Month: September 2025

419: Millions of Spectators

Mark Podcast
Newly arrived Jewish Hungarians at Auschwitz. Camp officials and prisoner-laborers are separating those who will be kept for slave labor from those who will be killed immediately. Photo is from the Auschwitz Album.

When Hitler learned that Hungary was secretly seeking to make a separate peace with the Allies, he ordered the German military to occupy Hungary.

Hungary was home to the largest surviving Jewish community in Axis-occupied Europe. When the German military moved into the country, so did the SS. It set to work deporting and murdering Jewish Hungarians as quickly as possible, while Allied and neutral leaders condemned the killings.

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Transcript.

Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening War Theme

“Marcia funèbre” from Six Piano Pieces.
Composed in 1925 by Erkki Melartin. Public domain.
Performed by Jean Dubé and used pursuant to a Creative Commons CC BY 3.0 license. Source.

Closing War Theme

Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.

418: Bloody Tarawa

Mark Podcast

US military leaders, disappointed by the slow slog in the Southwest Pacific, try a new strategy of hopping small islands in the Central Pacific.

YouTube will not allow embedding of the Marine Corps documentary With the Marines at Tarawa, but you can watch the film on the YouTube site by clicking on the image above.

  • Listen now:

Transcript.

Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening War Theme

String Quartet No. 19 in C major “Dissonant.”
Composed in 1785 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Public domain.
Public domain recording. Source.

Closing War Theme

Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.

417: Over the Rainbow

Mark Podcast
Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz.

Blues records sold well in the 1920s, and the most prominent blues singers were women.

In the 1930s, teenaged Judy Garland became a film star, most memorably in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz.

  • Listen now:

Transcript.

Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening War Theme

“St. Louis Blues.”
Composed in 1914 by W.C. Handy. Public domain.

“You Made Me Love You (I Didn’t Want to Do It.)”
Composed in 1913 by James V. Monaco, lyrics by Joseph McCarthy. Public domain.

Closing War Theme

Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.