The Fall Of Japanese-held Hong Kong in January 1945
Commander John Lamade started the war in 1941 a nervous pilot of an antiquated biplane. Just over three years later he was in the cockpit of a cutting-edge Hellcat about to lead a strike force of 80 aircraft through the turbulent skies above the South China Sea. His target: Hong Kong. As a storm of antiaircraft fire darkened the sky, watching from below was POW Ray Jones. For three long years he and his fellow prisoners had endured near starvation conditions in a Japanese internment camp. Did these American aircraft, he wondered, herald freedom?Today’s guest is Steven Bailey, and he discovered that much of the story of the U.S. Navy airstrikes on Japanese-held Hong Kong during the final year of World War II had never been told despite being an important step on the march toward Japan. Operation Gratitude involved nearly 100 U.S. Navy warships and close to a thousand planes. Bailey is the author of “Target Hong Kong,” and we look at the air raids through the experiences of seven men whose lives intersected at Hong Kong in January 1945: Commander John D. Lamade, five of his fellow U.S. Navy pilots and the POW Ray Jones.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
26 Mar 202438min
WW1 German Spies Infiltrated America and Attempted to Start a Race War
On January 30, 1918, a young man “with the appearance of a well-educated, debonair foreigner” arrived at the U.S. customs station in Nogales, Arizona, located on the border with Mexico. After politely informing the customs inspector that he had come to complete his draft registration questionnaire and meet a friend in San Francisco, he was approved to cross the border into the United States. Lothar Witzke, the most dangerous German agent in the western hemisphere had reached his destination. His assignment: launch a campaign of sabotage, insurrection, and murder to destabilize the American home front.The terror campaign would be devastating - unless it could be stopped by U.S. counterintelligence.The Witzke mission was the intelligence game played at its highest level - a plan for destruction on a massive scale, violent insurrection, and assassination, complete with master spies and double agents, diabolical sabotage devices, secret codes, and invisible ink.To look at these forgotten elements of German sabotage and assassination plots in the United States during World War One is today’s guest, Bill Mills, author of “Agents of the Iron Cross.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
21 Mar 202434min
The Air Battles of the 1945 Eastern Front Forged Air Force Doctrines of the Cold War
The last months of World War II on the Eastern Front saw a ferocious fight between two very different air forces. Soviet Air Force (VVS) Commander-in-Chief Alexander Novikov assembled 7,500 aircraft in three powerful air armies to support the final assault on Berlin. The Luftwaffe employed some of its most advanced weapons including the Me 262 jet and Mistel remotely guided bomb aircraft.To discuss this overlooked part of World War 2 is today’s guest William Hiestand, author of “Eastern Front 1945: Triumph of the Soviet Air Force.” We discuss the aerial capacities of the SSV, the Luftwaffe, and specific battles that laid the groundwork for Cold War air force doctrine.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
19 Mar 202438min
The First Pre-Columbian Explorers to Reach North America
Have you ever wondered if there was a group to reach North America before Christopher Columbus? Find out more in today's bonus episode from another Parthenon podcast "History of North America." Join host Mark Vinet as he discusses the search for the first non-indigenous explorers to reach the North American continent prior to Christopher Columbus’ 1492 voyage. If you like what you hear, subscribe to "History of North America" on Apple or Spotify and look for it on Parthenonpodcast.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
15 Mar 202410min
A Classicist Believes that Homer Directly Dictated the Iliad, and Was Also an Excellent Horseman
The Iliad is the world’s greatest epic poem—heroic battle and divine fate set against the Trojan War. Its beauty and profound bleakness are intensely moving, but great questions remain: Where, how, and when was it composed and why does it endure? To explore these questions is today’s guest, Robin Lane Fox, a scholar and teacher of Homer for over 40 years. He’s the author of “Homer and His Iliad” and he addresses these questions, drawing on a lifelong love and engagement with the poem. He argues that the poem is the result of the genius and single oral poet, Homer, and that the poem may have been performed even earlier than previously supposed a place, a date, and a method for its composition—subjects of ongoing controversy. Lane Fox considers hallmarks of the poem; its values, implicit and explicit; its characters; its women; its gods; and even its horses.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
14 Mar 202453min
In 1860, Damascus Nearly Committed Genocide Against Christians. How Did it Pull Back?
On July 9, 1860, a violent mob swept through the Christian quarters of Damascus. For eight days, violence raged, leaving 5,000 Christians dead, thousands of shops looted, and churches, houses, and monasteries razed. The sudden and ferocious outbreak shocked the world, leaving Syrian Christians vulnerable and fearing renewed violence. Rogan is today’s guest, and author of “The Damascus Events: The 1860 Massacre and the Making of the Modern Middle East.” Drawn from never-before-seen eyewitness accounts of the Damascus Events, Rogan tells the story of how a peaceful multicultural city came to be engulfed in slaughter. He traces how rising tensions between Muslim and Christian communities led some to regard extermination as a reasonable solution. Rogan also narrates the wake of this disaster, and how the Ottoman government moved quickly to retake control of the city, end the violence, and reintegrate Christians into the community. These efforts to rebuild Damascus proved successful, preserving peace for the next 150 years until 2011.Although history does not offer a road map for solving contemporary problems, it does illustrate the depths of possibility.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
12 Mar 202453min
Silk: The History of a Fabric That Was Civilization’s First Burial Cloth, Body Armor, and Much More
Silk—prized for its lightness, luminosity, and beauty—is also one of the strongest biological materials ever known. More than a century ago, it was used to make the first bulletproof vest, and yet science has barely even begun to tap its potential. As the technologies it has inspired—from sutures to pharmaceuticals, replacement body parts to holograms—continue to be developed in laboratories around the world, they are now also beginning to offer an alternative to such modern materials as plastics.But it’s history goes much further back, Starting with 1,000 years ago, as caravans crossed Eurasia to transport silk from China to Europe; and at least as far back as 6,000 years, when silk was first used in funeral rituals.Today’s guest is Aarathi Prasad, author of “Silk: A World History.” She wrote a cultural and biological history from the origins and ancient routes of silk to the biologists who learned the secrets of silk-producing animals, manipulating the habitats and physiologies of moths, spiders, and mollusks. Because there is more than one silk, there is more than one story of silk. More than one road, more than one people who discovered it, and wove its threads.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
7 Mar 202441min
Frank Lloyd Wrong – When America’s Greatest Architect Created His Masterpiece While Written-Off as a Has-Been
Nobody blossomed late in life like Frank Lloyd Wright. He was written off as a has-been by middle age after a promising start. Between 1909 and 1929, Wright’s career was marked by personal turmoil and a roller coaster of career-related ups and downs. In these years, before he completed the buildings, we know him for today, Wright’s career was so far gone that most critics had written him off as a product of the 19th century.But to everyone’s surprise, after the Great Depression, Wright, now in his seventies, emerged from total career chaos to create one of America’s greatest icons. From this time forward, his career surged, so much so that one third of all his buildings were constructed during the last 20 years of his life.An oft-overlooked aspect of his life is that the Great Depression played a key role in Wright's resurgence. The Depression disrupted the practice of architecture substantially, to the extent that most architects of the 1920s simply closed up shop. Unwilling to give up, Wright instead figured out ways to practice architecture during the Depression without building any buildings. And, the choices he made during this period gave rise directly to the American icon, Fallingwater. In the end, Wright stands alone as the only “big name” architect to survive the Depression years.Today’s guest is Catherine Zipf, author of “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater: American Architecture in the Depression Era.” We explore Wright's career at its lowest moment, the years of the Great Depression, before his comeback as America's greatest architect.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
5 Mar 202446min
