History As It Happens

Something remarkable happened as British, French, and German soldiers shivered in their trenches on Christmas Eve along a 20-mile-long stretch of the Western Front in 1914. Instead of killing one another, they met in no-man's-land to fraternize. They shared songs and cigarettes rather than bullets and bombshells. In this episode, historian Terri Blom Crocker separates history from memory, myth from reality concerning the Christmas Truce of 1914. The myths say more about man's uses of memory than the First World War itself. Further reading: The Christmas Truce: Myth, Memory, and the First World War by Terri Blom Crocker

Let's talk religion and politics as if we were on the set of All in the Family, the smash 1970s sitcom designed to expose the problems of racism, sexism, and religious intolerance. In this episode, historian Louis Benjamin Rolsky traces the rise and fall of the religious left through the career of Norman Lear, the legendary TV producer and writer. In Lear's view, if Archie Bunker personified the wrong ideas and attitudes, the millions of Americans watching All in the Family would see the errors of his mind. Would Archie Bunker vote for Donald Trump? Recommended reading: Misunderstanding the Right by L. Benjamin Rolsky (New International) The Rise and Fall of the Religious Left by L. Benjamin Rolsky

Since emerging as an independent state in 1991, Georgia has struggled to establish its nationhood. "Joining 'the West' has driven Georgian elites’ strategic thinking for decades," writes the historian Bryan Gigantino. Yet, at the same time, Tbilisi must not antagonize Russia, as the legacy of the 2008 war over South Ossetia and Abkhazia still looms over Georgian society. For the past three weeks, demonstrators have staged massive protests, often clashing with police, over the ruling Georgian Dream party's decision to suspend talks to join the European Union. In this episode, Gigantino untangles the complexities of Georgian history and politics as the country copes with life on the post-Soviet periphery. Further reading: In Georgia, a National Election Is a Geopolitical Struggle by Bryan Gigantino (Jacobin)

The fall of Bashar al-Assad marked the historic end of more than 50 years of cruel tyranny that began with his father Hafez, who took power in 1970. The world watched moving scenes of Syrians being freed from the regime's dungeons after a 13-year-long civil war killed hundreds of thousands of people. But who are Syria's new leaders? Who are the rebels that toppled Assad? In this episode, Sefa Secen, an expert on Syria and Middle East security, delves into the country's murky future and dark past.

Midway through his eighth year in office, President Bill Clinton kicked off a White House conference on the "new economy." The internet age was underway, unemployment was low, inflation was dormant, the stock market boomed, major industries had been deregulated, and Congress was preparing to pass a big trade deal with China. The future seemed so bright as Americans enjoyed the longest economic expansion in the country's history. The "new economy" cheerleaders did not foresee the working-class discontent that now defines American capitalism in the Age of Trump. In this episode, historian Nelson Lichtenstein delves into the illusions and missteps that hollowed out the working class.  Further reading: A Fabulous Failure: The Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism by Nelson Lichtenstein Why Bidenomics Did Not Deliver at the Polls by Dani Rodrik (Project Syndicate) The Decline of Union Hall Politics by Michael Kazin (Dissent)

Thirty years ago, in early December 1994, at a security summit in Budapest, the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, and Ukraine signed a memorandum in which Kyiv agreed to eliminate all nuclear weapons left on its territory after the collapse of the USSR. In exchange, the other signatories offered assurances to refrain from the threat or use of force against Ukraine's territorial integrity or political independence. Events would prove the Budapest Memorandum to be worth less than the paper it was printed on. Thirty years later, Russia has invaded Ukraine and occupies much of its eastern regions. The war has been devastating, killing tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides. In this episode, historian Michael Kimmage looks back at the empty assurances of the Budapest conference, which were made at a time of great optimism and even cooperation among former foes. Kimmage also contends that today's war is a world war insofar as it has expanding global repercussions and is attracting the involvement of non-European countries. Further reading: How Ukraine Became a World War by Michael Kimmage and Hanna Notte in Foreign Affairs, the official publication of the Council on Foreign Relations

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for individual Israeli and Hamas leaders, charging them with crimes against humanity. The accusations against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense chief Yoav Gallant involve the intentional murder of Palestinian civilians and starvation as a method of war. Since invading Gaza in the aftermath of the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian women and children while utterly destroying most of Gaza's civilian infrastructure. Jewish settlers are said to be waiting to move into the northern Gaza Strip now that it has been emptied of Palestinians. Is it genocide? In this episode, historian Omer Bartov explains why he believes Israel's actions amount to the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such." Further reading: Essay on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by Omer Bartov (The Guardian)

After the election, there was a hurricane of postmortems attempting to explain why Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump. Eschewing small-bore analysis, historian Daniel Bessner posted on X, "I feel like people are missing the fundamental lesson of the election: it is not the Democratic Party that is in crisis; liberalism itself is in crisis." Liberalism—the dominant political philosophy of the American Century—appears to be a spent force amid a wave of illiberal populism and anti-establishment politics. In this episode, Bessner, who co-hosts American Prestige podcast, delves into the origins of liberalism's rise and apparent decline in this post-post-Cold War period. Further reading: Empire Burlesque: What Comes After the American Century? by Daniel Bessner (Harper's)

Over the centuries, Thanksgiving traditions have changed with political, cultural, and religious winds. The holiday's mythic origins were propagated in the mid-nineteenth century, and soon Americans were all celebrating Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November. Parades and football games are important pieces of Americana now synonymous with Thanksgiving -- as is the start of the Christmas shopping season. In this episode, historian David Silverman delves into the history of a quintessential American holiday whose development has as much to do with magazine editor Sara Josepha Hale as the Pilgrim Edward Winslow.

Ronald Reagan was the most consequential U.S. president of the second half of the twentieth century. Conservatives once lionized him before the rise of Donald Trump. Yet how Reagan is remembered does not entirely square with his actual record. Although an anti-government, anti-Communist ideologue, Reagan governed like a pragmatist. Moreover, the fortieth president was a terrible manager with a flimsy grasp of policy. His administration was rife with scandal. When he left office, the federal deficit had nearly tripled. Despite it all, Reagan was an effective national leader who inspired Americans to feel proud of their country again. In this episode, historian and biographer Max Boot delves into the life and times of "The Great Communicator" whose Hollywood and television careers prepared him for political success. Further reading/listening: Reagan: His Life and Legend by Max Boot When Reagan Pressured Israel (podcast) with Salim Yaqub  Election of 1980 (podcast) with Jeremi Suri and Jeffrey Engel Star Wars (podcast) with Joe Cirincione

Does the historical concept of oblivion offer a way out of our ruptured political life? "For centuries, legislative acts of oblivion were declared in times when betrayal, war, and tyranny had usurped and undermined the very foundations of law; when a household or nation had been torn apart, its citizens pitted against one another; when identifying, investigating, trying, and sentencing every single guilty party threatened to redouble the harm, to further fracture already divided societies," writes the scholar Linda Kinstler. In this episode, Kinstler delves into the history of oblivion as well as its limitations, as Donald Trump prepares to return to the presidency having gotten away with his attempt to subvert democracy on Jan. 6, 2021. Further reading: Jan. 6, America's Rupture, and the Strange, Forgotten Power of Oblivion by Linda Kinstler (New York Times) Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends by Linda Kinstler (2022)  

The United States' most-wanted jihadist in Afghanistan is trying to portray himself as a pragmatic diplomat. Washington doesn't seem to be interested. Sirajuddin Haqqani has the blood of many U.S. soldiers and Afghan civilians on his hands. While the U.S. views him as an enemy, the CIA once handsomely supported his father Jalaluddin Haqqani in the war against the Soviets in the 1980s. The elder Haqqani was close to bin Laden in the years before the Haqqani network would violently resist U.S. invaders -- after the al-Qaeda strikes on 9/11/2001. Ah, Afghanistan, where the past is not even past. In this episode, Adam Weinstein of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft untangles the complexities of a land where the U.S. has been involved for most of the past forty years. Further reading: Is Afghanistan's Most-Wanted Militant Now Its Best Hope For Change? by Christina Goldbaum (New York Times) Ghost Wars by Steve Coll Taliban by Ahmed Rashid

Donald Trump's election victory probably means Hitler comparisons won't go away, even if they make little sense. Still, there are lessons to learn from the collapse of the Weimar Republic in 1933, the year Adolf Hitler was levered into power by conservative elites who wrongly assumed that they could control the "Bohemian corporal." The question is which lessons are the right lessons? In this episode, historian Christian Goeschel of the University of Manchester explains how Hitler achieved power in Germany to avoid facile comparisons to the America of 2024. Our problems today bear little resemblance to the crisis of Weimar democracy.

When it was ratified more than 30 years ago, the North American Free Trade Agreement was hailed as a decision "that will permit us to create an economic order in the world that will promote more growth, more equality, better preservation of the environment, and a greater possibility of world peace," according to President Bill Clinton. Today, NAFTA is toxic, and populist anger at the multilateral free trade regime of the post-Cold War era is redefining global politics. In this episode, Dan Kaufman, a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, tells us how NAFTA destroyed the working class in his home state of Wisconsin, specifically in Milwaukee, once the "machine shop of the world." Further reading: How NAFTA Broke American Politics by Dan Kaufman Further listening: The Economy, Stupid with historian Nelson Lichtenstein

It's Election Day in America and the survival of liberal democracy is said to be on the ballot. What does this mean? Has the United States ever been a democracy where all enjoy political freedom and economic rights? In this episode, historians Sean Wilentz and James Oakes delve into the history of political conflict in America, the progress and regress of democracy and liberty, a story of liberalism competing and coexisting with illiberalism.  Recommended reading: The Rise of American Democracy by Sean Wilentz Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865 by James Oakes

**New episode! History As It Happens has returned!** This is the eighth and final episode in a monthly series examining influential elections in U.S. history. The most recent episode, Election of 2008, was published on Sept 17. As the Obama presidency ended, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was the obvious frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. As for the Republicans, 17 candidates vied for the top spot. As the election year unfolded, few "informed observers" believed the New York real estate developer-turned-reality TV star Donald Trump had a chance. They were all wrong. Not only did Trump, a man with no government or political experience, take over a major party, but he defeated Clinton in the general election, the most stunning upset in American history. What explains the rise of Trump? Historians Jeremi Suri and Jeffrey Engel delve into the defining question of the 21st century in the United States. 

This episode was first published on March 4, 2024. Original show notes: The embattled incumbent expressed anguish over soulless materialism. The optimistic challenger promised Americans they could overcome any and all problems. The election of 1980 pitted Democrat Jimmy Carter against Republican Ronald Reagan as Americans struggled with stagflation at home and crises abroad. Reagan's victory marked a sea change in U.S. politics, tilting the political landscape to the right. Reagan crusaded against big government and Soviet Communism. If the incumbent looked impotent in the face of these vexing problems, Reagan projected strength -- a timeless lesson of campaigning. In this episode, historians Jeremi Suri and Jeffrey Engel discuss why this election still matters.

This episode was first published on Feb. 22, 2024 as part of a series marking the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Original show notes: In every war, there is a battle over its origins. In this episode, historians Michael Kimmage and Mark Galeotti discuss Kimmage's new book, "Collisions," which seeks to explain why the excessive optimism of the early 1990s about Russia's path toward democracy and market economics never materialized. Moreover, Kimmage's narrative explains what led to each major collision between Russia and Ukraine; Russia and Europe; and Russia and the larger "rules-based order" led by the United States. Russia under Putin -- and for a brief period, Dmitry Medvedev -- and the United States under five presidential administrations could not overcome a fundamental dissonance in how each viewed the other's role in the world. Institutions such as NATO and the E.U., seen in the West as bulwarks of democracy, human rights, and economic prosperity, were viewed with hostility by Putin, who believed an independent Ukraine had no right to join them. ((Note: This conversation was recorded before the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka fell to Russian forces))

This episode was first published on Oct. 24, 2023. Original show notes: Today's war between Israel and Hamas has its origins in the unresolved problems caused by the events of 1948. The year that witnessed the creation of an independent Jewish state in the former British mandate of Palestine, is known by Palestinians as the nakba, or catastrophe. Internecine violence intensified in 1947 as the U.N. weighed partitioning Palestine into two independent states, one Jewish and one Arab. Then five neighboring Arab countries invaded the new state of Israel immediately after David Ben-Gurion declared independence on May 14, 1948. In all, approximately 750,000 Arabs fled or were driven from their homes by Jewish forces. Many fled to Gaza and were forbidden from returning to their homeland after the war, turning them into permanent refugees. In this episode, Middle East expert Ian Lustick of the University of Pennsylvania discusses the throughline from 1948 to 2023.

This episode was first published on April 12, 2022. Original show notes: Was the Constitution pro- or anti-slavery? Maybe that is the wrong question to ask, even though it remains the question at the heart of public discourse about the founding generation. In this episode, Sean Wilentz and James Oakes -- two major scholars of eighteenth and nineteenth century America -- argue the Constitution was a contested document that marked the beginning of a political conflict over the future of slavery and, therefore, the nature of American democracy. They reject race-centered interpretations that elide early political conflicts over enslavement and the hard-fought progress won by Black Americans and their white allies. The American Revolution was an event of world-historical importance, marking a turning point in the history of human enslavement because it gave life to the world's first abolitionist movement.