Explaining History

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we continue our exploration of Eugene Rogan's masterful The Fall of the Ottomans, examining the fall of Baghdad to British forces in March 1917 – a victory that transformed Britain's position in the Middle East and revealed the imperial ambitions that would shape the post-war world.
The British capture of Baghdad was far from inevitable. The catastrophic surrender at Kut in April 1916 had left the War Cabinet deeply risk-averse. General Robertson, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, feared that occupying Baghdad would leave British forces isolated and vulnerable to a resurgent Ottoman army. He warned against being "compelled later to fall back for any reason because of the objectionable political effect that such a retirement might produce."

But pressure came from multiple directions. The Commander-in-Chief in India argued that seizing Baghdad would "greatly increase prestige in the Islamic East" – a crucial consideration given British fears of Muslim insurrection in India. And the Russians were proposing a spring offensive that might see them reach Baghdad first, which would "nullify the Sykes-Picot agreement." Oil, too, was already a factor – Mosul was understood to be the most reliable source of oil in the region.
General Maud, whose superstition led him to launch his offensive on the 13th of December with the 13th Division in the vanguard, pushed forward despite London's caution. The Ottomans, recognising that Baghdad could not be defended, evacuated the city. As they withdrew, they destroyed military installations – wireless masts, cranes, water tanks, and the pontoon bridge across the Tigris. Looting erupted, and the American consul, Oscar Heiser, rode out to find the British advance guard.
Maud's proclamation – drafted by Sir Mark Sykes, co-author of the Sykes-Picot Agreement – declared that the British came "not as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators." But the people of Baghdad were not convinced. As one Iraqi schoolboy recalled, "the people of Baghdad and of Iraq as a whole saw with their own eyes how the English treated the Iraqis as slaves or captives."
Topics covered:

The British War Cabinet's caution after Kut
The Russian threat and the Sykes-Picot Agreement
The strategic importance of oil
General Maud's superstitious command
The Ottoman evacuation of Baghdad
The destruction of Ottoman infrastructure
Looting and the restoration of order
Maud's proclamation and Iraqi scepticism
Britain's imperial ambitions in the Middle East
Eugene Rogan's The Fall of the Ottomans is available from all good bookshops. Please consider buying from an independent retailer.
If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting us – we are migrating from Patreon to Substack. Details in the show notes.
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The Fall of Baghdad

In this solo episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we continue our exploration of Eugene Rogan's masterful The Fall of the Ottomans, examining the British campaign to capture Baghdad in 1917 – a victory that helped redeem the catastrophic humiliation of Kut.
The surrender at Kut in April 1916 had been one of the worst disasters in British military history. Thousands of British and Indian soldiers, starved into submission, were marched into captivity and then worked to death building Ottoman railways. The British government was deeply wary of any further advances in Mesopotamia. But the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force, smarting from the stigma of defeat, was determined to score a victory.
Drawing on Rogan's narrative, we trace the campaign from the cautious advance on the Tigris to the fall of Baghdad. General Maud, a commander who had been wounded in France and was the last man off the beach at Gallipoli, was determined to break the Ottoman defences. Despite orders from London that barred an advance on the city, Maud pushed forward – driven in part by a superstitious belief that 13 was his lucky number.
The Ottoman Sixth Army, worn down by illness, desertion, and casualties, was desperately understrength. Halil Pasha had been forced to redeploy forces to confront a Russian threat on the Persian frontier, leaving Baghdad dangerously exposed. When the British finally broke through at the Shumran Bend, the Ottoman retreat became a rout – pursued by British gunboats that wreaked havoc on exhausted and demoralised Turkish soldiers.
The recapture of Kut was a symbolic victory. But the fall of Baghdad, which followed shortly after, was the first major British victory in the Middle East – a triumph that had eluded them since the beginning of the war.
Topics covered:
The disaster at Kut and its aftermath
General Maud's command and his superstitious beliefs
The Russian threat on the Persian frontier
The battle for Kut (December 1916 – February 1917)
The breakthrough at Shumran Bend
The Ottoman retreat and the naval pursuit
The symbolic recapture of Kut
British fears of Muslim insurrection in India
Eugene Rogan's The Fall of the Ottomans is available from all good bookshops. Please consider buying from an independent retailer.
If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting us – we are migrating from Patreon to Substack. Details in the show notes.
Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.
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In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we explore the transformation of British society since Brexit – a story of the weaponisation of immigration, the erosion of the NHS, and the narrowing of who counts as "British."
Drawing on Liam Stanley's excellent book, Britain Alone, we examine how the anxieties that gave rise to the 2016 referendum have been magnified and entrenched in the years since. The referendum did not create the forces that produced it – it gave them permission to speak openly. Racist discourse, once hinted at, is now shouted. Social media has amplified far-right invective. And political parties – first UKIP, then the Brexit Party, then Reform – have seized upon anti-immigrant sentiment as their primary political offering.
We explore the devastating human consequences of the "hostile environment" – the set of policies introduced by Theresa May as Home Secretary to make the lives of migrants "miserable, costly and precarious." The Windrush scandal, in which thousands of people who had legally lived in the UK for decades were detained, deported, or stripped of their rights, is the most extreme example. Sylvester Marshall, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1973, was denied cancer treatment because he could not prove his immigration status – despite having lived and worked in Britain for 44 years.
The episode also examines the "nationalisation" of the NHS – not in terms of state ownership, but in terms of making the state more national in its regulation and distribution of resources. Eligibility for healthcare, housing, and other essentials of life has become based around nationality – and as defined by Britain's right, based around whiteness. The logic of these changes cannot be reduced to austerity alone; they are a political project of exclusion.
Topics covered:
Brexit and the mainstreaming of racist discourse
The Windrush scandal and the hostile environment
The "nationalisation" of the NHS
The politics of austerity and punishment
Post-imperial Britishness and the racialisation of immigration
The bipartisan embrace of anti-immigrant policies
If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting us – we are migrating from Patreon to Substack. Details in the show notes.

Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.
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In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we explore one of the most significant transformations of 19th-century Russia: the introduction of universal military service in 1874.

The Crimean War had exposed the profound weaknesses of the Russian Empire. Its army, composed largely of serfs serving 25-year terms, was backward, poorly equipped, and utterly demoralised. The British and French had demonstrated the power of industrialised warfare – railroads, telegraphs, modern rifles – and Russia had been humiliated.

War Minister D. A. Milyutin, a reformer shaped by the shock of defeat, understood that the army could not be modernised without modernising the society that sustained it. The emancipation of the serfs in 1861 was the first step. Universal military service in 1874 was the next. It was an act simultaneously of military and social policy – designed not only to create a larger, more effective fighting force, but to elevate educational standards, foster civic cohesion, and transform the army from an object of social contempt into a symbol of national unity.

Milyutin's reforms were inspired by the successes of the Prussian army against Austria in 1866 and France in 1870. But Russia was not Prussia. The challenge was to create a system that could mobilise the empire's vast population while navigating the complex ethnic and social divisions of the Tsarist state.

We explore the mechanics of the reform: the reduction of active service terms, the expansion of the reserve pool, the linking of education to service length, and the creation of a more equitable system of conscription. We also examine the paradox at the heart of Alexander II's reforms – the desire to modernise and liberalise without surrendering autocratic power – and the tensions that would eventually lead to revolution.

Topics covered:
The Crimean War and its impact on Russia
D. A. Milyutin and the reform agenda
Universal military service (1874)
The Franco-Prussian War as a catalyst
The abolition of serfdom and its military implications
Education, literacy, and the army
Mobilisation and the reserve system
Alexander II's reformist paradox

Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.
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Hegseth's War – The Catastrophic Consequences of Maximum Lethality
In this week's solo episode, I examine a ProPublica investigation into Pete Hegseth's tenure as US Defence Secretary – and the catastrophic consequences of his "maximum lethality" doctrine. Here, I want to expand on some of the key themes we discussed.
The Civilian Protection Programme
The story begins with a programme called Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response (CHMR). It was a relatively new initiative, adopted after years of heavy civilian tolls in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Its mission was to station personnel within major regional commands to develop a picture of life on the ground in combat zones, aiding decision-making on military strikes and helping to avoid or minimise civilian harm.
Shortly after taking office, Hegseth polled the nation's top commanders about cutting the programme. He expected them to endorse his view that civilian security was "woke" and out of step with "maximum lethality." Instead, every commander rebuffed him. Nine chose to preserve the programme; two asked to expand it.
Hegseth ignored them. He gutted the programme, cutting staff from nearly 200 to around two dozen, and reducing Central Command's team from 16 to one.
The Consequences
The results were predictable. In Yemen, an air campaign killed 153 civilians and wounded 243 others. In Iran, a US strike on a school killed more than 100 children.
Democratic senators and humanitarian groups questioned whether the cuts had contributed to the school tragedy. In a letter to Hegseth, 11 senators said the strike reflected the administration's "broader disregard for the strategic, legal and moral imperatives to minimise civilian harm."
But this is not a regime that cares about international law. As I argue in the episode, the extreme right believes that international law has held the US back for years – that it has been fighting with one hand behind its back. The breaking of international law is not a regrettable byproduct of their policies; it is the mission.
The "War Department"
In a speech last year, Hegseth announced that the "Department of Defense is over" and that the "Department of War" had been restored. He spoke of "peace through strength" and "the warrior ethos." He told his enemies they would be "crushed by violence, precision and the ferocity of the war department." In other words: FAFO.
But the reality is very different. The US military is under-resourced and overstretched in the Persian Gulf. It has lost its supply bases. It is facing critical shortages of everything from ammunition to toothpaste. The "maximum lethality" doctrine has produced exactly the opposite of what it promised.
Hegseth's Psychology
As I discussed in my earlier conversation with Jasper Craven, Hegseth is a deeply damaged individual – a product of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and of the far-right culture war that has consumed the Republican Party. He is living out a violent adolescent fantasy, speaking in the language of Christian fascism and the annihilation of the enemy.
But he is also a symptom of a larger problem. Trump surrounds himself with incompetent ideologues because he does not want specialists and experts. He wants people who will tell him what he wants to hear, who will create chaos and distraction while he carries on looting the state. Hegseth is the perfect product of that system.
If you'd like to support this work, please consider joining us on Substack. We are migrating from Patreon – details in the show notes.
Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.
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