The Second World War was the deadliest conflict in human history – involving 30 belligerent nations, it was fought from the far north of Europe to the South Pacific, and mobilised 1 in 9 of the global population. Estimates of the total number of soldiers and civilians killed range from 56 million to 85 million.
WWII
Auntie’s Secret Resistance Messages
How did London communicate with the Resistance in Occupied Europe during the Second World War? A newly released archive of BBC documents has revealed that coded messages were often sent in regular radio bulletins.
War Reporters: Martha Gellhorn
Seema Syeda appreciates the charm and chutzpah of indefatigable war correspondent Martha Gellhorn. Having crossed the Atlantic to cover her first conflict, the Spanish Civil War, Gellhorn found herself in Czechoslovakia, just before the Nazi occupation of the region known to the Germans as the Sudetenland.
The Ardennes, 1944
More than 4,000 square miles of hills and ridges, thickly forested, dissected by streams and rivers, its few roads punctuated by chokepoints. One of Western Europe’s ancient wildernesses. How was the Ardennes Offensive executed, and how did it accelerate the bitter end of one of history’s most brutal regimes?
REVIEW – Normandy ’44: D-Day and the Battle for France
The truth is that the Normandy Campaign was a vast enterprise, of engineering, logistics, strategy, and planning, but it was also, once under way, driven by events that could not be foreseen.
Battle Map: Operation Cobra
Operation Cobra was a resounding success for the Allied forces on their path to liberating France in the summer of 1944, and one of the key turning-points in the history of the Second World War. Those days of fast-moving action between 25 and 30 July saw the beginning of the final collapse of the German occupation of France.
REVIEW – Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill, and the road to war
Tim Bouverie’s Appeasing Hitler strides boldly and confidently through a decade of British political and diplomatic history. Such history could be dull, but not in the hands of Bouverie, whose narrative is tense and written with great verve.
Operation Market Garden
The world’s largest ever airborne operation was launched during September 1944, with less than a week of planning. This was one of many ingredients in what, for the Allies, would become a major strategic setback. What went wrong?
REVIEW – Arnhem: the complete story of Operation Market Garden, 17 – 25 September 1944
William F Buckingham has written what may become the definitive British account of the Battle of Arnhem. In a crowded field, Buckingham’s meticulous reconstruction of the battle provides the reader with a detailed yet accessible narrative of those remarkable events of 75 years ago.
REVIEW – Fighting the People’s War: the British Commonwealth armies and the Second World War
It is perhaps surprising that no one had written a history of the Commonwealth armies in the Second World War before this new book by Jonathan Fennell. At the heart of Fennell’s history is the story of the morale of the different armies – British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, South African, and Indian.
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