Millennials: The Trauma Generation

We often hear about how the Second World War was more morally nuanced and complex than we have been led to believe. This is, to a certain extent, very true. The Axis powers meted out a level of genocidal destruction and suffering upon tens of millions of people across the world, decimating generations in places as far flung as Poland and the Philippines, and Croatia and China. To call their actions existential by their very nature is to arguably undersell the threat they posed. The Allies realized these were the stakes and were eventually faced with a very real question: what would it take to stop such a threat? It required what many have come to believe was the unthinkable: meeting destruction with destruction. And in meeting the Axis violence with more violence did indeed bring the war to its ultimate end.

In this newest episode of History Impossible we’re joined a second time by Richard Lim, host of the This American President podcast, who last appeared on this program a couple years ago to discuss the insane, contentious election of 1876. He is also the author of a new book, Refusing a Crown: How George Washington Changed the World, which releases on October 13, 2026, and covers the most significant aspect of America’s first president: his restraint from seizing power that almost certainly would have remained his.

“Because remember: Russia is a religious experience.” Those are the oft-repeated and well-said words by the host of The Eastern Border podcast, my good friend Kristaps Andrejsons. They are well-said because there are very few alternatives for explaining Russian actions, rhetoric, and political culture over the past near half-decade in its World War I-style conflict with Ukraine. The Russian religious experience, made emblematic by Kristaps’ and my favorite shared punching bag Aleksandr Dugin, is a phenomenon best understood as a more formalized and colossal version of what ISIS was ten years ago, and it helps explain why Kristaps believes the spiral of the Russian state as we currently know it is beginning in 2026.

Antizionism, as it has become, has been having a bit of a moment for going on three years. It is a tough nut to crack, given its various claims of varying legitimacy and, as we have covered more than once on History Impossible, its increasing tendency to veer into outright antisemitism, especially by those looking for a supposedly intellectual and moral veneer for their racial and geopolitical fixations. Part of the reason for this confusion is the complex intellectual history of the position, which, after 1948, became more complicated than the relatively straightforward debate over Jewish statehood before, during, and after the Holocaust.

After a bit of a hiatus, History Impossible is back with another special episode, this time looking at the phenomenon of outsourcing responsibility for bigotry and injustice at home to foreign powers. Whether it is the current blame for rising antisemitism in the United States being attributed to Israel’s actions in its ongoing wars with various Islamic states, or, as we’ll see, the tolerance and even approval of interning American citizens for the actions of warmongering empires during the Second World War, the picture is the same: no one taking responsibility for their feelings and beliefs that would otherwise be considered socially unacceptable.