15-Minute History

Welcome back to a new season of 15-Minute History! Jon, Joe, and the rest of the team are glad to be back for season 10, where we are looking at the forces that made us, both the good and the bad.
It was November 15, 1884, and the German chancellor had company. Representatives from fourteen powers arrived at his home in Berlin that day, including Britain, France, Belgium, Portugal, and the United States. Otto von Bismarck had called them together because the governments of Europe all wanted pieces of Africa, their claims were starting to overlap, and he wanted it settled before it turned into another war on the continent.
The conference lasted three months. The delegates spent most of that time on trade, on who could use the Congo and Niger rivers, and on what it would take for one country to recognize another's claim to African land. They argued and disagreed.
What they did not argue over was who belonged in the room. No African ruler had been invited to Berlin, and none had been consulted beforehand. The men at the table had already decided that this was their conversation to have, and they were entitled to make whatever decision they wanted.
They went home without a finished map, since most of the borders were worked out in later years by treaty and force. But the terms were set, and over the next thirty years nearly all of Africa came under European rule.
Join us as we show you imperialism, how it worked in King Leopold's Congo and in British India, how the people behind it justified it, and how it still affects the world today.

Was the Treaty of Versailles the cause of World War Two? And what might Germany have looked like without the political chaos that it caused?
We hope you've enjoyed these summer pop quizzes. Join us next Monday for the start of Season Ten!!

New Season starting this coming Monday, October 6th! During the break, the 15-Minute History team will be republishing some of your favorite episodes. This episode originally aired on December 9, 2024.
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The benefits of hindsight let us examine faults in national policy through the lens of what followed. But in the midst of a global threat of nuclear war, the United States chose to support vicious dictators in the name of anti-communism. Were they right or wrong? Did it save humanity from death in atomic fire? Was this a good idea or a bad idea?

What rights do citizens of US territories have, and what changes when their homes become states?

New Season starting on Monday, October 6th! During the break, the 15-Minute History team will be republishing some of your favorite episodes. This episode originally aired on May 5, 2025.
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It was still dark. The group of men felt the breeze getting warmer as the eastern horizon began to show signs of light. One of the men, tall with no expression, watched as final preparations were made to a large object in front of the group.
The others saw the anxiety in his face in a way that only those had had been around him could discern. The man walked forward, spoke with some of the technicians, and watched them haul it away. It was going to a tower, visible in the distance. Conversations around him continued, but only because it seemed like they had to. Somehow, the silence would have been louder.
Not long after, notifications came from the tower; an all clear was given. At 5:29 a.m., a flash of light that was so brilliant it could be seen from 200 miles away blossomed in the desert. The mushroom cloud rose 40,000 feet into the air, and the shock wave was felt 100 miles from ground zero. The man who all that morning had worn no expression, would later recall remembering a Hindu scripture in that moment: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
Another man who witnessed the test described the overwhelming impression it left: "A new thing had just been born; a new control; a new understanding of man, which man had acquired over nature." Another observer said, "The lighting effects beggared description. The whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun."
Humanity had crossed a threshold.
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Join us as we show you the Manhattan Project, the reason behind the development of nuclear weapons, and the ethical implications of such an invention.