Due to exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act, the documents were closed to public access until January this year, just as the island prepares to commemorate 75 years since its liberation on 9 May 1945.
WWII
MHM Competition: March 2020
This issue, we’re giving away four copies ofKursk, 1943, courtesy of Casemate Illustrated. In the summer of 1943, the German army sought to cut off a large number of Soviet forces near Kursk. But after weeks of fierce fighting, the German units were slowly and systematically defeated. Never again would the Nazi war machine go […]
REVIEW – Retreat from Moscow: a new history of Germany’s winter campaign, 1941 – 1942
David Stahel’s latest book, Retreat from Moscow: a new history of Germany’s winter campaign, 1941-1942, is here to add vital nuance to discussion of the German Army in this crucial phase of the war. Over the last decade, his works on the Eastern Front have led the way in scholarly reassessment of Operation Barbarossa in 1941, demonstrating how Germany’s failure to decisively defeat the Red Army was a disaster, and left them in a highly vulnerable position for the winter of 1941-1942.
US Navy aircraft carrier to honour Pearl Harbor hero
Doris Miller earned the Navy Cross for his actions during the Japanese attack on the US base at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. Now, the US navy is to honour his actions by naming a new aircraft carrier after him.
BEHIND THE IMAGE: Kristallnacht, by Charlotte Salomon, from Life? Or Theatre? 1940-1942
With its warm tones and bustling figures, this month’s image could – at first glance – appear almost to represent a scene of innocent activity. The truth, however, could not be more different.
REVIEW – Aerial Warfare: the battle for the skies
This book is written rather in the style of an excellent set of lecture notes produced by a diligent tutor. Frank Ledwidge, a Fellow of Law and Strategy at the Royal Air Force College at Cranwell, leaves very few stones unturned as he leads the reader through the complete history of manned and unmanned flight, quoting liberally from a wide range of authoritative sources.
REVIEW – The hidden places of WWII
Like a sort of Second World War smorgasbord, you can take a look and pull tasty morsels out of Hidden Places of World War II. After digesting these, you look for some more titbits. The wartime stories are all linked to places that can be visited.
REVIEW – Waiting for War: Britain, 1939 – 1940
Most Britons are proud of their country’s role in helping to bring about victory in the Second World War. There is nothing to be proud of, however, in the way the government and its agencies ran the first nine months of war, from September 1939 to May 1940 – the period known as ‘the Phoney War’.
The YB-40 Gunship
When the USAAF’s Eighth Air Force arrived in Britain in mid-1942, it was confident that unescorted formations of B-17 Flying Fortresses could make precision daylight bombing raids without suffering serious losses.
War on Film: 1917 reviewed
Just when you thought there was nothing else to say about the First World War after four years of commemorations, along comes 1917 – a hugely imaginative, totally immersive story set on the Western Front.
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