Somme, 1916
In the first part of our special, Stephen Roberts marks the 110th anniversary of the offensive that saw the bloodiest day in Britain’s military history, before looking in more detail at the Battle of the Boar’s Head in the second part.
attrition
The Mill on the Meuse
In the second part of our special feature, Graham Goodlad examines the epic French defence of the fortress of Verdun in the longest battle of World War I.
The Western Front: a history of the First World War
This is the first of a planned three-part history of the First World War organised by theatre. The second volume will deal with the Eastern Front (including Italy and the Balkans), the third with the wider war (mainly the Middle…
This week: Operation Barbarossa
Eighty years ago next month, on 22 June 1941, Adolf Hitler unleashed the largest military invasion force in history, when he ordered almost 3,700,000 Axis troops with 3,000 tanks, 7,000 guns and 2,300 aircraft to advance into the Soviet Union along a front that extended from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Less than six months later, following startling early successes, leading German units would reach almost to the gates of Moscow, before plummeting temperatures and the onset of the Russian winter finally brought their advance to a halt.