MHM August/September 2021

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The August/September 2021 issue of Military History Matters, the British military history magazine, is out now.

The best way to access the magazine is to subscribe. Click here to find out more. To read the digital archive, click here. You can also access the magazine online (as well as exclusive extra content) at our new website, The Past.

In this issue:

The front cover of MHM 123, the August/September 2021 issue.
The front cover of MHM 123, the August/September 2021 issue.

ON THE COVER:
Nelson and Trafalgar

Nelson may have been history’s greatest admiral, and Trafalgar its greatest naval victory. But the man and his moment can only be understood as the consummation of a new way of naval warfare developed over several decades by Britain’s Royal Navy. Nothing quite like it had ever happened before; and nothing quite like it would ever happen again. There were very particular things that made Nelson and Trafalgar possible. In our special this time, we take an in-depth look at what those were.

The men behind the wire: British POWs in the First World War

Joseph O’Neill lifts the lid on a hidden story of German POW maltreatment

Through the gates like a raging lion: The Battle of Cerami, 1063

Robert C L Holmes analyses a decisive medieval collision between two very different ways of war

Firing the generals: Lincoln v McClellan

Nigel Jones describes President Lincoln’s long search for a war-winning general, and his feud with the ultra-cautious General George B McClellan

Forgotten battles: Catarelto, September/October ’44

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

Also in this issue:

The latest in a new series on classic military history booksBehind the ImageWar CultureBook ReviewsMuseum ReviewBack to the Drawing Board, Listings, Competitions, and more.

To subscribe to the magazine, click here. To subscribe to the digital archive, click here. You can also access the magazine online (as well as exclusive extra content) at our new website, The Past. Find us on FacebookTwitter, and Instagram.


MHM editor Neil Faulkner
MHM editor Neil Faulkner

From the editor:

Graham Goodlad and I have teamed up in previous issues to discuss the military achievements of some of the great British admirals of the late 18th century – Hawke, Rodney, and Howe. The culmination of their revolution in naval tactics was, of course, Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar.

This issue, we look at Nelson’s career in general and also analyse his greatest battle. What we find is less a model for all time than an extraordinary coincidence of man, moment, and military system.

How do you get rid of awkward generals? Not that simple, Nigel Jones discovers, reviewing the extended tussle between President Lincoln and General George B McClellan in the first year of the American Civil War. In a follow-up piece, he will look at Churchill’s clash with ‘the men of 1940’.

Patrick Mercer’s ‘forgotten battle’ this issue is a vicious close-quarters struggle between two elites – the hardened Nazis of the Waffen SS and Britain’s Scots Guards – on the Gothic Line in the mountains of Italy in late 1944.

Joseph O’Neill, meantime, lifts the lid on the brutality of German POW camps during the First World War, while Robert Holmes transports us back to 11th-century Sicily for an epic confrontation between Norman chivalry and Saracen resistance – a confrontation that ended two centuries of Muslim rule in the island.


To subscribe to the magazine, click here. To subscribe to the digital archive, click here. You can also access the magazine online (as well as exclusive extra content) at our new website, The Past. Find us on FacebookTwitter, and Instagram.

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