Army history noted that “its complement was more theatri¬cal than military,” and “It was like a traveling road show that went up and down the front lines impersonating the real fighting outfits.” They pulled off twenty-one differ¬ent deceptions and are credited with saving thousands of lives through stagecraft and sleight of hand. They threw themselves into their impersonations, sometimes setting up phony command posts and masquerading as generals. They frequently put themselves in danger, suffering casualties as a consequence. After holding Patton’s line along the Moselle, they barely escaped capture by the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge, and in March 1945 they performed their most dazzling deception, misleading the Germans about where two American divi¬sions would cross the Rhine River.To explore the story of this forgotten subterfuge is today’s guest, Rick Beyer, author of “The Ghost Army of World War II: How One Top-Secret Unit Deceived the Enemy with Inflatable Tanks, Sound Effects, and Other Audacious Fakery.” We look at how a traveling road show of artists wielding imagination, paint, and bravado saved thousands of American lives.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Free time, one of life’s most important commodities, often feels unfulfilling. But why? And how did leisure activities transition from strolling in the park for hours to “doomscrolling” on social media for thirty minutes?Despite the promise of modern industrialization, many people experience both a scarcity of free time and a disappointment in it. Here to explain why this is today’s guest Gary Cross, author of “Free Time: The History of an Elusive Ideal.” We discuss a broad historical explanation of why our affluent society does not afford more time away from work and why that time is often unsatisfying.We begin with a survey of the past 250 years to understand the roots of our conception of free time and its use. By the end of the nineteenth century, a common expectation was that industrial innovations would lead to a progressive reduction of work time and a subsequent rise in free time devoted to self-development and social engagement. However, despite significant changes in the early twentieth century, both goals were frustrated, thus leading to the contemporary dilemma.Cross touches on leisure of all kinds, from peasant festivals and aristocratic pleasure gardens to amusement parks, movie theaters and organized sports to internet surfing, and even the use of alcohol and drugs. This wide-ranging cultural and social history explores the industrial-era origins of our modern obsession with work and productivity, but also the historical efforts to liberate time from work and cultivate free time for culture.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What goes through the mind of a mother who must send her child to school across a minefield or the men who belong to groups of volunteer body collectors? When living in a warzone, such questions become part of the daily calculus of life. This is an everyday form of war that included provisioning fighters with military equipment they purchased themselves, smuggling insulin, and cutting ties to former friends.Today’s guest is Greta Uehling, author of “Everyday War: The Conflict Over Donbas, Ukraine.” She explored these questions by researching Donbas, Ukraine, where an armed conflict over the region began in 2014 and continues to today. Uehling engaged with the lives of ordinary people living in and around Donbas and showed how conventional understandings of war are incomplete. She found that rather than nonstop air raid sirens, humans are able to forge a sense of normalcy in the most abnormal conditions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Winston Churchill remains one of the most revered figures of the twentieth century, his name a byword for courageous leadership. But the Churchill we know today is a mixture of history and myth, authored by the man himself. Today’s guest, David Reynolds, author of “Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill and the Leaders Who Shaped Him,” re-evaluates Churchill’s life by viewing it through the eyes of his allies and adversaries, even his own family, revealing Churchill’s lifelong struggle to overcome his political failures and his evolving grasp of what “greatness” truly entailed. Through his dealings with Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain, we follow Churchill’s triumphant campaign against Nazi Germany. But we also see a Churchill whose misjudgments of allies and rivals like Roosevelt, Stalin, Gandhi, and Clement Attlee blinded him to the British Empire’s waning dominance on the world stage and to the rising popularity of a postimperial, socialist vision of Great Britain at home.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the early twentieth century, anarchists like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman championed a radical vision of a world without states, laws, or private property. Militant and sometimes violent, anarchists were heroes to many working-class immigrants. But to many others, anarchism was a terrifyingly foreign ideology. Determined to crush it, government officials launched a decades-long “war on anarchy,” a brutal program of spying, censorship, and deportation that set the foundations of the modern surveillance state. The lawyers who came to the anarchists’ defense advanced groundbreaking arguments for free speech and due process, inspiring the emergence of the civil liberties movement.Today’s guest is Michael Willrich, author of “American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century.” We look at this tumultuous era and parallels with contemporary society.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Books are often seen as “victims” of combat. When the flames of warfare turn libraries to ashes, we grieve this loss as an immense human and cultural tragedy. But that’s not the complete picture. Books were used in war across the twentieth century—both as agents for peace and as weapons. On one hand, books represent solace and solidarity for troops and prisoners of war desperate for reading materials. On the other hand, books have also been engines of warfare, mobilizing troops, spreading ideologies, and disseminating scientific innovation. With accounts that span from ancient Rome to the Cold War, from Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Mao’s Little Red Book, Pettegree demonstrates how books have shaped societies at war—for both good and ill.Today’s guest is Andrew Pettegree, author of “The Book at War: How Reading Shaped Conflict and Conflict Shaped Reading.” We explore the weaponization of the publishing industry, the mechanics of mass-scale censorship, and why the Soviets Hated Ian Fleming.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In a country fragmented by Roman withdrawal during the 5th century, theemployment of Germanic mercenaries by local rulers in Anglo-Saxon Britain wascommonplace. These mercenaries became settlers, forcing Romano-Britishcommunities into Wales and the West Country. Against a background of spreadingChristianity, the struggles of rival British and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were exploited bythe Vikings, but eventually contained by the Anglo-Saxon king, Alfred of Wessex. Hisdescendants unified the country during the 10th century, however, subsequent weakrule saw its 25-year incorporation into a Danish empire before it finally fell to theNorman invasion of 1066.Scholars of the early Church have long known that the term ‘Dark Ages’ for the 5th to11th centuries in Britain refers only to a lack of written sources, and gives a falseimpression of material culture. The Anglo-Saxon warrior elite were equipped withmagnificent armour, influenced by the cultures of the late Romans, the ScandinavianVendel people, the Frankish Merovingians, Carolingians and Ottonians, and also theVikings.Today’s guest is Stephen Pollington, author of ”Anglo-Saxon Kings and Warlords AD 400-1070.” We look at the kings and warlords of the time with latest archaeological research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For a 30-year period, from the 1880s to World War I, 2.5 million Jews, fleeing discrimination and violence in their homelands of Eastern Europe, arrived in the United States. Many sailed on steamships from Hamburg.This mass exodus was facilitated by three businessmen whose involvement in the Jewish-American narrative has been largely forgotten: Jacob Schiff, the managing partner of the investment bank Kuhn, Loeb & Company, who used his immense wealth to help Jews to leave Europe; Albert Ballin, managing director of the Hamburg-American Line, who created a transportation network of trains and steamships to carry them across continents and an ocean; and J. P. Morgan, mastermind of the International Mercantile Marine (I.M.M.) trust, who tried to monopolize the lucrative steamship business. Though their goals were often contradictory, together they made possible a migration that spared millions from persecution.Today’s guest is Steven Ujifusa, author of “The Last Ships From Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and The Race to Save Russia’s Jews on the Eve of World War I.” His great-grandparents were part of this immigrant group, and he describes how they moved from the shtetls of Russia and the ports of Hamburg to the mansions of New York’s Upper East Side. We explore how debates on immigration have changed from the 1880s to today, and what it takes for the interests of billionaires and the interests of society’s poorest members to align.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

During the Civil War, Gen. James Longstreet was one of the Confederacy’s most beloved generals. Southerners called him “Lee’s Warhorse” and considered him a pillar of the war effort, largely responsible for victories at Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chickamauga.But after the war Longstreet moved to New Orleans, where he dramatically changed course. He supported black voting and joined the newly elected, integrated postwar government in Louisiana. When white supremacists took up arms to oust that government, Longstreet, leading the interracial state militia, did battle against former Confederates. His defiance ignited a firestorm of controversy, as white Southerners branded him a race traitor and blamed him retroactively for the South’s defeat in the Civil War.Today’s guest is Elizabeth Varon, author of “Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South.” We consider why although Longstreet was one of the highest-ranking Confederate generals, he has never been commemorated with statues or other memorials in the South because of his involvement in the Republican Party and rejecting the Lost Cause mythology. We also look at his second life as a statesman, serving in such positions as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Septuagint is the most important translations you’ve never heard of. In this episode of the 10th Anniversary of the History of the Papacy series, Steve Guerra and his special guest Garry Stevens lay out the basics of the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament. They talk about the issues of translation and the process of translation.Learn more about the History of Papacy and subscribe:Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3td44ES Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7DelfggbL0Au4e3aUyWDaS?si=6ffaacda2ddc4d9bSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Benedict Arnold committed treason— for more than two centuries, that’s all that most Americans have known about him.Yet Arnold was much more than a turncoat—his achievements during the early years of the Revolutionary War defined him as the most successful soldier of the era.Today’s guest is Jack Kelly, author of “God Save Benedict Arnold: The True Story of America’s Most Hated Man.” We look at Arnold’s rush of audacious feats—his capture of Fort Ticonderoga, his Maine mountain expedition to attack Quebec, the famous artillery brawl at Valcour Island, the turning-point battle at Saratoga—that laid the groundwork for our independence.Arnold was a superb leader, a brilliant tactician, a supremely courageous military officer. He was also imperfect, disloyal, villainous. One of the most paradoxical characters in American history, and one of the most interesting.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It took little more than a single generation for the centuries-old Roman Empire to fall. In those critical decades, while Christians and pagans, legions and barbarians, generals and politicians squabbled over dwindling scraps of power, two men – former comrades on the battlefield – rose to prominence on opposite sides of the great game of empire.Roman general Flavius Stilicho, the man behind the Roman throne, dedicated himself to restoring imperial glory, only to find himself struggling for his life against political foes. Alaric, King of the Goths, desired to be a friend of Rome, was betrayed by it, and given no choice but to become its enemy. Battling each other to a standstill, these two warriors ultimately overcame their differences in order to save the empire from enemies on all sides. And when Stilicho fell, Alaric took vengeance on Rome, sacking it in 410, triggering the ultimate downfall of the Western Empire.To discuss this critical decade in Western history is Don Hollway, author of “At the Gates of Rome: The Fall of the Eternal City, AD 410.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Scientists have always been rivals—for priority, prizes, and positions within science, and for fame and funding. This can be seen when Newton and Leibniz fought over who invented calculus (and the former destroyed the reputation of the latter), or Tycho Brahe losing part of his nose in a duel with his third cousin over a differing opinion on a mathematical formula, or when Thomas Edison publicly electrocuted animals to prove Nikola Tesla’s alternating current was dangerous. Yet, scientific rivals must co-operate in order for progress to be made, especially on massive projects that require international teams. But how?Today’s guest, Lorraine Daston, author of Rivals: How Scientists Learned to Cooperate,” guides us through a few major efforts of scientific collaboration over the ages, including the creation of the map of the stars and the Cloud Atlas, both of which we still use today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The British Army won a convincing series of victories between 1916 and 1918. But by 1939 the British Army was an entirely different animal. The hard-won knowledge, experience and strategic vision that delivered victory after victory in the closing stages of the First World War had been lost. In the inter-war years there was plenty of talking, but very little focus on who Britain might have to fight, and how. The British Army wasn’t prepared to fight a first-class European Army in 1939 for the simple reason that as a country Britain hadn’t prepared itself to do so. The failure of the army’s leadership led directly to its abysmal performance in Norway and France in 1940.Today’s guest is General Lord Richard Dannat, author of “Victory to Defeat: The British Army 1918-40.” The discussion issues a stark warning that we neglect to understand who our enemy might be, and how to defeat him, at the peril of our country. The British Army is now to be cut to its smallest size since 1714. Are we, this book asks, repeating the same mistakes again?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A century after Theodore Roosevelt’s death, the personal attributes that endeared him to Americans have become obscured.He is mostly known for his many accomplishments in conservation, as a solider and explorer, and a successful presidency. Most photos of Roosevelt are formal portraits as we he was seldom recorded in motion pictures, and cartoonists often portrayed him as overexaggerated and hyperactive.Today’s guest is Rick Marschall, and he has mined old newspapers, memoirs, diaries and letters for personal impressions to share almost five hundred vital and interesting accounts of the fascinating man who captivated a nation in his day in his new book, The Most Interesting American: Personal Encounters, Quotations, and First-Hand Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The most tried-and-true method of kings or politicians justifying their hold on power is by promising equality (this was the slogan of the French Revolution, along with liberty and brotherhood). All societies promise equality (regardless of how poorly they delivery), from the dawn of humanity through the Enlightenment to today.Equality has been reimagined continually, in the great world religions and the politics of the ancient world, by revolutionaries and socialists, Nazis and fascists, and postwar reformers and activists. Today’s guest is Darrin McMahon, author of Equality: The History of an Elusive Idea. We trace equality’s global origins and spread from the dawn of humanity through the Enlightenment to today. Equality has been reimagined continually, in the great world religions and the politics of the ancient world, by revolutionaries and socialists, Nazis and fascists, and postwar reformers and activists.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For 2,000 years, Catholicism – the largest branch of Christianity and – has shaped global history on a scale unequal by any other institution. It created the university, modern health care, reinvigorated philosophy in the West, and funded scientific enterprises. Today’s guest is H.W. Crocker, author of Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church – A 2,000 Year History. We discuss Roman legions, crusades, epic battles, and toppled empires, the Catholic church midwifing Europe through the lowest points of the medieval period, the Renaissance popes, the Reformation, and the present and future of the Catholic church.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For close to half a century after World War II, Marty Glickman was the voice of New York sports. His distinctive style of broadcasting, on television and especially on the radio, garnered for him legions of fans who would not miss his play-by-play accounts. From the 1940s through the 1990s, he was as iconic a sports figure in town as the Yankees’ Mickey Mantle, the Knicks’ Walt Frazier, or the Jets’ Joe Namath. In addition to the stories of how he became a master of American sports airwaves, Marty Glickman has also been remembered as a Jewish athlete who, a decade before he sat in front of a microphone, was cynically barred from running in a signature track event in the 1936 Olympics by anti-Semitic American Olympic officials. Glickman’s story underscores the complexities that faced his generation of American Jews as these children of immigrants emerged from their ethnic cocoons and strove to succeed in America amid challenges to their professional and social advancement. To explore Glickman’s story is today’s guest, Jeffrey Gurock, author of Marty Glickman: The Life of an American Jewish Sports Legend.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The conquest of Indian land in the eastern United States happened through decades of the U.S. government’s military victories, along with questionable treaties and violence. This conflict between two civilization came to head in 1813 in a little-known but consequential struggle between two extraordinary leaders.William Henry Harrison was born to a prominent Virginia family, the son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He journeyed west, became governor of the vast Indiana Territory, and sought statehood by attracting settlers and imposing one-sided treaties.Tecumseh, by all accounts one of the nineteenth century’s greatest leaders, belonged to an honored line of Shawnee warriors and chiefs. His father, killed while fighting the Virginians flooding into Kentucky, extracted a promise from his sons to “never give in” to American settkers . An eloquent speaker, Tecumseh traveled from Minnesota to Florida and west to the Great Plains convincing far-flung tribes to join a great confederacy and face down their common enemy. Eager to stop U.S. expansion, the British backed Tecumseh’s confederacy in a series of battles during the forgotten western front of the War of 1812 that would determine control over the North American continent.Today’s guest, Peter Stark, discusses these battles and diplomacy. He’s the author of “Gallop Toward the Sun: Tecumseh and William Henry Harrison’s Struggle for the Destiny of a Nation.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In October of 1871, Chicagoans knew they were due for the “big one”—a massive, uncontrollable fire that would decimate the city. There hadn’t been a meaningful rain since July, and several big blazes had nearly outstripped the fire department’s scant resources. On October 8, when Kate Leary’s barn caught fire, so began a catastrophe that would forever change the soul of the city.Leary was a diligent, hardworking Irish woman, no more responsible for the fire than anyone else in the city at that time. But the conflagration that spread from her property quickly overtook the neighborhood, and before too long the floating embers had spread to the far reaches of the city. Families took to the streets with everything they could carry. Grain towers threatened to blow. The Chicago River boiled. Over the course of the next forty-eight hours, Chicago saw the biggest and most destructive disaster the United States had ever endured, and Leary would be its scapegoat.Out of the ashes rose not just new skyscrapers, tenements, and homes, but also a new political order. The city’s elite saw an opportunity to rebuild on their terms, cracking down on crime and licentiousness and fortifying a business-friendly environment. But the city’s working class recognized a naked power grab that would challenge their traditions, hurt their chances of rebuilding, and move power out of elected officials’ hands and into private interests. As quickly as the firefight ended, another battle for the future of the city began between the town’s business elites and the poor and immigrant working class.Today’s guest is Scott Berg, author of “The Burning of the World: The Great Chicago Fire and the War for a City’s Soul.” Beginning with the fire’s origin on the property of Irish immigrant Kate Leary, we explore how a simple barn fire brought Chicago to its knees and ushered in a new political order in which immigrants wrested control of the city from the business class and birthed the machine politics for which the city is known today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

November 22nd marked the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. To commemorate this pivotal event in American history, learn more about Kennedy's 1963 Texas visit, reelection campaign, assassination, and legacy, with this excerpt from This American President.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

About four years ago Times of London journalist Daniel Finkelstein undertook an effort to tell his parents’ stories of survival in WW2 Europe. They met at a Jewish youth club in London in the Spring of 1956. He was twenty-six years old and she was twenty-two. Between them, they had lived in ten countries and survived years of hunger, disease, and the barest of survivals. Daniel’s mother Mirjam Wiener was the youngest of three daughters born in Germany to Alfred and Margarete Wiener. Alfred, a decorated hero from the Great War, is now widely acknowledged to have been the first person to recognize the existential danger Hitler posed to the Jews and began, in 1933, to catalogue in detail Nazi crimes. After moving his family to Amsterdam, he relocated his library to London and was preparing to bring over his wife and children when Germany invaded Holland. Before long, the family was rounded up, robbed, humiliated, and sent to Bergen-Belsen. Daniel’s father Ludwik was born in Lwow, (now Lviv) the only child of a prosperous Jewish family. In 1939, after Hitler and Stalin carved up Poland, the family was rounded up by the communists and sent to do hard labor in a Siberian gulag. Working as slave laborers on a collective farm, his father survived the freezing winters in a tiny house they built from cow dung. Finkelstein is today’s guest and he’s here to discuss his new book “Two Roads Home: Hitler, Stalin, and the Miraculous Survival of My Family.” It is both a family story and a larger exploration of how an entire continent came apart.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The British Royal Family and the intelligence community are two of the most mysterious and mythologized actors of the British State. From the reign of Queen Victoria to the present, they shared a complicated relationship, with some monarchs working hand-in-glove with their spies, while others detesting them. Nevertheless, successive queens and kings have all played an active role in steering British intelligence, sometimes against the wishes of prime ministers. Even today, the monarch receives “copy No. 1” of every intelligence report.Today’s guests are Richard J. Aldrich and Rory Cormac, authors of “Crown, Cloak, and Dagger: The British Monarchy and Secret Intelligence from Victoria to Elizabeth II.” We explore attempted assassinations and kidnappings, the abdication crisis, world wars and the Cold War, and the death of Princess Diana, all within the complex interconnection of the British Monarchy and its spy corps.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Before 1862, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had rarely left his home state of Maine, where he was a trained minister and mild-mannered professor at Bowdoin College. His colleagues were shocked when he volunteered for the Union army, but he was undeterred and later became known as one of the North’s greatest heroes: On the second day at Gettysburg, after running out of ammunition at Little Round Top, he ordered his men to wield their bayonets in a desperate charge down a rocky slope that routed the Confederate attackers. Despite being wounded at Petersburg—and told by two surgeons he would die—Chamberlain survived the war, going on to be elected governor of Maine four times and serve as president of Bowdoin College. How did a stuttering young boy come to be fluent in nine languages and even teach speech and rhetoric? How did a trained minister find his way to the battlefield? To explore Chamberlain’s fascinating story is today’s guest, Ronald White, author of “On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.” He is presented from cradle-to-grave in all his ideals, tenacity, and contradictions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

During Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency—from 1901 to 1909, when Mark Twain called him the most popular man in America—his daughter Alice Roosevelt mesmerized the world with her antics and beauty. Alice was known for carrying a gun, a copy of the Constitution, and a green snake in her purse. When her father told her she couldn’t smoke under his roof, she climbed to the top of the White House and smoked on the roof. She became the most famous woman in America—and even the world—predating Princess Diana and Jackie Kennedy as an object of public obsession. As her celebrity grew, she continued to buck tradition, push against social norms, and pull political sway behind the curtain of privilege and access. She was known for her acerbic wit and outspoken tendencies which hypnotized both the social and political world. Today’s guest is Shelley Fraser Mickle, author of “White House Wild Child: How Alice Roosevelt Broke All the Rules and Won the Heart of America.” We explore what it would have been like to be a strong-willed, powerful woman of the 20th century aughts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1923, the Weimar Republic faced a series of crises, including foreign occupation of its industrial heartland, rampant inflation, radical violence, and finally Hitler’s infamous “beer hall putsch.” Fanning the flames of anti-government and anti-Semitic sentiment, the Nazis tried to violently seize power in Munich, only failing after they were abandoned by like-minded conservatives. Today’s guest is Mark Jones, author of “1923: The Crisis of German Democracy in the Year of Putsch.” We discuss how the Nazis’ plan was initially to seize power in Munich, control Bavaria, then march on Berlin. Hitler needed the support of the military and the police, which he did not get in 1923 but did get in 1933. Tracing Hitler’s early rise, Jones reveals how political pragmatism and unprecedented international cooperation with the West brought Germany out of its crisis year. Although Germany would succumb to tyranny a decade later, the story of the republic’s survival in 1923 offers essential lessons about the future of democracy today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Among the conflicts that convulsed Europe during the nineteenth century, none was more startling and consequential than the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. Deliberately engineered by Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the war succeeded in shattering French supremacy, deposing Napoleon III, and uniting a new German Empire. But it also produced brutal military innovations and a precarious new imbalance of power that together set the stage for the devastating world wars of the next century.Today’s guest is Rachel Chrastil, author of “Bismarck’s War: The Franco-Prussian War and the Making of Modern Europe.” We see how the war reshaped and blurred the boundaries between civilian and soldier as the fighting swept across France by bolstering a unified Germany to contributing to the development of modern warfare.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Religious beliefs have been the source of food "rules" since Pythagoras told his followers not to eat beans (they contain souls), Kosher and Halal rules forbade the shrimp cocktail (shellfish are scavengers_, and the Catholic church forbade its peoples from eating meat on Fridays (fasting to atone for committed sins). Rules about eating are present in nearly every American belief, from high-control groups that ban everything except air to the infamous strawberry shortcake that sated visitors to the Oneida Community in the late 1800s.To explore the intersection of religion and modern diet is Christina Ward, author of “Holy Food: How Cults, Communes, and Religious Movements Influenced What We Eat.” The explosion of religious movements since the Great Awakenings that birthed a cottage industry of food fads and cookbooks. Ward uncovers the interconnectivity between obscure sects and communities of the 20th Century who dabbled in vague spirituality and used food to both entice and control followers.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Pax Romana has long been shorthand for the empire’s golden age. Stretching from Caledonia to Arabia, Rome ruled over a quarter of the world’s population. It was the wealthiest and most formidable state in the history of humankind.Today we are speaking with Tom Holland, author of “Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age” to explore Rome at the height of its power. From the gilded capital to realms beyond the frontier, we see ancient Rome in all its glory and cruelty: Nero’s downfall, the destruction of Jerusalem and Pompeii, the building of the Colosseum and Hadrian’s Wall, and the conquests of Trajan. Looking at the lives of Romans both ordinary and spectacular, from slaves to emperors, we see that Roman peace was the fruit of unprecedented military violence.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The first year of the siege of Leningrad that began in September 1941 marked the opening stage of a 900-day-long struggle for survival that left over a million dead. The capture of the city came tantalizingly close late that year, but Hitler paused to avoid costly urban fighting. Determined to starve Leningrad into submission, what followed was a winter of unimaginable suffering for ordinary citizens and defenders alike. First-hand accounts from Soviet and German soldiers, many never previously published, together with those of the civilians trapped in the city detail the relentless specter of death which defined life in and around Leningrad. Today’s guest is Prit Buttar, author of “To Besiege a City: Leningrad 1941-42.” Personal vignettes give a glimpse into the reality of life in a city under siege. The teenage volunteer climbers, weak from hunger, scaling the slender spire of the Peter and Paul Fortress to shroud it in camouflage as the German bombers circle overhead like vultures. Or the soldier trombonist completing a long day on the front line to perform Shostakovich’s epic Seventh Symphony alongside a starving and sickly orchestra – an act of defiance broadcast to defenders and attackers alike.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Ku Klux Klan was arguably America’s first organized terrorist movement. It was a paramilitary unit that arose in the South during the early years of Reconstruction. At its peak in the early 1870s, the Klan boasted many tens of thousands of members, no small number of them landowners, lawmen, doctors, journalists, and churchmen, as well as future governors and congressmen. And their mission was to obliterate the small but growing economic and political power of newly emancipated black Americans and their white allies, often by the most horrifying means imaginable. To repel the virulent tidal wave of violence, President Ulysses S. Grant waged a two-term battle against both armed southern enemies of Reconstruction and northerners seduced by visions of post-war conciliation, testing for the first time the limits of the federal government in determining the extent of states' rights. To discuss this early history of reconstruction is today’s guest, Fergus M. Bordewich, author of “Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction.” We explore the hamlets of the former Confederate States and the marble corridors of Congress, analyzing key figures such as crusading Missouri Senator Carl Schurz and the ruthless former slave trader Nathan Bedford Forrest.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Heinrich Pfeifer was a senior member of the Nazi deep state who defected in 1938. He wrote his memoirs in 1945, with the goal of describing the inner workings of Nazi intelligence with enough detail to keep any of the members from escaping justice from the encroaching Allies. However, he was assassinated in 1949 after a pro-Nazi hit squad killed him, and copies of his work were mostly destroyed. However, today’s guest, Robert Temple, was able to obtain a copy and recently translated it to English. Temple is author of Drunk On Power: A Senior Defector’s Inside Account of the Nazi Secret Police State. It is the first complete description of the Nazi “Deep State” by its most senior defector, Pfeifer. We discuss a complete X-Ray of the structure of the Nazi Deep State and describe the international infiltration of Nazis into key institutions in every country in the world.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Many of the WW2 generation faced hardship in their youth (they did spend their childhood in the Great Depression), but few had as bad of an early life as Denis Elliott, who became an RAF Flight Lieutenant. At age three he was placed in a brutal and abusive orphanage in London and was later subject to beatings by his first foster father. It wasn’t until the Second World War that everything in Denis’s life began to change — he finally overcame the lack of confidence and self-esteem that had plagued his childhood in Kent and went on to become a skilled, confident, brave pilot flying operations against Japanese forces in Burma, Malaya and Thailand.He spent two stints serving in the RAF, which saw him posted across Africa, the Middle East, the Far East and Europe, flyingearning to flying B-24 Liberators and Avro Lancasters.Today’s guest is Phillip Martin, author of “From Orphan to High-Flyer.” We discuss these stories, along with those of Denis’s personal growth, friendship and overcoming adversity.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The tragic story of the British airship R101—which went down in a spectacular hydrogen-fueled fireball in 1930, killing more people than died in the Hindenburg disaster seven years later—has been largely forgotten. But airships, those airborne leviathans that occupied center stage in the world in the first half of the twentieth century, were a symbol of the future. R101 was not just the largest aircraft ever to have flown and the product of the world’s most advanced engineering—she was also the lynchpin of an imperial British scheme to link by air the far-flung areas of its empire from Australia to India, South Africa, Canada, Egypt, and Singapore. No one had ever conceived of anything like this. R101 captivated the world. There was just one problem: beyond the hype and technological wonders, these big, steel-framed, hydrogen-filled airships were a dangerously bad idea.To tell the story of this disaster is today’s guest, S.C. Gwynne, author His Majesty's Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World's Largest Flying Machine. We discuss a number of characters, including Lord Christopher Thomson, the man who dreamed up the Imperial Airship Scheme and then relentlessly pushed R101 to her destruction; Princess Marthe Bibesco, the celebrated writer and glamorous socialite with whom he had a long affair; and Herbert Scott, a national hero who had made the first double crossing of the Atlantic in any aircraft in 1919—eight years before Lindbergh’s famous flight—but who devolved into drink and ruin.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Check out this episode sample from James Early's "Key Battles of American History," In this episode, which wraps up a season devoted to World War 2 in the European Theatre, hosts James Early and Sean McIver follow a long-established Key Battles tradition by giving brief overviews of the postwar lives and careers of the major leaders, Axis and Allies, discussed in the series.Subscribe to Key Battles of American History!Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3nCfZZySpotify: https://spoti.fi/3nIwO5cListen to more episodes of Key Battles of American History!The Longest Day: D-Day and the Normandy Campaign: https://apple.co/46jPeuw / https://sptfy.com/P2g7Saving Private Ryan: https://apple.co/3Q9z0i4 / https://sptfy.com/P2g6 Hitler’s Last Gambit: The Battle of the Bulge: https://apple.co/3tprLJN / https://sptfy.com/P2g4See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Robert E. Lee has become a target of activists in the last decade, with statues of him being taken down across the United States, and eponymous schools and streets being renamed. But for over a century after the Civil War, he was considered a brilliant general, courageous leader, and, in the words of Winston Churchill, “one of the noblest Americans who ever lived.” Today, however, he is vilified and the virtues of hard work and leadership he inspired are largely forgotten. To explore his legacy, and reasons for the drastic change is today’s guest, H.W. Crocker, author of “Robert E. Lee on Leadership.” From successfully reviving a debt-ridden plantation, to teaching and working his way to a prestigious university, Lee became an inspiration to the men under his charge. His personal standards of excellence and his unflinching character created a formidable force on the battlefield. We discuss the challenges of a disadvantaged upbringing; Lee’s education at West Point and years as an army engineer; the role Lee played during the Mexican War, in which he showed courage and level-headedness in the face of combat; Lee as a businessman and owner of a farm in Arlington; and Stonewall Jackson under Lee’s commandSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Who are people from the past whose lives are so cinematic that they deserve their own movie, but haven't received the right silver screen treatment, such as, say, Abraham Lincoln from Steven Spielberg or Napoleon Bonaparte from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Hosts from different shows on the Parthenon Podcast Network are here to discuss this question, including Steve Guerra (History of the Papacy), Richard Lim (This American President), yours truly, and Mark Vinet (History of North America).See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Charlie Chaplin was the most famous movie star in the world, especially at his height in the 1920s, when the silent film star won the hearts of audience around the globe. But in the aftermath of World War II, Charlie Chaplin was criticized for being politically socialist and internationalist in outlook. He had never become a US citizen, something that would be held against him as xenophobia set in when the Red Scare took hold. As soon as he left the U.S. to promote a new picture, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover persuaded the State Department to revoke Chaplin's visa (a move of doubtful legality).Politics aside, Chaplin had another problem: his l interest in young women. He had been married four times, had had numerous affairs, and was publicly involved in at least three paternity suits. His inappropriate sexual proclivity became another reason for those who opposed his ideas to condemn him. Today’s guest is Scott Eyman, author of “Charlie Chaplin vs. America.” We discuss historically pivotal moment of Hollywood’s rise and a prescient narrative with modern implications: that of cancel culture, artistic freedom, censorship, and the all-important question of whether we should be separating art from the artist.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There’s a good argument to be made that the entire trajectory of the Cold War was set off by ten fateful months of American and global history, between the first Soviet atom bomb test in the late summer of 1949 and the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950. The following events then all occurred in rapid succession: the dawning of the Taiwan question, the rise of Senator Joe McCarthy, the birth of NATO, the hydrogen bomb, and the origins of the European Union. To look at these fateful months is today’s guest, Nick Bunker, author of “In the Shadow of Fear.” At the time, Sir Winston Churchill described the United States as “this gigantic capitalist organization, with its vast and superabundant productive power – millions of people animated by the profit motive.” The dollar reigned supreme, and Harry S. Truman and his Democratic allies in Congress hoped to use the country’s economic might to build on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s achievements with a bold new program of liberal reforms. However, in the autumn of 1949 and the first half of 1950, Truman and his party were overtaken by the unforeseen. While Mao Zedong’s army swept through China, in America the age of FDR gave way to the beginnings of a new conservatism. An aggressive Republican Party, desperate for power, seized on rifts among its opponents, and Truman’s programs went down to defeat. As he launched his first anti-communist campaign, the young Joe McCarthy ambushed Truman with a style of politics that polarized the country. Leaders and citizens were compelled to improvise as events spun out of control.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Created during the World War II, the SAS was a small band of men brought together in the North African desert. They were the toughest and brightest of their cohort, the most resilient, most capable in close combat and most careful in surveillance. Winning approval for this radical new form of warfare was no small feat, but eventually it was achieved. The SAS was born, their mission to take on small-scale but often devastating raids and risks behind enemy lines. Today’s guest is Joshua Levine, author of “SAS: The Authorized Illustrated History of the SAS.” We discuss what it was like to fight and train in the SAS during the World War II by exploring individual stories and personal testimonies of the wartime experience.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this special compilation episode, Josh Cohen of Eyewitness History shares his favorite interview moments and stories from people who witnessed some of history’s most extraordinary events.First up, revisit his conversation with Frank DeAngelis, former principal of Columbine High School, recounting the harrowing events of the 1999 massacre.Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3Ow8UF0 / Spotify: https://sptfy.com/OWMr Next, dive into the world of podcasting with the podfather himself, Adam Curry. Discover the fascinating tale of his MTV days and presenting an award to Michael Jackson.Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3Df7jgn / Spotify: https://sptfy.com/OWMt CIA Agent Valerie Plame takes the spotlight in the next segment, shedding light on the notorious 'Plame Affair' of 2003.Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/48gSyYx / Spotify: https://sptfy.com/OWMw Sports enthusiasts, get ready! HBO Boxing legend Jim Lampley shares his experiences covering the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, including the unforgettable 'Miracle on Ice.'Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3YeyxNZ / Spotify: https://sptfy.com/OWMx Jonestown cult survivor and writer Eugene Smith takes a solemn turn as he revisits his journey through tragedy and survival.Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/451VIgu / Spotify: https://sptfy.com/OWMz Rock music lovers, stay tuned for insights from Ken Caillat, the record producer behind Fleetwood Mac's iconic albums, including the Emmy-winning 'Rumors.'Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3rhuyEb / Spotify: https://sptfy.com/OWMB Hear from DEA Agents Steve Murphy and Javier Peña, the real-life heroes who took down Pablo Escobar, inspiring the hit Netflix series 'Narcos.'Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3r5Cf0h / Spotify: https://sptfy.com/OWMD Podcasting sensation Jordan Harbinger shares his adventures and observations in North Korea.Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3JXYmfe / Spotify: https://sptfy.com/OWMF And finally, wrap up with a legendary performance – an interview with Queen's keyboardist, Spike Edney, discussing their iconic set at Live Aid in 1985.Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3Roxxp6 / Spotify: https://sptfy.com/OWMHSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At the height of the Civil War in November 1864, nine Union prisoners-of-war escaped from a Confederate Prison known as Camp Sorghum in Columbia, South Carolina. They scrambled north on foot in rags that had once been uniforms of blue. Traveling in brutal winter conditions more than 300 miles with search parties and bloodhounds hot on their trail. On the difficult journey they relied on the help of enslaved men and women, as well as Southerners who sympathized with the North, before finally reaching Union lines on New Years Day 1865.After arriving in Knoxville, Tennessee, and checking in with Union authorities, one of the men had a wonderful idea. The nine officers and their three mountain guides found a local photographer, hoping to commemorate what they had accomplished by posing together for a photograph. The instant, frozen in time, showed twelve ragged men with determination strong on their faces. It was a Civil War selfie. A moment that Captured Freedom.Steve Procko, a documentarian, received a copy of the more than 150-year-old photograph from a descendant of one of the mountain guides. Upon identifying and researching the men in the photograph, he realized their remarkable story had never been told. Procko is today’s guest, and he’s here to tell the story. He’s also the author of “Captured Freedom: The Epic True Civil War Story of Union POW Officers Escaping From a South Prison.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Teddy Roosevelt faced many challenges at the end of his life. Racked by rheumatism, a ticking embolism, pathogens in his blood, a bad leg from an accident, and a bullet in his chest from an assassination attempt. But none of that stopped Roosevelt from attempting to reassemble the Rough Riders for a final charge against the Germans in World War One, pushing them into a likely suicide mission of a cavalry attack against 50 caliber machine guns. Suffering from grief and guilt, marginalized by world events, the great glow that had been his life was now but a dimming lantern. But TR’s final years were productive ones as well: he churned out several “instant” books that promoted U.S. entry into the Great War, and he was making plans for another run at the Presidency in 1920 at the time of his death. Indeed, his political influence was so great that his opposition to the policies of Woodrow Wilson helped the Republican Party take back the Congress in 1918. To look at Roosevelt’s final years is today’s guest Bill Hazelgrove, author of “The Last Charge of the Rough Rider.” It was Roosevelt’s quest for the “vigorous life” that, ironically, may have led to his early demise at the age of sixty. "The Old Lion is dead,” TR’s son Archie cabled his brother on January 6, 1919, and so, too, ended a historic era in American life and politics.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When the Iron Curtain fell in 1990, East Germany ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to the cusp of a new millennium, the German Democratic Republic presented a radically different Germany than what had come before and what exists today. Socialist solidarity, secret police, central planning, barbed wire: this was a Germany forged on the fault lines of ideology and geopolitics. Today’s guest is Katja Hoyer, author of “Beyond the Wall,” who was born in the GDR. She saw beyond the usual Cold War caricatures of the GDR and experienced the political, social, and cultural landscape that existed amid oppression and hardship to see the other Germany, beyond the Wall.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nearly a century before the COVID-19 pandemic upended life as we know it, a devastating tuberculosis epidemic was ravaging hospitals across the country. In those dark, pre-antibiotic days, the disease claimed the lives of 1 in 7 Americans; in the United States alone, it killed over 5.6 million people in the first half of the twentieth century. Nowhere was TB more rampant than in New York City, where it spread like wildfire through the tenements, decimating the city’s poorest residents. The city’s hospital system was already overwhelmed when, in 1929, the white nurses at Staten Island’s Sea View Hospital began quitting en masse. Pushed to the brink of a major labor crisis and fearing a public health catastrophe, city health officials made a call for black female nurses seeking to work on the frontlines, promising them good pay, education, housing, and employment free from the constraints of Jim Crow. Today’s guest is Maria Smilios, author of “The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis.” We look at the unlikely ways in which public health developed in America, by means of these nurses who put in 14-hour days caring for people who lay waiting to die or, worse, become “guinea pigs” to test experimental (and often deadly) drugs at a facility that was understaffed and unregulated.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.