Curated playlist
Totalitarian states
- Vichy FranceVichy France began on the 10th of July 1940, the day the French National Assembly voted by 569 votes to 80 to hand absolute power to an 84-year-old military hero named Marshal Philippe Pétain. France had just suffered a catastrophic…
- North KoreaNorth Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, is a country that Amnesty International considers to hold the worst human rights record in the world, yet it also once boasted a healthcare system with nearly 45,000 family…
- Slovak Republic (1939–1945)On the 14th of March 1939, the Slovak parliament gathered in Bratislava and voted unanimously to break away from Czechoslovakia. The vote came under extraordinary pressure. Franz Karmasin, leader of the German minority in Slovakia, had…
- Socialist Republic of RomaniaOn the 25th of December 1989, Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena were executed by firing squad moments after a drumhead court-martial delivered its verdict. The trial lasted an hour and a half. Just days before, Ceaușescu had been…
- Fascist ItalyFascist Italy is the name given to the period from 1922 to 1943, when Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party ruled the Kingdom of Italy. The regime's own 1935 Doctrine of Fascism declared the Fascist State was "a synthesis and a unit…
- Hungarian People's RepublicThe Hungarian People's Republic was born on the 20th of August 1949, when a newly elected parliament passed a constitution that was, by most accounts, a near-carbon copy of the Soviet original. For the next forty years, Hungary existed as…
- Protectorate of Bohemia and MoraviaOn the 16th of March 1939, Adolf Hitler stood at Prague Castle and proclaimed that for a thousand years the provinces of Bohemia and Moravia had formed part of the Lebensraum of the German people. With that declaration, a new kind of…
- TurkmenistanTurkmenistan sits at the center of one of history's great crossroads. Bordered by Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and the Caspian Sea, this landlocked nation in Central Asia has served as a passage for empires for thousands of…
- Empire of JapanThe Empire of Japan lasted 79 years, beginning with the Meiji Restoration on the 3rd of January 1868 and ending with the ratification of the Constitution of Japan on the 3rd of May 1947. Albrecht Furst von Urach, writing in a 1942 booklet…
- Ba'athist IraqBa'athist Iraq came to power on the 17th of July 1968, when a small number of military units and civilian Ba'athists seized key government buildings in Baghdad in the early hours of the morning. All telephone lines were cut at 03:00. Tanks…
- AfghanistanAfghanistan has been called the graveyard of empires, and that nickname was not chosen lightly. Persians, Macedonians, Mongols, British, Soviets, and Americans have each marched into this landlocked country at the crossroads of Central and…
- Nazi GermanyNazi Germany lasted just twelve years, from 1933 to 1945, yet in that span it launched the deadliest war in human history and carried out the systematic murder of millions of people. Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on the…
- ManchukuoManchukuo lasted just thirteen years, from 1932 until its dissolution in 1945, yet it carried the grand title of empire and the trappings of a brand new civilization. A press release from the Japanese Information Service on the 1st of…
- Italian Social RepublicThe Italian Social Republic existed for just 19 months, yet its name carries a weight that still shapes Italian politics today. Proclaimed on the 23rd of September 1943 in the chaos following Italy's armistice with the Allies, it was a…
- Polish People's RepublicThe Polish People's Republic was born out of the ruins of a country that had lost nearly a third of its population in six years of war. By the census of the 14th of February 1946, Poland counted only 23.9 million inhabitants, down from…
- Mongolian People's RepublicThe Mongolian People's Republic began with a renaming. In 1924, the ancient capital of Mongolia was rechristened Ulaanbaatar, meaning "red hero", and a new constitution founded a communist state that would last nearly seven decades.…
- People's Republic of BulgariaThe People's Republic of Bulgaria was born on the night of the 9th of September 1944, when communist guerrillas launched a coup that ended a monarchy and began four decades of Communist rule. That night, a new government took power under…
- People's Socialist Republic of AlbaniaOn the 10th of January 1946, a small Balkan nation declared itself a people's republic, and began one of the most isolated and doctrinaire communist experiments in twentieth-century history. The People's Socialist Republic of Albania held…
- Soviet UnionOn the 26th of December 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev officially recognized the dissolution of the Soviet Union, ending nearly seven decades of Soviet rule. The country he led had spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until that day. It was the…