Almost History Podcast
1) AH 11 Operation Unthinkable - Churchill's plan to attack Russia and start a Third World War
According to Field Marshal Montgomery, rule number one on the first page of the book of war is ‘do not march on Moscow’. In April 1945, Winston Churchill ordered the British Chiefs of Staff to rip up...Show More
2) AH 12 Opening the iron curtain - the DDR's day of dissent
It’s the summer of 1953, and, across East Germany, angry people take to the streets. This isn’t a polite street protest. This is a furious, red flag ripping, police beating, office burning rampage. Th...Show More
3) AH 10 Louis of England - history’s forgotten King of England
In August of 1216, the King of Scotland rode down the entire length of England to pay homage to a new English king at Dover. The Scottish monarch bent his knee to a warrior prince who was the pri...Show More
4) AH 09 Princess Mary Tudor's flight to freedom
In the summer of 1550, Princess Mary, the eldest daughter of Henry VIII, was packing her belongings and preparing to flee her home. Her Tudor brother was the figurehead for an increasingly Protesta...Show More
5) AH 08 Cancelling Christmas and the Plum Pudding Riots
In 1647, the new puritan government tried to cancel Christmas. People in Canterbury protested in a peculiarly English way, with a destructive game of football followed by a mass brawl. The cit...Show More
6) AH 07 The Prince of Poyais - settling in the country that never was
In 1822, Gregor MacGregor committed what The Economist newspaper has called the ‘biggest fraud in history’ and ‘the greatest confidence trick of all time’. Investors, many of them Scottish, put for...Show More
7) AH 06 A wonderful paradise on the Isthmus of Panama
Towards the end of the seventeenth century, Scotland sank a huge chunk of its national wealth into an audacious scheme to colonise central America. become a more equal partner with England under the S...Show More
8) AH 05 Roosevelt's third term and the voice from the sewers
In the first half of 1940 only one question mattered in American politics. Would Franklin D. Roosevelt break with tradition and run for a third term as President of the United States? The New York Tim...Show More
9) AH 04 The British Hindenberg disaster and the demise of Imperial Airships
Imperial Airships would bring the far flung peoples of the British Empire closer together than ever before. Every day, blimps would slip their masts near London carrying passengers and freight bound f...Show More
10) AH 03 Hitler’s dreams to unify his empire with a monstrous railway
In 1941, Adolf Hitler issued orders to Nazi Germany’s railway officials. He wanted them to develop a new type of railway. It was to be bigger, far bigger, than anything that had ever been seen. ...Show More