For 2,000 years, Catholicism – the largest branch of Christianity and – has shaped global history on a scale unequal by any other institution. It created the university, modern health care, reinvigorated philosophy in the West, and funded scientific enterprises. Today’s guest is H.W. Crocker, author of Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church – A 2,000 Year History. We discuss Roman legions, crusades, epic battles, and toppled empires, the Catholic church midwifing Europe through the lowest points of the medieval period, the Renaissance popes, the Reformation, and the present and future of the Catholic church.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3101278/advertisement

How the Catholic Church Maintained Civilization in the Lowest Points of the Middle Ages

For close to half a century after World War II, Marty Glickman was the voice of New York sports. His distinctive style of broadcasting, on television and especially on the radio, garnered for him legions of fans who would not miss his play-by-play accounts. From the 1940s through the 1990s, he was as iconic a sports figure in town as the Yankees’ Mickey Mantle, the Knicks’ Walt Frazier, or the Jets’ Joe Namath.  In addition to the stories of how he became a master of American sports airwaves, Marty Glickman has also been remembered as a Jewish athlete who, a decade before he sat in front of a microphone, was cynically barred from running in a signature track event in the 1936 Olympics by anti-Semitic American Olympic officials. Glickman’s story underscores the complexities that faced his generation of American Jews as these children of immigrants emerged from their ethnic cocoons and strove to succeed in America amid challenges to their professional and social advancement.   To explore Glickman’s story is today’s guest, Jeffrey Gurock, author of Marty Glickman: The Life of an American Jewish Sports Legend.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3101278/advertisement

Marty Glickman: The New York Sports Legend Who Lost His Spot in the 1936 Olympics For Being Jewish

The conquest of Indian land in the eastern United States happened through decades of the U.S. government’s military victories, along with questionable treaties and violence. This conflict between two civilization came to  head in 1813 in a little-known but consequential struggle between two extraordinary leaders.William Henry Harrison was born to a prominent Virginia family, the son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He journeyed west, became governor of the vast Indiana Territory, and sought statehood by attracting settlers and imposing one-sided treaties.Tecumseh, by all accounts one of the nineteenth century’s greatest leaders, belonged to an honored line of Shawnee warriors and chiefs. His father, killed while fighting the Virginians flooding into Kentucky, extracted a promise from his sons to “never give in” to American settkers . An eloquent speaker, Tecumseh traveled from Minnesota to Florida and west to the Great Plains convincing far-flung tribes to join a great confederacy and face down their common enemy. Eager to stop U.S. expansion, the British backed Tecumseh’s confederacy in a series of battles during the forgotten western front of the War of 1812 that would determine control over the North American continent.Today’s guest, Peter Stark, discusses these battles and diplomacy. He’s the author of “Gallop Toward the Sun: Tecumseh and William Henry Harrison’s Struggle for the Destiny of a Nation.”This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3101278/advertisement

Tecumseh and William Henry Harrison’s Struggle for the Destiny of a Nation

In October of 1871, Chicagoans knew they were due for the “big one”—a massive, uncontrollable fire that would decimate the city. There hadn’t been a meaningful rain since July, and several big blazes had nearly outstripped the fire department’s scant resources. On October 8, when Kate Leary’s barn caught fire, so began a catastrophe that would forever change the soul of the city.Leary was a diligent, hardworking Irish woman, no more responsible for the fire than anyone else in the city at that time. But the conflagration that spread from her property quickly overtook the neighborhood, and before too long the floating embers had spread to the far reaches of the city. Families took to the streets with everything they could carry. Grain towers threatened to blow. The Chicago River boiled. Over the course of the next forty-eight hours, Chicago saw the biggest and most destructive disaster the United States had ever endured, and Leary would be its scapegoat.Out of the ashes rose not just new skyscrapers, tenements, and homes, but also a new political order. The city’s elite saw an opportunity to rebuild on their terms, cracking down on crime and licentiousness and fortifying a business-friendly environment. But the city’s working class recognized a naked power grab that would challenge their traditions, hurt their chances of rebuilding, and move power out of elected officials’ hands and into private interests. As quickly as the firefight ended, another battle for the future of the city began between the town’s business elites and the poor and immigrant working class.Today’s guest is Scott Berg, author of “The Burning of the World: The Great Chicago Fire and the War for a City’s Soul.” Beginning with the fire’s origin on the property of Irish immigrant Kate Leary, we explore how a simple barn fire brought Chicago to its knees and ushered in a new political order in which immigrants wrested control of the city from the business class and birthed the machine politics for which the city is known today.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3101278/advertisement

The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and Rebuilding The Windy City Into a World Metropolis

November 22nd marked the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. To commemorate this pivotal event in American history, learn more about Kennedy's 1963 Texas visit, reelection campaign, assassination, and legacy, with this excerpt from This American President.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3101278/advertisement

Commemorating the 60th Anniversary of JFK's Assassination

About four years ago Times of London journalist Daniel Finkelstein undertook an effort to tell his parents’ stories of survival in WW2 Europe. They met at a Jewish youth club in London in the Spring of 1956. He was twenty-six years old and she was twenty-two. Between them, they had lived in ten countries and survived years of hunger, disease, and the barest of survivals.   Daniel’s mother Mirjam Wiener was the youngest of three daughters born in Germany to Alfred and Margarete Wiener. Alfred, a decorated hero from the Great War, is now widely acknowledged to have been the first person to recognize the existential danger Hitler posed to the Jews and began, in 1933, to catalogue in detail Nazi crimes. After moving his family to Amsterdam, he relocated his library to London and was preparing to bring over his wife and children when Germany invaded Holland. Before long, the family was rounded up, robbed, humiliated, and sent to Bergen-Belsen.  Daniel’s father Ludwik was born in Lwow, (now Lviv) the only child of a prosperous Jewish family. In 1939, after Hitler and Stalin carved up Poland, the family was rounded up by the communists and sent to do hard labor in a Siberian gulag. Working as slave laborers on a collective farm, his father survived the freezing winters in a tiny house they built from cow dung.  Finkelstein is today’s guest and he’s here to discuss his new book “Two Roads Home: Hitler, Stalin, and the Miraculous Survival of My Family.” It is both a family story and a larger exploration of how an entire continent came apart.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3101278/advertisement

Hitler, Stalin, and a Jewish Couple Who Met After Surviving Their Extermination Programs

The British Royal Family and the intelligence community are two of the most mysterious and mythologized actors of the British State. From the reign of Queen Victoria to the present, they shared a complicated relationship, with some monarchs working hand-in-glove with their spies, while others detesting them. Nevertheless, successive queens and kings have all played an active role in steering British intelligence, sometimes against the wishes of prime ministers. Even today, the monarch receives “copy No. 1” of every intelligence report.Today’s guests are Richard J. Aldrich and Rory Cormac, authors of “Crown, Cloak, and Dagger: The British Monarchy and Secret Intelligence from Victoria to Elizabeth II.” We explore attempted assassinations and kidnappings, the abdication crisis, world wars and the Cold War, and the death of Princess Diana, all within the complex interconnection of the British Monarchy and its spy corps.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3101278/advertisement

Crown, Cloak, and Dagger: How the British Royal Family Spied  on Others and Was Spied on in Turn

Before 1862, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had rarely left his home state of Maine, where he was a trained minister and mild-mannered professor at Bowdoin College. His colleagues were shocked when he volunteered for the Union army, but he was undeterred and later became known as one of the North’s greatest heroes: On the second day at Gettysburg, after running out of ammunition at Little Round Top, he ordered his men to wield their bayonets in a desperate charge down a rocky slope that routed the Confederate attackers. Despite being wounded at Petersburg—and told by two surgeons he would die—Chamberlain survived the war, going on to be elected governor of Maine four times and serve as president of Bowdoin College. How did a stuttering young boy come to be fluent in nine languages and even teach speech and rhetoric? How did a trained minister find his way to the battlefield? To explore Chamberlain’s fascinating story is today’s guest, Ronald White, author of “On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.” He is presented from cradle-to-grave in all his ideals, tenacity, and contradictions.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3101278/advertisement

Joshua Chamberlain: From Stuttering Child to Civil War Hero to Polyglot Governor of Maine

During Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency—from 1901 to 1909, when Mark Twain called him the most popular man in America—his daughter Alice Roosevelt mesmerized the world with her antics and beauty. Alice was known for carrying a gun, a copy of the Constitution, and a green snake in her purse. When her father told her she couldn’t smoke under his roof, she climbed to the top of the White House and smoked on the roof. She became the most famous woman in America—and even the world—predating Princess Diana and Jackie Kennedy as an object of public obsession. As her celebrity grew, she continued to buck tradition, push against social norms, and pull political sway behind the curtain of privilege and access. She was known for her acerbic wit and outspoken tendencies which hypnotized both the social and political world. Today’s guest is Shelley Fraser Mickle, author of “White House Wild Child: How Alice Roosevelt Broke All the Rules and Won the Heart of America.” We explore what it would have been like to be a strong-willed, powerful woman of the 20th century aughts.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3101278/advertisement

White House Wild Child: How Alice Roosevelt Charmed Early 1900s America

In 1923, the Weimar Republic faced a series of crises, including foreign occupation of its industrial heartland, rampant inflation, radical violence, and finally Hitler’s infamous “beer hall putsch.” Fanning the flames of anti-government and anti-Semitic sentiment, the Nazis tried to violently seize power in Munich, only failing after they were abandoned by like-minded conservatives. Today’s guest is Mark Jones, author of “1923: The Crisis of German Democracy in the Year of Putsch.” We discuss how the Nazis’ plan was initially to seize power in Munich, control Bavaria, then march on Berlin. Hitler needed the support of the military and the police, which he did not get in 1923 but did get in 1933. Tracing Hitler’s early rise, Jones reveals how political pragmatism and unprecedented international cooperation with the West brought Germany out of its crisis year. Although Germany would succumb to tyranny a decade later, the story of the republic’s survival in 1923 offers essential lessons about the future of democracy today.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3101278/advertisement

The First Attempted Nazi Takeover of Germany: The Beer Hall Putsch of 1923

Among the conflicts that convulsed Europe during the nineteenth century, none was more startling and consequential than the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. Deliberately engineered by Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the war succeeded in shattering French supremacy, deposing Napoleon III, and uniting a new German Empire. But it also produced brutal military innovations and a precarious new imbalance of power that together set the stage for the devastating world wars of the next century.Today’s guest is Rachel Chrastil, author of “Bismarck’s War: The Franco-Prussian War and the Making of Modern Europe.” We see how the war reshaped and blurred the boundaries between civilian and soldier as the fighting swept across France by bolstering a unified Germany to contributing to the development of modern warfare.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3101278/advertisement

The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 and the Making of Modern European Warfare

Religious beliefs have been the source of food "rules" since Pythagoras told his followers not to eat beans (they contain souls), Kosher and Halal rules forbade the shrimp cocktail (shellfish are scavengers_, and the Catholic church forbade its peoples from eating meat on Fridays (fasting to atone for committed sins). Rules about eating are present in nearly every American belief, from high-control groups that ban everything except air to the infamous strawberry shortcake that sated visitors to the Oneida Community in the late 1800s.To explore the intersection of religion and modern diet is Christina Ward, author of “Holy Food: How Cults, Communes, and Religious Movements Influenced What We Eat.” The explosion of religious movements since the Great Awakenings that birthed a cottage industry of food fads and cookbooks. Ward uncovers the interconnectivity between obscure sects and communities of the 20th Century who dabbled in vague spirituality and used food to both entice and control followers.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3101278/advertisement

How Ancient Religions Affect What We Do and Don’t Eat in 2023

The Pax Romana has long been shorthand for the empire’s golden age. Stretching from Caledonia to Arabia, Rome ruled over a quarter of the world’s population. It was the wealthiest and most formidable state in the history of humankind.Today we are speaking with Tom Holland, author of “Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age” to explore Rome at the height of its power. From the gilded capital to realms beyond the frontier, we see ancient Rome in all its glory and cruelty: Nero’s downfall, the destruction of Jerusalem and Pompeii, the building of the Colosseum and Hadrian’s Wall, and the conquests of Trajan. Looking at the lives of Romans both ordinary and spectacular, from slaves to emperors, we see that Roman peace was the fruit of unprecedented military violence.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3101278/advertisement

Life in Rome at the Very Height of Its Power

The first year of the siege of Leningrad that began in September 1941 marked the opening stage of a 900-day-long struggle for survival that left over a million dead. The capture of the city came tantalizingly close late that year, but Hitler paused to avoid costly urban fighting. Determined to starve Leningrad into submission, what followed was a winter of unimaginable suffering for ordinary citizens and defenders alike. First-hand accounts from Soviet and German soldiers, many never previously published, together with those of the civilians trapped in the city detail the relentless specter of death which defined life in and around Leningrad. Today’s guest is Prit Buttar, author of “To Besiege a City: Leningrad 1941-42.” Personal vignettes give a glimpse into the reality of life in a city under siege. The teenage volunteer climbers, weak from hunger, scaling the slender spire of the Peter and Paul Fortress to shroud it in camouflage as the German bombers circle overhead like vultures. Or the soldier trombonist completing a long day on the front line to perform Shostakovich’s epic Seventh Symphony alongside a starving and sickly orchestra – an act of defiance broadcast to defenders and attackers alike.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3101278/advertisement

How Russians Survive the 900-Day-Long Siege of Leningrad

The Ku Klux Klan was arguably America’s first organized terrorist movement. It was a paramilitary unit that arose in the South during the early years of Reconstruction. At its peak in the early 1870s, the Klan boasted many tens of thousands of members, no small number of them landowners, lawmen, doctors, journalists, and churchmen, as well as future governors and congressmen. And their mission was to obliterate the small but growing economic and political power of newly emancipated black Americans and their white allies, often by the most horrifying means imaginable. To repel the virulent tidal wave of violence, President Ulysses S. Grant waged a two-term battle against both armed southern enemies of Reconstruction and northerners seduced by visions of post-war conciliation, testing for the first time the limits of the federal government in determining the extent of states' rights. To discuss this early history of reconstruction is today’s guest, Fergus M. Bordewich, author of “Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction.” We explore the hamlets of the former Confederate States and the marble corridors of Congress, analyzing key figures such as crusading Missouri Senator Carl Schurz and the ruthless former slave trader Nathan Bedford Forrest.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3101278/advertisement

The Origins of the KKK and its First Death in the 1870s

Heinrich Pfeifer was a senior member of the Nazi deep state who defected in 1938. He wrote his memoirs in 1945, with the goal of describing the inner workings of Nazi intelligence with enough detail to keep any of the members from escaping justice from the encroaching Allies. However, he was assassinated in 1949 after a pro-Nazi hit squad killed him, and copies of his work were mostly destroyed. However, today’s guest, Robert Temple, was able to obtain a copy and recently translated it to English. Temple is author of Drunk On Power: A Senior Defector’s Inside Account of the Nazi Secret Police State. It is the first complete description of the Nazi “Deep State” by its most senior defector, Pfeifer. We discuss a complete X-Ray of the structure of the Nazi Deep State and describe the international infiltration of Nazis into key institutions in every country in the world.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3101278/advertisement

A Nazi Defector Revealed Germany’s Infiltration in All Major Governments in His 1945 Memoir

Many of the WW2 generation faced hardship in their youth (they did spend their childhood in the Great Depression), but few had as bad of an early life as Denis Elliott, who became an RAF Flight Lieutenant. At age three he was placed in a brutal and abusive orphanage in London and was later subject to beatings by his first foster father. It wasn’t until the Second World War that everything in Denis’s life began to change — he finally overcame the lack of confidence and self-esteem that had plagued his childhood in Kent and went on to become a skilled, confident, brave pilot flying operations against Japanese forces in Burma, Malaya and Thailand.He spent two stints serving in the RAF, which saw him posted across Africa, the Middle East, the Far East and Europe, flyingearning to flying B-24 Liberators and Avro Lancasters.Today’s guest is Phillip Martin, author of “From Orphan to High-Flyer.” We discuss these stories, along with those of Denis’s personal growth, friendship and overcoming adversity.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3101278/advertisement

From Orphan to RAF Hero

The tragic story of the British airship R101—which went down in a spectacular hydrogen-fueled fireball in 1930, killing more people than died in the Hindenburg disaster seven years later—has been largely forgotten. But airships, those airborne leviathans that occupied center stage in the world in the first half of the twentieth century, were a symbol of the future. R101 was not just the largest aircraft ever to have flown and the product of the world’s most advanced engineering—she was also the lynchpin of an imperial British scheme to link by air the far-flung areas of its empire from Australia to India, South Africa, Canada, Egypt, and Singapore. No one had ever conceived of anything like this. R101 captivated the world. There was just one problem: beyond the hype and technological wonders, these big, steel-framed, hydrogen-filled airships were a dangerously bad idea.To tell the story of this disaster is today’s guest, S.C. Gwynne, author His Majesty's Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World's Largest Flying Machine. We discuss a number of characters, including Lord Christopher Thomson, the man who dreamed up the Imperial Airship Scheme and then relentlessly pushed R101 to her destruction; Princess Marthe Bibesco, the celebrated writer and glamorous socialite with whom he had a long affair; and Herbert Scott, a national hero who had made the first double crossing of the Atlantic in any aircraft in 1919—eight years before Lindbergh’s famous flight—but who devolved into drink and ruin.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3101278/advertisement

The Life and Tragic Death of R101, The World’s Largest Flying Machine

Check out this episode sample from James Early's "Key Battles of American History," In this episode, which wraps up a season devoted to World War 2 in the European Theatre, hosts James Early and Sean McIver follow a long-established Key Battles tradition by giving brief overviews of the postwar lives and careers of the major leaders, Axis and Allies, discussed in the series.Subscribe to Key Battles of American History!Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3nCfZZySpotify: https://spoti.fi/3nIwO5cListen to more episodes of Key Battles of American History!The Longest Day: D-Day and the Normandy Campaign: https://apple.co/46jPeuw / https://sptfy.com/P2g7Saving Private Ryan: https://apple.co/3Q9z0i4 / https://sptfy.com/P2g6 Hitler’s Last Gambit: The Battle of the Bulge: https://apple.co/3tprLJN / https://sptfy.com/P2g4This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3101278/advertisement

The Postwar Lives of WW2 Leaders, Both Axis and Allies

Robert E. Lee has become a target of activists in the last decade, with statues of him being taken down across the United States, and eponymous schools and streets being renamed. But for over a century after the Civil War, he was considered a brilliant general, courageous leader, and, in the words of Winston Churchill, “one of the noblest Americans who ever lived.” Today, however, he is vilified and the virtues of hard work and leadership he inspired are largely forgotten. To explore his legacy, and reasons for the drastic change is today’s guest, H.W. Crocker, author of “Robert E. Lee on Leadership.” From successfully reviving a debt-ridden plantation, to teaching and working his way to a prestigious university, Lee became an inspiration to the men under his charge. His personal standards of excellence and his unflinching character created a formidable force on the battlefield. We discuss the challenges of a disadvantaged upbringing; Lee’s education at West Point and years as an army engineer; the role Lee played during the Mexican War, in which he showed courage and level-headedness in the face of combat; Lee as a businessman and owner of a farm in Arlington; and Stonewall Jackson under Lee’s commandThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3101278/advertisement

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