History That Doesn't Suck

“Comrade Stalin, now that he is general secretary, has concentrated immense power in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of exercising this power with sufficient caution.”

This is the story of Joseph Stalin’s path to becoming the dictator of the USSR. 

Ioseb (Joseph) Jughashvili, or little “Soso,” is a good student. A choir boy, in fact. But that changes as the Orthodox Georgian increasingly puts his faith in the Bolshevik branch of Russia’s Social Democrats. Under Vladimir Lenin’s leadership, Soso, now going by Joseph Stalin, becomes a true revolutionary. One who embraces violence and murder as an acceptable means to an end amid Russia’s shift from revolution to civil war.

With Lenin’s passing in 1924, it’s clear that someone has to step into his shoes, and Stalin deftly outmaneuvers Leon Trotsky to be that someone. But he won’t just lead it. Stalin will remake the Soviet Union in his own image, industrializing and consolidating his power at all costs. Millions will die. Millions more disappear into the gulags, never to be seen again. This is the rise and reign of Joseph “the Man of Steel” Stalin.

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“Being a Jew is not a crime, I am not a dog.”

This is the story of the start of the Holocaust. 

Serving as the scapegoat for everything from a disappearing child to the Black Plague, European Jews are used to “anti-Jewry.” But as the nation state rises in the modern world, it brings the so-called “Jewish Question” to the fore: can one be a faithful Jew and modern citizen? As modern antisemitism rises and European Jews face pogroms and the Dreyfus Affair, some begin to think they need a nation of their own. Jewish nationalism, or “Zionism,” is born.

Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the Great War, Adolf Hitler’s Nazism is leaning into the continent’s centuries-old anti-Jewry and antisemitic ideas to claim that the Jews are responsible for Germany’s postwar woes. Once in power, he begins systematically removing rights from the Reich’s Jewish population. This includes taking their citizenship through the Nuremberg Race Laws in 1935, and an unfathomable, deadly, destructive pogrom in 1938: Kristallnacht. 

Stateless and persecuted, European Jews try to flee Nazism—can they find safety in America? We’ll see how that goes as we follow the St. Louis to America’s shores, and as the German American Bund gathers in Madison Square Garden…

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Professor Greg Jackson is touring the country with a live version of the podcast telling the story of The Unlikely Union of American states. Starting Sep 19, 2025 through July 4, 2026, you can hear the Professor history-tell in person, with video and live musicians. 

It’s not recorded for the podcast so get your tickets now at ⁠HTDSpodcast.com/live-shows

In 100 minutes Professor Jackson will take audiences on a remarkable 100-year journey that begins when thirteen distinct, disparate British colonies set aside differences to unite as something greater. Then, in less than a century of this young nation's existence, the durability of its union and commitment to its founding ideals are put to the test in a bloody civil war. 

In 2026, America will turn 250 years old, remarkably— because it nearly died a thousand deaths in just its first 100. This live stage show celebrates America’s semiquincentennial (250th birthday) by not only returning to its bold Declaration of Independence, but revisiting key events in its first centennial that gave this nation, as Abraham Lincoln spoke, “a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

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“There will be no more mercy now; anyone who stands in our way will be butchered.”



This is the story of Adolf Hitler and the collapse of the Weimar Republic. 



A dropout. A failed applicant to Vienna’s prestigious Academy of Fine Arts. A decorated but low-ranking soldier who attempts to overthrow the state and is convicted of treason. But only a decade or so later, he’s the nation’s leader. Not just the Chancellor, not even a “mere” president. He’s Germany’s dictator. The “Führer.” 

How on earth does such an underwhelming man rise to such an overwhelming position of power? With virulent nationalism, rabid antisemitism, fearmongering, and violence in an economically panicked, democracy-doubting, and defeated Germany. This is the rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Reich. 

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“Italy, Gentlemen, wants peace, wants quiet, wants work, wants calm; we will give it with love, if that be possible, or with strength, if that be necessary.”

This is the story of Italy’s Benito Mussolini’s creation of fascism and rise to power in interwar Italy.

Benito starts life the way his father intended—as a socialist—and the often moving, young schoolteacher quickly emerges as a leading voice in the movement as he’s entrusted to serve as the editor of one of the party’s most important newspapers. But the Great War changes that. Benito supports it, the party doesn't, and by the conflict’s end, the returned soldier has a new idea—one that takes him across the political spectrum, all the way from the Marxist left to the nationalist far-right—a violent, war-glorifying, anti-democratic, one-party, dictatorial version of nationalism. He calls it “fascism.” 

Benito speaks of order. Economic prosperity. National pride. Some see his black-clad fighting squads, known as “Blackshirts,” as their saviors from the far-left’s communism, so feared in the wake of the recent Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Indeed, many Italians welcome his march on Rome and his growing powers as Prime Minister, and celebrate his foreign policy achievements, including a reconciliation between Italy and the Vatican. 

But as Benito kills Italy’s constitutional monarchy in all but name as he turns into a dictator, conquers Ethiopia, ignores the League of Nations, and bonds with Germany’s rising dictator Adolf Hitler, former allies are growing concerned. Some fear his anti-democratic path will also embolden Germany. As W.E.B. Du Bois questions: “If Italy takes her pound of flesh by force, does anyone suppose that Germany will not make a similar attempt?” Only time will tell.

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