Show Notes
*The history that this podcast episode explores involves harm and neglect to children and some listeners may find the details disclosed distressing.
In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we are joined by Paige Towers to discuss her new book, What They Stole – a deeply researched exploration of intercountry adoption from Korea to the United States, rooted in a family tragedy that shook her Iowa hometown.
The book begins with a shocking event: in 2008, a local bank vice president murdered his wife and children before taking his own life. For Paige, this was a window into a much larger and darker history – the story of Korean intercountry adoption, which began in the aftermath of the Korean War and continued for decades with little oversight or accountability.
We trace the origins of modern intercountry adoption to the mass displacement of children during and after World War II. In Italy, Greece, and Germany, orphans filled the streets, and American GIs and missionaries began taking children home – often through informal, unregulated channels. By the time the Korean War ended, a full‑blown adoption industry had emerged, driven by a combination of military humanitarianism, Christian missionary zeal, and Cold War anti‑communism.
Paige focuses on Harry and Bertha Holt, an evangelical couple who became the face of Korean adoption. The Holts started by seeking out the multiracial children of American GIs – children whose “whitened” appearance struck a chord with US audiences. But when those children proved scarce, they simply turned to Korean children, fulfilling a waiting list of 10,000 American families. The Holts pioneered “baby lifts” – chartering old military cargo planes, removing the seats, and packing up to 100 infants on unpressurised, freezing, turbulent flights. Many children died en route.
The system that emerged was reckless and coercive: adoptions by proxy (parents never met their child before the adoption was finalised), falsified records, and a global pipeline that eventually supplied children to Denmark, France, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Paige also documents a shocking pattern of murder – Korean children killed by their adoptive parents, cases that were largely ignored by a media more interested in feel‑good rescue narratives. What does it mean when good intentions produce harmful systems? Paige argues that the humanitarian narrative of adoption has often silenced the voices of adoptees themselves – their experiences of cultural loss, identity erasure, and, in the worst cases, violence. The book is a powerful call to reckon with the colonial assumptions embedded in intercountry adoption.
Topics covered: The 2008 Iowa City murder and its connection to adoption history World War II displacement and the origins of intercountry adoption The Korean War and “military humanitarianism” Harry and Bertha Holt and the Christian adoption mission Multiracial children and the politics of “whiteness” The shift to adopting Korean children Baby lifts: unpressurised planes, sick infants, and deaths in transit Adoption by proxy and the lack of regulation European adoption pipelines (Denmark, France, Sweden, the Netherlands) Adoptee activism and the fight for truth and reconciliation Paige Towers’ What They Stole is available now from the University of Iowa Press. Please consider buying from an independent bookshop or directly from the publisher. If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting us – we are migrating from Patreon to Substack. Details in the show notes. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share. ▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory ▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com ▸ R
More from Explaining History
In this episode of The Explaining History Podcast, historian Ewan Gibbs joins us again to talk about his new book An Injury to All: The Unmaking of the British Working Class. We discuss the nature of class identity and allegiance in the 20th Century, the almost hegemonic denial of class as a poltiical and historic force in Blair's late 1990s Britain and the effect of mass affluence, home ownership, changing work and aspirations on class identity. We also explore the return of class to the debate, particularly where it has been weaponised by the far right. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share. ▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory ▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com ▸ Read Articles & Go Deeper Website: explaininghistory.org
In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we are joined by Sam Parry of Cardiff Metropolitan University to discuss the concept of stateless nations – nations that have not achieved nation-state status for complex historical reasons.
In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we return to Keith Jeffery's official history of MI6 to examine a question that gets to the heart of how the secret state was built: who became a spy, and why?
China’s war against Japan was one of the largest, bloodiest and most consequential theatres of the Second World War — yet it is still too often treated as peripheral to the wider conflict.
In this solo episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we examine the American withdrawal from Iraq – the product of Trump's war with Iran, and a strategic defeat of historic proportions. Iraq has been enormously important to the United States since the end of the Cold War. It has served multiple strategic, foreign policy and domestic purposes. Its loss – the effective expulsion of American power from the country – is an epic disaster unfolding in slow motion. It doesn't look like the British retreat from Afghanistan in the 1840s, but it is a catastrophe nonetheless. The war against Iran has achieved the opposite of everything it intended. It has cost America its bases in the Persian Gulf. It has empowered the Houthi rebels in Yemen and threatened control of the Red Sea. It has surrendered the Straits of Hormuz. It has alienated the Gulf states and the Saudis. And now it has forced a strategic withdrawal from Iraq. We trace the long history of American involvement in Iraq – from the use of Saddam Hussein as a bulwark against revolutionary Iran and the Soviet Union, through the first Gulf War and the brutal sanctions regime that followed, to the catastrophic invasion of 2003. We examine the decision not to overthrow Saddam in 1991, the disbandment of the Iraqi army, the failure to understand Iraq's ethnic and religious divisions, and the looting of the National Museum – met with Rumsfeld's infamous remark that "freedom is messy." Drawing on John Gray's critique of liberal interventionism, we consider the argument that there are things worse than tyranny – and that what replaced Saddam's Leviathan was anarchy, a condition that elements of the American right seemed actively to welcome. The withdrawal from Iraq is not the orderly dismantling of empire. It is a rout – and what replaces American influence will almost certainly be Iranian. Trump has defeated his own country. Topics covered: The American withdrawal from Iraq The war against Iran and its strategic consequences Iraq as a Cold War client state The first Gulf War and the sanctions regime The 2003 invasion and its catastrophic aftermath The disbandment of the Iraqi army The looting of the National Museum John Gray on tyranny and anarchy The rise of Iranian influence in Iraq If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting us – we are migrating from Patreon to Substack. Details in the show notes. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share. ▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory ▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com ▸ Read Articles & Go Deeper Website: explaininghistory.org