This week on History Happy Hour: In 1993 two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down, and in the ensuing Battle of Mogadishu eighteen Americans and hundreds of Somalis were killed. But very few appreciate that this was just one day in a two-and-a-half-year operation—the most ambitious attempt in history to rebuild a nation. Why and how did it go so wrong?

In this encore episode we explore this with fellow Stephen Ambrose Tours historian Jonathan Carroll, author of Beyond Black Hawk Down: Intervention, Nation-Building, and Insurgency in Somalia, 1992-1995.

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Jonathan Carroll is an associate professor of military history at the British Army’s Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. Dr. Carroll has taught courses on U.S. and European military history; leadership, combat, and command; air power in contemporary warfare; and U.S. social and political history from 1865 to the present. A major focus of his teaching is on the First and Second World Wars. A native of the Republic of Ireland, Dr. Carroll served in the Irish Army for 12 years. In 2023, he published his first book on contemporary Irish defense. He received his doctorate in military history from Texas A&M University in College Station.

This week on History Happy Hour: It was a marvel of 1930s engineering, a line of underground forts containing hospitals, modern kitchens, telephone exchanges, and even electric trains. The fortifications were invulnerable to the heaviest artillery and to chemical warfare. Yet they fell to the Germans in just a few weeks.

Kevin Passmore has written The Maginot Line – A New History. We’ll talk with him about the controversies of how it was built, the men who manned it, and what happened when the Germans showed up.

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Kevin Passmore is professor of modern European history at Cardiff University. He is the author of Fascism: A Very Short Introduction, The Right in France from the Third Republic to Vichy, and From Liberalism to Fascism: The Right in a French Province, 1928–1939.

This week on History Happy Hour: Author Dan King interviewed more than 100 Japanese veterans while living in Japan, and has written a series of books telling the story of the war from their POV.

We’ll talk to him about his latest book, The Iron Graves of Saipan, about the men of the 9th Japanese Tank Division. Their story begins with training, chow halls, talent shows, pranks, and USO shows on the Manchurian border. But their journey ends in the brutal battles of the Mariana Islands, where only 4% survived.

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Dan King earned a degree in Japanese language from Cal State University, then worked at a tech company in Japan for 10 years. During that time, he interviewed 103 Japanese veterans about their wartime experiences, and often had the opportunity to review scrapbooks, letters and diaries as well. He is the author of Blossoms From the Sky, The Last Zero Fighter, A Tomb Called Iwo Jima, and The Yalu River Boys, all based on those interviews. He has also worked as a technical / historical / language advisor on films and documentaries including: The Last Samurai, Windtalkers, Flags of Our Fathers and others.