Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 122 i History of War

By the time Benito Mussolini declared war against the Allies in June 1940, the Second World War looked like it would soon be over. Nazi Germany had already swept through most of Western Europe, France was teetering and once it fell Britain, isolated and alone, would surely capitulate too. Keen to exploit the situation by grabbing French and British possessions in North and East Africa, including the Suez Canal, Mussolini sent his armies across the Mediterranean to start a conflict that they were in no fit state to fight. The Great Depression and decades of financial mismanagement under Mussolini had left Italy industrially and economically weak. His fascist crusades in East Africa and Spain, meanwhile, had burned through vast amounts of military materiel. As a result, his armed forces were…

Six days after the Germans launched Operation Citadel, which threatened to surround and cut off several Red Army divisions of the Central and Voronezh Fronts, German panzers continued to make progress, with the II-SS Panzer Corps moving in on the city of Prokhorovka. At 0850 on 11 July the German Leibstandarte SS Panzergrenadier Division overcame an anti-tank ditch that was to play an important role in the next day’s fighting. SS War Correspondent Johan King’s photos confirm the road bridge over this obstacle was captured intact. Beyond the anti-tank ditch stretched Hill 252.2 “like an enormous wave” – the Leibstandarte was now 1.6 miles (2.5km) from Prokhorovka. The Soviet 9th Guards Paratroop Division put up a fierce defence of the heights, which delayed the German advance and forced the Leibstandarte…

“THE CHINESE HAD RETREATED AND REGROUPED BUT WERE FAR FROM DEFEATED” On 25 June 1950, approximately 135,000 troops from the North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) advanced across the 38th parallel, and for months the conflict with the Republic of Korea (ROK) and its allies ebbed and flowed. Rolling southwards, the NKPA overwhelmed the ROK defenders and allied counterparts, before pushing them into a small perimeter around the southern port of Pusan. The tide then changed in the UN’s favour when on 15 September 1950 an amphibious landing far up the west coast at the port of Inchon enabled the recapture of Seoul and advances into North Korea itself. Unfortunately, doing so brought China into the conflict, with the People’s Volunteer Army (PVA) crossing the Yalu River that constituted the Chinese-North…

Auschwitz and Dachau have become bywords for the genocide of European Jews and other persecuted groups during the Second World War. Millions of people died at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators in these camps, with the horror of what took place casting a long shadow across the world. Of the six million Jews who were killed, almost 1.5 million were children. A much smaller number survived but the majority of them lost their families and were burdened with traumatic memories for life. Today, the surviving children of the Holocaust remain committed to ensuring that similar crimes against humanity never occur again. One such survivor is Ivor Perl. He and his elder brother Alec were the only survivors from their large Hungarian Jewish family and endured unimaginable suffering…

Author: Jacky Hyams Publisher: Michael O’Mara Books Price: £16.99 (Hardback) On sale: Out now It is undoubtedly the case that the Spitfire was the ‘glamour’ aircraft of the Battle of Britain compared to the Hurricane; a thoroughbred racehorse and a cart horse is the sort of analogy often applied to these two aircraft. But this perception of the Hurricane isn’t just unfair, it’s also incorrect, and it’s one that author Jacky Hyams seeks to redress in her book. A very readable little account of the plucky Hurricane, the book reprises many of the well-known tales surrounding the aircraft and its pilots during those Battle of Britain days and beyond. While it might be a stretch to say that this aircraft won the war, it is certainly the case that the…

Author: Major General (Ret’d) Mick Ryan Publisher: Casemate Fiction Price: £17.95 (Paperback) Released: Out now The techno-thriller is enjoying a revival in the fiction business as today’s ‘Great Power Competition’ has authors tackling future war. Back in the 1980s the likes of Craig Thomas and Tom Clancy launched the genre into the mainstream. As with General Sir John Hackett’s 1978 bestseller The Third World War, whose granular look at a clash between NATO and the Warsaw Pact became a template for other writers, in White Sun War an assault on Taiwan gets the same treatment but with a stronger plot. Mick Ryan weaves a sequence of events that pitches the US and Chinese militaries into a months-long contest of brinkmanship and high technology. As a storyteller Ryan’s grasp of the…

DR BEN WHEATLEY Following his interview in last month’s History of War, this issue Ben focuses on the fight for one critical position during the Battle of Prokhorovka: Hill 252.2. On page 28 he describes the battlefield tactics that proved decisive in the brutal armoured struggle. DR PENNY STARNS Penny received her PhD in the history of medicine from the University of Bristol, and has written multiple books on the subject. On page 32 she recounts how during the First World War, epidemics and outbreaks became deadly foes to both sides of no man’s land. JON TRIGG Before becoming an author and historian, Jon served with the Royal Anglian Regiment in Bosnia, the Gulf and Northern Ireland. This issue he recounts the brutal campaign between the IRA’s East Tyrone Brigade…

‘Fascism repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it. The Fascist conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest.’ By the time Benito Mussolini wrote these words in 1932, he had been in power for less than a decade. In that short time, however, he’d both expanded Italy’s armed forces and established a cult of militarism at the heart of national life. When the self-styled Duce first grabbed power in 1922, Italy was in turmoil. It may have ended up on the winning side during the First World War, but the conflict had almost broken the country. Its society was deeply polarised and its economy…

On the morning of 22 June 1941, when Mussolini was told of Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, he instantly pledged his country’s military support to the venture. Joining a crusade against communism was just too good an opportunity to miss – and not only from an ideological viewpoint. Apart from the potential plunder to be had, there was also the possibility of redeeming Italy’s martial reputation. After its military blunders in North Africa, piggybacking Hitler’s giant invasion force – the largest ever assembled – with the aim of scoring a few quick victories must have seemed like a safe bet to Il Duce. Within four days, he’d assembled a force known as the Corpo di Spedizione Italiano in Russia (or CSIR). It was made up of 62,000 men, 82…

At the turn of the 20th century the basics of epidemiology, vaccine development, infection control and aseptic techniques were incorporated into scientific endeavour and medical practice. However, nobody had yet coined the term ‘superspreader’ or referred to large gatherings as ‘super-spreader’ events. Infection control and quarantine measures relied on observing certain signs and symptoms of illness and isolating sufferers from those who were healthy, and there was no recognition that certain people could be carriers of disease without displaying any of the usual manifestations of infection. Such asymptomatic carriers were responsible for unknowingly transmitting disease among their families, communities and further afield. The most famous of these super-spreaders was an Irish cook named Mary Mallon, who as a carrier of typhoid (also known as enteric fever), became widely known as…

Discover the RAF Museum’s tribute to Bomber Command, a medieval tower in Peterborough and a ‘Unicorn’ in Dundee Around 125,000 aircrew from 60 nations served in Bomber Command during the Second World War. They volunteered from the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth and Dominions, occupied and neutral countries as well as German nationals fleeing persecution. Their average age was just 23. Over 55,000 of these men died in skies above Europe, with only 30 percent reaching the end of the war without being killed, wounded or captured as a prisoner of war. At the Royal Air Force Museum in London, a new exhibition called Strike Hard, Strike Sure: Bomber Command 1939-1945 shares the Bomber Command story through the lens of the personal experiences of those who served. They were, in their…

“A DISTINGUISHED WWI VETERAN, SIKORSKI LED THE GOVERNMENT-IN-EXILE FROM LONDON AND BECAME A SYMBOL OF POLISH NATIONAL DEFIANCE” DEATH OF SIKORSKI During the early part of the Second World War, WładyslawSikorski (1881 – 1943) was the most powerful Polish figure among the Allies. The prime minister of the Polish government-in-exile, Sikorski was also commander-in-chief of the Polish Armed Forces. A distinguished Great War veteran, Sikorski led the government-in-exile from London and became a symbol of Polish national defiance. However, on 4 July 1943 Sikorski was killed when the RAF B-24 Liberator aircraft he was travelling in crashed after taking off from Gibraltar. Eight other people, including his daughter, were also killed, with the plane’s Czech pilot being the only survivor. Sikorski was buried in the Polish War Cemetery in Newark-on-Trent,…

Author: Mark Healy Publisher: Osprey Publishing Price: £35 (Hardback) Released: 20 July 2023 Mark Healy first wrote on the ancient Assyrians for Osprey in 1991. With this year’s The Ancient Assyrians: Empire and Army 883-612 BC, he brings to bear on the same subject the scholarship of the last 30-odd years. What is more, this work has none of the limitations of format of some of Osprey’s series – coming in at 310 pages it covers everything you could want to know regarding the Assyrian army over almost three tumultuous centuries. He breaks the work into two sections. The first is on the empire, which begins with a hefty chunk before this period before looking at each of the important rulers – Sargon II, Sennacherib, Ashurbanipal – down to the…

Author: John Shelton Publisher: Fonthill Media Price: £40 (Hardback) Released: Out now While books on the Spitfire abound, and at least one good biography of RJ Mitchell has appeared in recent decades, this is the first ‘integrated’ story of Mitchell, Supermarine and the Spitfire. And what a wonderful book this is! Quite rightly, John Shelton focuses on the early era of Supermarine in the halcyon days of the late 1920s and 1930s and the flying boat and seaplane days of the company. The early biographical aspects of RJ Mitchell’s life are also revealing and fascinating, as is the gripping tale leading up to the Schneider Trophy successes and the early development of the aircraft which became the Spitfire. At a stonking 445 pages, this is undoubtedly the definitive work on…

Originally formed as Thomas Morgan’s Company of Foot in 1572, The Buffs (Royal East Kent Regiment) was one of the oldest regiments in the British Army. Nicknamed because of the buff coats its soldiers were issued during their first overseas deployment in the Netherlands, this moniker became official in 1751. Accumulating 116 battle honours, the regiment had a distinguished history. First fighting in the Eighty Years’ War (1566 – 1648), it went on to fight in the Jacobite uprisings, American Revolutionary War, Napoleonic Wars, Second Opium War, Anglo-Zulu War, Second Boer War and the World Wars. Four of its soldiers were awarded the Victoria Cross, including two during the Crimean War. The Buffs was finally merged with another Kentish regiment after 389 years of service in 1961 to become the…

The Spanish Civil War (1936-39) split the world down ideological lines. Those who supported the left-leaning government of the Second Spanish Republic travelled to Spain in their thousands to join the volunteer International Brigades and other associated groups. Consisting of socialists, communists, anarchists and democrats, these pro-Republican foreign volunteers did not receive official recognition or assistance from their countries of origin such as France, the United States and United Kingdom. On the other hand, supporters of the Nationalist military junta led by General Francisco Franco firmly included Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Portugal. Nationalist forces received supplies of munitions and other equipment as well as air and naval support from these far-right governments. The most infamous example of this foreign intervention was the bombing of Guernica in 1937 when German…

Johnson Beharry did not have an easy life growing up. Born in 1979 in Grenada, then recently independent from British rule, the Beharry family lived in poverty. During the early days of the post-independence, Marxist-Leninist regime, the young Beharry had to walk three miles (5km) to school barefoot. This difficult start to life set Beharry on his journey to joining the British Army as he saved up enough money to move to the UK when he was 20. Yet he would not join the army immediately after arriving in West London; instead, he continued to work as a labourer on building sites, as he had done in Grenada since he was just 13. While living in the UK, Beharry almost became caught up with West London gangs, but in August…