The year was 1959. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was rounding out the second year of an already eventful second term, when suddenly he received a bit of shocking news. Fidel Castro, the man that had been waging a guerrilla war in Cuba for the past several years, had stormed into Havana on New Year's Day, forcing their America-friendly president to flee and turning the island nation into a socialist republic. Leading up to this seismic shift, the U.S.A. had broadly adhered to a policy of "containment," meaning that they would allow communism to persist wherever it already existed, but that they would not allow it to spread to new countries. Since it was hardly possible to predict in advance which nations would catch the Marxist bug, the containment blueprint was more reactive than it was proactive. And you'd better believe that when Cuba turned from an ally into a socialist enemy overnight, the American government was swift to react.

It wasn't long before the Eisenhower administration had set into motion a variety of actions designed to turn the tide in Cuba. Some of them were arguably illegal, others were completely bizarre, and most of them were utter failures that never even got off the ground floor. And yet it is worth studying them because they are all, in one way or another, expressions of a unique Cold War ideology. By diving deeper into the plots to dethrone Castro, one stumbles upon a lot of questions regarding America's approach to interventionism. What types of rationale were invoked to justify these drastic measures? Which, if any, were most likely to work? And why did U.S. officials push forward with their plots when they inevitably encountered major setbacks? Tune in to have these questions (and more) answered.

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The prevailing historical narrative has it that the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, bombings which killed more than 100,000 innocent civilians in a matter of minutes, were not only responsible for bringing about the end of the Second World War, but also morally justifiable due to the disproportionately costly nature of the alternative. However, in recent years some historians have challenged these conventional wisdoms and offered an alternative perspective: that these attacks were neither necessary nor consequential to the end of WWII. And since you won't find these views presented in most American classrooms, today's episode is dedicated to a fair and considerate discussion of the available arguments.

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The long-awaited second season of 20 Minute History is finally here. Episode 1 drops Monday, November 8th, with new episodes thereafter releasing on the second Monday of each month.

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