HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2025-02-14T14:34:46.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: How we forgot the Korean War
items: Britain and the Korean War
items: How have nuclear weapons shaped global politics? 10 key moments in the post-war atomic world
items: Coronavirus: what might we learn from pandemics in the past?
items: Coronavirus: a historical perspective

How we forgot the Korean War
type: item
date: 2020-07-01T08:45:54.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: When conflict erupted on the Korean peninsula 70 years ago, many Britons feared the worst, anticipating a return to conscription and air-raids. So why, asks Grace Huxford, did anxiety soon turn into apathy – and why has that sentiment dominated British attitudes to the war ever since?
encoded: Today, not many people know the names Hewlett Johnson or Monica Felton. But during the Korean War (1950–53), these two figures were well known, even notorious, for their opposition to British involvement in Korea. Their stories tell us an alternative history of the Korean War, of the social response to the conflict back in Britain. Even though the fighting raged many thousands of miles away, Felton and Johnson show us the complex impact it had in Britain, the legacies of which we continue to live with today. To grasp why these two Britons opposed the Korean War so passionately, we need first to understand why the conflict erupted in the first place – and, to do that, we must return to the climax of the Second World War. When the Japanese empire collapsed in August 1945, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to divide the Korean peninsula into two occupation zones, along a latitude line – the 38th Parallel North. The Korean War “created a blood debt that is crucial to understanding North Korean behaviour ever since” By 1948, the two areas of occupation had become separate states championing bitterly opposing ideologies: Kim Il-sung’s communist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the north, and Syngman Rhee’s western-aligned Republic of Korea in the south. Over the following two years, tensions between the two rivals increased inexorably until, on 25 June 1950, North Korean troops invaded their southern neighbour. Britain soon become one of many nations to pledge their military support to the United Nations force – led by the charismatic American general Douglas MacArthur – tasked with defending the south. The war took on a whole new – and far more dangerous – dimension when the People’s Republic of China entered the fray in October 1950 to support North Korea. In short, for Britain, the Cold War got considerably hot in 1950. And the situation would remain serious until, after three years of rapid advances, retreats and then grinding stalemate, an armisti…

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Britain and the Korean War
type: item
date: 2020-06-24T11:27:44.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Grace Huxford describes the key events of the Korean War and explains how it played out in Britain
encoded: On the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula, historian Grace Huxford describes the key events of the conflict and explains how it played out in Britain. The Korean War “created a blood debt that is crucial to understanding North Korean behaviour ever since” Forging alliances: Britain and the US in the Korean War

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How have nuclear weapons shaped global politics? 10 key moments in the post-war atomic world
type: item
date: 2020-06-22T15:20:36.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: 21st Century
subject: Cold War
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Atom bombs have been used in war just twice in history – at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan during World War Two. The results of this attack were so devastating that the threat of nuclear attack has shaped global politics ever since, says author Jeremy Black. He explores 10 key moments in the post-war atomic world...
encoded: What did not happen can be just as important, if not more so, than what did. A good example is provided by atomic weaponry. Nuclear bombs have never been used since 1945 – when they played a key role in ending the Second World War – yet they have shaped the post-war world. They were a cornerstone of the Cold War, helping ensure that rising tensions did not escalate to full-scale hostilities. During that period the creation of intercontinental nuclear forces capable of destroying the planet helped transfix the collective imagination, coloured public fears, and placed a heavy burden on leading economies. Nuclear capability casts a shadow over international relations to this day, and is central to modern pressure on so-called “rogue states”, such as North Korea. 1948: The Berlin Crisis As the Soviet Union became increasingly assertive in Europe, so the USA became more committed to its defence of Western European democracy. The Berlin Crisis was triggered by the Soviet decision to blockade West Berlin, which was occupied by British, American and French forces as part of the post-war settlement. In response, alongside an Anglo-American airlift of supplies into the city, America stationed B-29 long-range bombers in Britain, planning to drop atom bombs on the Soviet Union in the event of war. The Soviets had no nuclear capability at the time and the threat of attack helped bring a solution to the crisis. The bombers, however, remained. A brief history of Checkpoint Charlie – the famous Berlin Wall spot 1952: America tests the hydrogen bomb The USA believed it had reasserted its nuclear primacy when it tested the first hydrogen bomb, destroying the Pacific island of Elugelab. The bomb employed a nuclear explosion that heated hydrogen isotopes sufficiently to fuse them into helium atoms, a transformation that released far more destructive energy than the atom bomb. US superiority, however, was short-lived: Britain became the third atomic power in 1952, while the Soviet Union…

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Coronavirus: what might we learn from pandemics in the past?
type: item
date: 2020-03-16T15:57:32.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: 21st Century
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Pandemics
subject: Podcast transcripts
description: As Covid-19 dominates the news, read our interview with Laura Spinney (author of Pale Rider, an account of the 1918 influenza pandemic known as Spanish flu) from the HistoryExtra podcast. In the interview, Spinney draws historical parallels with other pandemics in history and asks what we might learn from disease outbreaks in the past
encoded: Note: this is an unedited transcript of our recent podcast Coronavirus – a historical perspective Matt Elton, editor of BBC World Histories Magazine: Obviously, Coronavirus is something that’s hitting a lot of headlines at the moment. Why does it strike such a chord, why are we so afraid of pandemics? Laura Spinney: Well, I think it’s something very primitive in us really. I mean, we’ve had to deal with epidemics of infectious disease, plagues if you like, to use a more kind of ancient and Biblical term, since we settled down in kind of semi-permanent settlements, since we started farming, that is, about 10, 12,000 years ago. And, you know, these diseases that kind of adapted to big groups of densely-living people, we call them the crowd diseases, and they kind of evolved in parallel with us as we adopted those new, more sedentary lifestyles. So it’s been a kind of arms race for a very long time, they know us very well and unfortunately because they’re small and they reproduce much faster, they tend to be a step ahead. They can just mutate and adapt and, you know, they’re just wherever we don’t want them to be before we can do anything about it and we’re seeing that again now. In some ways, there are many aspects, I think, of a pandemic which don’t change over time. There are many that do but there are many that don’t and those are the ones that speak to our, obviously speak to our most ancient fears. ME: And, of course, it’s natural for humans to look back at past examples of a similar thing to see if there’s any parallels or any lessons that could be drawn. Do you think there are particular pandemics from history that are most useful to look at in terms of parallels or is it just not a useful exercise generally? LS: No, I do think it’s a useful exercise, I just don’t know why we immediately rush to pick the worst possible example. Given that the Spanish Flu, or the not Spanish Flu, we should really call it the 1918 Flu, was pretty much forgotten for most of the la…

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Coronavirus: a historical perspective
type: item
date: 2020-03-16T15:55:33.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: 21st Century
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Pandemics
description: As COVID-19 dominates the news, Laura Spinney asks what we might learn from pandemics in the past
encoded: As COVID-19 dominates the news, Laura Spinney draws historical parallels with other pandemics in history and asks what we might learn from disease outbreaks in the past Read our transcript of the podcast interview here Why was the 1918-19 pandemic known as Spanish Flu?

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