The History of the Twentieth Century

A chronicle of the history of the twentieth century, including art, music, popular culture, science, religion, and, of course, politics and war.

365 The Second Happy Time 05/05/2024

365 The Second Happy Time When the United States entered the war, the German U-boats suddenly had many more targets. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/31016753

364 The Man with the Iron Heart 04/21/2024

364 The Man with the Iron Heart Reinhard Heydrich was one of the most vicious of the Nazis. So much so that the Czechoslovak and British governments decided that he needed to be eliminated. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/30913078

363 Midway 04/14/2024

363 Midway The Japanese execute their attempted ambush at Midway, and it fails catastrophically. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/30814798

362 Scratch One Flattop! 04/07/2024

362 Scratch One Flattop! The US Navy sent two of its carriers into the southwest Pacific to thwart the Japanese campaign to take New Caledonia and isolate Australia. The Japanese responded by sending two of their own. The carriers engaged each other in the Battle of the Coral Sea. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/30700108

361 I Could Never Be So Lucky Again 03/31/2024

361 I Could Never Be So Lucky Again Shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack, President Roosevelt asked the military to find a way to strike back at the Japanese Home Islands. It took an unorthodox approach to make this possible. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/30519403

360: Now You Belong to the Japanese Army 03/17/2024

360: Now You Belong to the Japanese Army For India, like Australia, the entry of Japan into the war meant it was no longer a distant, European struggle. By May 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army was at the Indian border. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/30310518

359 Order 9066 03/10/2024

359 Order 9066 In 1942, many Americans feared a Japanese invasion of the West Coast of the US or Canada was imminent. Regrettably, these fears led to the belief--unsupported by facts--that the ethnic Japanese population on the West Coast represented a dangerous fifth column of potential spies and saboteurs. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/30227308

358 The Wannsee Conference 03/03/2024

358 The Wannsee Conference Sometime in the autumn of 1941, a decision was made among the Nazi elite to murder every Jewish person in Europe--or within reach, anyway. No record exists of how that decision was made, but we have a very detailed record of how it was carried out. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/30119143

357 No Retreat 02/25/2024

357 No Retreat The winter of 1941-42 was not a happy one for the German Army. On the Eastern Front it was battered by a record cold winter and a Soviet counteroffensive. In North Africa, a British offensive pushed Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps all the way back to central Libya, from where he had begun. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/30099063

356 Happy Time 02/11/2024

356 Happy Time After the sinking of Bismarck, the Germans abandoned surface raiding in the Atlantic and turned to their greatest naval strength: submarine warfare. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/29789543

355 Reap the Whirlwind 02/04/2024

355 Reap the Whirlwind The Luftwaffe's bombing campaign over England did not force a British capitulation. Can RAF Bomber Command force a German capitulation? /episode/index/show/history20th/id/29789468

354 The Fall of Singapore 01/28/2024

354 The Fall of Singapore The Japanese Army's greatest victory; the British Army's greatest defeat. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/29581233

353 A Date Which Will Live in Infamy 01/21/2024

353 A Date Which Will Live in Infamy The attack on Pearl Harbor ended the political division in the US between interventionists and isolationists. Now the US was united as never before. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/29580033

352 Climb Mount Niitaka II 01/07/2024

352 Climb Mount Niitaka II The Japanese attack the US naval base at Pearl Harbor. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/29310978

351 Climb Mount Niitaka I 01/02/2024

351 Climb Mount Niitaka I The Japanese give up on peace talks with America and began prepare for war. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/29310773

350 The Land of Abundant Wildlife 12/25/2023

350 The Land of Abundant Wildlife The defining features of the nation of Panama are its abundant wildlife and that it is the place where the world's two largest oceans are at their closest. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/29102253

349 Why Do the Winds and Waves Rage So Turbulently? 12/24/2023

349 Why Do the Winds and Waves Rage So Turbulently? The upper levels of Japanese government (and, more important, the military) increasingly came to the view that war with the United States was necessary if Japan was to survive. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/29102173

348 Five Minutes to Midnight 12/17/2023

348 Five Minutes to Midnight At the end of the rasputitsa, the mud season, the German Army had one final, narrow opportunity, to win the war against the USSR before winter. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/29102043

347 The Green Folder 12/03/2023

347 The Green Folder Even before the first German soldier crossed the frontier into the USSR, the Nazi government in Berlin had a plan for administering occupied Russia. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/28906423

346 The Battle of Smolensk 11/26/2023

346 The Battle of Smolensk The German invasion of the USSR went brilliantly for the first 2-3 weeks, but instead of collapsing as expected, the Red Army only got stronger. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/28706373

345 Operation Barbarossa 11/19/2023

345 Operation Barbarossa On June 22, 1941, Germany began an invasion of its erstwhile trade partner, the USSR. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/28706288

344 America First 11/12/2023

344 America First The Dust Bowl ravages the central United States, Charles Lindbergh's infant son is kidnapped, the America First movement opposes US involvement in the war. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/28600768

343 The Balkan Detour 10/29/2023

343 The Balkan Detour Germany executes its invasions of Yugoslavia and Greece, and the Axis encourages an anti-British coup in Iraq. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/28453040

342 Operation Marita 10/22/2023

342 Operation Marita As Germany made preparations to assist its ally Italy in the war against Greece, a coup in Yugoslavia prompted Adolf Hitler to order the invasion of that country as well. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/28319825

341 A Crime against the Future 10/15/2023

341 A Crime against the Future In summer of 1940, even as the Battle of Britain was just getting started, Adolf Hitler was already laying plans for war with the Soviet Union. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/28001526

340 The ULTRA Secret 10/08/2023

340 The ULTRA Secret After the fall of Poland, British Intelligence's codebreaking operation at Bletchley Park became the center of efforts to decrypt messages from the Germans' supposedly unbreakable Enigma machine. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/28000962

339 The Enigma Machine 09/24/2023

339 The Enigma Machine The British had been hugely successful at breaking German codes in the First World War. The Germans were determined not to let that happen again. This time they had Enigma, a code machine that produced messages that could not be decrypted. Or so the Germans believed. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/27930294

338 The Battle of the Atlantic 09/17/2023

338 The Battle of the Atlantic The navy Germany had at the outbreak of the Second World War was only a small fraction of what the Allies had arrayed against it. But the Fall of France and the entry of Italy into the war changed things dramatically and created opportunities at sea that Germany had never had in the last war. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/27930270

337 The Tizard Mission 09/10/2023

337 The Tizard Mission In 1940, the British government was in the frustrating position of funding research on a number of promising projects that would be valuable to the war effort, but with the Battle of Britain in full swing, British factories had to turn out fighter planes as fast as they could. There was no room for development of experimental new technologies, so the British turned to the United States /episode/index/show/history20th/id/27860931

336 Όχι 09/03/2023

336 Όχι Italy's invasion of Greece was disastrous. With the British also advancing in North Africa, and a surprise air attack disabling three Italian battleships, it was no longer possible to pretend that Italy was a equal of Germany. /episode/index/show/history20th/id/27796803

The History of the Twentieth Century

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