Journey Through Time Episode 26 The Failed Nazi Coup (Episode 1) The Munich Beer Hall Putsch was the time when Hitler could have, and should have been stopped. In 1923 there were dozens of far right parties with paramilitary wings. The Treaty of Versailles had demanded the loss of lands still in German hands (much as Russia is demanding of Ukraine now). Particularly in conservative Bavaria, the German defeat was blamed on the ‘stab in the back’ from progressives and Jews. Knowing the importance of visual images, and inspired by the Italian fascists’ March on Rome, on 8 November 1923 Hitler and approximately 600 supporters marched on the beer hall Bürgerbräukeller, where Gustav Ritter von Kahr—the Minister-President of Bavaria was speaking. They surrounded the hall, and held von Kahr and other speakers at gunpoint in an adjoining room until they declared their support for the uprising . Although Hitler had the crowd in the hall eating out of his hand, the expected crowds outside did not materialize and the whole thing collapsed in farce.
In Our Time Another one from the archives. Little Women features Bridget Bennett Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Leeds; Erin Forbes Senior Lecturer in African American and U.S. Literature at the University of Bristol and Tom Wright Reader in Rhetoric and Head of the Department of English Literature at the University of Sussex. The podcast starts of with Louise May Alcott’s lifestory, emphasizing her parents’ eccentricity for the time and the influence of the Transcendentalists. Alcott herself was a prolific writer, although much of it was ‘sensation literature’, mainly written under the pseudonym A. M. Barnard. She did not particularly want to write for a teenaged girl market (not that there was a concept of ‘teenager’ at that time), but she was manipulated into writing it by her publisher who promised to publish her father’s book in return. Little Women was published in two parts. The first part was modelled on Pilgrim’s Progress, with the four girls each trying to overcome their personal flaws. Part 2 follows their adult lives. She didn’t want to write this one either, so she intentionally married Jo off to the Professor, who was not likely to appeal to many readers. The panellists then go on to talk about the film depictions of Little Women over time, and the way that increasingly there has been a conflation between Jo and Alcott herself, particularly in the most recent Greta Gerwig version.
The Documentary (BBC) When Christian Nationalists Came To Town The small Tennessee town of Gainesboro population 900, overwhelmingly Trump voters (80%), is disconcerted when a large parcel of land is bought up by a conservative developer with the aim of forging an “aligned” community based on shared values like “faith, family, and freedom“. It attracts young men, looking for a traditional family life and holding a particular view of the role of the church in society, and the locals don’t like it.
The Rest is Classified Ep.98 Putin’s Secret Army: The Rise of Prigozhin (Ep.1) Even though Prigozhin was known as ‘Putin’s chef’, he was never actually a cook: instead, he was a restaurateur, among many other things. He was born in 1961 in St Petersburg (the old Leningrad) to a middle class family, but he left school early and fell into bad company. From petty crime he escalated to a robbery with violence at the age of 18 and was sentenced to 13 years in a penal colony. He was released in 1990, as the old Soviet Union was collapsing. He started off by selling hot dogs, then moved into grocery stores, casinos, clubs and restaurants. At the same time, Putin was working his own way up in the thuggish capitalism of the 1990s. Prigozhin became Putin’s catering man, and President Putin brought the Japanese Prime Minister and G. W. Bush to Prigozhin’s restaurants when they visited. In 2011 Putin became Prime Minister, then moved back to being President. When protests broke out (and Putin hates protests), Putin turned to Prigozhin.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 