History As It Happens

This is the fourth episode in a 5-part series marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in August 1945.

Before 1947, the United States did not have peacetime intelligence-gathering agencies such as the CIA. Foreign policy was formulated on an informal basis. Even during the Second World War, interservice cooperation was voluntary in the U.S. military. The Army and Navy had to compete for resources in the absen...

This is the third episode in a 5-part series marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in August 1945.

In 1942, the Japanese seemed unstoppable in the Pacific, and the Germans steamrolled toward Stalingrad. Their victories proved ephemeral. And, in defeat, the Axis powers took millions of innocent people with them. This human drama is captured in historian Peter Fritzsche’s new book, 1942, which b...

This is the second episode in a 5-part series marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in August 1945.

Most wars do not end in total victory. They usually end at the negotiating table after years of indecisive combat. What made the Second World War different? Was the Allied formula of unconditional surrender counter-productive? In this episode, acclaimed war historian and podcaster James Holland breaks down t...

This is the first episode in a 5-part series marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in August 1945.

No individual bore more responsibility for plunging Europe into another world war than Adolf Hitler, who was obsessed with reversing Germany's defeat in 1918 and getting rid of all the Jews within his reach, remaking the racial map of Eurasia in the process. Eighty years after his death, Hitler's horrendous l...

Since 1945, has there been an antiwar U.S. president? Is it even possible to be an antiwar president when one has at his disposal history's most powerful war machine and is expected to maintain American primacy? President Donald Trump began his second term promising peace in the world, but after six months, the structures of empire and his unforced errors as a negotiator have thwarted progress. In this episode, historian Stephen We...

For half a century, the Cold War defined global politics. Contested by two superpowers with opposing ideologies and interests, it touched nearly every part of the globe. It threatened nuclear war, and brought incalculable devastation to its battlefields – from Korea to Vietnam to Afghanistan and beyond. Could all the tension and violence have been avoided? Did the U.S. triumph or did the Soviet Union surrender? Where c...

Has Haiti passed the point of no return? Nearly 5,000 people have been killed in gang violence since last October, according to the U.N. Gangs control an estimated 90 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince, as a Kenya-led security mission remains undermanned and outgunned. Government services are collapsing, and people are desperate for food. The country hasn't had a president since 2021. There is little appetite among Western nati...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has contended with five U.S. presidents, from Bill Clinton in 2000 to Donald Trump today. Each American leader had the stated aim of improving U.S.-Russian relations by the time he left office. None truly succeeded. Why? In this episode, Jeffrey Engel and David Kramer examine the past 25 years of structural causes and the internal processes within Russia that contributed to the conflict.

Historian J...

One hundred years ago, in July 1925, a high school teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, was arrested for teaching evolution. John Scopes' guilt was never in doubt, but his sensational trial was the center of national attention, pitting modernists against traditionalists, the defenders of Darwin's science against Christian fundamentalists. In this episode, historian Michael Kazin recounts what happened inside the courtroom and why it still...

Is President Donald Trump augmenting or undermining the sources of American power? Trade wars against U.S. allies, an immigration crackdown, and slashing the federal workforce are but three ways the administration's approach to exercising power could ultimately erode it. In this episode, renowned political theorist Robert Keohane argues that "the continuation of Trump’s current foreign policy would weaken the United States and acce...

President Trump's executive order to restore "truth and sanity to American history" targets esteemed institutions such as the Smithsonian and the National Park Service. It accuses them of promoting "a divisive ideology that reconstrued America’s promotion of liberty as fundamentally flawed." In this episode, historian Kevin Levin, who writes the Civil War Memory newsletter on Substack, explains what changes visitors might see at re...

This is a story about the unintended consequences of U.S. military interventionism. In 2011, President Obama decided to get involved in Libya's civil war. The U.S. and its NATO allies bombed Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi's forces in the name of protecting civilians who had risen against his regime in the early months of the Arab Spring. What began as a humanitarian intervention in March turned into a regime change operation, as G...

The Democratic Party controls none of the three branches of government, has no apparent leader, and is deeply unpopular. An NBC News poll says only 27 percent of registered voters have a positive view of the party. This is not the first time the Democrats have faced irrelevancy. At the onset of the 1992 presidential campaign, Republicans were confident of a fourth consecutive victory, having defeated Democrats Carter, Mondale, and ...

Eighty years ago, during the final weeks of the worst war ever fought, the United Nations Charter was signed in late June 1945, outlawing aggression and upholding universal human rights. World leaders agreed a legal edifice was necessary for the peaceful arbitration of disputes and protection of civilians after the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis and Imperial Japan. Today, however, the world is aflame in war and genocide, and some...

On April Fool's Day, members of Elon Musk's government dismantling team known as DOGE showed up at the downtown Washington offices of the Wilson Center for International Scholars with grave news. It was not an April Fool's Day prank; they were there to shut it down and fire everyone. The Wilson Center was the home of the Kennan Institute along with a library of some 30,000 books. In this episode, the institute's former director, th...

Israel and the United States justified their war against Iran on claims that its nuclear program posed an existential threat. Iran had no nuclear weapons, but the nature of its enrichment program exceeds what is necessary for peaceful energy production. An unintended consequence of U.S. and Israeli belligerence, say non-proliferation experts, could be that Iran now secretly races for a bomb. If the lesson here is that the only way ...

Note: This episode was recorded hours before President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between Iran and Israel.

Over the decades and in the face of Western pressure not to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels, the Islamic Republic of Iran has maintained its nuclear program, whose origins predate the ayatollahs' rule. The program has become a potent symbol of nationalism and resistance. On Saturday, the U.S. joined Israel's war...

This episode of History As It Happens was recorded on location at the U.S. Army War College and the Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pa. The Army's 250th birthday was on June 14th.

What were the first soldiers of the Continental Army talking about 250 years ago? Where did they gather to share their ideas about war and revolution? To mark the Army's 250th birthday, the curators and craftsmen at the Heritage and Educat...

This episode of History As It Happens was recorded on location at the U.S. Army War College and the Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pa. The Army's 250th birthday was on June 14th.

What happens inside a classroom full of colonels and lieutenant colonels? At this institution in rural Pennsylvania, America's future military leaders are learning grand strategy steeped in history, from Thucydides to today's conflicts. In...