Despite a succession of victories during the Second World War, Conservative leader Winston Churchill faced a crushing defeat in Britain’s 1945 general election – one of the most astonishing political events in British history. Churchill’s approval rating was 83% just months prior to his loss, but in an unexpected landslide victory Clement Attlee’s Labour party swept to power […]
WWII
Great Escapes: Roger Bushell
Patrick Boniface examines the lives of history’s most daring wartime captives. Roger Joyce Bushell was born on 30 August 1910 in Springs, Transvaal, in South Africa. His parents had moved to South Africa to pursue business interests in the mining industry. Roger received a first-class education there until the age of 14, when he transferred […]
Blitzed: drugs in Nazi Germany
Hitler almost died of a cocaine overdose, and the Wehrmacht’s blitzkrieg was powered by methamphetamine. These are just two of the areas of investigation in Blitzed, Norman Ohler’s study of the massive pharmacological intake at all levels of the Nazi war-machine. Ohler begins by detailing the widespread availability of cocaine and morphine in early 20th-century […]
Mussolini’s secret time-capsule
Classics scholars Hans Lemers and Bettina Reitz-Joosse have produced an critical edition and translation of a forgotten Latin text that reveals the ideological intricacies of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s Fascism. The text is the Codex Fori Mussolini (or the Mussolini Forums Codex), and it lies beneath the Mussolini obelisk in Rome – a stone column […]
World’s only portrait signed by Churchill displayed
The only portrait that Winston Churchill ever signed has gone on public display for the first time. It was painted by artist Paul Trevillion in 1955. Born in 1934, Paul was a schoolboy during the Second World War. He told MHM, ‘My school desk faced a large poster hanging on the school wall, it had the face of Churchill […]
Tukhachevsky: ‘the Red Napoleon’
The Red Army’s Marshal Tukhachevsky was one of the most brilliant, innovative, and influential military theorists since Napoleon Bonaparte. Some military historians believe the Second World War could have ended sooner had Tukhachevsky lived to lead the fight. Here are a few of his key ideas: This is an extract from an article written by […]
Talk: ‘Roald Dahl’s War’ by Graham Laurie
The RAF Museum Cosford will host a talk about Roald Dahl, presented by historian and former RAF pilot Graham Laurie on Saturday 10 September 2016. ‘Roald Dahl’s War’ will cover the writer’s life in the RAF and his subsequent rise to literary stardom. Graham will examine Roald Dahl’s career as he went from employee of the oil company Shell, […]
BOOK REVIEW: Poles In Defence of Britain
Robert Gretzyngier’s account of the Poles who fought for the RAF so gallantly during the Battle of Britain both amazes and captivates the reader. It includes personal and moving accounts from and about the airmen who fought and died for Britain during the Second World War. This day-by-day coverage begins with the journey of the […]
Tank Museum goes out with a bang
The Normandy Tank Museum is shutting down and will sell its entire collection of tanks, armoured vehicles, and Second World War memorabilia at auction next month. The museum is closing its doors due to poor visitor numbers. It is situated on a Second World War airfield used by the Allies during the Battle of […]
BATTLE MAPS: Battles of Monte la Difensa and Remetania
Monte la Difensa Today, when you look at the routes up Difensa’s crags, it is just possible to imagine small groups of highly trained mountaineers conquering them. But hosts of heavily laden troops could not succeed, could they? They did, but not without facing almost overpowering difficulties. As one Forceman said, ‘no fear of death, just sheer exhaustion and survival. I […]
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