Well, here we are, finally. The Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan have been defeated. Hitler has committed suicide, at least that’s the official story, Mussolini was captured and hanged, and the Japanese emperor had to go on a nationwide broadcast and admit that he was not a deity.
The Allies were firmly in control of all the Axis lands, and the countries that they had conquered. If you look at a map of the high-tide mark of the Axis control, which was probably mid-1942, they controlled all of Europe, except the UK and the remnant of the European part of the USSR. They controlled much of North Africa. The Axis controlled all of the western Pacific Ocean, and in mid-1942, they had inflicted huge damage on the existing militaries of the Allies.
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Well, here we are. Humans are about to devise the technology that could realistically end the world. For the first time, humans have the ability to basically eradicate all of life on earth, and it’s only restrained by, well humans. Yikes.
The war in Europe ended in May of 1945, but the war in the Pacific was still going on. We talked about the turning point in the Pacific, the Battle of Midway, a couple of episodes ago, but since then we’ve only talked about the war in Europe. So we need to go back a couple of years and catch up with what was going on in the Pacific.
Well, VE Day is the sort of nickname that the world press gave to the day when victory in Europe was achieved. So VE stands for victory in Europe, which obviously is where we are going with this episode, but we’ve got a ways to go yet. And the eventually victory over Japan is going to be called VJ Day, but that one doesn’t get all that much traction, for some reasons that we’ll go into next episode. But lots of newspapers and countries around the western world were very excited about VE Day, and the name kind of stuck.
At the end of the last episode, we left about 150,000 Allied troops holding a small but solid beachhead in Normandy. The D-Day invasion was a huge Allied victory, but it was only the start of a long and difficult road to the defeat of Nazi Germany. But it was, indeed, the beginning of the end.
Well, here we are. This episode is about one of the most massive, high-risk and pivotal events of the last 100 years. Seriously, if you had to pick one day that was the most important or consequential days of the last 100 years, I think you might have to pick June 6th, 1944. It wasn’t quite the same ‘turning of the tide’ event that Midway and Stalingrad were, but in some ways, June 6th 1944 was an even bigger deal than either of them.
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As the Soviets were fighting the Germans all along a 1000 mile long front, they were demanding that the Allies in the west do something to open a second front against the Germans. We’ll get to the Allies eventual response to this in a couple of episodes, but the western allies had the same problem invading Europe that the Germans had had when they were thinking about invading Britain. That problem was the English Channel.
In order to send an invasion fleet across the channel to land in France, the Allies had to have complete control of the air above the channel, to protect the invasion fleet from German planes. So before the sea-borne invasion could take place, the Allies needed to defeat the Luftwaffe, or at least drive them back from their bases in France where they could attack an invasion fleet.
So the Allies started building up their air forces in Great Britain. The Royal Air Force, which had done such a heroic job of defeating the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, had continued to build up its fighter and bomber forces. But early 1942, they were joined by the newly formed American group, the Eighth Air Force. The Americans began to ship men, planes, bombs and ammo, and fuel to Great Britain. By the end of the war, the Americans are going to have over 200 airbases in Great Britain, with over half a million men on those bases, and over 50,000 planes.
Every once in a while, there is a great moment or battle that really changes the course of history. Yes, yes, I know I said that exact thing at the beginning of the last episode too, but I need to say it again, because this episode is, once again, a pivotal moment in human history. And instead of it being decided by a few crucial minutes, this battle will take about half of the year of 1942. And unlike the Battle of Midway, where the casualties were measured in the thousands, the casualties in the battle of Stalingrad will be measured in the millions.
Welcome to the deadliest battle in all of human history, the battle of Stalingrad.
Every once in a while, there is a great moment or battle that really changes the course of history. The Battle of Salamis, Caesar crossing the Rubicon, Charles the Hammer winning the Battle of Tours, The Battle of Hastings in 1066, Luther nailing the 95 theses to the door in Wittenberg, the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the time I defeated my neighborhood HOA by installing a whole pallet of grass sod in my front yard even before they mailed me a nasty letter. I got other nasty HOA letters, but not about the front yard grass. All of those were key moments that changed the direction of history in some way. They turned the tide, so to speak.
And this episode is one of those moments. And, as a quick spoiler, next episode will be one, too.
Ok, it’s the beginning of 1942, and for the Allies, things are looking, well, kinda bleak. France, one of the great powers of the world as recently as 1939, is now occupied by the Nazis, who are in total control of the north and west of France, and who have installed a puppet government in the south and east of France. Great Britain is alone in Europe, and it very dependent on imported goods, but Nazis are threatening British shipping in the Atlantic with both surface boats and U-boats. The Soviet Union has lost almost a million square miles of territory to Nazi Germany, and the Germans are at the doors of Moscow and Leningrad, and in the south have captured much of the Ukraine.
The Italians, with German help, have captured Greece and Cyprus, and are also trying to gain territory in North Africa, pushing towards British-held Egypt and the vitally important Suez Canal.
British naval control of the Mediterranean and the North Sea is threatened by German air power and U-boats.
In the Pacific, the United States has lost its entire battleship fleet, though some will be back in action before the end of the year. The Japanese have captured the US territory of the Philippines, and the British holdings of Singapore and Hong Kong, and are threatening Indonesia and Australia. The Japanese navy has also driven the British navy out of the Pacific, and now the only area that the Royal navy is really in control of is the Indian Ocean.
So that’s a quick summary of how things are looking for the Allies. Looks pretty grim, actually. Let’s take a closer look at each area of the world, and just how close the Axis is to completely taking over the world.
Last episode, we left the German soldiers freezing off ihr Gesäß in the the early, harsh Russian winter of 1941. But there was more going on in the winter of 1941 than just frozen Germans. I mentioned back in episode 113, which was about the rise of Hitler and fascism, that the Germans had made a pact with Italy and with Japan. Both the Germans and the Empire of Japan regarded the Soviet Union as their most dangerous potential enemy, which is why they signed a treaty. This is actually going to work against them here in just a minute.
Last episode, I said Hitler might have done better in the long run if he hadn’t had Germany attack Great Britain. Well, after that mistake, he decides to double down, and make an even bigger mistake. He is about to fall victim to one of the classic blunders - never get involved in a land war in Asia! Well, technically, he doesn’t get all the way to Asia, but he was trying to.
Anyway, it’s going to be an even bigger mistake than not continuing to bomb the RAF bases in south and east England. And it’s going to lead to the biggest invasion in human history, the deadliest battle in human history, and the biggest tank battle in human history. And, the deadliest overall campaign in human history. So many people are about to die.
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I’m going to make a quick confession to you here: The Battle of Britain is one of my three favorite parts of all of human history. The other two would be the Roman Empire at the time of Jesus, and then the American Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution, and the Constitution, all of that right as the US was being founded. And then this, the Battle of Britain.
Why is this one one of my favorites periods? Well, it’s got it all: a clear villain, a heroic underdog who fights valiantly, a moment when all seems lost, and then a sudden change of fortunes as the tide begins to turn. The battle of Helm’s Deep, or the Battle of Minas Tirith - this has the same narrative arc.
Plus, it has some of the most amazing airplanes that ever flew, which I will get to in a bit. The American war for Independence was cool, but they didn’t have Spitfires or Messerschmitts. Neither did Minas Tirith. I guess Mordor did have the Nazgul on their flying lizards, but that’s not quite the same.
Anyway, this was one of those crucial turning points in history, where if it had gone differently, even by a small bit, our modern world would not be the same. It really was a pretty close shave.
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You might have noticed that I kind of used the same title twice in a row, which might seem like kind of lazy writing, but I really couldn’t think of a better title to describe what is about to happen. Since Germany had such easy success in the blitzkrieg of Poland, Hitler decide that they could do it to France too.
And basically, that’s exactly what they do. In fact, they were maybe even more successful in France.
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Ok, here we are, poised right on the edge of World War II. I’m going to try to not bog down as much as I did on the US Civil War, but I still have 9 episodes planned to cover World War II. Is that bogging down? I can’t imagine doing it in less episodes than that. Too much interesting and important stuff is about to happen. Also, what happens during the war, including who wins which battles, who gains and loses territory, and what happens to governments during and after the war will make a big difference in our modern world. So to set the stage for all that happens geopolitically after the war, we have to look pretty closely at what happens during the war.
Plus, World War II was kind of the last time that the world made any sense, and we’ll need to talk about that at some point.
Anyway, at the end of our last episode, we left about 106 German divisions poised along the Polish border. That’s not an ominous sign, is it?
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Well here we are, about to introduce one of history’s most notorious villains. I’m talking about Adolf Hitler. He really is remembered as one of the worst, most dangerous people of all time. If you took a survey and asked most people ‘Who is the worst person who ever lived?’ I bet Hitler would be the runaway winner. Also, if you asked people, ‘Who had the worst mustache of all time?’ Yeah, Hitler, again.
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This episode, we’re going to talk about the great depression.
Last episode, we talked about the stock market crash of 1929, and mentioned that it was one of the causes of the Great Depression.
The Great Depression left a very strong mark on the people who lived through it. We’re getting to the point in history where a lot of us know people who have lived through the events that we’re talking about. My grandparents, for example, lived through the Great Depression. My parents were born during it. If you know someone who lived through it, they will have very vivid memories of how hard things were for most people during that time. It shaped people’s impressions of life, government, their country, and what mattered in life more than just about any other event of their lives.
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The 1920’s was a very prosperous time for America, and for much of the world. As I mentioned last episode, during the 20’s the American economy became the largest in the world.
Yet postwar prosperity was precarious. Much of the American boom was a speculative affair. Fueled by optimism, and fueled by borrowing. Customers were urged to buy on credit or to borrow from the banks, and thus the banks earned large profits. The stock market was riding high. But at any sign of a credit squeeze or a loss of confidence, everything was likely to collapse. Demand would fall, goods would pile up, and prices would plummet. This was precisely what happened on “Black Thursday,” October 24, 1929, the day of the Wall Street crash. I’ll talk about that in a minute, but first, I need to talk about one of the weirder things about the 1920’s - prohibition.
First of all, it’s a weird word. Prohibition. Obviously, it refers to prohibiting something, but why did it come to be associated only with the prohibiting of making or selling alcohol? And why did America, a freedom-loving place, decide to outlaw AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL, this one particular thing? We’ve never had an amendment that outlawed prostitution, or drugs, or corrupt politicians, or driving at night in traffic with your high beams on, though I might support that one.
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Well, the war to end all wars was over. After a period after several months, the surviving soldiers began to return home. The Treaty of Versailles was signed, and Europe began to try to rebuild and re-organize. The political and social landscape of Europe was very different after the war. The Austro-Hungarian empire was gone, as was the Ottoman Empire. Lots of lands and peoples had seen their geographical boundaries re-drawn, some of which were logical, and some of which ended up causing more trouble down the road.
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We’ve been here on World War I for seven episodes, if you count the 2 on the Russian and Soviet revolutions. See? I’m getting more concise. It took me 10 episodes to get through the American Civil War. This time, I tried to not get quite so bogged down in explaining the battles, even though that is one of the parts that is most interesting to me personally. But now I get to explain a few last battles in World War I, and then some about how WWI shaped our modern world.
And the big battle that is going to really end the war is the German offensive of the spring of 1918.
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Well, last episode, we left the chaos of the eastern front and the founding of the new country of the Soviet Union. In this episode, we’re going back to France and Belgium and we’re going to look at the turning of the tide on the Western Front. And do you know what turned the tide? Yep, several million farm boys from the United States. This isn’t only going to change the war, it’s going to change America’s perception of itself.
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For Lenin, transforming a society from near feudalism to communism was a tall order. To do that, you have to change a capitalistic economy into a centrally controlled economy. You have to destroy private ownership of land, homes, and capital. You have to destroy institutions that supported the capitalist system, like schools, universities, and government offices. You have take full control of the media, and suppress any dissenting voices. You have to control the police, the jails, the judicial system, and the armed forces. It’s a lot like what the democrats were trying to do under Joe Biden.
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