Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 142 i History of War

The liberation of Paris in August 1944 was one of the most symbolically important moments of the war, ending the four-year German occupation. However, even among the celebrations on 26 August, German snipers who had remained concealed in the city opened fire on the crowds below. Elusive and deadly, marksmen like these were not new to the battlefield, but during the urban combat of Western Europe they took on a new potency, turning every street corner into a potentially lethal killing zone. In this issue’s cover feature, Mike Haskew recounts how Allied sharpshooters countered this threat using their own tactics and fieldcraft. He explores how Canadian, British and American snipers successfully disrupted, demoralised and destroyed the enemy during the gruelling 1945 campaign in Europe. FOLLOW THE HISTORY OF WARTEAM /HISTORY…

When Wolfgang Kapp proclaimed himself chancellor on 13 March 1920, the Weimar government called a general strike to derail the putsch. The trade unions lost no time in calling their members to support the strike, and an estimated 12 million workers downed tools. The strike paralysed Kapp’s government, and by the 17th brought the coup to an end. Yet despite a victory for the Weimar government, the strike triggered an uprising of workers in the Ruhr. Savage violence erupted, which claimed 1,600 lives. Although the strike acted as the trigger, the causes of the Ruhr uprising lay with the state of politics of the early Weimar Republic. As Frank McDonough writes in The Weimar Years: “The Rhenish-Westphalian industrial region was already a focal point of left wing radicalism. It was…

The science of precision killing took an enormous leap forward during the Great War. Such horrific cost in lives and treasure could’ve scarcely been conceived prior to that conflict. The warring nations concluded their tenuous peace at Versailles in 1919, handing Germany the lion’s share of responsibility for the catastrophe; at the same time, the victors and vanquished curbed defence spending and reduced the size of their standing armies. The notion of another global conflict was abhorrent, and yet it came. By 1939 the nations of Europe were at war once again. Along with the shrinking of armies, the perpetuation of sniper craft had been stifled in the process. Although the sniper and his stealthy capability to change the tactical course of battle had been prized, Western countries allowed that…

Once East and West Germany had been established, both new nations set about rearming to protect themselves against Cold War threats. In West Germany, rearmament was met with widespread opposition. Things were much smoother in the East, where the Stalinist GDR could impose militaristic policies on German society. While many mothers expressed the fear that they could lose their sons in future wars, resistance and conscription boycotts were limited. At the same time, communist ideology provided a moral justification for the military. It was believed that fighting was essential to building a peaceful socialist world constantly under attack from imperial capitalists. The military permeated into professional life and childhood. “The East promoted military toys for children and children would visit army barracks,” says Trentmann. “It was like a funfair. The…

IWO JIMA CAMPAIGN On 19 February, US Marines and US Navy began the Iwo Jima campaign. Designated Operation Detachment, they aimed to capture the island’s two airfields to enable bombing runs on the Japanese mainland with fighter escorts. The invasion involved 110,000 US servicemen, who were tasked with clearing the Japanese defenders from heavily fortified positions. The Japanese had constructed a complex network of bunkers, hidden artillery positions and 11 miles (18km) of tunnels. The American forces suffered nearly 7,000 killed and 20,000 wounded. YALTA CONFERENCE From 4-11 February Joseph Stalin, Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met at the Yalta Conference in Crimea to discuss a post-war settlement. The failure to invite Charles de Gaulle provoked his lasting resentment towards the ‘Big Three’. The leaders agreed on the division…

Author: Gabriel Gavin Publisher: Hurst Price: £20 (Hardback) Released: Out now Nagorno-Karabakh is one of Eurasia’s almost-forgotten conflict zones, one that largely fails to resonate even with people who are well-informed about today’s wars. In this incisive book, Gabriel Gavin exposes for the first time the humanitarian catastrophe that led to the exodus of the region’s entire population in 2023. That came after hostilities broke out in the area and its surrounding territories, a clash that ended two months later with a trilateral treaty between the two warring factions Armenia and Azerbaijan, brokered by Russia, one that strongly favoured the Azerbaijanis. There then came a two-year blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh’s road access to the outside world. In 2023, the Azerbaijani cordon touched off a crisis for the people of this territory.…

Author: Ashley Jackson Publisher: Bodleian Libraries Price: £30 (Hardback) Released: Out now As a fan of ‘local’ histories of the Second World War, this writer was more than delighted to be asked to review this book, and it’s a work which most certainly did not disappoint. While some might consider such histories rather too narrow and parochial, this book is none of those things. Instead, author Ashley Jackson focuses on Oxford as a university city and examines the institution’s wider role in the conflict, uncovering the secret world of intelligence and science which were all part of Oxford’s wartime story. A professor of imperial and military history at King’s College, London, Jackson certainly knows his stuff – a fact shining through on every well-researched page, with the author’s enthusiasm for…

FRANK TRENTMANN Frank is a professor of history at the University of London and author of Out of the Darkness – shortlisted for the 2024 Wolfson History Prize. On page 62 he discusses Germany from 1943 to the present day. FRANK COGLIANO A professor of American history at the University of Edinburgh, on page 48 Frank ponders the counter-factual conundrum: what would have been the consequences of a Mexican victory over the United States in the war of 1846-48? DAVID SMITH In this issue David examines the Royal Navy’s attack on the vital strategic port Baltimore in 1814, a pivotal battle in the conflict between Great Britain and the USA that shaped the destiny of both countries (p.34).…

Relations between Britain and its former colonies had been prickly ever since the United States won its independence, and there were many friction points between the two nations. Even so, a declaration of war in 1812 (the first time the USA had declared war on a foreign power) still seemed to catch both parties by surprise. There was little appetite for war and neither side was in much of a position to fight one. Great Britain had all it could handle with the Napoleonic Wars, while the American armed forces were weak. The declaration itself appears to have been unexpected – President James Madison brought a list of grievances before Congress in June 1812 and they narrowly voted for war. With neither side fully engaged, the conflict meandered on for…

“IF YOU’RE A CITIZEN WHO’S WORRIED ABOUT RUSSIAN AGGRESSION, I’D RATHER HAVE THE FINNISH, ESTONIAN OR POLISH ARMY THAN THE GERMAN ARMY” Over the past 80 years, Germany has gone through an astounding transformation from Nazism to liberal democracy. This transition is the subject of Frank Trentmann’s latest book, Out of the Darkness. It earned Trentmann, a professor of history at Birkbeck, University of London, a nomination for the Wolfson History Prize 2024, an award recognising excellence in research with readability. The judges described Out of the Darkness as: “A wide-ranging and engaging portrait of Germany since World War II, highlighting the remarkable regeneration of its people in the post-Nazi era and the strength and vitality of its political culture.” Here, Trentmann speaks to History of War on what he’s…

During the fateful December 1944 fight for Bastogne, Belgium, Captain John ‘Jack’ Prior was serving with the 20th Armoured Infantry Battalion (AIB). He was the chief medic of Team Desobry, one of the three 10th Armored Division teams tasked with holding a key road into the town. Augusta Chiwy, a young Belgian-Congolese nurse, had travelled down to Bastogne at her father’s invitation from Louvain, where she worked in the Saint Elizabeth Hospital. She arrived in Bastogne on 16 December, just two days before Jack – auspiciously, the same day that three German armies attacked along an 89-mile (143km) front. When Team Desobry retreated from Noville, Jack set up a military aid station in a vacant building on the Rue Neufchateau in Bastogne. He had about 100 men in his charge,…

Director: Tyler Perry Starring: Kerry Washington, Ebony Obsidian, Milauna Jackson, Kylie Jefferson Released: Out now in cinemas & on Netflix In February 1945, the ocean liner Île de France ran the gauntlet of German U-boats as it headed towards Glasgow. Onboard were the 855 women of the ‘Six Triple Eight’, the only primarily Black US Women’s Army Corps to be sent to Europe. Led by Major Charity Adams (Kerry Washington), they were tasked with processing a backlog of 17 million letters to and from US servicemen in six months. African-American director Tyler Perry was inspired to create a film about the 6888th after reading about them in 2019. He wanted to tell a story of triumph over racism and sexism, and the determination to fulfil a vital task for morale…

Author: Leigh Neville Publisher: Osprey Price: £30 (Hardback) Released: Out now In his book on 21st century warfare, military historian Leigh Neville offers a non-technical overview of what the immediate future of land warfare may hold. He looks back to the conflicts following 9/11 in Afghanistan and Iraq and examines important factors from other wars, including the civil war in Libya, the war against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Russia’s seizure of the Crimea, the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, Israeli operations in Lebanon and Gaza and, of course, the Russo-Ukrainian War. The author highlights lessons and observations from these conflicts and uses them to predict what land warfare will likely look like in the next decade. Each potential theatre of war throws up its own unique challenges. The narrative begins…

Author: Jeremy A Crang Publisher: Bloomsbury Price: £20 (Hardback) Released: Out now This 800-page book is an academic resource rather than a cover-to-cover read, but as such is extremely valuable. Home Intelligence was a unit set up by the British government at the end of 1939 to monitor public opinion. Its weekly reports are edited here by Jeremy Crang (following on from two earlier volumes), beginning with reactions to Hitler’s invasion of Russia and culminating in his desperate gamble in the Ardennes, at which point the reports were surprisingly brought to an end. We learn of ordinary people’s responses to military events, such as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the much-needed victory at El Alamein and the Allied landings in Normandy. There is also plentiful information on the stresses…

“HUDNER’S EXCEPTIONALLY VALIANT ACTION AND SELFLESS DEVOTION TO A SHIPMATE SUSTAIN AND ENHANCE THE HIGHEST TRADITIONS OF THE US NAVAL SERVICE” Medal of Honor citation On 4 December 1950, Thomas J Hudner flew his F4U Corsair over Chosin Reservoir, North Korea, under the early afternoon Sun. Seven other Corsairs and eight Douglas A-1 Skyraiders were with him, conducting a routine armed reconnaissance mission, hunting for enemy troop concentrations and mechanised equipment. Compared to close air support (CAS) missions, the navy aviators were at relatively low risk. Still, they had to fly at an altitude of just 700ft (210m) to spot Chinese equipment in arctic camouflage, dodging between mountains up to 6,000ft (1800m) high. Reconnaissance missions had gone awry before during the Korean War, with Chinese soldiers, near-impossible to spot set…

Historians have done much work on the nature of the evil that carried out the Holocaust, but their understanding is mechanistic and psychological. Historians expect particular people and social structures to be behind the Holocaust. Germans in the late 1940s and 1950s had a more metaphysical understanding of history and developed a demonic sense of Nazism. “Many people believed that the reason the war was so murderous was because demonic forces had taken hold of German minds and Hitler was their mouthpiece,” says Trentmann. Signs of belief in metaphysical evil permeated many sources Trentmann read while researching Out of the Darkness. In one case, he stumbled across a researcher’s notes who had been visiting destroyed German cities in the early 1950s to learn about how families were hanging on at…

Author: Douglas Carl Peifer Publisher: Oxford University Press Price: £26.99 (Hardback) Released: April 2025 When Germany finally overturned court martial verdicts delivered on deserters, more than 50 years after the end of the Second World War, it highlighted the scale of desertion within the German forces during that conflict. Astonishingly, some 20,000 men were executed for desertion, and Douglas Carl Peifer’s informative and fascinating read uncovers who they were, why they left, what constituted desertion and how they were punished for “undermining military spirit”. Perhaps surprisingly – and notwithstanding the generally unforgiving brutality of Hitler’s Third Reich – it was the Führer himself who issued a directive in April 1940 that cautioned against a blanket imposition of the death penalty. He ordered that each defendant’s background should be examined and…

The Tank Museum has recently received a donation of Corporal Walter H Stickler’s ‘Splatter’ mask. Stickler served aboard a Mark IV tank at the Battle of Cambrai (1917), history’s first combined arms battle using tanks. Approximately 5,000 ‘Splatter’ masks were distributed at Cambrai, with thick leather horizontal slits over their eyes and chainmail over their mouth, chin and neck. These masks couldn’t stop a bullet but offered some basic protection. Common dangers included ‘spalling’, where explosive shockwaves break the armour’s inner metal and propel shrapnel inside the tank, and ‘splash’: molten metal from bullet impacts getting inside the vehicle. At Cambrai, Stickler was a gunner aboard a Mark IV tank and earned a Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) for gallantry. On the first day of the battle, his tank came under…