MHM 39 – December 2013

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001_MHM39_Cover_FINAL2The December issue of Military History Monthly, the British military history magazine, is on sale today.

In the latest issue we cover:

The 900-day Siege – Leningrad, 1941-1943
Steve Roberts tells the story of the Second World War’s greatest and most terrible siege through the experiences of ten participants.

Napoleon’s Secret Weapons – Science and the empire
Retired scientist Allan Ashworth explores the fascination that Hitler and Napoleon had in common.

Operation Husky – Invasion of Sicily, 1943
Dave Sloggett looks at the operation’s significance and asks if it was a turning-point in the war.

Warrior Monarchs – Royalty on the battlefield
Historian Carolyn Harris explores the long-established link between the royals and the military.

Pashtun Uprising – The 1897 Revolt
Jules Stewart recalls British efforts to subjugate resistance in the North-West Frontier more than a century ago.

Also in this issue: Recommended Read, Museum Review, Back to the Drawing Board, War Culture, Book Reviews, War on Film, Your Military History, and much more.

 


 

From the editor

Neil Faulkner, Editor

Stalingrad is better known. Fought with the intensity of the Somme or Passchendaele, it was the battle above all others that turned the tide in the Second World War.

But Leningrad was worse. Of all the clashes between Nazi and Communist of the period 1941 to 1945, the 900-day Siege of the old revolutionary capital was an epic without compare.

Leningrad – formerly Petrograd – was the city where Bolshevism had swept to power in 1917. Hitler, his hatred of Communists as visceral as his hatred of the Jews, was determined to destroy it utterly. The infamous Commissar Order captured the spirit of the struggle: all Communist Party officials were to be shot.

Stalin was equally determined to hold it. And, despite everything that his monstrous regime had done to its own people, so were ordinary Russians. Total Russian casualties were two million. Around half of these were civilians who simply starved to death. Yet the city did not surrender.

Steve Roberts is our guide to the horrors of the siege this issue, recounting the story from the perspective of ten very different participants.

Another WWII story this month is Dave Sloggett’s analysis of the planning for Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943. Was it the right target? How well conducted was the operation?

Also we have Carolyn Harris’s essay on the British royals at war, Allan Ashworth’s uncovering of Napoleon’s ‘secret weapons’ research, and Jules Stewart’s account of the great tribal uprising on the North-West Frontier in 1897.

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