American History Hit

Paul Revere's Midnight Ride is a legend of the American Revolutionary War - galloping through the Massachusetts' dark to warn Sam Adams, John Hancock and the rest that the British were coming. The nex...

How did a US Army mission in Vietnam end with the massacre of up to 500 people? In this episode, Don is joined by Christopher Levesque to examine one of the most harrowing chapters of the war in Vietn...

Born in poverty in Texas Hill Country, President Johnson delivered an unsurpassed series of legislation, including the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act. Yet by 1968 he was so toxically unpopular...

The Vietnam War is a defining chapter in American military history. But how did the US get so involved in this far away conflict? And when did those in command realise that they had to leave? To answe...

Almost a year into the American Civil War, Union forces laid siege to Fort Donelson. In this episode, we're going to find out why this fort was strategically important, and how Ulysses S Grant got his...

Bobby Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign had an aura around it. Its urgency, idealism and raw emotion connected with a nation in turmoil. But his life was cut short, just as his brother's had been, ...

80 years ago, the battle of Iwo Jima came to an end on 26 March 1945. After 36 days of fighting, nearly 7,000 US Marines had been killed and another 20,000 injured. Don is joined by historian Timothy ...

How do you justify a war you lost, and that destroyed countless homes, businesses, towns and families? This was a question facing the southern states after the Civil War. Their answer? The myth of the...

The biggest counterfactual that hangs on the assassination of JFK is this: Would JFK have launched a ground war in the jungles of Vietnam? Don Wildman and his guest Fredrik Logevall explore what might...

Did the Confederates predict that secession would lead to war? How ready were they to fight? And what was their military strategy? Cecily Zander is back on the podcast for this third part of our serie...