Second World War

The Battle of Catarelto: September/October 1944

Patrick Mercer recalls a grim battle between two military elites, British Guards and Waffen SS, on the heavily fortified Gothic Line in northern Italy.

War on Film: The Desert Rats (1953)

The battle scenes are, in the main, well made, especially in showing what it was like for men hiding in dugouts and wadis in the desert under intense artillery-fire.

Letters: July 2021

Your views on the latest from Current Archaeology.

The Past

D-Day Quiz

At which conference in 1943 did the ‘big three’ of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt agree to a cross-channel invasion of France the following year?

Renovation works taking place aboard HMS Belfast.Photographed 7th May 2021.

The Past

Date announced for HMS Belfast’s reopening

Although primarily closed because of the pandemic, Belfast has undergone significant restoration in that time. Work

Special Forces in World War II

Elite units played an essential if often obscure role during the Second World War. In this new illustrated book, with more than 120 colour and black-and-white images, Michael E Haskew charts units from across the globe, regardless of nation or…

War of Words – ‘Grenade’

‘Grenade’ derives from the Old French pome grenate, on account of the bomblet’s similarity in shape to the pomegranate fruit.

The Spitfire Kids

Despite depictions of the Battle of Britain as a campaign waged by grown-up men and women, the average age of an RAF fighter pilot at the height of the Second World War was just 20 – with those involved in…

The German invasion of Russia

David Porter analyses the largest military invasion in history.

The Past

Operation Barbarossa Quiz

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?

Jet Man: the making and breaking of Frank Whittle, genius of the jet revolution

This is a fine, deeply researched book, with Frank Whittle’s story beginning with a lad of humble origin who, aged just 16, entered the RAF as an apprentice fitter, already with strong views about the viability of gas-turbine aero engines…

Facing the Mountain: the forgotten heroes of the Second World War

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor of 80 years ago not only brought the United States into a war, but provoked a wave of hostility to Japanese immigrants and their children across America. Daniel James Brown here explores the lives…

Stalin’s War

‘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…

Military History Events, Lectures, and Exhibitions – May

The best military history events, lectures, and exhibitions in May 2021, including an online course delving into the discovery of King Richard III in a car park, and an exhibit on Disney wartime propaganda.

War Classics – A Bridge Too Far

MHM Editor Neil Faulkner recalls one of the great works of military history.

LEFT Steven Spielberg with Tom Hanks on the set of Saving Private Ryan, the 1998 film which has since spawned several wartime miniseries.

Filming begins on new Spielberg WWII miniseries

The series is based on Donald L Miller’s non-fiction book of the same name on the American 8th Air Force.

World’s ‘deepest-known shipwreck’ surveyed in the Pacific Ocean

Heavily outnumbered and outgunned, she nonetheless fought valiantly against her larger opponents, allowing time for the escort carriers she was protecting to escape. Of the ship’s 327-man crew, only 141 survived the battle.

World news: Indonesia, Germany, Mexico

Earliest known rock art ever found in Indonesia; skulls relating to sacrificial ceremony found in Tenochtitlan; German enigma machine discovered in Bay of Gelting.

BELOW Overlooking the First World War era airfield at Boscombe Down, Wiltshire, in 1918. Most of the construction seen here was temporary.

Stringbags to Star Wars: an archaeology of airfields

Why should we study airfields – and do these sites even count as archaeology? Bob Clarke makes a case for investigating and preserving such sites as important drivers of social change, as well as relics of military history.

Britain at war in colour

Britain at War in Colour, released later this spring, reveals 100 of the best original images from the IWM collection. Some of them have been previously published – either in American magazines after the war, or more recently in books – but others are appearing in print for the first time.

War Athletes: Keith Truscott

No other Australian was so dear to the public as ‘Bluey’ Truscott... He was idolised and idealised, but not put on a pedestal.

Sink the Tirpitz!

John Sweetman analyses the relative failure of repeated Fleet Air Arm attacks on the German battleship Tirpitz.

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…

Operation Pedestal: the fleet that battled

Malta’s strategic significance to the Allied war effort was not lost on the Luftwaffe: in the spring of 1942 alone, they dropped more bombs on the island than they did on London during the entire Blitz. In his latest book,…

Lost wartime letter reaches family after 75 years

The family of a schoolgirl who knitted clothes for troops has received a letter written by a grateful soldier.

Letters from CA February 2021/March 2021

Your thoughts on the London Blitz, Cerne Abbas Giant, and Dad's Army

Hitler’s V-Weapons: The Battle against the V-1 and V-2 Written at the Time – an official history

Review of John Grehan's latest release 'Hitler’s V-Weapons: The Battle against the V-1 and V-2 Written at the Time – an official history'.

Europe without borders

The exhibition Iron Age – Europe without Borders is divided into cultural-historical, chronological, and geographical sections. In addition to relics of largely unknown cultures, the exhibition focuses on the legacies of peoples such as the Celts, Etruscans, Scythians, and Sarmatians.