History Unplugged Podcast

• Operation Barbarossa Saw Millions of POW Executions, Civilian Murders, and Starvation Deaths

  Operation Barbarossa, launched by Nazi Germany on June 22, 1941, aimed to swiftly conquer the Soviet Union, targeting key cities like Moscow, Leningrad, and Kyiv. Hitler reportedly said a meeting with his generals before the campaign began "We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down," With German forces advancing up to 200 miles per week in the first two months, it looked like Germany would accomplish this goal, nearly reaching Moscow by August. The operation’s rapid pace saw the Wehrmacht encircle and capture millions of Soviet troops, bringing Germany close to victory, though fierce resistance and logistical challenges stalled their progress short of total conquest. The campaign devastated civilian populations, with millions killed through bombings, mass executions, and starvation policies, particularly in occupied regions like Ukraine and Belarus. The Nazis’ brutal tactics, including the Einsatzgruppen death squads, systematically murdered Jews, Romani people, and others, contributing to an estimated 10-14 million civilian deaths across the Soviet Union by the war’s end. To look at these months of fighting in Eastern Eruope, some of the most devastating times in that region’s history, is today’s guest, Richard Hargreaves, author of Opening the Gates of Hell. The combination of unprecedented, rapid military victories coupled with state-sponsored and spontaneous atrocities makes the opening fortnight of the invasion of the Soviet Union unique in the annals of modern warfare.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• Pistol Duels Existed Across the 19th-Century World, But Only the Chaos of the American West Produced Gunfighters

  To understand American history and its deep-seated relationship with violence, we must look to the last three decades of the 1800s in the American West, which had the highest murder rate per capita in American history. And it all boils down to one place: Texas. Texas was born in violence, on two fronts, with Mexico to the south and the Comanche to the north, and the invention of the Colt revolver only made the area wilder and less orderly. Across the nineteenth-century frontier defending one’s honor and reputation often resulted in duels and bitter feuds. After the cattle business boom, this sensation spilled into the greater West from Arizona to Wyoming to Kansas. The trigger-happy assortment of rustlers, hustlers, gamblers, and freelance lawmen, and their desire to defend their honor caught the eye of newspapers, igniting a firestorm of mythmaking. The word “gun-man” first appears in a newspaper in 1874, followed by an explosion of Western biographies and memoirs in the 1920s. 1940s-1950s Hollywood reimagined these gunfighters as leading men, introducing Billy the Kid and Wyatt Earp to a new generation. Today’s guest is Bryan Burrough, author of “The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild.” We explore how only in the American West could gunfighters exist, and what led to the death of this unique period in time.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• Rome Definitively Eclipsed Greece in 197 BC By Making the Alexandrian Phalanx/Cavalry Obsolete

  The battle of Cynoscephalae represents a key moment in the history of the Greco-Roman world. In this one battle the Macedonian hold over mainland Greece was broken, with the Roman Republic rising in its place as the pre-eminent power in the Greek East. At Cynoscephalae, the proud Macedonian kingdom of Antigonid monarch Philip V was humbled, its army shattered. Yet the battle, and campaign leading up to it, was hard fought and protracted. Philip V had defied Rome and its allies in the First Macedonian War and was poised to do so again, with the pike phalanx continuing to be a daunting opponent for the Roman legionaries.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• Exploring the Wreckage of the Britannic (the Titanic’s Sister Ship) and Discovering Why It Sunk in 50 Minutes

  The RMS Titanic is history’s most famous shipwreck, but it wasn’t the only ship of its kind. The White Star Line built two other nearly identical vessels: The RMS Olympic and Britannic. The Olympic carried passengers until 1935 and can be visited today. The Brittanic sank only four years after her sister ship the Titanic off the Greek island of Kea in the Aegean Sea like due to striking a German mine while serving as a hospital ship during World War One. It sank in only 55 minutes (compared to 160 minutes for the Titanic) but only 30 of the 1066 passengers due to better lifeboat procedures, warmer waters, and being closer to land. What While the wreck of the Titanic is 2 miles below the surface and rapidly deteriorating, the Britannic is much more accessible (only 400ft down) and remains largely intact. It’s in “shallow” enough waters that divers can reach it, although submersibles do most of the investigation work. What can the ship tell us about the sinking of the Titanic, the lives of its passengers in the early 20th century, and whether something nefarious happened that caused it to sink, as some claim (like German sabotage). These are the questions that today’s guest, Simon Mills, tried to answer when bought the wreck of the Britannic in 1996. He is a maritime historian who has coordinated multiple expeditions into the underwater wreckage and most recently finished extensive internal surveys in 2021 and 2023. He’s also the author of the new book Inside the Britannic which is the sum of decades of work covering every inch of the ship. We discuss exactly how this ship sunk, what happened during the frantic 50 minutes of its sinking, what happened to the survivors, and other unanswered mysteries.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• Did Tariffs Make America a Manufacturing Powerhouse Or Trigger Economic Misery and Stifle Global Trade?ads)

  At a time when debates over tariffs, regulation, and the scope of government are back at center stage. Is this time in American history unprecedented, or can we find parallels in the past? For example, has trade “hollowed out” U.S. manufacturing—or have fact tariffs like the Corn Laws in Britain hurt working-class families the most? Was the Great Depression a failure of capitalism—rather than a policy crisis worsened by poor monetary responses and overreach? Today’s guest is Phil Gramm, a former U.S. Senator and author of “The Triumph of Economic Freedom.” We look at five periods of American history—the Industrial Revolution, Progressive Era, Great Depression, decline of America’s postwar preeminence in world trade, and the Great Recession—along with the existing levels of income inequality and poverty, leads many to believe in expanding government in American life. Gramm argues that the evidence points to a contrary verdict: government interference and failed policies pose the most significant threat to economic freedom.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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