This week on History Happy Hour: Chris and Rick explore the story of two B-24 navigators from the same Illinois town, who find themselves in a famous bombing raid over Ploesti - and the woman who connects them.

Our guest is Jan Cress Dondi, author of The Navigator’s Letter: The Story of Two WWII Airmen, a Doomed Mission, and the Woman who Bound Them Together. Drawing on family letters and firsthand accounts, the book combines military history with and a story of courage, loss, and survival.

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

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This week on History Happy Hour: Chris and Rick welcome Robert Edsel, author of the book “Monuments Men,” to talk about his latest book “Remember Us: American Sacrifice, Dutch Freedom, and a Forever Promise Forged in World War II.”

We’ll talk about the occupation and liberation of the Netherlands, as well as the extraordinary, 80-year commitment of Dutch citizens to adopt and maintain the graves of American soldiers.

This week on History Happy Hour: The shocking untold story of the British royal family’s centuries-long investment in slavery and continued profiting off its legacy—from Elizabeth I to the present. Acclaimed historian Dr. Brooke Newman reveals the true story of the enslavers who were supported by members of the royal family in her new book The Crown’s Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas.

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?

In this encore episode, Chris and Rick talk with 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 Drawing on decades of research and previously unpublished interviews, Rees examines the twisted ideas at the heart of the Third Reich and what they reveal about human behavior.

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WE HAD A SCHEDULING ISSUE WITH THIS WEEK'S GUEST AND HE DID NOT APPEAR. WE WILL TRY TO RESCHEDULE. This week on History Happy Hour: President Truman’s choice to drop the atomic bomb is the most debated decision in the 20th Century. But what if he, himself, did not fully understand the decisions being made until after the atomic bomb was used.

Chris and Rick will talk to historian Alex Wellerstein about his highly regarded new book The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age.

Alex Wellerstein is an Associate Professor of Science and Technology at the Stevens Institute of Technology. He is also a visiting researcher at the Nuclear Knowledges program, Center for International Studies, Sciences Po, Paris. He is the author of Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, and he has written for The New Yorker, Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, and many other venues. He is perhaps best known as the creator of the NUKEMAP, the world’s most popular online nuclear weapons effects simulator. He is also the author of the Doomsday Machines blog, and he has taught at Harvard, MIT, and Georgetown University.

This week on History Happy Hour: The little-known story of FBI agents who went undercover to hunt down U.S. traitors on foreign soil during World War II. The goal: to identify and capture U.S. citizens plotting against their own country in the shadows of war-torn Europe. To accomplish this, a small group of federal agents assumed new identities to infiltrate underground networks, interrogate key suspects, and conduct a secret manhunt as harrowing as any Hollywood cliff-hanger.

We’ll talk to Stephen Harding, author of G.I. G-Men: The Untold Story of the FBI's Search for American Traitors, Collaborators, and Spies in World War II Europe. HHH Alum Andrew Roberts says “Stephen Harding, America’s leading commentator on the extraordinary scenes that define the finale of World War II, has done it again."

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Stephen Harding is the author of ten previous books, including the New York Times bestseller The Last Battle and Last to Die. He is a longtime journalist specializing in military affairs. For nearly two decades he was on the staff of Soldiers, the official magazine of the US Army, reporting from Northern Ireland, Israel, Egypt, New Zealand, Bosnia, Kuwait, and Iraq. Currently he is editor-in-chief of Military History magazine.

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.

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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?

In this encore episode we’ll chat with Richard Overy, author of “Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima and the Surrender of Japan.”

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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.