American History Through the Eyes of Radio
April 12, 1945 – January 20, 1949 · 6 broadcasts
American History Through the Eyes of Radio is not a program but a preservation archive -- a collection assembled by the Old Time Radio Researchers of the twentieth century's hinge moments as the nation first heard them on the air. There is no host and no cast; each entry is a genuine historical recording, from a mayor's eulogy to a battlefield report to a surrender bulletin, presented in the medium that carried it into American living rooms. The six broadcasts gathered here fall across the end of the Second World War and its aftermath: New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia's radio response to the death of Franklin Roosevelt in April 1945; a short news report on the Nazi women's camp at Ravensbrueck; the flash announcing Hitler's death; the first word of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, with President Truman's own statement; the bulletin marking Japan's surrender aboard the USS Missouri; and Truman's 1949 inaugural address. Behind these six sits a far larger held archive -- hundreds of recordings reaching back to 1919 -- and the sound in every case is the history itself, not a re-creation of it.
Episode Spine
Grouped by year. Jump to the full list below, or open a season on its own page.
1945
1949
American History Through the Eyes of Radio is not a program but a preservation archive -- a collection assembled by the Old Time Radio Researchers of the twentieth century's hinge moments as the nation first heard them on the air. There is no host and no cast; each entry is a genuine historical recording, from a mayor's eulogy to a battlefield report to a surrender bulletin, presented in the medium that carried it into American living rooms. The six broadcasts gathered here fall across the end of the Second World War and its aftermath: New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia's radio response to the death of Franklin Roosevelt in April 1945; a short news report on the Nazi women's camp at Ravensbrueck; the flash announcing Hitler's death; the first word of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, with President Truman's own statement; the bulletin marking Japan's surrender aboard the USS Missouri; and Truman's 1949 inaugural address. Behind these six sits a far larger held archive -- hundreds of recordings reaching back to 1919 -- and the sound in every case is the history itself, not a re-creation of it.