This Week on History Happy Hour: In 1940, French painter Henri Matisse was ill, recently divorced, and full of doubt about his own career. But when the Germans invaded, he and his family defiantly refused to evacuate Nazi-occupied France.

Chris and Rick discuss what happened next with HHH alum Christopher Gorham, author of Matisse at War: Art and Resistance in Nazi Occupied France.

Christopher C. Gorham is a lawyer and teacher of modern American history at Westford Academy, outside Boston. He appeared on HHH in October 2023 to talk about his book The Confidante. He has degrees in history from Tufts University and the University of Michigan, and a law degree from Syracuse University. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post and in online journals. He and his wife Elizabeth live in Massachusetts.

This Week on History Happy Hour: The Hispanos of frontier New Mexico spent decades engaging in various forms of resistance against the corruption, exploitation, and violent oppression that frequently plagued their homeland following the conclusion of the Mexican-American War in 1848.

Chris and Rick welcome James Mills, author of In the Days of Billy the Kid. Mills dives into the lives of four men little known to history, who played a big part in the events of those days.

JAMES B. MILLS is an HHH alum, having appeared in 2023 to discuss his first book, Billy the Kid. He has studied the American frontier and numerous other areas of history since childhood. He has published numerous articles for True West and Wild West magazines. He enjoys living a quiet life with his cat Bernard and dog Dennis.

This Week on History Happy Hour: In 1915 Winston Churchill resigned as Lord of the Admiralty in the wake of the Dardanelles disaster. Struggling to deal with the fallout, he accepted a commission and headed for the front lines – where he began the most extraordinary comeback in political history.

In this encore episode, Chris and Rick discuss this pivotal year in Churchill’s life with J. Furman Daniel, author of Blood, Mud, and Oil Paint: The Remarkable Year that Made Winston Churchill.

Dr. John Furman Daniel III is an associate professor of political science at Concordia University in Chicago. He is the author of 21st Century Patton: Strategic Insights for the Modern Era, The First Space War: How Patterns of History and Principles of STEM Will Shape Its Form, and Patton: Battling with History.

This Week on History Happy Hour: What drove the thinking of Hitler and his followers? How did ordinary Germans come to embrace an ideology of hate and destruction?

Chris and Rick welcome Laurence Rees, award-winning historian and author of the new book The Nazi Mind: Twelve Warnings from History. Drawing on decades of research and previously unpublished interviews, Rees examines the twisted ideas at the heart of the Third Reich and what they reveal about human behavior.

Laurence Rees is an acclaimed historian, documentary filmmaker, and bestselling author specializing in Nazi Germany and World War II. Former head of BBC TV History, he has written and produced award-winning series such as Auschwitz: The Nazis and the “Final Solution” and The Nazis: A Warning from History. His books, translated worldwide, include Hitler and Stalin: The Tyrants and the Second World War and The Holocaust: A New History. His latest work, The Nazi Mind, explores the beliefs that drove the Third Reich.

This Week on History Happy Hour: In January 1945, as the Battle of the Bulge was coming to an end, the 29th Division readied itself to be at the point of the fourth Allied offensive in eight months. There, along the banks of the Roer River, is where volume five of Joe Balkoski’s epic series on the 29th gets under way.

In this encore episode, Joe joins us for his sixth History Happy Hour to talk about that book, The Last Roll Call: The 29th Intantry Division Victorious, 1945, and the many decades he has spent telling the story of the 29th.

Joe Balkoski is a renowned American military historian who has authored eight books on American involvement in the ETO during World War II. This includes a five-volume series on the history of the 29th Infantry Division in World War II and a two-volume set on American participation in the D-Day invasion. He has appeared as a D-Day expert on MSNBC, and his work has been praised by Joe Scarborough, the New York Post, World War II Magazine, and others.

This Week on History Happy Hour: We’ll explore the history of the British and German war dead buried on enemy soil in the two world wars. How did Germany and Britain remember, commemorate, and reconcile the legacy of their fallen soldiers?

Chris and Rick will speak with our guest, Tim Brady, author of Burying the Dead: Those who Cared for the Dead in Two World Wars.

Sunday at 4PM ET, on History Happy Hour, where history is always on tap.

Tim Grady is professor of modern history at the University of Chester. Much of his research has explored the human experience of the world wars and the contested legacies of conflict. He is the author of A Deadly Legacy, and The German-Jewish Soldiers of the First World War in History and Memory.

This Week on History Happy Hour: We travel back to the six critical months before Adolf Hitler seized power, when the Nazi leader teetered between triumph and ruin. As financial backers withdrew, the Nazi Party threatened to fracture. Hitler talked of suicide. The New York Times declared he was finished. Yet somehow, in a few brief weeks, he was chancellor of Germany.

Our guest is Timothy Ryback, author of Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power, a story of backroom deals, unlikely alliances, stunning betrayals, an ill-timed tax audit, and a fateful weekend that changed our world forever.

Timothy Ryback has written on history and politics for more than three decades. He is the author of Hitler’s Private Library, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year, and The Last Survivor, a New York Times Notable Book. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and the Financial Times. He is cofounder and director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation in The Hague.

This Week on History Happy Hour: Eighty years ago, Japan surrendered to the Allies after three of the most devastating bombing attacks of the war – two nuclear weapons and the fire-bombing of Tokyo. What was the decision-making process in this endgame of World War II? Was it just the atomic bomb that brought about Japan’s surrender?

This week, Chris and Rick will chat with HHH Alum, Richard Overy, author of Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima and the Surrender of Japan.

Richard Overy is Professor of History at the University of Exeter, one of Britain's most distinguished historians and an internationally renowned scholar of World War II. (He’s also a History Happy Hour Alum!) He is the recipient of the Hessell-Tiltman Prize, the Wolfson History Prize, the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize and is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Historical Society. His many works include The Bombing War, Dictators and The Morbid Age.