I had planned to take this week and next off but I can't leave y'all hanging without your fix on Christmas! This week I'm bringing you a special mini fix episode about the Christmas Truce of 1914. This remarkable ceasefire that happened spontaneously all along the Western Front during the first winter of World War I has shocked and inspired the masses ever since. But despite tons of eyewitness accounts and tangible evidence like letters, autographs, and photos, there are many who refuse to believe that the Christmas Truce ever happened. So, what do you think? Is this actual history or merely a myth?

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Sources:

• Imperial War Museums video "How Did the Christmas Truce Happen?"
• Imperial War Museums "The Real Story of the Christmas Truce"
• History.com "The Christmas Truce"
• Institute for Economics and Peace "The Christmas Truce"
• "Western Front Companion" by Mark Adkin
• Forces War Records by Ancestry "The True Story of the 'Christmas Truce'"

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After talking about the Pearl Harbor attack last week and how it prompted US involvement in World War II, I realized I glorified the aftermath pretty hard. Yes, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor did directly lead to the US declaring war on both Japan and Germany. Yes, US involvement in World War II undeniably helped bring that war to a close. However, the US reacted in other ways at home that weren't quite as glorious. This week I'm talking about the ugly side of the Pearl Harbor aftermath, when the US government forced some 120,000 Japanese Americans, two thirds of them US citizens, into "relocation centers" or "internment camps" that could just as easily be called concentration camps. Mistakes were made, lessons were learned... lessons we can't afford to forget, especially now.

Support the show!

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• densho.org
• National Archives "Japanese-American Incarceration During World War II"
• Densho Encyclopedia "Picture Brides"
• Densho Encyclopedia "Executive Order 9066"
• National World War II Museum "Japanese American Incarceration"
• Wikipedia "Internment of Japanese Americans"

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I feel pretty well versed when it comes to World War II. I understand fairly well what was happening in Europe at least with Germany and whatnot. I know that the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 (84 years ago today) was the event that drew the United States into the war. But Pearl Harbor wasn't bombed by Germany. It was bombed by Japan. Wait, what? Japan? What does Japan have to do with Nazi Germany and World War II? This week I sit down with Quin Cho, an expert on the Pacific Theater during World War II, to talk about what was happening in Asia leading up to that fateful attack on Pearl Harbor. He'll fill us in on the rising action, like the Mukden Incident and the Second Sino-Japanese War, that led to the collision of two different war theaters into one big, bad world war.

Quin's books:

• "Rise of the Kwantung Army: Japan's Empire in Manchuria to 1932"
• "Competing Empires in Burma: A Chronicle of the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations in World War 2"

Support the show!

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• The National WWII Museum "Pearl Harbor Attack, December 7, 1941"
• Office of the Historian "The Mukden Incident of 1931 and the Stimson Doctrine"
• Office of the Historian "The Chinese Revolution of 1911"
• History.com "Pearl Harbor"
• Wikipedia "Zhang Zoulin"
• Wikipedia "Mukden Incident"

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