Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 138 i History of War

On 2 August 1939, Albert Einstein sent US President Franklin D Roosevelt a letter. In it, he warned that the recent discovery of nuclear fission in Nazi Germany could lead to the creation of “extremely powerful bombs of a new type”. The letter, which had actually been written by Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, then hinted that the Germans were currently trying to develop such a weapon. Szilard believed that the only way to stop Hitler was to beat him in the race to build an atomic bomb. His hope was that by leveraging Einstein’s fame, they could convince Roosevelt to start a US atomic programme. It worked. Roosevelt’s Advisory Committee on Uranium held its first meeting on 21 October 1939, just weeks after the outbreak of the Second World War.…

The Battle of Leyte Gulf was the climactic naval engagement of the Pacific Campaign. Leading the Japanese First Diversion Attack Force, Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita attempted to enter Leyte Gulf and disrupt the ongoing US amphibious invasion of Leyte Island. Admiral William Halsey and the United States Third Fleet stood in his way. Across four battles – Sibuyan Sea, Surigao Strait, Cape Engaño and Samar – the US won a decisive victory and the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) would never again carry out large operations. Leyte Gulf is now among the most highly mythologised battles in US history, as covered by Mark Stille in his book Leyte Gulf: A New History of the World’s Largest Sea Battle. Speaking with History of War, Stille discusses Leyte Gulf’s mythology, the significant engagements…

Just after dawn on 14 October 1918, after a night of heavy bombardment, a German Army despatch runner staggered back to his regimental HQ at Wervicq-Sud near France’s border with Belgium. His eyes were burning red and his voice was no more than a croak. It was clear that he had been gassed. By the time he reached a first aid station in a mansion called the Château Blanc, the 29-year-old could no longer see. The diagnosis of gassing was confirmed when he was transferred to a clinic in German-occupied Belgium and then to a hospital in Germany. By the time he was released the following month – and had regained his faculties – Berlin had capitulated and the First World War was over. Adolf Hitler recounted this experience in…

Despite the fact that the last naumachia in ancient Rome about which we have any detail seems to have come in the reign of Domitian (r.81-96 CE), the idea of naumachia seized the popular imagination from the 16th century onwards. This may have coincided with the publication of Latin authors which recorded these ancient extravaganzas and gave modern rulers the chance to show off in a similar way while also connecting themselves to a lost glory of Rome. Many of the entertainments of the period sought to connect and identify contemporary rulers and aristocracy with the great figures of Roman and Greek history. A naumachia was held for Henry II of France in Rouen in 1550. Another was held in Scotland, on the waters of Holyrood Park in 1562, to…

BATTLE OF AACHEN CONCLUDES On 21 October 1944, US forces captured Aachen, the first German city to fall. It followed 39 days of brutal urban combat, with the outnumbered Wehrmacht forces putting up a tenacious defence. The Germans were eventually defeated after heavy losses, struggling to cope with the US’s capacity to unleash overwhelming artillery fire and armoured deployments. However, the difficulties in Aachen had upset Allied plans for their continued advance east. Success in the Battle of Hürtgen Forest became vital so the Allies could capture dams behind German lines, an even more challenging prospect than seizing Aachen. MARKET GARDEN FALLOUT The Allies’ most infamous airborne assault was disastrous in many ways, but it did allow them to advance 60 miles (97km) into occupied Netherlands and liberate cities like…

Author: John Gilbert McCurdy Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press Price: £29 (Hardback) Released: Out now The experiences of Robert Newburgh will sound familiar to many current and former servicemen and women. It wasn’t until 2000 that it ceased to be illegal to be homosexual in the British Armed Forces, and many people had been disgraced and discharged by then. Newburgh had already raised suspicions regarding his sexuality before becoming the chaplain of the 18th Regiment, based in Philadelphia, in 1773. He attempted to clear his name before leaving to take up his position in America, but rumour and scandal were irresistible to the garrison at a time when entertainment was scarce. Newburgh was unfortunate to have arrived in America to join a regiment riven by private quarrels, at a time…

MARK STILLE A retired commander of the US Navy, Mark also worked for 40 years in the intelligence community. He is now a widely respected expert on the Pacific Theatre of WWII and this issue spoke with Louis Hardiman on the Battle of Leyte Gulf (page 34). DR ZACK WHITE Zack is a researcher, historian and podcaster, specialising in the British Army in the early 19th century. On page 42 he shares his insight on the Battle of Salamanca, which saw the future Duke of Wellington gain a decisive victory over the French during the Peninsula Campaign. MURRAY DAHM A History of War regular, this month Murray unravels the mysterious, and mythologised, naval gladiator battles. Part theatrics, part re-enactment, part extravagant blood sport, these spectacular ancient events have fascinated and…

Within days of the Nagasaki bombing, some of the scientists who’d worked on the Manhattan Project released a statement. In it, they warned of the “grave danger that lies ahead”, predicting that other countries might now be “spurred on to create atomic bombs of their own in self-defense [leading to] an armaments race”. The arms race they were predicting, however, had already started. As soon as Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had seen evidence of the destruction at Hiroshima, he’d issued orders for the USSR to develop an atomic weapon. Despite the immense secrecy around the Manhattan Project, the Soviets were better positioned to do this than the Americans imagined. For over a year, they’d not only known of the laboratory at Las Alamos, but they’d also had two spies working…

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The four battles at Leyte Gulf were extraordinarily costly to the Japanese, whereas their US opponents faced minimal losses. The Japanese brought 69 ships to the battle, of which 28 were sunk. That totalled around 12,000 casualties. Meanwhile, the US Navy lost just six vessels, totalling 36,000 tons of shipping and approximately 3,000 casualties. The scale of the Japanese defeat was staggering. “The term decisive is overused when it comes to describing naval battles in the Pacific War but here’s a case where you can use it,” says Stille. “After Leyte Gulf, the Japanese surface force was ineffective. It didn’t have the fuel or the ships to conduct any more large-scale operations. The Japanese defeat at Leyte Gulf was inevitable. Toyoda should not have accepted battle under those conditions.”…

The link between the gassing of Hitler and a new British Army gas shell came to light while I was researching the war service of my grandfather, Arthur James Ingoldsby, writes David Orr. At the age of 25, my grandfather fought in the Battle of Courtrai in Flanders – the same engagement in which the future Nazi leader was invalided out of the Great War. At about the time Hitler was being gassed on 14 October 1918 – and less than two miles (3km) away – Lieutenant (later Captain) Ingoldsby of the 2/23rd Battalion, London Regiment, was leading his company in an attack on German machine gun posts on the northern outskirts of Wervik. The action, in which “he single-handed took many prisoners”, won him a Military Cross for “gallantry…

The term naumachia was used in the ancient world for staged naval combats and the structures that were built to host them. Naumachia were in many ways an inevitable progression of Roman blood sports which, by the late first century BCE, had become increasingly violent. The most famous of these spectacles was, of course, gladiatorial combat – where pairs of warriors were pitted against one another in an arena. The earliest gladiatorial combat dates back to the First Punic War in 264 BCE. On that occasion only three pairs of gladiators fought, to honour a dead general’s father. They were a munus – a gift to the departed. Throughout Rome’s history the numbers of combatants grew larger and larger – in 216 BCE games lasted three days, with 22 pairs…

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Our pick of the latest military history books Author: Katherine Carter Publisher: Yale University Press Price: £20 (Hardback) Released: Out now This is an absolutely fabulous book, full of anecdotes and deep insight. Katherine Carter, who has worked as the curator at Chartwell for the past decade, is eminently placed to recount the house’s vital role in Winston Churchill’s so-called wilderness years. As the custodian of the beloved Churchill family home she has soaked up its atmosphere and brought it vibrantly back to life. Carter expertly explains why the house became Winston’s operational nerve centre in the years preceding the outbreak of the Second World War. Through meetings held there with 12 individuals, some well-known, some less so, the author elaborates how Churchill’s perception of the growing Nazi threat was…

Author: Mark Stille Publisher: Osprey Publishing Price: £25 (Hardback) £11.38 (Kindle) Released: Out now The story of the epic Battle of Midway, the June 1942 turning point of the Second World War in the Pacific, has been told and retold, written about, dissected and made into two feature films in the last six decades. So why tell it again? Historian and author Mark Stille and Osprey Publishing team up with a resounding response in this reexamination of the pivotal contest of the carrier war in the Pacific. Six months after Pearl Harbor, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Combined Fleet, sought to destroy the remainder of the US Navy in the theatre and seize Midway Atoll, just 1,300 miles (2,000km) from the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Stille,…

Author: Prit Buttar Publisher: Osprey Publishing Price: £30 (Hardback) Released: Out now Through a fine body of well-researched work, Prit Buttar has established himself as one of the UK’s leading Eastern Front historians for both the First and Second World Wars. His latest book is a welcome follow up to To Besiege a City: Leningrad 1941-42, published by Osprey last year. Buttar now completes his narrative of one of the most brutal sieges in history, perhaps only eclipsed by Stalingrad. Leningrad defiantly held out against Hitler’s armies, who were hell-bent on the city’s destruction, for 900 days. Naively he thought he could bomb and shell the city into submission – starvation also became a weapon of war. Stalin, though, was determined the city, which had once been Russia’s capital, should…

Dating from the early 1900s, this broadsword belonged to an officer in the Royal Scots (Lothian Regiment): JFS Gordon. As a traditional Highland broadsword, it’s packed with details and markers that reflect a soldier proud of his Scottish identity. Symbols on the blade’s markings include the thistle (Scotland’s national flower) and St Andrew, patron saint of Scotland, carrying his saltire cross. The sword also includes markings that are unique to Gordon, including an etching of his name and a boar’s head. The latter was part of the Gordon coat of arms, used by many Scottish clans to signify bravery. The Highland broadsword evolved from the basket-hilted sword that emerged in the 16th century, designed to protect the user’s hand. A new style of swordsmanship developed across Britain and lasted centuries,…

After the last American holdouts on the rocky island of Corregidor surrendered in April 1942 the Philippines had to endure a pitiless Japanese occupation that stretched 40 months. Ending it was a matter of honour and principle for General Douglas MacArthur and his staff, all of them exiled after defeat in the Philippines, and they were raring to go after achieving victory in the South Pacific and the crucial New Guinea archipelago. For three days in late July 1944, a high-level conference in the Hawaiian islands attended by President Franklin D Roosevelt settled the endless deliberations of whether to retake Formosa (now called Taiwan) from the Japanese or rush headlong to the Philippines. MacArthur’s faction prevailed with the reluctant endorsement of Admiral Chester Nimitz, whose staff were strong advocates for…

How did Salamanca impact Wellesley’s career? By Salamanca, Wellesley had learned the bulk of what he would ever know about war. It was a very clear indication of his confidence in himself, his tactical awareness and his troops, and confirmed that Wellesley could consider himself one of the best generals of this period. Salamanca made Wellesley a darling back home. He was already a household name by this point because of the long string of successes with his name attached. However, it did mark a turning point in the conversations around Wellesley and expelled the vast majority of criticisms he had been subject to. The victory was overwhelming after other successes at Ciudad Rodrigo in January and Badajoz in April. Within the space of half a year, Wellesley had achieved…

Rations for Two The Royal Logistics Corps (RLC) Museum’s new exhibition explores the changing face of maternity in the military Prior to the 1990s, women who became pregnant had to leave the military. Between 1978 and 1990, some 5,700 women left the three services for this reason. In August 1990, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) changed its policy for pregnant service personnel, allowing them to continue serving and benefit from maternity leave. These changes meant that the Armed Forces had to develop maternity-wear consistent with uniform standards and compatible with pregnant women’s changing bodies. The Rations for Two exhibition illustrates the story of maternity in the military by displaying the development of maternity uniforms, with examples on display from the 1990s to the present day. The exhibition tells the story…

Author: James Crossland Publisher: Elliott & Thompson Price: £25 (Hardback) Released: Out now If you like books about swashbuckling sons of the British Empire, then this is a must. Its subject is Robert Bruce Lockhart, a man who lived such an outrageous life that if it were turned into a Hollywood script nobody would believe a word of it. Born in 1887 near Edinburgh, Lockhart saw himself as an “experimentalist in adventure”. Aged 21, he left home to work in colonial Malaya. The experience lasted three years, saw him embroiled in a scandal after having an affair with a local (married) princess and ended with his suspected poisoning. It was an episode that pretty much set the tone for the rest of his life. After coming home, he joined the…