resistance

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Clare Mulley

The MHM award-winning author, historian, and broadcaster on overlooked stories and person-sized doorways to the past.

The Last Days of Budapest: spies, Nazis, rescuers, and resistance, 1940-1945

REVIEW JONATHAN EATON In reading about the Second World War, it is easy to lose sight of the brutal realities of the conflict, whether revealed through acts of unfathomable evil or deeds of immense personal courage. In The Last Days…

George Cross of ‘courageous’ WWII spy Noor Inayat Khan goes on display

The George Cross that was awarded posthumously to a Second World War spy has gone on display in a new exhibition in London. Noor Inayat Khan served in occupied Paris with the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) before ultimately giving…

German Mountain troops before departure to Crete

The Past

This week: Crete 1941

The daring German capture of Crete in May-June 1941 is not often mentioned alongside more celebrated military upsets. But still, there were many levels on which Operation Merkur (Mercury) – as it was codenamed – was a victory against the odds.

Resistance: The Underground War in Europe, 1939-45

REVIEW BY DAVID PORTER. This is a highly detailed (936 pages!) study of resistance across Europe during the Second World War, from its tentative beginnings in 1939 to the large-scale partisan warfare of 1944-1945. Indeed, the author’s coverage of the…

OPPOSITE A bomb damaged government building in Manila during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. It was a reminder to Filipinos as if it were needed of the brutality of Japanese rule.

The Philippines, 1942-1945: the resistance and the return

James Kelly Morningstar describes the Philippine resistance to the Japanese occupation during WWII.

MHM Letters – November 2021

Your thoughts on issues raised by the magazine.

War Classics – 1066: the year of the conquest

The Norman Conquest of England was a violent onslaught by barbaric feudal chivalry on what was, at the time, a sophisticated constitutional monarchy based on the rule of law, under whose authority the common people experienced a fair measure of…

Operation Anthropoid: killing the Hangman of Prague

Graham Goodlad describes the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, one of the Third Reich’s most sinister figures, and its bloody aftermath.

Britain’s secret resistance plans

The British authorities were preparing for a brutal underground war in the event of German invasion and occupation in 1940.

Secret Alliances

It is one of the great ‘what ifs?’ of World War II. What would have happened had the Nazis acquired a nuclear weapon? The consequences are unthinkable. The sabotaging of the Nazi nuclear programme was therefore one of the most…

Mission France

Despite the deserved praise for Special Operations Executive members Violette Szabo and Noor Inayat Khan, many of its other agents are forgotten. Kate Vigurs here attempts to redress the balance, looking at the widely varying experiences of all 39 women…

Spies of WWII commemorated with blue plaques

Two spies who worked for Britain during the Second World War have been honoured with blue plaques outside their London homes.

The Glamour Boys: the secret story of the rebels who fought for Britain to defeat Hitler

To oppose the Munich Agreement of 1938 was once considered something close to treason. The prime minister of the day had met an intimidating opponent and had extracted from him a pact that would save the world from war. Who could possibly object to that?

Medieval Irish Warriors

It was as aggressors that the Irish first made their impact on European history. The quasi-legendary Irish warlord Cormac mac Airt, from the 3rd century AD, not only subdued almost all of Ireland, he also launched destructive attacks on Roman Britain. Another who did so, the following century, was Niall of the Nine Hostages.