20th Century Facts & Events

A small republic, a country in spirit, lies north of Dagestan and Azerbaijan. It has only about a million and a half people and I am not sure there is consensus about how they want to live, but they have had to deal with choices made by others. The second Chechen war happens to be how a relatively new Russian prime minister made a name for himself; a man whose name we all know; Vladimir Putin...

Following the tumultous revolution and subsequent hostage crisis, Iran's neighbour, Saddam's Iraq thought the timing was opportune to do a land grab.The strategic miscalculation led to one of the bloodiest 20th century bilateral conflicts and had repercussions that reverberate today.What happened?

When I was seven years old, one of my friends moved to Tehran with his family. I do not know what his parents did, but I know that they returned in less than a year because of the revolution. I did not know what that meant, but I was glad to have my friend back. Iran felt like an excotic and dangerous place.Since my childhood Iran has been in the news; for the revolution, the hostage crisis, its support of Hamas & Hezbollah. Why? Why is this the current representation of a civilization that can be traced back to the earliest empires of the world? Let's try to shed some light...

Here is the continuation of the 2 part series on Ukraine in the last 100+ years; trying to see the overall picture and understand why Ukraine has become such an important headline in the last few years. If you haven't yet, please listen to part 1.

It seems that Ukraine rarely made the news until about 2013-14 when Russia invaded Crimea and somehow the Bidens were involved in a scandal. I knew of it, because my mother's family all trace their lineage to the Ukraine as recently as the 1920s. I do not go into any of that here - we're going back to the beginning of the 20th century, when Ukraine was a nation split between the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs. During the first half of the 20th century, Ukraine was in the middle of everything. What was Ukraine like demographically then and now, and what is the legacy of a century of nation building?Thanks for listening!

Its effect was little in the rest of the world. Vietnam was the larger story at the time, and the horror of the Cambodian Killing Fields a sidenote in coverage.

This is part 2 of the two part series on the Korean War. Thanks for listening.

If you have listened before, you know how this goes. This episode looks at the history of the Korean peninsula and what happened leading up to the Korean War in 1950.

We're following the trajectory of the Cold War; after the end of the very hot World War II, the beginning of the Cold War was playing out in countries and regions around the world, seemingly all at the same time. As usual, I found that I knew very little about happened in Greece during the late 1940s. Thanks for listening.

This is episode 2 talking about post-war Europe and the early days of the Cold War in Germany and specifically Berlin.Listen to the first episode for greater context and come back for more!

The Cold War - a long, drawn out conflict between competing ideologies and world views. We start to look at the years immediately following VE -Victory Europe. There are iconic images of sailors celebrating in New York, and soldiers kissing girls in the streets of London; but for much of Europe, it would take years to get to a point of celebration. Let's look at why...This is the first episode in this season and I will be continuing with this theme and how it played out in different theatres around the world. Thanks for listening!20thcenturyfacts@gmail.com

This episode has some disturbing descriptions. I began researching for this podcast about 2 1/2 years ago. I could not have imagined in 2021 that we would have witnessed the recent attack on Israel now. This episode seems like it might be poorly timed, but I think it is more important than ever to be aware of what the SS did to jewish people in Europe in World War II.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." If you have not listened to part 1 of this series, I recommend doing that first. The purpose of the series is to understand the police state that Nazi Germany became and to see the difference between the SS, the SA, the SD, the Ordnungs Polizei and the Gestapo, if there is a distinction. But it is not possible to view the perpetrators without eventually considering what they were responsible for. Eugenics is part of the puzzle that led to the murder of millions and leads directly to the deaths in the Holocaust as well as the deaths of millions of Soviet civilians. Thanks for listening! Email me at 20thcenturyfacts@gmail.com

We all know about World War 2, and the Holocaust. We have watched movies and have a picture of what happened. But in this episode, I wanted to explore the evolution of what happened, the logistics of who the Schutzstaffel men were. And to examine the differences between the SS, the SD, the Gestapo, etc. This episode sets up for the beginning of the war, which will be the continuation in episode 2. Thanks for listening.

Here it is!  The finale - the culmination of the other three episodes where we have worked toward an understanding of where political forces stood in the mid-20th century.  I start this episode after the 1936-7 elections in India under the Raj and end it 10 years later with Indian and Pakistan Independence.  That decade packs a wallop for stuff happening.    Primary characters in this episode are Muhammed Ali Jinnah, Mahatma Ghandi, Jawarhalal Nehru, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Sardar Patel if you want to look any of them up. Thanks for listening - drop me a line at 20thcenturyfacts@gmail.com. Greg

After the Mutiny of 1857 by military personnel in the employ of the East India Company, the British Crown took over rule in India.  It would last until Indian independence 90 years later.  It was a long, rocky road to independence - have a listen to find out about what happened in the intervening years.  One more episode to go after this one! Thanks for listening - send me an email at 20thcenturyfacts@gmail.com.

Episode 1 of the India-Pakistan partition was a quick introduction to centuries of Indian history, but I could not ignore all the details of just the 18th century.  There was so much happening!  Afghan invasions, Sikh reprisal on the Mughals, south India allegiances, multiple Mughal emperors, defiance against British expansionism, and all of that probably in the same year!  I know that this episode is an indulgence on my part, but I think it will prompt you to learn more about India.  Episode 3 will definitely move ahead from the Mutiny of 1857, which is where the first part ended. Thanks for listening.  Email me at 20thcenturyfacts@gmail.com to let me know what you think.

You have to listen to this! In 1947, Britain effectively abandoned its responsibility to India after a few hundred years of pillaging the wealth from the Asian subcontinent.  We'll get to that... But part of trying to understand the events of 1947, is laying a foundation of what had happened in India and surrounding areas in the previous centuries.  This episode is an introduction to the rich history of India, albeit much abridged, but enough to help understand what happened later.   Learn a little bit about the empires that came before the British, the Mughals, the Marathas. There will be more coverage in the next episode in this series.  If you know as little as I did when I began, this will be eye opening and may alter any impressions that you had of India before listening. You can always let me know what you think at 20thcenturyfacts@gmail.com. Thanks for listening. Greg

In Episode 1, I discussed the different players contributing to the rising tensions in the Spanish Republic in the years leading up to 1936.  They were the same tensions that were growing across Europe during the years of the Great Depression and all of the instability that had come as a result of the poor economy, failing empires as well as growing communist and fascist movements.  Listen now to how the military coup turned into a civil war and how Franco remained the ruler of Spain until the 1970s.

The civil war that ravaged Spain in the years leading up to World War II has been a footnote to the greater conflicts in Europe in the early 20th century.  But it had much greater implications; in some ways it became an extension of the Russian civil war.   It was a testing ground for the Nazi war machine, and it allowed Hitler to see how far he could push the boundaries with France, Britain and Russia, years before the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact or Chamberlain's infamous "peace in our time". The Spanish Civil War was a harbinger of things to come.  We should all pay close attention because tensions that exist now have a lot of similarities to what Spain was dealing with close to 100 years ago. Enjoy part 1.