Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 107 i History of War

Each passing month marks different 80-year milestones for many of the most poignant and important moments of the Second World War. In May, 1942, perhaps one of the most important encounters – certainly in the Pacific War – took place around Midway Atoll, between the US and Japanese fleets. From fighting on the back foot almost entirely for five months, the carrier engagement at Midway saw a resounding turnaround in the war for the US. For Japan, Admiral Yamamoto’s ominous prediction that success against their powerful adversary could only last a matter of months, was becoming a reality. This issue, historian James Holland explains how the US turned the tide in the battle and what it meant for Japan’s hitherto unstoppable conquests. FOLLOW THE HISTORY OF WAR TEAM / HISTORY…

Female members of Iran’s Basij militia pose brandishing AK-47s during celebrations marking 25 years since the militia was founded. In the aftermath of Iran’s revolution (1978-79), and the build-up to the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) the leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini, created the militia purportedly to defend the revolution, and his regime. Named The Organization for Mobilization of the Oppressed but most commonly known as Basij (meaning ‘mobilisation’), the militia was formed of millions of civilian volunteers and was heavily involved in the war with Iraq. After the war, however, Basij became used as a paramilitary wing of the regime, deployed to quell protests and opposition.…

From 1945 onward the challenge of rebuilding a devastated Europe was so vast that US President Harry Truman’s administration struggled to devise a strategy for the continent, which by 1946 had 60 million refugees, with 14 million displaced in Germany alone. But there remained critical voices from within and without Washington DC, such as the former isolationist and Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg, who urged a firm American commitment – a commitment that required the huge costs to be shared by the Allies. This approach was also proposed by former Secretary of War George C Marshall in a speech at Harvard on 5 June 1947. An even earlier proponent was Winston Churchill who, after losing re-election as prime minister, devoted himself to writing and public speaking. In the post-war years he…

After the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Department of Defense in Washington DC the Bush administration announced plans for a global campaign against Al Qaeda and its network of allies. Rather than extend the previous Clinton administration’s counterterrorism policies of limited punitive strikes, President Bush’s cabinet built a consensus for attacking Afghanistan to root out the masterminds behind 9/11 in what became Operation Enduring Freedom. The US opened its campaign in Afghanistan with special forces raids and the insertion of CIA operatives among local resistance factions dubbed the Northern Alliance, but once the Taliban were ousted by late October a new mission was drawn up. It went far beyond just a token deployment of US forces to secure the capital Kabul and…

Christopher Charles Teesdale entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, London, in 1848 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery in 1851. The following year Teesdale went to Corfu, where he was promoted to first lieutenant in 1853. In 1854 he was appointed aide-de-camp to Colonel William Fenwick Williams, who at the time was the British commissioner with the Turkish army in Asia Minor during the Crimean War. The same year, Teesdale accompanied Williams to Erzurum, from where they travelled to Kars, reaching the city on 24 September. Williams later returned to Erzurum, leaving Teesdale with the unenviable task of organising and establishing discipline among the poorly trained Turkish garrison. He worked ceaselessly to ensure the welfare of his men, and with his task largely complete…

Soldiers of the 4th Indian Division and their anti-tank weapons – a Boys anti-tank rifle, Molotov cocktails and grenades – are inspected in Egypt. The photo’s original caption refers to the men as a “tank-hunting squad”. Benito Mussolini’s invasion of Egypt had begun just a month prior to this photograph being taken, and the men of the 4th Indian Division had a large part to play in the forthcoming Operation Compass, which drove the Italians back into Libya.…

As the Cold War progressed, the threat of an offensive by the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies was the paramount concern for NATO, whose HQ moved to Brussels, Belgium, in 1967. To prepare for this eventuality the United States along with Belgium, France, the Netherlands, West Germany and the United Kingdom organised the Return of Forces to Germany exercises, aka REFORGER. The rationale behind it was to practise the air bridge for bringing full US Army divisions to the European mainland and then the West German plains, where the Warsaw Pact’s main invasion force could break out. In the recollection of one Cold War veteran, Colonel Matthew Morton (Ret), the importance of REFORGER was the logistics behind it. “The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia only months earlier [in August…

Contemporary accounts from Charles Darwin and Captain Robert FitzRoy, of HMS Beagle, suggest that settlers of various nationalities were encouraged to colonise the Falklands during the 19th century. The Falkland Islands Company was founded in 1851 to exploit the wild cattle descended from herds imported by the French, while sheep farming became the basis of the economy. In 1861, Argentina emerged after years of civil war as a country that welcomed immigration from Italy, Germany and Spain, and by the mid-20th century it had grown to become one of the topten wealthiest nations. In 1892, the Falklands was recognised to be a self-supporting British colony of about 2,000 people. During the mid-19th century, the British Army order of battle consisted of the Regular Forces managed by the War Office and…

Situated near Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, the former wartime facility and present-day museum known as Bletchley Park – a name synonymous with codebreaking – has opened its largest ever exhibition. The permanent fixture, entitled The Intelligence Factory, seeks to highlight the personal stories of those involved in the vast and secretive operation, from tracking ships to handling data to recruiting, feeding and housing thousands of staff. Unveiled on 28 April 2022, the newly restored Block A, which houses the exhibition, has been made available to visitors for the first time in Bletchley Park’s history. Featured within are numerous fascinating objects, including a Hagelin C-39s cipher machine and an original Hollerith machine. A contemporary interactive recreation of the Plotting Room used by naval intelligence officers for safeguarding Allied vessels has also been…

Author: Peter Caddick-Adams Publisher: Penguin Random House Price: £30 Released: May 2022 In early 1945, US General Dwight D Eisenhower assembled seven Allied armies, totalling four million soldiers, to launch an invasion of the Western Reich. Military historian Peter Caddick-Adams, in his sweeping and thoroughly documented narrative of that offensive, offers an in-depth account of the last 100 days of the Second World War. It is a tale rarely revealed in histories of the war’s final weeks which, as the author points out, tend to dwell on the 1944 D-Day landings, the summer battles in Normandy, the autumn stalemate of Operation Market Garden in Holland and the winter campaign in the Ardennes forests. The author bases his research on an extensive list of sources. These include hundreds of personal interviews…

A British patrol, including a Ferret armoured car, is photographed close to the border with East Germany the year before construction of the Berlin Wall began. After the end of the Second World War, West Berlin remained within control of the Allied Powers, split between France, the US and UK occupying forces. Prior to 1961, when the Berlin Wall was built, movement between Soviet-occupied East Berlin and West Berlin was much easier, and an estimated three million Germans fled East Germany between 1949 and 1961.…

2 February 1946 THE LONG TELEGRAM Just months after the end of World War II the American ambassador in Moscow, George Kennan, sends a report to the State Department explaining the Kremlin’s expansionist ideology. To oppose growing Soviet influence and power Kennan argues it’s vitally important to uphold democratic ideals in the West. 4 April 1949 01 NATO IS BORN Eager to strengthen collective security in Western Europe, the representatives of 12 countries – including Iceland and Denmark – meet in Washington DC and sign the founding documents of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 1950-53 02 THE KOREAN WAR Although the war never involves the NATO alliance, the invasion of South Korea on 25 June 1950 galvanises the member countries to send forces under a United Nations mandate. China and the Soviet…

“MORE AMERICANS DIED ON 17 SEPTEMBER 1862, THAN ON D-DAY, 6 JUNE 1944” The first year of the American Civil War (1861-65) had shown the people of both north and south that it would be a long, bloody conflict. A decades-long feud over states’ rights to own slaves in the south, versus the determination in the north to abolish the evil trade, had culminated in the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in November 1860. Lincoln had won on a platform not to abolish slavery, but to reform it and prevent its spread into the new states being formed in the west of the continent. To southerners, who had not voted for him, this was a step too far and they openly argued for secession – that is, to…

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“HIGHLY AGILE, ESPECIALLY AT LOW SPEEDS, IT IS AN EXCELLENT CLOSE-RANGE DOGFIGHTER” When it entered service with the Warsaw Pact in the early 1980s, stories of the MiG 29’s potency spread alarm among the NATO powers. Fast, with a top speed of over twice the speed of sound and yet incredibly nimble, the Mig 29 seemed to outclass even the latest Western types. Experience and exposure to the type post-Cold War tempered its reputation somewhat, but it is still an extremely capable fighter. Highly agile, especially at low speeds, it is an excellent close-range dogfighter. However, it has been found to be lacking in longer range engagements, with neither the avionics nor the weaponry for the ‘beyond visual range’ combat more common today. It would eventually see service in nearly…

Part of a series of tapestries to mark the 1672 Battle of Solebay, The Burning of the Royal James depicts the dramatic climax of the naval engagement between the English and the Dutch in what became the first battle of the Third Anglo-Dutch War. It is the only remaining Solebay Tapestry in the collection of the Queen’s House, Greenwich – belonging to the National Maritime Museum of the Royal Museums Greenwich – and was designed by the father and son team Willem Van de Velde the Elder and Younger around 350 years ago. However, in the centuries since its creation, fading dyes and light damage to the silk and wool have muted its once vibrant colours, obscured the fine craftsmanship showcased in its details and fundamentally resulted in its structural…