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War Classics – Inherit the truth: The Cellist of Auschwitz
When Anita Lasker came to Britain in March 1946, 80 years ago, having survived Auschwitz and having been liberated at death’s door from Belsen, she found that no one wanted to hear about her terrible experiences in the camps. Britons wanted to move on from the horrors of the past and look to the promise of the future.
War on Film – World War II with Tom Hanks
Taylor Downing reviews the latest film and television releases.
Military History Matters 151
Charlemagne: King, conqueror, emperor
In the first part of our special feature for this issue, Stephen Roberts traces the life of this extraordinary individual; while in the second part, he looks in more detail at Charlemagne’s victory at Pavia, which helped him establish the foundations of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Siege of Pavia: Defeating the Lombards, 773-774
In the second part of our special, Stephen Roberts reveals how a key victory helped Charlemagne establish the foundations for the Holy Roman Empire.
Charlemagne: From life to death, a timeline of events that defined the legendary king’s reign.
Infographics: Amy Brunskill
A world upside down: The American Revolution – Part 4: the final act
In the concluding part of our series marking 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, Fred Chiaventone reveals how the Revolutionary War was won at last.
War on Film – The American Revolution
Taylor Downing reviews the latest film and television releases.
The bridge that saved a city: The Iron Curtain fall – Part 5: the Berlin Airlift
Continuing our series on the coming of the Cold War, Taylor Downing examines the first major confrontation with the Soviets.
Judgement at Nuremberg
Eighty years on, Ben Goodlad reveals how the trials of 24 high-ranking Nazis shaped modern attitudes to punishing war crimes.
The Tsar’s last victory: The Brusilov Offensive, June-September 1916
It was the greatest Russian triumph of World War I – but the Brusilov Offensive also sowed the seeds of revolution, as David Porter reports.
War Classics – With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
With the Old Breed is a harrowing, visceral account of a US Marine’s combat experience fighting the Japanese in Peleliu and Okinawa in 1945. Together with Robert Leckie’s Helmet for My Pillow, it provided the material for HBO’s acclaimed 2010 television series The Pacific. Excellent though the latter was, the book offers much more.
Wolfpack: inside Hitler’s U-boat war
As Roger Moorhouse suggests in the introduction to Wolfpack, it was natural that post-war English language books about the Battle of the Atlantic would largely ignore the German perspective on the conflict.
The Spanish Civil War in the Air Volume 1: 1936-37
Under-funded and wracked by the hostility between political factions within its ranks, Spain’s military aviation was in a dire state in the period immediately before the Spanish Civil War. At this time,
Germany’s First World War Aviators: the lives of fliers
Since the late 1990s, the study of World War I has moved beyond the constraints of military history to embrace an increasingly multidisciplinary agenda. Not least in this has been the adoption
Tunisgrad: victory in Africa
It is something of a cliché in the history of the Second World War to claim that Stalingrad, the graveyard of Germany’s Sixth Army in Russia, was the decisive turning point of
Military mass graves unearthed in the Czech Republic
Archaeologists have discovered four military mass graves from the 18th and 19th centuries during rescue excavations in advance of the construction of the D11 highway between the towns of Jaroměř and Trutnov