Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 114 i History of War

In 1925 the Schutzstaffel was formed as Adolf Hitler’s personal bodyguard, made up of his most loyal and fanatical followers. Before long the group was tasked with carrying out the Nazi Party’s most heinous and brutal policies across Europe and beyond, with the Waffen-SS serving as the supposed ‘elite’ combat arm. By late 1944, with the Allies advancing in the East and West, the Waffen-SS found itself at the frontline of the Führer’s final desperate attempts to salvage his Reich. This issue historian Anthony Tucker-Jones recounts the final desperate actions of the Waffen-SS, from their savagery in the Bulge to their fanatical final stand in Berlin. FOLLOW THE HISTORY OF WAR TEAM HISTORY OF WARMAG @HISTORY OF WARMAG SCAN TO GET OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER…

Heinrich Himmler inspects a Soviet POW during an official visit to Shirokaya concentration camp in Minsk, Belarus. Shirokaya was a labour camp that held thousands of prisoners from the Red Army and the Minsk Ghetto. Himmler, who was the Nazi chief of police and head of the SS, is seen locking eyes with a Soviet prisoner who stares back with a defiant glare. On the same day, Himmler ordered 99 Jews to be executed to demonstrate his men’s shooting technique. He was reportedly nauseated after witnessing the executions.…

Hyder Ali was a Mysorean soldier, who rose to prominence as a military leader. As commander-in-chief he created a modern army and equipped and trained it along European lines, with assistance from the French, which would later pose a significant threat to the British. As William Dalrymple writes in The Anarchy: “Having learned modern infantry warfare by observing French tactics, he offered strong resistance to the East India Company, gaining his most notable victory… at Pollilur in 1780.” It would be around 1761 that Ali became de facto leader of Mysore. He would conquer Bednore and Kanara, as well as the petty feudal chiefs in southern India. His expansionism worried Asaf Jah II, the nizam of Hyderabad, and Madhavrao I, the peshwa of the Maratha Empire. Ali’s involvement with the…

Both the 1845-46 and 1848-49 wars, waged by the East India Company (EIC), ended in Sikh defeat and partial subjugation followed by full annexation of Sikh territory. In the aftermath of the second conflict, it also brought the British into contact with the Pashtun tribes of the North West Frontier, which the British were to contend with for the next century. During the early 19th century the Sikh Empire, under the leadership of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, had maintained civil relations with the British. Nevertheless, the Sikh ruler established a strong army to safeguard Sikh territory from the dual threats posed by the Afghans and Pasthun tribesmen, as well as from any potential territorial expansion of the British. The Sikh army was equipped and trained along European lines, and thus presented…

By the spring of 1863, the American Civil War in the eastern theatre of Northern Virginia was in stalemate. Both sides had been busy rebuilding their forces in winter quarters since the bloodletting at the Battle of Fredericksburg the previous December. Since the beginning of the war itself, President Abraham Lincoln had been searching for a general who could effectively lead the enormous resources Washington would place under his command in terms of men and materiel. The industrial north had the resources to conduct and win a strategic war against the weaker agricultural-based southern rebel states, but what it repeatedly failed to do was defeat Robert E Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. The Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862 had been a bloody calamity for the north, with thousands needlessly…

Known in Irish Gaelic as Dun Fhraoigh (Fort of the Heather) Fort Dunree is a coastal defence fortification on the west side of the Inishowen peninsula in County Donegal, Ireland. It was built by the British in the aftermath of the 1798 Irish Rebellion to guard northwest Ireland in case of a French naval invasion. The fort was modernised in the late 19th century and guarded the British fleet at anchor before the Battle of Jutland during World War I. Following the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, Dunree became the last fortification to be handed over to the Irish government when the British surrendered it to the Eire Defence Forces on 3 October 1938. This was the last time that sovereignty over any territory was ceded to…

United Nations soldiers dig into bunkers atop Hill 266 during the Korean War. The hill was the scene of five engagements between UN and Chinese troops over a 10-month period during 1952-53. The UN soldiers were mostly American, although there were also personnel from South Korea and Colombia. The Americans nicknamed Hill 266 ‘Old Baldy’ after heavy fire destroyed the trees on its crest. Both sides incurred heavy casualties during the five engagements, with the Chinese and UN controlling the hill at different points.…

“KNOWN TO CREWS AS ‘THE BEAST’ OR THE ‘SON OF A BITCH 2ND CLASS’, THE SB2C ENDED UP BEING THE USN’S MOST COMMON DIVE BOMBER” The Curtiss SB2C Helldiver (not to be confused with the earlier, biplane Curtiss SBC Helldiver) was designed to an ambitious set of specifications published by the United States Navy (USN) and United States Marine Corps (USMC) in 1938. They required a modern, fast, long-range monoplane dive bomber with internal bomb bay and powerful engine. Such was the USN’s confidence in Curtiss, who had designed many of their aircraft in the last two decades, that the type was ordered into production in November 1940, weeks before the maiden flight of the prototype. When it flew, however, many problems soon became obvious. The type suffered from an…

Author: Desmond Seward Publisher: Birlinn Price: £22 Desmond Seward, who died on 3 April 2022, was one of Britain’s most accomplished popular historians, his many books displaying a mixture of vigorous storytelling and close attention to primary and secondary sources. His final book, published posthumously, shows that he suffered no decline in his gifts in his final years. The Greatest Viking takes the life of King Olav Haraldsson and brings the man and his times to life. In this, Seward was helped by Olav’s life being, like that of so many of the great Vikings, a tale of outrageous adventure, of reversals and victories, daring escapes and unlikely returns. Indeed, it’s the sort of life that if Seward had been writing a novel, he would have had to tone it…

Painted by Anglo-American artist John Singleton Copley, The Death of Major Peirson is a large oil painting that depicts the demise of Major Francis Peirson at the Battle of Jersey. Fought on 6 January 1781 as part of the American Revolutionary War, the battle was the last French attempt to seize the island of Jersey in the English Channel. The French invaded with c.1,000 soldiers but Peirson and the British garrison refused to surrender. Peirson was killed but the British quickly defeated the French.…

1600-86 MILITANT TRADE An English (later British) joint-stock company, the East India Company (EIC) is formed to trade in the East Indies. It establishes trading posts on the Indian coast and recruits soldiers to secure its settlements from hostile locals and European rivals. 1686-90 01 ANGLO-MUGHAL WAR The first Anglo-Indian conflict on the subcontinent sees the EIC fighting the Mughal Empire, which had initially allowed the EIC to establish trading posts. The Company refuses to pay Mughal taxes, which results in naval blockades of its forts. The EIC is heavily fined by the Mughal emperor. 1746-63 02 CARNATIC WARS Fought in the Carnatic coastal region of India, three conflicts form part of the wider Seven Years’ War. The British and French East India Companies fight for dominance within Mughal territories, with…

When a group of merchants and explorers met in London to form the East India Company (EIC) in 1600 they couldn’t have conceived it would eventually own one of the largest private military forces in colonial history. The EIC was founded to trade in Asian goods and produce and it created trading posts along the Indian coastline during the 17th century. It prospered by buying land from local rulers, and such was the EIC’s success that guards were employed to protect its trading posts and factories. Company lands became so extensive that these territories were named ‘Presidencies’ and included large ‘Presidency Towns’ such as Madras (Chennai), Bombay (Mumbai) and Calcutta (Kolkata). At first, the EIC had the consent to trade by the Mughal and Maratha Empires but the Presidencies became…

Outside the battered Reichstag the sound of artillery and small arms fire echoed across the ruins of the Königsplatz. The building shook as chunks of stone were torn off in great showers of debris. Inside cowered the remains of Heinrich Himmler’s mighty Waffen-SS. How had his private army that once numbered almost 40 divisions been reduced to this? Hitler, in the closing months of World War II, vainly hoped that the Waffen-SS could turn the tide on both the Western and Eastern Fronts. Ever since the assassination attempt on his life on 20 July 1944 he had refused to trust the German armed forces – especially the army. Instead Hitler put his faith in Himmler’s Nazi fanatics and it was the SS who spearheaded his last two offensives. First in…

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This year marks the 337th anniversary of the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685. Led by James Scott, Duke of Monmouth – the glamorous and popular eldest son of King Charles II – it was a rebellion against Charles’ successor, James II of England. In February 1685, Charles II died after a horrendous series of treatments from his physicians following a ‘fit of apoplexy’ – commonly known as a stroke. Although he had numerous illegitimate offspring, he had no surviving children with his queen, Catherine of Braganza, and so the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland passed to his younger brother, James, who became King James II of England/VII of Scotland. Within months of James’ ascension to the throne, the duke of Monmouth invaded England in a vain attempt to rescue the…

Manufactured by the American company Pioneer UAV Inc, the RQ-2A provides field commanders with real-time reconnaissance, surveillance, target acquisition and battle damage information. It is controlled by ground control pilots and has a 185km (115-mile) range. Its deliberately small size and selected materials makes this UAV difficult to detect visually or by radar. RQ-2As were used by the US Armed Forces during 1986-2007 as well as by Israel, Singapore and Sri Lanka. The most famous event involving an RQ-2A occurred in 1991 during the Gulf War. This pictured UAV (designated Air Vehicle No. 159) operated from USS Wisconsin and was conducting a battle damage assessment after USS Missouri shelled Iraqi troops on Failaka Island. When 159 flew low over the island, some of the Iraqi soldiers concluded that the Missouri…