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Following the tumultous revolution and subsequent hostage crisis, Iran's neighbour, Saddam's Iraq thought the timing was opportune to do a land grab. The strategic miscalculation led to one of the bloodiest 20th century bilateral conflicts and had repercussions that reverberate today. What happened?

When I was seven years old, one of my friends moved to Tehran with his family. I do not know what his parents did, but I know that they returned in less than a year because of the revolution. I did not know what that meant, but I was glad to have my friend back. Iran felt like an excotic and dangerous place. Since my childhood Iran has been in the news; for the revolution, the hostage crisis, its support of Hamas & Hezbollah. Why? Why is this the current representation of a civilization that can be traced back to the earliest empires of the world? Let's try to shed some light...

Here is the continuation of the 2 part series on Ukraine in the last 100+ years; trying to see the overall picture and understand why Ukraine has become such an important headline in the last few years. If you haven't yet, please listen to part 1.

It seems that Ukraine rarely made the news until about 2013-14 when Russia invaded Crimea and somehow the Bidens were involved in a scandal. I knew of it, because my mother's family all trace their lineage to the Ukraine as recently as the 1920s. I do not go into any of that here - we're going back to the beginning of the 20th century, when Ukraine was a nation split between the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs. During the first half of the 20th century, Ukraine was in the middle of everything. What was Ukraine like demographically then and now, and what is the legacy of a century of nation building? Thanks for listening!

Its effect was little in the rest of the world. Vietnam was the larger story at the time, and the horror of the Cambodian Killing Fields a sidenote in coverage.

This is part 2 of the two part series on the Korean War. Thanks for listening.

If you have listened before, you know how this goes. This episode looks at the history of the Korean peninsula and what happened leading up to the Korean War in 1950.

We're following the trajectory of the Cold War; after the end of the very hot World War II, the beginning of the Cold War was playing out in countries and regions around the world, seemingly all at the same time. As usual, I found that I knew very little about happened in Greece during the late 1940s. Thanks for listening.

This is episode 2 talking about post-war Europe and the early days of the Cold War in Germany and specifically Berlin. Listen to the first episode for greater context and come back for more!

The Cold War - a long, drawn out conflict between competing ideologies and world views. We start to look at the years immediately following VE -Victory Europe. There are iconic images of sailors celebrating in New York, and soldiers kissing girls in the streets of London; but for much of Europe, it would take years to get to a point of celebration. Let's look at why... This is the first episode in this season and I will be continuing with this theme and how it played out in different theatres around the world. Thanks for listening! [email protected]

This episode has some disturbing descriptions. I began researching for this podcast about 2 1/2 years ago. I could not have imagined in 2021 that we would have witnessed the recent attack on Israel now. This episode seems like it might be poorly timed, but I think it is more important than ever to be aware of what the SS did to jewish people in Europe in World War II.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." If you have not listened to part 1 of this series, I recommend doing that first. The purpose of the series is to understand the police state that Nazi Germany became and to see the difference between the SS, the SA, the SD, the Ordnungs Polizei and the Gestapo, if there is a distinction. But it is not possible to view the perpetrators without eventually considering what they were responsible for. Eugenics is part of the puzzle that led to the murder of millions and leads directly to the deaths in the Holocaust as well as the deaths of millions of Soviet civilians. Thanks for listening! Email me at [email protected]

We all know about World War 2, and the Holocaust. We have watched movies and have a picture of what happened. But in this episode, I wanted to explore the evolution of what happened, the logistics of who the Schutzstaffel men were. And to examine the differences between the SS, the SD, the Gestapo, etc. This episode sets up for the beginning of the war, which will be the continuation in episode 2. Thanks for listening.

Here it is!  The finale - the culmination of the other three episodes where we have worked toward an understanding of where political forces stood in the mid-20th century.  I start this episode after the 1936-7 elections in India under the Raj and end it 10 years later with Indian and Pakistan Independence.  That decade packs a wallop for stuff happening.    Primary characters in this episode are Muhammed Ali Jinnah, Mahatma Ghandi, Jawarhalal Nehru, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Sardar Patel if you want to look any of them up. Thanks for listening - drop me a line at [email protected]. Greg

After the Mutiny of 1857 by military personnel in the employ of the East India Company, the British Crown took over rule in India.  It would last until Indian independence 90 years later.  It was a long, rocky road to independence - have a listen to find out about what happened in the intervening years.  One more episode to go after this one! Thanks for listening - send me an email at [email protected].