Description
In this issue:
A New Intensity, 1915/1916. This month, MHM focuses on the second winter of the First World War. Jeremy Black analyses the transformation in the character of war that heralded the great offensives of the following year, while David Porter takes the planning of the Battle of Verdun as a case-study in the new intensity of the conflict
-Background
-Change of gear
-New technology
-Case study: Verdun
-Battle map
Wellington’s words. David Porter reveals the human being behind the Iron Duke’s ‘mask of command’.
Fortuna’s darling -the Emperor Julian and the Battle of Strasbourg. Marc DeSantis recalls the career of Julian the Apostate and his victory against the Alemanni at the Battle of Strasbourg in AD 357.
Ballistic bombardment -how the V-2 terrorised Europe. Dave Sloggett reviews Hitler’s V-2 campaign in light of later history.
Plus: news, reviews, museums, opinion columns, and much more!
From the Editor:
After a spike of interest around the centenary of the outbreak, public interest in the First World War has been at fairly low ebb through 2015. This is likely to change next year, with the anniversaries of the Somme, Jutland, and Lawrence of Arabia.
So we lead this month with an analysis of the shift of gear in the winter of 1915/16. The campaigns of movement in the late summer and early autumn of 1914 had quickly morphed into trench stalemate and attrition by the year’s end. But the resources for sustaining this kind of war simply weren’t available.
Offensives were too underpowered to have any chance of breaking through. Industry could not provide the guns and shells needed. The transition to ‘total war’ had not been made.
Welcoming Jeremy Black as a new contributor to MHM, we invited him to explore the transformation of war between 1915 and 1916 in preparation for the great offensives to come. His overview is supported by MHM regular David Porter’s case-study of the planning and preparation for Verdun, the first of those offensives, launched in February 1916.
Also this issue, we have Marc DeSantis’s account of the Roman Emperor Julian’s great victory over the Germans at the Battle of Strasbourg in AD 357, Dave Sloggett’s assessment of Hitler’s V-2 rocket assault on Britain in the last year of WWII, and, again from David Porter, a look at the man behind the mask of the ‘Iron Duke’, using his own words.
Cover Date: Jan-2016, Volume 6 Issue 4