20th Century History

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The Twentieth Century will go down in history as one of the most tumultuous 100 years of development for our planet.

If you were born in 1899 at the dawn of the new century and lived for the next 10 decades, you would have paid witness to staggering steps forward in technology, science and medicine that would change our world for ever. Let alone two World Wars and numerous revolutions.

Here's just a few 20th Century inventions that we will be featuring over the coming months, powered Flight, The Car , Atom Bomb, Jet Engine, Mobile Phone, Computer and the list goes on.

Find below the latest great articles on the Century that changed everything.

A 'God-given signal' - The Reichstag Fire, 1933

(2 votes, average 5.00 out of 5)

Monday, 01 March 2010

9 p.m. February 27, 1933, the German Reichstag building is set ablaze. By the time firefighters had arrived, the parliament building was already gutted.

A communist outrage

Only four weeks earlier, Adolf Hitler had been appointed German Chancellor. On hearing the news of the fire, Hitler rushed to the site and there was met by Hermann Goring, who declared, "This is a communist outrage! One of the communist culprits has been arrested." Hitler saw it as a "God-given signal", and yelled that "All Communists must be hanged this very night."

Somerset Maugham A Short Bio

(3 votes, average 4.00 out of 5)

By Pete Jessup
Monday, 07 September 2009
The famous English playwright and novelist (William) Somerset Maugham (b.1874 – 1965) was one of the the leading authors of his day he was born at the British Embassy in Paris on 25th January, 1874. His father Robert Ormond Maugham, was a solicitor, working for the Embassy in France. He was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and later at Heildelberg University in Germany, Maugham became a medical student at St. Thomas Hospital, London. Whilst training to become a doctor Maugham worked as an obstetric clerk in the slums of Lambeth and it was these experiences he used to help him write his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897).
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Chauffeur To 5 British Prime Ministers - Great Uncle Reg

(11 votes, average 4.36 out of 5)

Tuesday, 01 September 2009
It's not every day a member of your family hands you a folder which amongst other things contains photographs of one of your ancestors at an event that held great significance for the whole world. But this was the position I found myself in recently having visited my parents in Yorkshire. And it was especially pertinent as the event in question was Prime Minister Chamberlain returning from Munich with a certain piece of paper - and Great Uncle Reg was there, in close proximity to the man who had only hours before been meeting with Hitler.
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Recent 20th Century Articles

Munich’s Wilderness of Mirrors: 1959 Poison Plot, or Not

The Wilderness of Mirrors—the organizational culture of the secret services. In it deceptions are false, lies are truth, the reflections are illuminating and confusing...The mirrors comprise information from defectors, disinformation from the opposing sides in the Cold War, deviously covered false trails, and facts thought to be valid but incomplete (and later established as totally untrue).

Encyclopedia of Cold War espionage, spies, and secret operations

Code Name Puppet

On November 18, 1975, Josef Frolik, a seventeen-year veteran of the Czechoslovak Intelligence Service (StB) who had defected to the West, testified before a U.S. Senate Subcommittee. In page after page of remarkable testimony, Frolik presented detailed information about the inner most workings of intelligence services, not only that of Czechoslovakia but also of the KGB and other Warsaw Pact services. He gave true names and code names of agents and StB officers.
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'Trippers' to the Curtain

Starting in October 1954, and for the next seven years, prominent Americans were flown to Europe to visit Radio Free Europe (RFE) locations in Germany and Portugal, the Czech-German border, and the cities of Berlin and Paris. This was in conjunction with the domestic fund raising activities of the Crusade for Freedom in support of RFE. Those who participated in these “study tours” were given the nickname “Trippers” and were expected to brief their respective state and local Crusade chapters and national organizations on “Radio Free Europe’s role in the fight against Communist propaganda.” Below we briefly will look at some of these trips.
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Reds Under the Beds: Joseph McCarthy and the Cold War

Aggressive, intimidating, and unfazed by the truth, Joe McCarthy single-handedly whipped 1950s USA into a frenzy of anti-communist fear and paranoia.

It was near the beginning of the Cold War: the Soviet Union had surged ahead of America in the arms race, Chairman Mao had not long come to power in China, and Americans everywhere feared the presence of 'Reds Under the Beds' within their own communities. In stepped Joseph McCarthy to shock the nation with a sensational announcement that confirmed their worst fears.
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On Saturday Night - The 1981 Bombing of RFE/RL

The temperature was below freezing in Munich and snow covered the grounds around the sprawling two-story headquarters building of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. No one observed the terrorists as they left their car that was parked nearby. They quickly and quietly walked over the frozen ground in the shadows of RFE/RL carrying a bomb and placed it in the corner of one wing of the building.

There was no warning of what was to come. A guard making his rounds of the exterior of the building was exactly in the corner of the building at 9:18 PM and did not see anything unusual. 46 people were working in the building that night. Just above the area where the terrorists placed the bomb, three employees of Czech Language Broadcast Service were busily preparing a news program scheduled for 10 PM that was never aired.
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