Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 95 i History of War

When reading the history of Operation Barbarossa, it’s impossible not to be overwhelmed by the sheer scale and numbers involved. Over three million Axis soldiers, across 1,800 miles, took part in what many consider to be the monumental turning point in the Second World War. Of course, it also heralded the most terrible crimes the world has seen. In the 80th year since the Nazi invasion began, we look at not only the events on the frontline but also the horrors that unfolded as a result. They are a sobering reminder that behind the numbers and stats are people who lived and suffered through truly world-changing events, never to be repeated. SUBSCRIBE & SAVE! Take advantage of our fantastic subscription offers and get History of War for less than half…

In the summer of 1940, most of western Europe was under the boot of a rampant Wehrmacht. Though Hitler’s pact with the Soviet Union seemingly remained strong, on 31 July 1940 he described his plans for war with Stalin. “The sooner Russia is crushed, the better,” he said. “If we were to start in May 1941, we would have five months to finish the job.” The Nazi leader directed the OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the high command of the armed forces) to begin planning the invasion, codenamed Barbarossa after the famed Holy Roman Emperor, for 15 May 1941. The operation would see three army groups (North, Centre and South) storming into Soviet territory under the leadership of Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb, Fedor von Bock and Gerd von Rundstedt. Von Leeb’s…

Honouring Jewish airmen The Royal Air Force Museum and Chelsea FC’s Foundation are launching a new, multifaceted project to commemorate the Jewish airmen and women who served during WWII The Royal Air Force Museum and the Chelsea Foundation have joined forces to support the expansion of the museum’s Hidden Heroes project. Sponsored by Chelsea FC club owner Roman Abramovich, the project will feature a new Bomber Command exhibition at the museum’s London and Cosford sites, with a launch date in 2023. The new displays will help the museum to continue raising awareness of the previously untold story of the Jewish personnel in the RAF during WWII and the vital role they played in defeating the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain. These heroes joined the RAF from all over the…

DAVID REYNOLDS David Reynolds is Professor Emeritus of International History at Cambridge, and a Fellow of the British Academy. Starting on page 28, he spoke with History of War about Stalin’s disastrous response to the 1941 invasion and how it almost lost him the war. STUART HADAWAY RAF researcher Stuart is back to take a look inside another iconic aircraft for our Operator’s Handbook. This issue he turns his attention to the Ilyushin Il-2 – a hardy ground-attack aircraft known to the Red Army as the ‘Flying Tank’ (page 62) MICHAEL HASKEW In this month’s Great Battles feature (page 42) Mike recounts the against-the-odds Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 1954. This encounter saw French paratroopers up against a vast number of Viet Minh revolutionaries.…

THEMISTOCLES OF ATHENS HIS FIRM BELIEF IN NAVAL POWER SAVED GREEK FREEDOM c.525 – 459 BCE ATHENS The Greek who was the most responsible for defeating the second Persian invasion in 480 BCE was Themistocles of the city-state of Athens. As an archon of Athens, he foresaw that the Persian threat had only receded following the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE, and had not disappeared entirely. In 483 BCE A new vein of silver was discovered at the Laurium mines. Knowing that Athens would need a powerful navy for its defence, he persuaded his fellow citizens to spend this new income, not as individual disbursements, but on expensive (but much-needed) trireme warships. This was a not inconsiderable amount of money, about 600,000 drachmae in value. With it, Athens built…

22 JUNE – 5 DECEMBER 01 22 JUNE German Army Groups North Centre and South advance east after sustained attacks from the Luftwaffe on Soviet airfields, taking air superiority to cover the advance. 02 22 JUNE Two Romanian armies press into Ukraine with the objective of capturing Odessa. Over 650,000 Romanian and Finnish soldiers take part in the initial attack. 03 3 JULY Volkovysk and then Minsk are taken as German forces encircle the Red Army and take 324,000 prisoners. 04 10 JULY While the Romanians advance in the south, the Finnish army moves towards the Karelian Isthmus. In total, 300,000 Finnish soldiers joined in the fight against the USSR. 05 16 JULY Smolensk is taken by the Germans. Resistance lasted in the city until 5 August. By 1 September,…

“IT WAS MORE BRUTAL THAN ANY OTHER CAMPAIGN OF WWII, AND ON A SCALE OF ATROCITY THAT BEGGARS BELIEF” Operation Barbarossa has received different interpretations from historians over the past eight decades. Although it has been written about many times, Western academics have often focussed on Barbarossa’s purely military aspects. Nevertheless, Jonathan Dimbleby has written a new general history that tells the story of the operation in all its vast complexity. A British historian, journalist and filmmaker, Dimbleby reveals the unfathomable brutality that characterised Barbarossa, its consequences for European history and how it’s remembered in different countries. What new direction did you want to take in how to tell the story of the operation? There have been many books written about Barbarossa but there haven’t actually been that many recent…

REINHARD HEYDRICH Reinhard Heydrich was a leading SS and police official in Nazi Germany, who became one of the chief architects of the Holocaust. He had formed earlier Einsatzgruppen operating in Poland in 1939. These units arrested and executed individuals deemed a threat to the German occupation, including members of the Polish nobility and intelligentsia, nationalists, members of the Catholic clergy, and Jews. Under Heydrich’s direction, the Einsatzgruppen murdered 50,000 Poles, including 7,000 Polish Jews. In 1941 Heydrich was again directed by Himmler to organise Einsatzgruppen to operate in the Soviet Union. Four Einsatzgruppe, made up of 16 Einsatzkommandos and Sonderkomandos, were deployed, and are estimated to have murdered 1.5 million Jews and others. Heydrich was assassinated in June 1942. DR FRANZ WALTER STAHLECKER A Gestapo head and member of…

OPERATION BATTLEAXE Indian soldiers of the 4th Indian Division decorate the side of their lorry ‘Khyber pass to Hellfire Pass’ in advance of Operation Battleaxe – the Allied offensive to push back Erwin Rommel’s forces and relieve Tobruk, Libya. The Halfaya Pass, nicknamed ‘Hellfire’, was heavily defended by German anti-tank guns, which halted the British 7th Armoured Division. RAZING KANDANOS A sign erected after occupying Nazi forces destroyed the village of Kandanos in Crete on 2 June, 1941. Written in German and Greek is: “In retaliation for the bestial murder of a paratrooper platoon and half a platoon of pioneers, by armed men and women who were ambushing, Kandanos was destroyed.” GREEK MASSACRE Greek civilians confront German troops, gathered prior to the massacre of Kondomari in Crete. After the defeat…

Author: Peter Kornicki Publisher: Hurst Price: £25 Released: Out now There was an enormous linguistic disparity to overcome in the Pacific War with Japan. English as a second language is spoken in numerous countries throughout world, hence the British have traditionally displayed a notorious laziness when it comes to learning foreign tongues. The country’s principal European enemies in the Second World War spoke German and Italian. This did not present a great problem for codebreakers and interrogators, many of whom possessed a knowledge of these languages which, after all, share Indo-European roots. But the picture changed radically when Britain found itself at war with Japan in December 1941. “There can be no doubt that Britain was ill-prepared for war with Japan,” says Peter Kornicki, who brings to this book his…

Author: Robin Waterfield Publisher: Folio Society Price: £69.95 Released: Out now Originally released in 2020, classics scholar and translator Robin Waterfield’s book is a fantastic introduction to the topic of Ancient Greece, which manages to strike a canny balance between the big names of the era with the daily lives of ordinary Greeks. Now presented in his Folio edition, we have a package that complements the quality of the writing rather nicely. Waterfield’s extensive research and smart structuring of this book makes it an excellent way to look at Ancient Greek history from a new perspective. Broken down into the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic Periods, examining and explaining the evidence available, Waterfield paints a vivid picture of the rise and decline of Greece as an ancient power. And all of…

Author: Steven Casey Publisher: Oxford University Press Price: £26.99 We approached this book with anticipation. It’s years since we read Robert Leckie’s Helmet for my Pillow and Eugene Sledge’s With the Old Breed, both classic first-hand accounts of the conflict in the Pacific. We were also reminded of Richard Collier’s The Warcos: The War Correspondents of World War Two. Casey’s latest study is a welcome follow-up to his The War Beat, Europe. Interestingly, he highlights that for the first three years of the war the US media was far more fascinated by events in Europe than in Asia. Indeed, once American troops set foot in North Africa, the fighting in New Guinea became all but neglected by comparison. Only Midway helped to peak interest. However, D-Day ensured that American sacrifice…

As well as being the largest invasion in history, Operation Barbarossa was also the greatest crisis of Joseph Stalin’s career. A bloodthirsty dictator, Stalin had ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist since the 1920s. Millions of his own people had already been killed through purges and famine but Barbarossa was a tragedy of titanic proportions. As Soviet forces crumbled in the wake of a relentless onslaught, vast swathes of territory were lost until the Nazis were almost at the gates of Moscow. Despite the millions of people affected, events were largely dictated by the actions of one man: Stalin. Far from being the mighty autocrat who led a new superpower at the end of the war, his political and military miscalculations during (and even before) June-December 1941 had…

To prove to the men of his 94th Aero Squadron that he was one of them, Lieutenant Eddie Rickenbacker took to the air alone on 25 September, 1918, over Billy, France. Spotting seven enemy planes – five Fokker D.VIIs protecting two Halberstadt CL.IIs – Rickenbacker, disregarding the odds, attacked without hesitation and fired on the enemy formation. Diving through the German planes, he downed one of the Fokkers and one of the Halberstadts and returned home. For this action he was awarded his eighth (a record) Distinguished Service Cross, and in 1931 President Herbert Hoover awarded him the Medal of Honor for this action. By the time of America’s entry into World War I in April 1917, Rickenbacker was already a household name. Obsessed with engines, he had become a…

During the Trump presidency, the conflict in Afghanistan became the longest war in American history. In two decades the Afghan patient had been lavished with more aid than war-devastated European countries received under the Marshall Plan (1948), but Washington found itself mired and no closer to victory, or even a modestly satisfactory settlement. No wonder the nowformer president railed against what he saw as America’s stupid, endless wars. Trump’s railing may have ended but the recriminations haven’t. On 14 April President Biden announced the US would withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. NATO allies will quickly and quietly follow. This hardly qualifies as the ‘conditions-based’ withdrawal repeatedly invoked by politicians and military leaders over the course of America’s longest war, but there…

Author: John Nichol Publisher: Simon and Schuster Price: £20 In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait and many of the Western forces that had spent 40 years training over the forests and plains of Germany found themselves deployed to the deserts of Saudi Arabia. Among them were the RAF’s latest fast jet, the Panavia Tornado, which was about to embark on its first active deployment in what would stretch into 30 years of continuous operations. Thrown into an unfamiliar operational environment and climate, the type suffered from a number of technical problems which had to be overcome, as well as tactical and doctrinal issues that still cause controversy today. Despite these set backs, the force provided a unique and valuable contribution to the Coalition’s efforts. Nichols is well known as a member…

Studio: Reel2Reel Films Director: Bruce Vigar Released: Out now “THIS FAMOUS ‘BLITZ SPIRIT’ BEAMS OFF THE SCREEN AS FORMER RAF PILOTS, GROUNDCREW AND CITY DWELLERS RECALL THE DETERMINATION OF THE BRITISH PEOPLE THROUGHOUT 1940 AND BEYOND” After 80 years of study, remembrance and reflection, the torment and terror of the Blitz has been covered in books and films in great detail, a history of Nazi Germany’s aerial assault on a stubborn Britain etched into the annals of World War II. Therefore it’s hard not to be impressed by the efforts of the producers and researchers behind this anniversary documentary in uncovering previously unseen footage and photographs that cast a new light on a time of seemingly unrelenting darkness. While the appropriately staid narration and flow of facts cover the most…

During the Middle Ages, Japanese samurai warriors wore yoroi armour. The term ‘ö-yoroi’ means ‘great armour’ and it was made from pieces of lacquered metal that were connected with silk laces and cords. The breastplate was wrapped around the body and closed by a separate panel on the right side as well as a deep, foursided skirt. Yoroi armour first appeared during the 10th century and was in favour for several centuries afterwards. It was generally worn by warriors on horseback and reserved for high-ranking samurai. The armour became outdated by the 15th century when the samurai transferred from cavalry to primarily infantry tactics. The yoroi pictured here is laced in white silk and has diagonal bands of multi-coloured lacings at the edge of the skirt and shoulder guards. These…