ON_THIS_DAY_IN_HISTORY - sort of - everyone was going to Paris! Destination Paris: Mission, end the war! As thousands of people from all across the world flocked to Paris for the looming conference, Parisians and civil servants of all shades had the unenviable task of preparing the way for them. Hotels would have to acquired for the different delegations, some of these would have to be scrubbed from top to bottom. Wine would have to be found, as would tons of foodstuffs. Along with the delegatio...
Nov 28, 2018•31 min
"From the blind confusion of factional strife the Frenchman has emerged in this hour all of a piece throughout, stronger, more resolute, silent, smiling, his eyes bright with an invincible fire which affirms that the legend of France shall not fail…It is in that mysterious hour when something comes to birth in us which burns out the dross and clears the way for the casting of a metal which neither steel nor diamond can scratch. And when, some day, after superhuman efforts, all these souls, fatig...
Nov 24, 2018•49 min
France, that critically important cog in the machine of the Paris Peace Conference, had scores to settle and plenty to feel sorry about. The war had ripped through her people and country, bringing with it a plague of devastation unmatched in living memory. The flower of her youth lay dead, a demographic fact which she never truly recovered from. The final year of the war had been a trying and at times, gloomy one for France. Could Germany ever be defeated, was the question which seemed to surfac...
Nov 23, 2018•1 hr 9 min
Remember - check out the Delegation Game , and find out how you can participate in this exciting new way to make the very most out of this incredible centenary era... The famed armistice was signed followed several weeks' worth of diplomatic process, and several hours' worth of meetings between statesmen that didn't like each other very much. By the time it was finished, the document which they were left with went far short of what many had wanted, and was too harsh in the minds of others. Still...
Nov 19, 2018•45 min
Remember - check out the Delegation Game , and find out how you can participate in this exciting new way to make the very most out of this incredible centenary era... Sometimes, it isn't always the best idea to take vain people at their word. In the case of Edward House, the situation which he claimed to have created in Paris, in the run up to the signing of the armistice, and the situation he ACTUALLY created, proved to be two very different things. After several days meeting intimately with Eu...
Nov 18, 2018•38 min
Now THIS is exciting - click here to learn more about the aforementioned Delegation Game which I talked about for a great deal in this episode , and remember to connect with me if you have any questions! To everyone else, I hope you weren't too bothered by my rambling about it for ten minutes - I'm just super excited, and I think it could really be something special! Onto this episode at hand though, and we come to Edward House, Woodrow Wilson's best friend; a man whom the president could truly ...
Nov 17, 2018•59 min
It is impossible to tell the story of the Treaty of Versailles without Germany, and in episode 2 of the VAP, 'Germany Falling, Germany Falling', we examine the state of Germany in military, economic and societal terms by mid-1918. A campaign which had started out so strong and filled everyone with false hope ended in failure. The gamble to move all men from east to the western front had failed, and the chasm in capability was growing by the hour. Stark pronouncements on the true state of affairs...
Nov 16, 2018•1 hr 17 min
Another introduction episode - this one giving us a brief(ish) rundown on the origins of the Great War, for the benefit of those that have not listened to the July Crisis Anniversary Project of old. The world went to war in 1914, and the circumstances which surround that event are often held against Germany in the subsequent peace negotiations. Germany, it is said, started the whole wretched thing, so she should be punished once her gamble failed, and she clearly lost. In my view though, it isn'...
Nov 13, 2018•41 min
We must set the structure and sources of this project in front of you before we jump right into it, and we should also clarify our aims before we go any further too. We have got a LOT of ground to get into over the next eight months, but I hope that you are ready to join me for this fascinating and illuminating journey, as we examine this era of our past like you've never seen it before. Of course it is worth setting forth our aims: 1) create the most comprehensive, but also the most accessible,...
Nov 12, 2018•25 min
To make it through the tons of research material available on the Treaty of Versailles, it is essential we take a certain angle as our guide. Find out what kind of angle I am interested in, and how I plan to divide the different sections of this project up, so that you and I can get through it with our sanity maintained! It's going to be a wild ride to 28th June, but before we reach those sumptuous halls (below), we first have to paint a picture, or series of pictures, that help us set the scene...
Nov 12, 2018•48 min
It's time. It's time at long last to unleash this project, to reveal the hidden complexities, the terrible truths, the dire dangers, the fascinating characters and the inspiring anecdotes of the period in history so often maligned and misunderstood, but so critically important to our world. It's time to go to 11th November 1918, where the guns fell silent at long last, and the birds could finally be heard to sing. ****** The Versailles Anniversary Project is possible because of your support and ...
Nov 11, 2018•22 min
WDF is about to be positively lit up by the most ambitious project we've ever taken on, but before we jump into that, I felt it only right that I bring you guys up to speed with my new job, how I got on in the Sound Education Podcast Conference in Harvard, some notes about the podcasting schedule, a bit on Dan Carlin, some more info about my future and even more ramblings - sounds like a state of the podcast address to me! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Nov 08, 2018•33 min
It's time to say goodbye to this incredible era, and to end this whopper journey we've been on for the past 11+ months. I really can't believe we're here, but we are, and I figured there was never a better time to end this series, than on my birthday, so happy birthday to me! Our conclusion examines a suitably poignant moment in recent history - the location of a reunion of Korean families, trapped and separated for more than six decades by a war which they never wanted, but which they have been...
Oct 30, 2018•24 min
It's time to say good bye! Episode 48: Something Of An Ending gathers together everything we’ve learned over the last 47 episodes and returns to those key questions, theories and goals which opened our series all those months ago. It is a typically intensive episode, since we have a good deal of stuff to talk about, several things to reiterate and not a small amount of final goodbyes to wave at our key figures. By now you have seen our narrative underline and hopefully vindicate my conclusions, ...
Oct 29, 2018•49 min
Episode 47: Ike Will Bring Them Home! This is our penultimate episode, and as such plays a critical role in bringing several threads of our narrative together. How fluent in the use of atomic diplomacy was Eisenhower’s administration? Armed with the knowledge we have from the last episode, we can state that Eisenhower was far from the first President to bring atomic weapons into the diplomatic discourse. Indeed, it makes sense that the first and last president of the US to make use of the atomic...
Oct 29, 2018•50 min
Episode 46: Atomic Diplomacy looks at the fascinating tactic supposedly made use of by the Eisenhower administration in the first half of 1953. This policy of threatening nuclear war if the communists did not see sense worked, so the conventional account suggests, and it worked because NSC68 had so empowered American defensive capabilities. However, as we’ll see in this episode, Eisenhower’s tactic was neither completely successful nor was it unprecedented. In fact, to set the background by what...
Oct 26, 2018•39 min
Our endless flurry of Korean War content continues as we pave the way towards the Versailles Anniversary Project! Stay tuned! Episode 45: The Culminating Factors brings several threads of our story together, as we count down towards the establishment of peace amidst the political climb of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who would be elected President of the US and wave goodbye to the Truman administration. The story of how Eisenhower got there, and why he decided that “I will go to Korea” is a fascinating...
Oct 21, 2018•42 min
Episode 44: Talking & Fighting picks up from last time with the Korean peace process, as the allies managed to sit down at last and talk face to face with the communists, at a place called Kaesong. As we’ll discover, getting the communists to sit and talk with them was only half the battle. The Chinese and North Koreans were well equipped to turn even the most genuine peace initiative into a great propaganda victory. When they weren’t applying their own brand of spin to the latest talks, the...
Oct 20, 2018•40 min
Episode 43: Peace Talks, Almost presents the situation on the frontlines as it stood in spring 1951, following some promising offensives by General Ridgeway which effectively crushed the Chinese capacity to launch another great offensive again. This incapacitation of the Chinese by no means meant that the communists were ready to roll over; indeed, the Chinese were still determined to hold on. As the allies crossed the 38th parallel for the second time, indeed, there was no genuine desire to pus...
Oct 16, 2018•50 min
Episode 42: So Long Old Soldier bids farewell to General MacArthur in a podcast experience which has to be heard to be believed! Before we get to the point that MacArthur stood before Congress and gave that rousing farewell speech on 19th April 1951 though, we have to detail how it was that the relationship between President and General deteriorated to such a point that both parted ways. It was not, predictably enough, MacArthur’s choice. Yet, for a myriad of reasons, including MacArthur’s inabi...
Oct 14, 2018•52 min
Episode 41: Adored No More examines the week following the shattering experience of Chinese intervention on a grand scale. With General MacArthur’s credibility in tatters, President Truman’s plan to apportion blame to his least favourite General now appeared to make all the more sense. MacArthur was under immense pressure to explain himself, and when he finally did, Truman’s response was to place a gag order on all US figures from talking about the country’s foreign policy. Truman claimed he was...
Oct 12, 2018•40 min
Episode 40: Shock & Awe continues where we left off last time. This was the result of the Truman administration’s months of planning and theorising, and for the sake of NSC68 and the strategy of containment, it was believed to be the right one. The Chinese had finally intervened, and thus the efforts to make this so must have been considered a success. Yet, on the ground level, it was anything but a success, as the Chinese advanced with a ferocious pace and zeal that stunned and shattered al...
Oct 10, 2018•38 min
Truman continues to set up his General, as the allied soldiers wander into the consequences on the Manchurian border... Episode 39: ‘An Entirely New War’ focuses on that moment in the conflict when the Chinese finally pulled the trigger and invaded in massive force between late October and late November 1950. After months of diplomatic manoeuvring, Mao Zedong seemed to finally have had enough and believed that the moment had come to act in force. This decision, fully in line with the aims of the...
Oct 07, 2018•45 min
Truman serves up MacArthur, and contrary to popular imagination, it was not the General, but the President, who schemed in the background - at least at this stage... Episode 38: The Perfect Scapegoat introduces one of the most infamous aspects of the Korean War narrative to you guys – that insufferable tension between President and General which would eventually lead to the dismissal of the latter and harsh criticism of the former. It was a difficult relationship long before this plug was pulled...
Sep 30, 2018•41 min
Since the founding of the United States, in every generation, in every field of business, politics, sports and society, we’ve watched in shock as corruption, deceit and desire bring down heroes, titans and those we thought we could trust. In the aftermath, we’re left with too many questions, how did this happen? Who is to blame? American Scandal, a new podcast from Wondery, will answer these questions. They tell the stories of America’s biggest scandals, the who, how and why, to discover what ha...
Sep 27, 2018•19 min
Episode 37: Burning Chinese takes our story back a bit to late September, in roughly the same timeframe we covered in the last episode, to examine how the American policy was developed as the Chinese became ever more pressed to involve themselves. The official picture in Washington and among the UN allies, and of course in General MacArthur’s mind, was that no matter what they publicly said, the Chinese would not, could not intervene, and that thus, all evidence to the contrary was bluff or the ...
Sep 23, 2018•43 min
Our biggest episode yet! Episode 36: Ordering Chinese picks up from the last episode, this time from the perspective of the Chinese, as in late September they were clearly faced with something of a quandary. Stalin was ramping up his campaign to urge the Chinese to intervene, and in response, the Chinese claimed that since Kim Il-sung had yet to ask for help, Beijing could not give it. Stalin thus set to work engineering his plan into motion, and ensuring that the North Koreans would indeed ask ...
Sep 16, 2018•52 min
Remember your NSC reports! NSC 68 : The reason we're all here (ish). NSC 81 : The public report on compromises that pleased everyone and meant nothing. Especially no mention of the Chinese... NSC 73 : The secret report which imagined Chinese involvement. NSC 76 : The report which confirmed that the Soviets would never get involved. Episode 35: Up In Flames examines that pivotal moment in the history of the Korean War, when General MacArthur finally got the chance to achieve his greatest triumph ...
Sep 09, 2018•40 min
This is it history friends, our last free episode of section 2 of 1956! If you like what you hear here, then make sure and track down the rest. Hours of content await, not just associated with this series. If you want to invest in Zack Twamley, in history podcasting and in WDF's future, then supporting us on Patreon is the best way to do that. I'd be most grateful, and you'd be filled with more history audio than you can shake an Egyptian stick at! Head on over to our Patreon page and access all...
Sep 07, 2018•38 min
PATRONS! HISTORY FRIENDS! Everyone in between! Part 2 of 1956 is now upon us, and here’s what you should do. First – ask yourself, do you love history? Second – answer yes, and have a listen to us here, as we unpack the Suez Crisis, in 21 easy steps! For everyone, episodes 2.1 and 2.2 are out now, but for those Patrons at the $5 level and above, 1956 is about to get very interesting indeed! For the rest of the year we’ll be hitting you with the run up to, outbreak of and consequences of the SUEZ...
Sep 06, 2018•32 min
