Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 99 i History of War

1119 ‘POOR FELLOW-SOLDIERS’ A French knight called Hugues de Payens establishes a monastic order of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ in Jerusalem. Tasked with protecting Christian pilgrims on the routes to the Holy City, they are headquartered on the Temple Mount from 1128. This gives them their name Templars. 1139-45 OMNE DATUM OPTIMUM In 1139 Pope Innocent II issues a papal bull called Omne datum optimum that officially endorses the Templars and exempts them from tithes and taxes. Two further bulls in 1144 and 1145 greatly increase Templar privileges, including the right to build their own churches. 1139 – 1314 EUROPEAN POWER & WEALTH Although primarily concerned with Crusading activities, the Templars accumulate vast wealth and power across Europe by building a network of hundreds of churches, commanderies and fortifications.…

NURI AL-SAID “Nuri commanded the Arab regular army. Many former Ottoman soldiers were captured and imprisoned in Egyptian POW camps but were offered to join the regular Arab army with khaki uniforms. They were trained as regular forces with Nuri as the field commander. He recaptured Abu el-Sam in January 1918 and secured the route to Aqaba. Nuri raided Maan and was prominent in quite large-scale operations to take Jurf al-Darawish. In that battle he tried to control irregular Arabs and orchestrated a very successful attack. “Because he was a regular officer, Nuri is deserving of more recognition. He also defeated Abdul el Kader’s putsch in Damascus because he anticipated where to put his forces. Without him in October 1918, Lawrence would not have held onto Damascus. He’s a really…

The Fokker D.VII was one of the best, some would say the best, fighter aircraft of World War I. It was fast, manoeuvrable and a forgiving aircraft to fly, and it didn’t suffer from the structural problems that plagued many other German fighters. It could be placed in the hands of a novice and perform well, while in the hands of an expert it was truly formidable. Designed by Reinhold Platz, Chief Designer at the Fokker works, the already excellent aircraft was further refined by Anthony Fokker. The metal tubular frame gave it strength, and its docile stall characteristics allowed a pilot to ‘hang on his prop’ at the top of a climb for precious seconds, remaining in control when most other aircraft would have already fallen into a spin.…

Dr Robert Lyman is a retired British Army officer, historian, best-selling author and fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He has also contributed to television documentaries, and was the military consultant to the BBC for the Victory over Japan memorial celebrations in the UK in 2015 and again for the 70th anniversary in 2020. What do you think of when someone mentions the war in Burma? Is it that ‘wild man of the jungle’ Orde Wingate? Is it the Burma Star Association? The Chindits? Bill Slim? Jungle? Monsoon? Vinegar Joe Stilwell? Perhaps you might have heard of Kohima, or Imphal, and the haunting lines of the 2nd Division epitaph on Garrison Hill: “When You Go Home, Tell Them of Us and Say, For your Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today.” I…

Author: Peter Fritzsche Publisher: Oxford University Press Price: £25 On sale: Out now Peter Fritzsche’s book tackles an important question – exactly how did Adolf Hitler transform a modest political power base into total control of a nation? And how did he do it so quickly? Fritzsche draws on a vast amount of research to take us into the heart of a tumultuous 100 days, bringing in voices from all sides of the political spectrum. In the process, he turns what seems like an impossible sequence of events into one that seems both understandable and frighteningly repeatable. At the heart of the Nazi Party’s appeal was its promise to end the suffering that started during the First World War and continued through post-war economic meltdown and the Great Depression. With…

During the Napoleonic Wars, battle standards served as rallying points for soldiers and were used by commanders to quickly identify units during combat. Such was their importance that troops were supposed to fight to the death rather than allow their banner to be captured. For French regiments under Napoleon’s rule, banners took an even greater significance. Each standard was topped with a gilded eagle that was the personal gift from the emperor to every regiment in his armies. However, when Napoleon was first exiled to Elba in 1814 the restored Bourbon monarchy ordered all Napoleonic eagles and standards to be destroyed. Napoleon soon returned to France in 1815 to commence his ‘Hundred Days’ rule and new eagles and standards had to be hastily created. One of the new standards was…

The EEF was a British Empire formation that was initially formed to push Ottoman forces out of the Sinai Peninsula. Commanded by General Edmund Allenby from June 1917, the EEF was a huge multinational force of British, Imperial, French and even Italian troops that outnumbered Ottoman forces and pushed into Palestine. The campaign was notable for its mobility in an overall static war. The EEF famously captured Jerusalem and won significant victories such as Megiddo. The EEF captured Damascus in October 1918 after a lightning advance of 560km in a month, with the capture of 75,000 Ottoman prisoners for the loss of 5,000 men. The campaign’s success led to the destruction of the Ottoman Empire but the EEF’s success has largely been forgotten. Johnson explains its importance: “The Arab Revolt…

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A new photography exhibition at IWM London has brought together 50 contemporary portraits of Holocaust survivors and their families. The aim of Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors is to shine a light on their full lives and our collective responsibility to ensure their stories live on. One of the portraits is of John Hajdu, a Hungarian from Budapest who experienced the Nazi and Soviet occupations of Hungary. Born in 1937 to a middle-class Jewish family, Hajdu survived the Budapest Ghetto before he escaped to Britain in 1956 following the Hungarian Revolution. He recalls being separated from his parents, the appalling conditions of the ghetto and how he finally escaped from Hungary. HOLOCAUST IN BUDAPEST What are your earliest memories of WWII? They are vague but I remember my father being…

Author: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver Publisher: Osprey Publishing Price: £20 On sale: 14 October In July 1964, a North Vietnamese attack on US warships in the Gulf of Tonkin sparked direct American involvement in the Vietnam War. Within days, US Navy aircraft were making retaliatory attacks on the Communist Democratic Republic of (North) Vietnam. It was the start of a decade-long commitment, which would see navy aircraft operating across North Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and the Republic of (South) Vietnam. It was a campaign limited by politics and technology, and the Navy found their superior equipment was far less effective than hoped. The author pulls no punches in critiquing the shortcomings of American tactics and technology, which were geared towards intercepting lumbering nuclear bombers and ill-suited to swirling dogfights. Solutions including new…

KEEP YOUR EARS PEELED c.1943 A US Marine anti-aircraft unit demonstrates the operation of an acoustic location device. Also known as sound mirrors, war tubas or acoustic horns, these bizarre-looking machines were designed to identify enemy aircraft by honing in on the engine noise. Though rendered obsolete by the development of radar, there were many different designs of listening devices made around the world and some continued to be used throughout World War II, in conjunction with search lights and short-range radar. SPLASHDOWN 5 May, 1961 A US Navy Marine HUS-1 helicopter recovers the Freedom 7 capsule from the Atlantic Ocean after its successful return from sub-orbital flight. Freedom 7 was piloted by the US Navy veteran Alan Shepard, who was the first American and second person ever to travel…

James Holland is an award-winning historian, writer, broadcaster and best-selling author He is also co-founder of the Chalke Valley History Festival, a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and co-host of weekly podcast We Have Ways of Making You Talk A little after 6am, on Saturday, 18 November 1944. It was still dark and raining as Operation Clipper, the battle to smash wide open the Siegfried Line at Geilenkirchen, began. It was also freezing cold. “The draught on my back wasn’t funny,” noted Arthur Reddish, the gunner in Major John Semken’s A Squadron. The assembly area was about 730 metres south of a railway embankment, near a large farmhouse, which was already wrecked and surrounded by what a couple of months earlier would have been a lovely, lush orchard but…

Forging the Irish Free State The National Museum of Ireland in Dublin has an exhibition dedicated to the conflicts that led to Irish independence 100 years ago The National Museum of Ireland (NMI) is the Republic of Ireland’s leading museum institution. With three branches located in Dublin it’s multifaceted in scope with a strong emphasis on Irish history, archaeology, art, culture and natural history. One of its branches is the NMI Museum of Decorative Arts and History, which is located at the former Collins Barracks in the Arbour Hill area of central Dublin. The building, originally called the Royal Barracks, was built in 1702 during the reign of Queen Anne and was once the largest barracks in Europe. It housed various British infantry regiments and also served as a prison.…

FALL OF ODESSA A German unit photographed during street fighting in Odessa, Ukraine. The Siege of Odessa began in August 1941, with Soviet defences holding off Romanian and German troops for over 70 days, stalling and severely weakening the Romanian forces in the region in particular. The Soviets finally withdrew on 16 October, leaving the city to the Axis forces, though resistance continued. On 22 October a bomb exploded in the Romanian Army HQ in the city, killing many officers. This event preceded the rounding up and murder of around 30,000 Jews by Axis troops, many of whom were shot dead or burned alive. RISE OF TOJO On 18 October, General Hideki Tojo formed a new cabinet in Japan, himself becoming prime minister. Retaining his existing positions as head of…