Summary
The birth of the modern environmental movement, Germany's 1918 Spring Offensive, the discovery of the concentration camp horrors of Bergen-Belsen plus the rebuilding of the World Trade Centre site; and the last occupiers of Europe's most westerly lighthouse.
Photo credit: Robert Sabo-Pool/Getty Images
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson. |
| 0:05.1 | Coming up in this edition, it's the centenary of Germany's 1918 Spring Offensive, the last |
| 0:11.1 | desperate bid to win the First World War. |
| 0:13.4 | And it brought great foreboding to all of us that we knew that there we were facing the biggest |
| 0:19.5 | fight of our lives. |
| 0:21.4 | Also from the last days of the Second World War, the horrors of Bergen-Belsen, as recalled by one of the liberators in 1945. |
| 0:29.0 | Inside the gates there was this mob of people, and there were people lying around dying or dead and I |
| 0:36.9 | had absolutely no idea what to do. We've also got the last lighthouse keeper from |
| 0:41.5 | Europe's most westerly island and the architect behind the rebuilding of the |
| 0:45.9 | World Trade Center site. But first, a key moment in the history of the global environmental movement. Just this past week the British |
| 0:54.6 | government has announced moves to cut the amount of single-use plastics in a bit to |
| 0:58.6 | stop plastics ending up in the oceans and it's a measure of the central role that the environment plays in |
| 1:04.0 | policymaking these days that such an announcement was given prominence at a time |
| 1:08.1 | when the UK government is facing a mountain of other problems not least |
| 1:11.6 | associated with Brexit. |
| 1:13.0 | But it wasn't always that way, |
| 1:15.0 | and it took a groundswell of grassroots activism |
| 1:18.0 | going back decades to get green issues at the forefront of global politics. |
| 1:22.0 | Hence our key moment from the past. green issues at the forefront of global politics. |
| 1:22.5 | Hence our key moment from the past. |
| 1:24.9 | Back in April 1970, 20 million Americans |
| 1:28.8 | came out onto the streets to demonstrate |
... |
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