Dec 22, 2018 | Latest, Podcast, Premium, Recent |
After Ho Chi Minh declared the independence of Vietnam in September 1945, the British and Chinese troops arrived in Saigon and Hanoi to disarm the Japanese and prepare the return of the French – and the shooting begins. Some scholars thing that *this* was the...
Dec 7, 2018 | Latest, Podcast, Premium, Recent |
* As they grew stronger, Giáp’s forces took more territory and captured more towns* And then on 15 August they heard that the Japanese Emperor had declared his country’s unconditional surrender to the allies.* Unfortunately for Ho and Giap, the U.S. had a...
Nov 30, 2018 | Latest, Podcast, Premium, Recent |
* Ho believed the army’s job was largely going to be propaganda until the conditions were right for war.* But he also decided that for propaganda purposes, they had to win a military victory within a month of being established, so on 25 December 1944 Giáp led...
Nov 24, 2018 | Latest, Podcast, Premium, Recent |
* Welcome to #100!* And we are still talking about 1944!* When we finished last time, Ho Chi Minh was making his way to the Red River Delta.* The Japanese have chased the French out of Vietnam and didn’t bother to protect the northern regions.* So Ho and the ICP are...
Nov 10, 2018 | Latest, Podcast, Premium, Recent |
* On December 7 1941, Japan’s main carrier force, seeking to destroy the American fleet and thereby purchase time to complete its southward expansion, struck Pearl Harbour.* And the world celebrated.* As De Gaulle said “that’s it, the war’s over.”* He was...
Nov 1, 2018 | Latest, Podcast, Premium, Recent |
* Ho’s speech to the French socialist congress in 1920 was 12 minutes long and delivered without notes.* It got some applause but that was about it.* He realised that French socialists were more worried about affairs at home than they were about colonialism in a...
Oct 27, 2018 | Free, Latest, Podcast, Premium, Recent |
In 1919 a 29 year old Vietnamese man wrote a list of demands for political rights for his people to present to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference. Nobody paid him any attention. His name was Nguyen Ai Quoc. He devoted the rest of his life to...
Oct 12, 2018 | Latest, Podcast, Premium, Recent |
* America’s approach to providing financial aid wasn’t popular with some of their allies either.* Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary, resented American dollar diplomacy, in particular the linking of desperately needed financial assistance to London’s...
Oct 5, 2018 | Latest, Podcast, Premium, Recent |
* Something that Marshall mentions only briefly in his speech is the effect that would have on the US economy. (around the 7’20″ mark)* Europe’s economy might have been destroyed after the war, but America’s wasn’t looking too bulletproof, partly BECAUSE the...
Sep 29, 2018 | Free, Latest, Podcast, Premium, Recent |
* One of the greatest pieces of mythology to ever be produced in America is the “Marshall Plan”.* It’s right up there with the idea of glorifying the “Founding Fathers”, who were actually just tax dodgers who orchestrated a bloody coup.* It’s also of course one of...
