How shall we remember them?
In 1919, London hosted a Victory Parade that marked a unique moment of national rejoicing, mourning and catharsis. The Parade, also known as the London Peace Parade, saw returning troops march through packed streets in the capital. The city’s iconic monuments…
![Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria Carl Pietzner [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://www.almosthistorypodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/490px-Franz_ferdinand-e1421829462415.jpg)
The United States of Greater Austria
As the world tumbled into the chasm of conflict in the early years of the twentieth century, one European country carried a light for tolerance, federalism, peace and prosperity. The United States of Greater Austria had been forged from an amalgam…
A thoroughly middle-class emperor
Russia’s Tsars typically surrounded themselves with the opulence they felt befitted their status as the autocratic rulers of the world’s largest country. Their palaces were sumptuous and vast, ornate gilded statements of power and wealth. But not every occupant of the…
A slice of Turkey
The Paris Peace Conference was tasked with setting the peace terms for the Central Powers after their defeat in the First World War. The Treaty of Versailles dealt with the principal belligerent, Germany. It was, however, accompanied by four less well…
Achtung, achtung!
In George Orwell’s 1984, the complete dominance of the dystopian dictatorship is reinforced by the unavoidable presence of telescreens. Ubiquitous and without an off button, they ensured that Big Brother was not only watching you, but speaking to you at all…
Charles de Gaulle’s embarrassing tête-a-tête
At the start of the Second World War, Philippe Pétain was one of France’s most revered military heroes. By the end of the conflict, he was widely reviled as traitor to the nation. The Lion of Verdun’s reputation was destroyed when…
Ticket to Vokzal
Why is the word for a main railway station in Russian named after the unprepossessing London area of Vauxhall? The Russian word for a main train station is Vokzal (воксал). Say it out loud – does it remind you of anything?…
A stimulating proposition
Quantitative easing is a new name for an old concept – governments taking a role in stimulating flagging or flat-lining economies. Old fashioned economic stimulus has a new name for the twenty-first century. Concepts such as Keynesianism, state intervention and pump priming…
Albert Göring – the good brother
The Göring family name is indelibly associated with Hermann Göring (1893 – 1945). Hermann was one of the leading lights of the National Socialist movement, and, until the regime was consumed and destroyed in the reaping hubris of Allied military advances,…
The Trafalgar Square Tank Bank
One of the most successful appeals for money to support the British war effort was inspired by the tank. Seen as a wonder weapon that could shorten the war, the cumbersome and ungainly vehicles became popular icons and were ultimately used…
Death from the skies
It is a scene from the darkest days of the Blitz. A squadron of German planes flies over the East End and the City releasing a deadly stream of bombs on the people below. A school in Poplar is blown up…
This is not a test
At 9:33 a.m. on 14 September 1954, a Soviet Tu-4 bomber dropped a 40,000-ton atomic weapon from a height of 25,000 feet just north of Totskoye in the steppes of the southern Urals. In the early years of the Cold War,…