This week on History Happy Hour: After the outbreak of World War I, German sabotage agents set out to destroy neutral America’s war-making abilities by unleashing a campaign of terror and destruction. A network of saboteurs and spies, scientists and diplomats worked furiously to wage a secret war on the American homeland long before the United States ever entered the war. This campaign culminated in one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history: the Black Tom explosion in 1916 across the harbor from New York City, which destroyed a staggering half a billion dollars of [...] more

From 1914-1918, soldiers from all over the world found themselves in this remote part of the Western Front, battling to control this forbidding piece of French woodland. French, Germans, Italians, Austrians and, eventually Americans all came to know the horrors of fighting in the Meuse Argonne. It was here, in 1918, that America launched its final offensive of the Great War. Battles that saw Charles Whittlesey and his 'Lost Battalion’ hold out against insurmountable odds and Sergeant Alvin York, the Tennessee backwoodsman and pacifist, writes himself into American military history. Join host-historians Chris Anderson and Rick [...] more

Ubique (Everywhere), the motto of the Royal Artillery Regiment, is an apt description of the World War II service of the South Nottingham Hussars. A part-time cavalry unit before the war, upon mobilization in 1939 the “South Notts” traded their chargers for guns and served with distinction from Tobruk across North Africa to Sicily and then all the way across Europe and into Germany; in the process becoming what Major Gordon Corrigan called, “A British Band of Brothers.” Join Rick and Chris this week as we discuss At Close Range: Life and [...] more

This week on History Happy Hour: General George S. Patton. The debate still rages: Was he a brilliant combat commander or the most over-rated general of the war? A legendary leader or a legend in his own mind? Whatever you think of Patton, there is no getting around the fact that he is one of most-chronicled figures of World War II. Historian Kevin Hymel is weighing in with a book that seeks to add a new dimension to Patton’s story by looking at the general through the eyes of the soldiers who fought with him. Host-historians [...] more

The true story of two British POWs in WWI who hatched an elaborate escape plot that hinged on a Ouija Board, a feigned suicide attempt, and remarkable perseverance.Host historians Chris Anderson and Rick Beyer welcome Margalit Fox, author of “ The Confidence Men: How Two Prisons of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History. ” Captured after a horrific siege near Baghdad, imprisoned by the Ottoman Empire, these two British soldiers pulled off a an ingenious escape fromtheir remote mountaintop prison in Turkey – with the unintentional help of their captors! [...] more