HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-10-20T11:11:31.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Reagan's plan to 'make America great again'
items: America in Korea: a failed occupation?
items: How the Cold War made the modern world
items: Watergate is the ultimate American conspiracy – but what if we’ve been misunderstanding it all along?
items: Iron Mountain: the conspiracy that duped America
items: Is Oppenheimer a true story? Meet the real Robert Oppenheimer, ‘father of the atomic bomb’
items: The CIA’s most unlikely Cold War weapon? A secret smuggling operation that terrified Soviet censors
items: CIA book smugglers of the Cold War
items: From Operation Snuffles to Killer Kleenex: the forgotten history of the secret Cold War experiments in Antarctica has just been uncovered
items: Could the US have won the Vietnam war?

Reagan's plan to 'make America great again'
type: item
date: 2025-10-17T07:00:59.000Z
creator: Matt Elton
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Phil Tinline explores why Ronald Reagan's presidency was a pivotal moment for the United States – and the extent to which we can draw parallels between the country during his 1980s tenure and today
encoded: The phrase 'Make America Great Again' is indelibly associated with President Trump – yet a very similar version of the slogan – 'Let's Make America Great Again' – was in fact used by his predecessor Ronald Reagan. What can this parallel tell us about the United States of the 1980s? And does drawing such comparisons reveal anything about the US today? Speaking to Matt Elton, author and documentarian Phil Tinline offers his take.

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America in Korea: a failed occupation?
type: item
date: 2025-09-26T08:51:29.000Z
creator: Rob Attar
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Cundill History Prize
description: Professor Kornel Chang revisits the three-year US occupation of the southern half of Korea that followed the Second World War, to see if opportunities were missed to prevent the bloodshed and division that followed
encoded: For three quarters of a century, the Korean peninsula has been divided between two very different regimes that are bitterly opposed to each other. But did it have to be this way? In his book, A Fractured Liberation, which has been shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize, Professor Kornel Chang revisits the US occupation of the south of Korea between 1945-1948 to explore whether opportunities were missed for a better future. For today's episode, he shared his findings with Rob Attar. Kornel Chang is the author of A Fractured Liberation: Korea under US Occupation (Harvard University Press, 2025). Buy it now from Waterstones

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How the Cold War made the modern world
type: item
date: 2025-09-17T07:00:27.000Z
creator: Danny Bird
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Vladislav Zubok debunks many of the popular beliefs about the Cold War, instead presenting an era of relentless change
encoded: For most of the latter half of the 20th century, the world was frozen in a standoff. The Cold War era was defined by the ideological fissure between capitalism, led by the United States, and communism, espoused by the Soviet Union. But in a new book, Vladislav Zubok challenges much of the accepted wisdom that has shaped popular perspectives about this standoff since 1991. Speaking to Danny Bird, Zubok discusses why Americans were far more ideological than their Soviet contemporaries; why decolonisation and the Global South became the ‘nuclear fuel’ that sustained the Cold War; and how the conflict’s conclusion in the 1990s continues to reverberate in global affairs to this day. Vladislav Zubok is the author of The World of the Cold War: 1945-1991 (Pelican). Buy it now from Amazon

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Watergate is the ultimate American conspiracy – but what if we’ve been misunderstanding it all along?
type: item
date: 2025-07-25T13:45:06.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Journalist and author Phil Tinline explores how a fake 1960s document convinced millions – and reveals what it says about fear, power and belief in modern America
encoded: In 1967, a mysterious book appeared on American shelves. It seemed to confirm the darkest suspicions of a country gripped by Cold War paranoia, grappling with increasingly controversial entanglement in the Vietnam War. Titled The Report from Iron Mountain, the book claimed to be a leaked government report, the findings of a secret think tank commissioned by the Kennedy administration to explore what might happen if the world ever achieved permanent peace. The conclusions were chilling. War, the report claimed, wasn’t just inevitable – it was essential. Without it, economies would falter, governments would lose their grip on power, and society would unravel. To preserve stability, the report proposed alternatives: mass enslavement, faked alien invasions, even environmental catastrophes staged to keep the population afraid and obedient. It's because of this report, says journalist and author Phil Tinline speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, that we’ve been getting Watergate wrong for decades. It wasn't the work of “Satanic cabals” lurking in the shadows like a demonic Illuminati. It was simply a political farce amplified by a short-lived zeitgeist. Which was made all the more galling by the fact that The Report from Iron Mountain was actually a work of fiction. How a ‘peace scare’ startled Wall Street The Report from Iron Mountain was not the work of shadowy government operatives. It was satire, authored by Leonard Lewin – a political provocation designed to question America’s military priorities and its dependence on conflict. “In early 1966, it looks for a moment like the Vietnam War is going to come to an early close, that there's going to be a peace settlement,” says Tinline, author of Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax That Duped America. “On Wall Street, the response to this prospect of peace is that the price of shares dips. It doesn't go up; it dips. That’s what's called a peace scare.” This bizarre market reaction – the fear that peace could harm the economy …

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Iron Mountain: the conspiracy that duped America
type: item
date: 2025-07-23T07:00:35.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Journalist Phil Tinline unpacks the impact and influence of The Report From Iron Mountain – a satirical document that unintentionally put rocket fuel under the conspiracies and paranoia of the 1960s
encoded: As the war in Vietnam spiralled out of control, US president Lyndon B Johnson was confronted by a different type of threat: a fake report so convincing that it tricked Americans into believing dangerous disinformation. But that was never the intention. Revisiting The Report From Iron Mountain, journalist Phil Tinline speaks to James Osborne, to reveal how a satirical report evolved into something far more sinister than anyone could have predicted. Phil Tinline is the author of Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax that Duped America and its Sinister Legacy (Apollo, 2025). Buy it now from Waterstones

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Is Oppenheimer a true story? Meet the real Robert Oppenheimer, ‘father of the atomic bomb’
type: item
date: 2025-07-13T16:38:11.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Historical people
subject: Trends-Entertainment
subject: TV interest
description: Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer tells the story of the creation of the atomic bomb, a weapon so powerful that it redefined the world order. And at the centre of its development was of the first nuclear weapon, and the paradoxes and moral questions that dogged him for the rest of his life
encoded: Few famous scientists have left quite as complex a legacy as J Robert Oppenheimer, the 'father of the atomic bomb' who reflected, in aftermath watching the raw power of the first ever nuclear test in 1945, "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Oppenheimer's moral quandaries and personal demons nestled alongside his scientific brilliance, and all are explored in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which tells the story of the Manhattan Project during the Second World War. Starring Cillian Murphy ( perhaps known to history fans for his role in Peaky Blinders) in the title role, the film follows Oppenheimer’s journey from acclaimed theoretical physicist to director of the top-secret Los Alamos laboratory, where he led team of brilliant minds in a race to unlock the destructive power of the atom. The star cast also includes Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer, Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock, Robert Downey Jr as Lewis Strauss, and Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves. But is any of what we see in the film true? Read on for a full breakdown of the real history in Oppenheimer. Is Oppenheimer a true story? Yes, Oppenheimer is based on true events. The film tells the story of J Robert Oppenheimer, a real-life American physicist who played a central role in the Manhattan Project, the United States’ secret programme to develop the first atomic bomb, which began in 1942. Kitty Oppenheimer, Lewis Strauss, Jean Tatlock, General Leslie Groves – they were all real historical figures who shaped Oppenheimer's life and work. So too were the questions around his political leanings, and the intense scrutiny he endured during the post-war era. Briefed with weaponising atomic energy, the 38-year-old Oppenheimer was chosen by General Leslie Groves to head up the project’s secret research laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and oversaw the development of the world’s first atomic weapons between 1943-45. Prior to taking up the post, he had carried out research into the quantity of radioact…

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The CIA’s most unlikely Cold War weapon? A secret smuggling operation that terrified Soviet censors
type: item
date: 2025-07-06T15:00:34.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: In the aftermath of the Second World War, as the Soviet Union imposed ideological control across Eastern Europe, the CIA turned to an unexpected tactic: a covert smuggling operation designed to win hearts and minds
encoded: At the height of the Cold War, the US and Soviet Union vied for any advantage they could find. And between the various proxy wars and games of economic brinkmanship, the CIA unleashed its most unexpected weapon: books. Their ambitious and unusual plan was to smuggle banned literature into the heart of Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe – and by doing so, weaken the grip of Soviet ideology on people’s hearts and minds. The books chosen (from authors including George Orwell, Agatha Christie, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Albert Camus) were specifically picked for their power to challenge authoritarianism, undermine censorship and question the doctrines of totalitarian ideology. Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, journalist and author Charlie English lifted the lid on the scale and ambition of this extraordinary campaign, which spanned four decades and reached deep behind the Iron Curtain. Read more | Did the Cold War ever really end? “The ‘CIA Book Program’ was a long-running US intelligence operation that ran from the mid 1950s until about 1991,” English explains. “It succeeded in secretly infiltrating around ten million books into the Eastern Bloc over that period in a bid to undermine the draconian censorship regimes that existed in every East European country.” A war of words In the aftermath of the Second World War, the Soviet Union had expanded its influence across Central and Eastern Europe, establishing satellite states in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania and beyond. With that expansion came rigid political control alongside strict ideological enforcement. Enabling this control were state censorship offices which policed what could be published, read or discussed. Large swathes of Western literature were suppressed, critical thinkers were silenced and entire philosophical traditions with rich histories (from liberalism to existentialism) were denounced as dangerous. Read more | What was the Truman Doctrine? “Every East European country that …

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CIA book smugglers of the Cold War
type: item
date: 2025-06-13T07:00:13.000Z
creator: Lauren Good
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Charlie English explores how the CIA used literature as a secret weapon during the Cold War, by smuggling books into the Eastern Bloc
encoded: During the Cold War, the CIA book programme was a covert campaign to smuggle books into the Eastern Bloc using everything from balloon drops to baked bean tins. But why was literature such a significant weapon in the culture wars between east and west? Lauren Good speaks to author Charlie English about his book The CIA Book Club: The Gripping New History of the Best-Kept Secret of the Cold War. Charlie English is the author of The CIA Book Club: The Gripping New History of the Best-Kept Secret of the Cold War ( William Collins, 2025). Buy it now from Waterstones

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From Operation Snuffles to Killer Kleenex: the forgotten history of the secret Cold War experiments in Antarctica has just been uncovered
type: item
date: 2025-06-01T09:00:26.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Period
description: A new academic study reveals how Cold War paranoia, space medicine, and germ theory collided in one of the most bizarre scientific outposts of the 20th century. Meet the men who gave their blood and nasal mucus to NASA in the name of science…
encoded: The United States emerged from the aftermath of the Second World War a superpower. Stepping into the Cold War – and a technological arms race with the Soviet Union – the US’s new dominance within the global order meant that both powers increasingly viewed space as a scientific frontier and potential strategic domain. With this came a wave of research to answer increasingly urgent questions. Could humans survive in total isolation? What would happen to human bodies in sterile environments? And how could disease or disaster be prevented in space? NASA, the US space agency founded in 1958, was at the forefront of these investigations, not only as an engineering powerhouse but also as a pioneer in biomedical science. Now, decades on, newly published historical research shines a light on one of the strangest – and most obscure – arenas of this Cold War experimentation and biomedical testing: the frozen bases of Antarctica. In ‘Germs, infections, and the erratic 'natural laboratory' of Antarctica: from Operation Snuffles to the Killer Kleenex’ (Medical History), historian Vanessa Heggie of the University of Birmingham uncovers a remarkable and little-known chapter in the story of 20th-century science. Her research argues that Antarctica was a key pillar in global biomedical research – and a Cold War-era site of secretive NASA-backed experiments. Drawing on decades of archival material, Heggie traces the evolution of microbiological studies on the continent, from the early days of sampling to Cold War surveillance-style studies and, ultimately, experiments to mimic the environment of space on earth, backed by the American space agency. The Heroic Age of sampling Heggie’s research explains that Antarctica’s journey to become a hub of experimental testing began in the early 20th century, during the so-called Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration. As germ theory gained traction in Western medicine, medical officers on polar expeditions began collecting bacteria from the environ…

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Could the US have won the Vietnam war?
type: item
date: 2025-04-14T06:00:19.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Geoffrey Wawro considers the question of whether US firepower in Vietnam could ever have won out against their elusive enemy
encoded: When US forces entered Vietnam, the nation's leaders believed they could contain communism and secure victory. Instead, they found themselves trapped in a war that drained resources, divided the country, and ultimately ended in failure. Geoffrey Wawro explains to Elinor Evans how flawed strategies doomed the US campaign from the start, and why Nixon’s secret plan to end the war failed to achieve lasting 'peace with honour'. Geoffrey Wawro is the author of The Vietnam War: A Military History (Basic Books, 2024). Buy it now from Amazon

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