A Short Walk through Our Long History

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.   Website:  shortwalkthroughhistory.com [http://shortwalkthroughhistory.com/] email:  shortwalkthroughhistory@gmail.com [shortwalkthroughhistory@gmail.com]

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.   Website:  shortwalkthroughhistory.com [http://shortwalkthroughhistory.com/] email:  shortwalkthroughhistory@gmail.com [shortwalkthroughhistory@gmail.com]

здравствуйте, еще раз, товарищи.  добро пожаловать в советский союз 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.   Website:  shortwalkthroughhistory.com [http://shortwalkthroughhistory.com/] email:  shortwalkthroughhistory@gmail.com [shortwalkthroughhistory@gmail.com]

здравствуйте, товарищи. добро пожаловать в русскую революцию. One of the weirder and more catastrophic side effects of the First World War was what happened to Imperial Russia.  We’re about to see not just one but two Russian Revolutions, and then several years of civil war within Russia, that is going to leave the whole country in shambles for many years to come, and is going to set up some of animosity that will lead to World War II, the Chinese Communist revolution, the Cold War, the Space Race, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.  But before we get to all that, things are going to get really bad in Russia itself. And before I get to what I have to say about the Russian Revolution, I need to say that there’s really no way that you can cover something as complex as the Russian Revolution in one 20 minute podcast, so I’ve broken this up into two revolutions, and two episodes.    Website:  shortwalkthroughhistory.com [http://shortwalkthroughhistory.com/] email:  shortwalkthroughhistory@gmail.com [shortwalkthroughhistory@gmail.com]

One of the unique aspects of World War I was simply the huge scale of the battles, with numbers of soldiers, sailors, and even airmen that the world had not seen in a long time.  Some of the Roman battles back in the day involved over 100,000 men on each side. Way back in episode 8, on the Persian Wars, I mentioned that the Persian army under King Xerxes might have had as many as a million men.   But World War I dwarfed even this.  There were more than 5 million men on each side over the course of the war, and that was only on the western front, not counting the several million more involved on the eastern front and in other parts of the world.   We’re going to look at several of these big battles today, including the bloodiest one of the war, the Battle of the Somme, which is going to feature the single bloodiest day of the war, and is one of the deadliest battles in human history.  In fact, if it wasn’t for a couple of battles between Germany and the Soviet Union in World War II, the Battle of the Somme would be the deadliest, bloodiest battle in all of human history.   Website:  shortwalkthroughhistory.com [http://shortwalkthroughhistory.com/] email:  shortwalkthroughhistory@gmail.com [shortwalkthroughhistory@gmail.com]