Blockbuster movies have been made about the legendary D-Day landings, but little attention is paid to what happened afterwards. Although the Allies succeeded in puncturing the German Atlantic Wall, a long campaign of bitter fighting through the fields and hedgerows of the Normandy countryside –otherwise known as the bocage – lay ahead. How were the Germans brought to final defeat?
Second World War
MHM April 2019
The April issue of Military History Matters, the British military history magazine, is now on sale. To subscribe to the magazine, click here. To subscribe to the digital archive, click here. In this issue: After D-Day: Normandy, 1944 Blockbuster movies have been made about the legendary D-Day landings, but little attention is paid to what happened afterwards. Although the […]
MHM March 2019
The March issue of Military History Matters, the British military history magazine, is now on sale. To subscribe to the magazine, click here. To subscribe to the digital archive, click here. In this issue: Chariots of Victory In this month’s cover feature, MHM Editor Neil Faulkner analyses how an obscure Celtic warrior used chariot warfare to repel Caesar’s invasion […]
War Requiem
Dan Keane reviews Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, a key highlight of the London Coliseum’s 2018/2019 season. It is difficult for any artist to find an appropriate medium to convey the immensity of pain generated by war. Such is the task of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, first performed in 1962 to mark the consecration of the […]
The Long World War
The crisis engendered by the Treaty of Versailles broke the European liberal centre and led to polarisation to both left and right. An apocalyptic confrontation between socialist revolution and fascist reaction dominated European politics during the 1930s. The victory of the latter across most of Europe set the stage for another world war, even longer, bloodier, and more barbaric than the first.
MHM January 2019
The January issue of MHM, the British military history magazine, is now on sale. To subscribe to the magazine, click here. To subscribe to the digital archive, click here. In this issue: The Long World War In our cover feature, Neil Faulkner argues that the First World War never really ended, and that the seeds of Nazism and the […]
World War II at Sea: a global history
When first approached to review Craig L Symonds’ World War II at Sea, I was somewhat ambivalent about how much value another narrative history of this subject might add to the huge volume of extant literature. I really could not have been more wrong. Symonds’ work is gripping and well written, for sure, but it […]
Stormtroopers: a new history of Hitler’s brownshirts
Daniel Siemens’s excellent new history of the Sturmabteilungen — the SA; better known as the Nazi Party’s Stormtroopers or Brownshirts — includes a lot of violence. It begins with the horrific murder of an innocent Polish down-and-out in German Upper Silesia in August 1932. Accused of being a Communist, he was savagely beaten to death […]
Last Hope Island: Britain, occupied Europe, and the brotherhood that helped turn the tide of the war
When King Haakon of Norway, one of the many exiled leaders from occupied Europe in London during World War II, visited the BBC at Bush House for an interview, a harassed receptionist asked, ‘Sorry, dear, where did you say you were king of?’ The quote perfectly sums up Lynne Olson’s timely book about the Britain […]
MHM December 2018
The December issue of MHM, the British military history magazine, is now on sale. To subscribe to the magazine, click here. To subscribe to the digital archive, click here. In this issue: Crimea: the last great charge of the redcoats, 1854 Only the incompetence of the enemy prevented it from becoming a national disaster. Neil Faulkner revisits the British […]
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