On the face of it, Operation Barbarossa – Nazi Germany’s 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union – is straightforward to understand. Germany was at first strikingly successful, then faltered, and ultimately failed to subdue the Soviets, leading to rout and…
It was the greatest Russian triumph of World War I – but the Brusilov Offensive also sowed the seeds of revolution, as David Porter reports.
REVIEW BY DAVID PORTER In January 1945, the Red Army launched a powerful operation that was intended to go all the way to Berlin. The Vistula–Oder Offensive, as it was known, is the subject of this new book by Prit…
REVIEW BY CALUM HENDERSON St Petersburg has an immensely dark history. Built largely by slave labour on the orders of Peter the Great in the early 1700s, it has endured more than its fair share of assassination, revolution, flooding, and…
In the third part of our series marking the 80th anniversary of World War II’s final months, Taylor Downing asks whether the Allied Supreme Commander was correct in allowing the Russians to capture the German capital.
Younger readers might be forgiven for thinking that Enemy at the Gates is merely a novelisation of the 2001 film of the same name. But the movie – directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud and starring Jude Law – in fact takes its title from William Craig’s groundbreaking 1973 history of Stalingrad, the first Western history to make extensive use of Russian sources.
In the fourth part of our series on the Normandy landings, Patrick Mercer follows three British units to understand what 6 June 1944 was really like for those at the point of the spear.
REVIEW BY JONATHAN EATON The Eastern Front: a history of the First World War is the second instalment in Nick Lloyd’s trilogy exploring the experiences and history of the conflict through an intensive focus on individual combat theatres. Lloyd is…
MHM’s round-up of the latest military history titles.
REVIEW BY CALUM HENDERSON Leningrad – today known as St Petersburg – was a key military and industrial target in the early years of the Second World War. But the city also held a psychological attraction for the invading armies…
MHM’s round-up of the latest military history titles.
REVIEW BY TOBY CLARK This new book by Dr Ben Wheatley of the University of East Anglia can claim success in the fields of both academic and popular history. With a nod to the Soviet ideal of ‘deep battle’, Wheatley…
It was the critical time, when the tide finally turned in the West. But even victories at Stalingrad, in North Africa, and in Sicily could not mask the tensions between the Allied ‘Big Three’. Eighty years on, Taylor Downing describes a pivotal period in World War II.
Most books about the Second World War include only black-and-white photographs, and these are often sketchy or blurred. Some are even staged pieces of propaganda. Colour photography was not unknown at the time, of course, but it was immensely expensive…
REVIEW BY CALUM HENDERSON ‘The longer the war lasts the lesser my opinion of the generals.’ These were the words in April 1943 of Ulrich von Hassell, a German diplomat who was executed for his role in the 20 July…
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A besieged city, a hostile army enveloping on all sides, and a ruthless commander refusing to surrender – this was not 1942, but 1919, when the city in southern Russia then known as Tsaritsyn was on the verge of being…
Eighty years on, David Porter analyses Germany’s plan to launch another great offensive in the summer of 1942.
As the Russian army commits appalling atrocities in Ukraine, it might not feel like the best time to recall the heroism of the Red Army in the Second World War. But this year marks the 80th anniversary of the titanic…
The winners of this years MHM Book Awards...
MHM Editor Neil Faulkner recalls one of the great works of military history.
An old German proverb has it that ‘a great war leaves the country with three armies – an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.’ General Field Marshal ‘Bloody Ferdinand’ Schörner, commander of Army Group…
The passage of time reveals two things – the forgetfulness of human memory, and the clarity of hindsight – neither of which of course is a law. For the archaeology of modern conflict, in this case the First World War,…
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Hitler’s invasion of Russia on 22 June 1941 – Operation Barbarossa – initiated a campaign of epic proportions. While the format of recounting a campaign through the recollections of individual participants is well established, the author does an exceptionally good…
Which was more important, D-Day or Operation Bagration? Chris Bambery argues that it was on the Eastern Front that the fate of Nazi Germany was sealed.
Frantic redesign efforts were made, but in 1942 the aircraft finally entered production still plagued with the same engine problems.
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.
David Porter analyses the tense relationship between the two most powerful dictators in Europe during the countdown to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
David Porter analyses the largest military invasion in history.
When Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, he had an army of approximately 685,000 men. How many times larger was the army with which Hitler invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941?
‘I trust no one, not even myself.’ So the merciless dictator of the Soviet Union reportedly once said. In this new book, Sean McMeekin explores the Second World War from Joseph Stalin’s perspective. From his complex relations with both Winston…
The Eastern Front remains the forgotten child of Western histories of the Second World War. Even the phrase ‘Eastern Front’ is a reflection of a Western-centric view that sees the struggle between the USSR and Germany as an afterthought compared…
On a fateful Sunday in late June 1941, millions of German soldiers poured into the Soviet Union, beginning Operation Barbarossa: the Nazis’ war of annihilation in the East. Stewart Binns here explores the struggle of the Russian army to defend…
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Gold, silver, and bronze prizes are up for grabs in the race for MHM Book of the Year, which will be awarded to the titles our readers feel have made the greatest all-round contribution to the study of military history.