Military History Matters

Latest issue

Military History Matters magazine
June/July 2020 is out now

The Battle of Berlin

Germany lost the war long before May 1945. But Hitler refused to surrender, instead dragging the country into the abyss. Although there was a huge imbalance in force between Germans and Soviets, the Nazis maintained surprising advantages in equipment, experience, and tactics. We explore in-depth this apocalyptic showdown.

Latest features

REVIEW – Military Strategy: a global history

Black’s ‘shotgun’ approach takes us from Thucydides to Vergennes via Clausewitz, Napoleon, and Hitler, as he attempts to blend incisive historical insight with contemporary practice ...

REVIEW – Dresden: the fire and the darkness

Sinclair McKay’s well-researched, detailed, and all-embracing book is the first major study of the bombing of Dresden to be published for 15 years, and covers equally the pre-war history of the city – ‘The Florence of Germany’ – the horrors ...

War of Words – ‘Gunboat Diplomacy’

Ordinarily, a gunboat was a lesser craft, mounting just a few guns. They were particularly useful in shallow waters that larger warships could not navigate ...

New research uncovers life in Nazi camp on Channel Islands

Professor Caroline Sturdy Colls and archaeologists at Staffordshire University investigated the living conditions of inmates at the camp of Sylt on the island of Alderney ...

Somme diary found in barn sold at auction

Written by Private Arthur Edward Diggens, the diary was found in a Midlands barn and contains astonishing insights into the author’s experiences ...

Behind the Image

BEHIND THE IMAGE: Wind tunnel testing, Messerschmitt Bf 109, 1940

It may look like a scene from a movie shoot – Germany’s answer to The Dam Busters, perhaps – but this strikingly modern photograph from 1940 offers instead a real-life glimpse behind the scenes of a top-secret aeronautical project. The state-of-the-art wind tunnel at the Herman Goering Aviation Research Institute, near Braunschweig (or Brunswick) in Lower Saxony, was one of Germany’s most closely shrouded military sites. Spread over 1,000 acres, the Institute’s 60 buildings were low-rise, nestling under the treeline, and well camouflaged from the air. As a result, until the end ...
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BEHIND THE IMAGE: VE Day, 8 May 1945

Image: Imperial War Museum We are all familiar with photos depicting jubilant crowds of people celebrating the end of the Second World War. They are shown racing through the streets of Piccadilly or crammed together outside the balcony at Whitehall as Churchill waves, exultant relief on their faces, bottles and flags in their hands. Victory in Europe (VE) Day marked the official conclusion of the six-year world war against Hitler and his allies. Civilians and soldiers around the world had ...
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BEHIND THE IMAGE: U-Boat on Hastings beach, April 1919

Five months after the Armistice and with the Great War finally behind them, the last thing the townspeople of Hastings expected to see from their elegant promenade, just in front of the Queens Hotel and lying like a monstrous metallic whale, was a U-boat. But on the morning of 15 April 1919, after a storm had caused the submarine to break free from its tow, that is exactly what they saw. U-boat 118 had been launched in February 1918, and ...
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