Month: May 2016

Reminder

Mark Supplemental

There will be no new episode of The History of the Twentieth Century this week, because this is Memorial Day weekend in the United States and a bank holiday weekend in the UK. We’ll be back with a new episode next week.

033: The Mountain Where Your Souls Lie

Mark Podcast
Port Arthur after the surrender. Note the multiple sunken battleships. 203 Hill is at the top left of the picture.
Port Arthur after the surrender. Note the multiple sunken battleships. 203 Hill is at the top left of the picture.

This week, part three of our series on the Russo-Japanese War, covering the Battle of Liaoyang, and the fall of Port Arthur. The Russian Empress, Alexandra, gives birth to a boy, Alexei Nikolayevitch, and the Imperial Family soon learn that he has hemophilia.

Listen.

Download.

Transcript.

 

Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening Theme

Night on Bald Mountain
Composed in 1867 by Modest Mussorgsky. Public domain.
Performed by the Skidmore College Orchestra. Public domain recording. Source.

“Shika No Tone”
Traditional. Public domain.
Public domain recording. Source.

Closing Theme

 

Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.

Red Sun Rising

Mark Wargames

IMG_0927

 

Red Sun Rising was the name of a conflict simulation game (wargame) published by Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI) in 1977. I was a college sophomore when the game came out, and I bought a copy at once.

IMG_0930
A portion of the Red Sun Rising map, showing the Liaodong Peninsula, and a number of locations that should be familiar to anyone listening to the podcast.

 

IMG_0929
Some of the counters from Red Sun Rising. Below are Japanese and Russian battleships. Above are some leader counters. Note the leader ratings. Togo is a better admiral than Kamimura, who’s about a match for Rozhdestvensky. Oyama is a better general than Kuropatkin, who is better than Nogi (III Army). At Port Arthur, Smirnov is a better general than the dismal Stoessel. In the game, you roll a die every turn. On a roll of “6,” Smirnov is in command at Port Arthur for that turn. On any other result, Stoessel is in charge. Do you agree with these assessments of the commanders?

 

Red Sun Rising is a great game and an excellent explainer for the Russo-Japanese War. (Not to mention a source for the podcast series on the war.) It covers both land and naval warfare. The Japanese must move their armies into Manchuria and supply them via transport fleets that are vulnerable to Russian attack.

But the game was amazing to me for a whole other reason: I had, at that time, never even heard of the Russo-Japanese War. The game made clear not only the course of the war, but the fact that the war was an important development in the history of the century. And here I had never even heard of it!

And so, this week’s episode of the podcast is titled in honor of this amazing wargame conflict simulation.

032: Red Sun Rising

Mark Podcast
A period map of the theater of the Russo-Japanese War (click for larger version).
A period map of the theater of the Russo-Japanese War.

This week, part two of our series on the Russo-Japanese War, covering the Battle of the Yalu River, the battles at Nanshan and Delixu, the naval Battle of the Yellow Sea and the Russian raids on Japanese shipping. And in St. Petersburg, Admiral Rozhdestvensky prepares for an unprecedented effort to send ships from the Baltic Fleet all the way around Africa and Asia to link up with the embattled Pacific Squadron at Port Arthur.

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Download.

 

Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening Theme

“Etenraku”
Traditional. Public domain.
Performed by Ron Korb. Public domain recording. Source.

“Farewell of Slavianka”
Composed in 1912 by Vasily Ivanovich Agapkin. Public domain.
Performed by the United States Coast Guard Band. Public domain recording. Source.

Closing Theme

 

Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.

031: The Ruler of the East

Mark Podcast
A period Japanese wood block print of Japanese destroyers attacking the Russian Pacific Squadron at Port Arthur.
A period Japanese wood block print of Japanese destroyers attacking the Russian Pacific Squadron at Port Arthur.

This week, we examine the run-up to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. We look at the emerging rivalry between Russia and Japan following the Boxer Uprising, Japan’s surprise attack on Port Arthur, and the opening weeks of the war.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening Theme

“God Save the Tsar”
Composed in 1833 by Alexei Lvov. Public domain.
Public domain recording. Source.

1812 Overture
Composed in 1880 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Public domain.
Performed by the Skidmore College Orchestra. Public domain recording. Source.

Closing Theme

 

Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.

030: The Concert of Europe

Mark Podcast
The Peace Palace in The Hague, seat of the Permanent Court of Arbitration.
The Peace Palace in The Hague, seat of the Permanent Court of Arbitration

Our thirtieth episode! This week, we take a look at the so-called “Concert of Europe,” the informal arrangement by which Europe has kept itself (mostly) at peace for the past 85 years. We also examine the Hague Peace Conference of 1899.

Listen.

Download.

 

Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening Theme

“Rule, Britannia!”
Composed in 1740 by Thomas Arne. Public domain.

Aragonaise from Carmen
Composed in 1875 by Georges Bizet. Public domain.
Performed by Papalin, and used pursuant to a Creative Commons license. Details.

Closing Theme

 

Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are
© and ℗ 2015, 2016 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.