History Does You

The period between 1492--resonant for a number of reasons--and 1571, when the Ottoman navy was defeated in the Battle of Lepanto, embraces what we know as the Renaissance, one of the most dynamic and creatively explosive epochs in world history. Here is the period that gave rise to so many great artists and figures, and which by its connection to its classical heritage enabled a redefinition, even reinvention, of human potential. It was a moment both of violent struggle and great achievement, of Michelangelo and da Vinci as well as the Borgias and Machiavelli. At the hub of this cultural and intellectual ferment was Italy. To explore this period, we interview Dr. Catherine Fletcher who is a historian of Renaissance and early modern Europe. She has written numerous books including The Beauty and the Terror, The Black Prince of Florence, and Our Man in Rome/The Divorce of Henry VIII. She has also lectured at Durham University, the University of Sheffield, and Swansea University. In January 2020 she became Professor of History at Manchester Metropolitan University.

1774 was the critical, and often overlooked, period when colonists traditionally loyal to King George III began their discordant “discussions” that led them to their acceptance of the inevitability of war against the British Empire. Late in the year, conservatives mounted a vigorous campaign criticizing the First Continental Congress. But by then it was too late. In early 1775, colonial governors informed officials in London that they were unable to thwart the increasing power of local committees and their allied provincial congresses. Although the Declaration of Independence would not be formally adopted until July 1776, Americans had in effect “declared independence ” even before the outbreak of war in April 1775 .To help explain we interview Dr. Mary Beth Norton who is an American historian, specializing in American colonial history and well known for her work on women's history and the Salem witch trials. She is the Mary Donlon Professor Emeritus of American History at Cornell University. She was elected as president-elect of the American Historical Association in summer 2016. She served as president-elect during calendar 2017 and as president in 2018. Her book Founding Mothers and Fathers was a finalist for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize. She recently wrote 1774: The Long Year of Revolution, which was A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

The Battle of Aachen was a major combat action of World War II, fought by American and German forces in and around Aachen, Germany, between 2–21 October 1944. The city had been incorporated into the Siegfried Line, the main defensive network on Germany's western border; the Allies had hoped to capture it quickly and advance into the industrialized Ruhr Basin. Although most of Aachen's civilian population was evacuated before the battle began, much of the city was destroyed and both sides suffered heavy losses. It was one of the largest urban battles fought by U.S. forces in World War II, and the first city on German soil to be captured by the Allies. The battle ended with a German surrender, but their tenacious defense significantly disrupted Allied plans for the advance into Germany. Incorporating after action reports and first hand accounts, we retell the story of Aachen from the generals to the regular soldiers of the First Infantry Division

Once the darling of U.S. statesmen, corporate elites, and academics, the People's Republic of China has evolved into America's most challenging strategic competitor. Its future appears increasingly dystopian. To wrap up our series and explain some of the basics of Chinese Grand Strategy, we interview Dr. Dan Blumenthal is a resident fellow and the director of Asian studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on East Asian security issues and Sino-American relations. He has served in and advised the US government on China issues for more than a decade. Before joining AEI, he served as senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia at the US Department of Defense. He served as a commissioner on the congressionally mandated US-China Economic and Security Review Commission from 2006 to 2012, and he was vice chairman of the commission in 2007. He also served on the Academic Advisory Board of the congressional US-China Working Group. He is the author of “The China Nightmare: The Grand Ambitions of a Decaying State” and coauthor of An Awkward Embrace: The United States and China in the 21st Century. Link to book below! https://www.amazon.com/China-Nightmare-Dan-Blumenthal/dp/084475031X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=dan+blumenthal&qid=1616291163&sr=8-1

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has unleashed a powerful set of political and economic reforms: the centralization of power under Xi, himself, the expansion of the Communist Party's role in Chinese political, social, and economic life, and the construction of a virtual wall of regulations to control more closely the exchange of ideas and capital between China and the outside world. Beyond its borders, Beijing has recast itself as a great power, seeking to reclaim its past glory and to create a system of international norms that better serves its more ambitious geostrategic objectives. We also explore some of the most current issues including COVID, Hong Kong, and the upcoming Olympics. To help explain all of this, we interview Dr. Elizabeth Economy who is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Hoover Institute. She has written numerous books on China including The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State. She is also author of By All Means Necessary: How China's Resource Quest is Changing the World with Michael Levi and The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China's Future. She has published articles and scholarly journals in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and the Harvard Business Review, and op-eds in the New York Times and Washington Post, among others. In June 2018, she was named one of the “10 Names That Matter on China Policy” by Politico Magazine.

Few books have had a wider sustained impact than Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. More than 2,500 years after it was written, Thucydides is still read by academics, students, and policymakers looking for enduring lessons into everything from grand strategy to domestic politics and human nature. We apply those same lessons to the US-China relationship and what they might tell us about the future. To further explore, we interview Dr. Andrew Novo who is an Associate Professor of Strategic Studies at the National Defense University, Washington, D.C. An expert in ancient and modern European history and strategic studies, He also teaches for the Johns Hopkins University program in Global Security Studies and the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. He recently cowrote Restoring Thucydides: Testing familiar lessons and deriving new ones (2020) with Dr. Jay Parker. A regular contributor to the D.C. think tank circuit, presenting at the Brookings Institute, the Atlantic Council, and the European Institute of the Mediterranean. In addition, he also lectures widely in Europe and the United States, including at the University of Oxford, NATO Defense College (Rome), the University of Torino (Turin), the University of Macedonia (Thessaloniki), the United States Military Academy, and the United States Naval Academy.

At the end of World War II, General George Marshall took on what he thought was a final mission―this time not to win a war, but to stop one. In China, conflict between Communists and Nationalists threatened to suck in the United States and escalate into revolution. Marshall’s charge was to cross the Pacific, broker a peace, and prevent a Communist takeover, all while staving off World War III. At first, the results seemed miraculous. But as they started to come apart, Marshall was faced with a wrenching choice―one that would alter the course of the Cold War, define the US-China relationship, and spark one of the darkest-ever turns in American politics. To help explain this aspect of the U.S. China relationship we interview Daniel Kurtz-Phelan is Editor of Foreign Affairs. He previously spent three years as Executive Editor of the magazine and served in the U.S. State Department, including as a member of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff. His book on George Marshall’s post­–World War II mission to China, The China Mission, was published in 2018 and named a best book of the year by The Economist and an editor’s pick by The New York Times Book Review. His writing has also appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic. We also explore the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Nixon opening, all of which had a large impact on shaping modern U.S.-China relations.

The U.S.-China relationship is increasingly becoming under scrutiny because of China's increasingly powerful economy and military. The relationship between the two countries has been complex, and varied from positive to highly negative. The relationship is of economic cooperation, hegemonic rivalry in the Indo-Pacific, and mutual suspicion over each other's intentions. Each nation has adopted a wary attitude regarding the other as a potential adversary but has meanwhile maintained an extremely strong economic partnership. To help explain some of the important aspects of the relationship and the region, we interview Dr. Zack Cooper who is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies US strategy in Asia, including alliance dynamics and US-China competition. He also teaches at Georgetown University and Princeton University, codirects the Alliance for Securing Democracy, and cohosts the “Net Assessment” podcast. He is currently writing a book that explains how to predict the future path of US-China military competition by examining how militaries change during power shifts. Before joining AEI, He was the senior fellow for Asian security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a research fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He also served as assistant to the deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism at the National Security Council and as a special assistant to the principal deputy under secretary of defense for policy at the Department of Defense.

The Road to the Vietnam War has been scrutinized by historians for decades offering a variety of explanations on how the U.S. became involved a war that most concluded was unwinnable by 1966, only a year after combat troops had been deployed. We explore the cataclysmic decisions of those in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to explain why the "Best and the Brightest" became trapped in situations that suffocated their thinking and willingness to dissent, why they found change so hard, and why they were so blind to their own errors. To explain we interview Dr. Brian VanDeMark who is a professor of history at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis where he has been a member of its History Department since 1990. He is the author of several books on American history, he co-authored Robert McNamara's #1 best-selling Vietnam memoir, In Retrospect, which became the basis of Errol Morris's Academy Award-winning documentary film, "The Fog of War." He also wrote Pandora's Keepers: Nine Men and the Atomic Bomb and Into the Quagmire: Lyndon Johnson and the Escalation of the Vietnam War. His most recent book is Road to Disaster: A New History of America's Descent into Vietnam which was a Financial Times Best Book of the year in 2018

There is the saying that, "History is written by the victors". For the Central Powers, the First World War started with high hopes for an easy victory. But those hopes soon deteriorated as Germany's attack on France failed, Austria-Hungary's armies suffered catastrophic losses, and Britain's ruthless blockade brought both nations to the brink of starvation. We examine the war from the perspective of the losers, how scholarship looks at their role in the leadup to the war, their participation, and the subsequent aftermath. The war shattered their societies, destroyed their states, and imparted a poisonous legacy of bitterness and violence that sowed the seeds for an even deadlier conflict that would follow only two decades later. To help explain, We interview Dr. Alexander Watson who is a Professor of History at the University of London specializing in conflict and identity in East-Central Europe. His latest book is The Fortress: The Great Siege of Przemysl. He is also the author of the widely acclaimed Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War, 1914-1918. The book won the 2014 Wolfson History Prize, the 2014 Gilder Lehrman Prize in Military History, the Society for Military History’s 2015 Distinguished Book Award and the 2015 British Army Military Book of the Year.

In the long history of American demagogues, from Huey Long to Donald Trump, never has one man caused so much damage in such a short time as Senator Joseph McCarthy. We still use “McCarthyism” to stand for outrageous charges of guilt by association, a weapon of polarizing slander. From 1950 to 1954, McCarthy destroyed many careers and even entire lives, whipping the nation into a frenzy of paranoia, accusation, loyalty oaths, and terror. When the public finally turned on him, he came crashing down, dying of alcoholism in 1957. To help explain his complicated life we interview Larry Tye who is a New York Times bestselling author who has written numerous books including Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon, Rising from the Rails, and recently wrote DEMAGOGUE: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Previously, he was an award-winning reporter at The Boston Globe, where his primary beat was medicine. He also served as the Globe’s environmental reporter, roving national writer, investigative reporter, and sportswriter. Before that, he was the environmental reporter at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, and covered government and business at The Anniston Star in Alabama.

After his disastrous campaign in Russia, Napoleon rebuilt his armies hell bent on reclaiming dominance of Europe. What followed was a fierce-fast moving campaign covering most of Germany with multiple armies fighting on multiple fronts. The campaign culminated in the battle of Leipzig which was the largest land battle up to that point in history involving over 650,000 troops from 11 nations. To help explain the course of the campaign we interview Dr. Michael Leggiere who is a professor of History and Deputy Director of the Military History Center at the University of North Texas. He is also a leading historian of the Napoleonic wars having written several books on the subject including a 1400-page, two volume series: Napoleon and the Struggle for Germany as well as Blücher: Scourge of Napoleon which was a Winner of the Society for Military History's 2015 Distinguished Book Award.

Nuclear Weapons are the most destructive invention ever created in human society but they only have been used twice in armed conflict. The global threat of these weapons has only deepened in the following decades as more advanced weapons, aggressive strategies, and new nuclear powers emerged. We explore how the Cold War initially shaped the policies regarding Nuclear Weapons as well as the Nuclear era after the Cold War. To help explain we interview Dr. Francis Gavin who is the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and the inaugural director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. In 2013, he was appointed the first Frank Stanton Chair in Nuclear Security Policy Studies and Professor of Political Science at MIT. Before joining MIT, he was the Tom Slick Professor of International Affairs and the Director of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas. He has written numerous books including Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age and Nuclear Weapons and American Grand Strategy.

As the United States steadily expanded west acquiring new territory by buying it and war, the overarching question regarding slavery in these territories sowed the seeds of the civil war. When the south seceded and war broke out, fighting was not limited to the Eastern and Western theatres, but even in the territories of present day Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Native American tribes that had been steadily pushed westward tried to navigate the messy politics of North and South in order to preserve their lands. To help explain this complicated theatre of the war, we interview Dr. Megan Kate Nelson, she received her BA in History and Literature from Harvard University and her PhD in American Studies from the University of Iowa. She has taught U.S. history and American Studies at Texas Tech University, Cal State Fullerton, Harvard, and Brown before leaving academia to write full-time in 2014. She has written several articles and books including The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West and is currently writing This Strange Country: Yellowstone and the Reconstruction of America which will be published in 2022. 

As Rome headed into the 1st Century BC, its power continued to expand, they had destroyed its rival in the Mediterranean, the Carthaginian Empire and various Greek Warlords who attempted to keep their independence. But with tremendous success came costs as a series of civil wars and unrest transformed the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. But Rome had a well functioning representative democracy for centuries, so how did it all come to an end? To help explain we interview Dr. Edward Watts; he is a professor of History at UC San Diego focusing on the intellectual and religious history of the Roman Empire and the early Byzantine Empire. He has written several books including City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria, Riot in Alexandria: Historical Debate in Pagan and Christian Communities which was a 2010 PROSE Award Honorable Mention. He also wrote The Final Pagan Generation which was awarded the 2015 Phi Alpha Theta Best Subsequent Book Prize and Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny. We also explore how the Roman government function and how Roman society was transformed as a result of this transition. 

In October of 1962, US spy planes discovered evidence of Soviet Missiles on the Island of Cuba. What came next was a thirteen days of confusion, backchannel diplomacy, and the threat of Nuclear War. But to understand the leadup to the crisis, one must look back at the making of the Atomic Bombs and the decision to use them against Nagasaki and Hiroshima which brought World War II to an end. It set the Soviet Union and the United States on a collision course over who could use the weapon most effectively. To help explain the crisis and the policies that led to it, we interview Dr. Martin Sherwin who is an author and historian specializing in the development of atomic weapons and nuclear policy. Along with Kai Bird, he co-wrote American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of Robert Oppenheimer, which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2006. In addition, Sherwin has advised a number of documentaries and television series relating to the Manhattan Project, including The Day after Trinity: A History of Nuclear Strategy, and War and Peace in the Nuclear Age. He also recently wrote, Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis

By 1914 the great powers of Europe were sliding inexorably toward war, and they pulled the Middle East along with them into one of the most destructive conflicts in human history. No region experienced more change as a result of the war than the Middle East. The Ottoman empire ceased to exist after dominating the region for more than four centuries and borders were redrawn piecemeal by the victorious allies. This set the stage for the modern Middle East and all of the conflict that will follow, much of which continues to this day. To help explain we interview Dr. Eugen Rogan who is a Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at Oxford and a Fellow of St Antony's College. He is the author of several books on the Middle East including The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, which was An International Bestseller and Economist Best Book of the Year. His other work includes The Arabs: A History and Outside In: On the Margins of the Modern Middle East

The Battle of Manila was fought by forces from both the United States and the Philippines against Japanese troops in Manila, the capital city of the Philippines. The month-long battle, which resulted in the death of over 100,000 civilians and the complete devastation of the city, was the scene of the worst urban fighting in the Pacific Theater. Japanese forces committed mass murderer against Filipino civilians during the battle. Along with massive loss of life, the battle also destroyed architectural and cultural heritage dating back to the city's founding, and Manila became one of the most devastated capital cities during the entire war. To explain we interview James Scott, a former Nieman Fellow at Harvard, is the author of Rampage, which was named one of the Best Books of 2018 by the editors at Amazon, Kirkus and Military Times and was chosen as a finalist for the prestigious Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History by the New York Historical Society. His other works include Target Tokyo, a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist in history, he also write the The War Below and The Attack on the Liberty, which won the Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison Award.

We tend to think of the United States as a country promoting democracy and international liberalism across the globe, but in the grand scheme of American history, the U.S. has preferred to stay isolated avoiding alliances and only fighting  wars in the interest of domestic economics.  We highlight the various episodes and events that have shaped American Foreign Policy and Diplomacy. To help explain, we interview Charles Kupchan who is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and professor of international affairs at Georgetown University. From 2014 to 2017, he served as special assistant to the president and senior director for European affairs on the staff of the National Security Council (NSC) in the Obama administration. He was also director for European affairs on the NSC during the first Clinton administration. Before joining the Clinton NSC, he worked in the U.S. Department of State on the policy planning staff. He is also the author of  several books including No One's World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn (2012), How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace (2010) and Isolationism: A History of America's Efforts to Shield Itself From the World (2020)

With Allied soldiers penned in at Anzio, the need to breakthrough past Monte Cassino became the priority. Between January and May of 1944, American, British, French, New Zealand, Indian, and Polish soldiers attempted to take Monte Cassino and the surrounding area.  By the time the battle ended with a breakthrough to Rome, there had been almost 350,000 casualties on both sides and one of the few battles where every major Allied nation participated in some capacity. We interview Mathew Parker who is the author of several history books including Hells Gorge, The Battle of Britain and Monte Cassino which well be talking about today. His most recent book, published in August, tells the extraordinary story of Willoughbyland, the forgotten seventeenth-century English colony in Surinam that was exchanged with the Dutch for New York. He was also recently elected to be a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. This is the final part of our series on the War in Italy during World War II