Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 145 i History of War

“THEY DON’T HAVE GENEVA CONVENTION RIGHTS AND CAN BE HELD IN INSUFFICIENT PRISONS WITH LITTLE FOOD” 10 MARCH 1945 GERMAN POWs RECLASSIFIED Combined (Anglo-American) Chiefs of Staff (CCS) declare prisoners captured after VE day are not POWs. In light of food shortages, two million German POWs are reclassified as Disarmed Enemy Forces (DEF). Their new status means they don’t have Geneva Convention rights and can be held in inadequate prisons with little food. 4 MAY 1945 LÜNEBURG HEATH SURRENDER German forces in the Netherlands, northwest Germany and Denmark surrender unconditionally. A delegation led by Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg meets Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery to sign the surrender, filmed by Pathé News and recorded for radio broadcast by the BBC. 7 MAY 1945 FUNERAL FOR WÖBBELIN VICTIMS Five days after liberating…

In the middle of the Second World War, with the outcome of the conflict becoming more evident as the Allies progressed from hard-won victory to victory, the tremendous upheaval and eventual return to a tenuous peace in a new world order demanded some provision. Among the priorities in a post-war world was the repatriation or relocation of more than 11 million displaced people in western Europe and – by 1945 – an estimated 12 to 26.5 million refugees or expelled German-speaking people. In the west this included those who had been forcibly removed during Nazi occupation, those whose property had been seized, those imprisoned in concentration and forced labour camps, and those simply caught up in the maelstrom of warfare. But by the spring of 1945 another dimension was becoming…

After six years of fighting, Europe lay in ruins, but the Nazi regime had finally buckled. All their fronts were collapsing and they had no hope of recovery. The Allies demanded unconditional surrender, while the remnants of the Nazi state wrestled for time so its troops could escape the Soviet clutches. James Holland and Al Murray’s Victory ‘45 covers each of 1945’s eight surrenders - six in Europe and two in Japan - and the celebrations that followed. The book is driven by the personalities and eccentricities of the people that negotiated the surrenders, and how they shaped our current world. For instance, Murray recounts the different approaches of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force Dwight D Eisenhower: “Montgomery was doing it as a…

Allied leaders tempered VE Day jubilation with reminders that Japan was yet to be defeated. Crowds booed when Churchill brought up the ongoing Pacific conflict in his speech from the Health Ministry’s balcony in London. At the centre of what Holland describes as “the spectre of going to Japan and the Far East” was President Harry Truman, who had become the US president less than a month before VE Day following President Franklin Roosevelt’s death. Holland describes Truman’s newfound power as an “albatross around his neck that had been thrust upon him”. Reflecting on Truman’s performance as a wartime president, Holland says: “The nobility with which Truman approached this gargantuan task was extraordinary. You can sense the enormous weight on his shoulders during his victory broadcast when he reminds everyone that…

Amid the heady rush of events at the war’s end, the Prague Uprising usually, unjustly, receives scant attention. The Czechs had suffered the longest period of occupation in Europe and yearned to be free of the Nazi yoke. The Germans had annexed the Sudetenland in October 1938, and occupied the remainder of the country in March 1939, setting up an independent, pro-fascist republic in Slovakia and forging the remnants into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. After the assassination of Hitler’s henchman SS General Reinhard Heydrich (the region’s brutal protector) in Prague in the summer of 1942 the Germans butchered thousands of Czech citizens in reprisal. After the death of Hitler, the country’s underground movement made preparations for a revolt against Nazi rule. Its focal point would be the Czech…

EDWARD IV Edward was both ouster and ousted during the Wars of the Roses, having taken the throne from Henry VI following victories at Mortimer’s Cross and Towton in 1461, only to face revolt and Henry reinstated in 1470. He gained support while taking refuge in Flanders before returning to London in 1471. RICHARD, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER The future Richard III was Edward IV’s brother and one of his main supporters as he sought to take back the throne in 1471. He was at the heart of the fighting at Barnet and held the vanguard at Tewkesbury. Richard then sat as Constable of England for the trial and sentencing of captured Lancastrians.…

Inevitably, the passage of time takes from us the ever-dwindling band of Second World War veterans and those for whom the conflict is within living memory. The death of Group Captain John ‘Paddy’ Hemingway on 17 March 2025, at the age of 105, means that, 85 years since Britain’s darkest hour, none of the 2,937 airmen awarded the Battle of Britain clasp are still with us. May 2025 sees the 80th anniversary of VE day, but without the Battle of Britain and men like Paddy there would have been no victory over Nazi Germany and no VE Day. Paddy flew with the RAF on the first day of the Second World War and was still serving when Germany surrendered, but he remained steadfastly modest about his immense contribution. For the…

On 5 June 1945, less than a month after the surrender of all German forces ended the Second World War, the Allied Control Council (ACC) was activated. The Nazi capitulation had been unconditional, and the instrument signed by the former warring parties specified that the German military was to cease operations and give up its arms and equipment without further resistance. The ACC was the principal organisation charged with the administration of the occupation zones in Germany, each separately under the direct control of the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. Along with responsibilities for the repatriation of some displaced persons and the establishment of borders and procedures regarding interaction among the occupying troops, one of the most immediate tasks of the ACC was the demobilisation of…

Born in Gomel, Belarus, to a Jewish family, Elena Kagan worked for the Red Army as an interpreter. At the war’s end, she served with Major General Dmitry Lelyushenko’s troops in Belarus, Poland and Berlin. Kagan’s unit was part of General Vasily Kuznetsov’s 3rd Army’s attack on the Reichstag, where she took on an astounding role. James Holland describes how the interpreter helped identify Hitler and protect his remains: “Kagan was involved in trying to find Hitler’s dental records, which they did. They found an assistant of Hitler’s dentist still alive, though the Russians had raped her. The dental assistant helped them and told the Russians they could find [the records] in the dentist’s temporary surgery in the Reich Chancellery. Kagan’s unit broke into the Reich Chancery. It was dark and…

In the popular imagination, the Wars of the Roses ended with the death of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. The House of York had fallen and England belonged to the Tudors under Henry VII. However, it is arguable that the true fight between the houses of York and Lancaster ended 14 years previously. The Battle of Tewkesbury is one of the greatest clashes in English history and was the final direct encounter between the Yorkists and a purely Lancastrian force. It witnessed the death of a prince of Wales, destroyed the ambitions of a queen, entrenched the rule of a king and sealed the grisly fate of another monarch. Its story has all the hallmarks of a medieval epic and was the culmination of decades of…

Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales, spent most of his short life growing up in exile and the shadow of war. Born in 1453, he was the treasured only son of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou. He witnessed his first battle when he was seven years old at the Second Battle of St Albans in February 1461, which is said to have toughened his spirit. While he and his mother were living in exile in 1467 the Milanese ambassador to France reported: “He already talks of nothing but cutting off heads or making wars, as if he had everything in his hands or was the god of battle or the peaceful occupant of that (English) throne.” A fellow exile, Sir John Fortescue, also remarked: “As soon as he became…

CHALKE HISTORY FESTIVAL 2025 This year’s event will feature household names, new talks and a fresh festival layout Britain’s largest history festival has announced a new site layout, including bigger tents and places to discuss history with your fellow festival-goers. Organisers have also unveiled a fantastic lineup of speakers. The Chalke History Festival will begin with new Twilight Talks, held on the Monday and Tuesday evenings. Organised as lively discussions, some of these talks will be on broad subjects like revolution, republic and liberal democracy; more specific lectures will coincide with the 400th anniversary of James I’s death and explore author Hilary Mantel’s legacy, reflecting on the 2024 BBC adaption of The Mirror and the Light. Once each day’s talks have finished, festival-goers looking to burn the midnight oil can…

Author: Paul Thomas Chamberlin Publisher: Basic Books Price: £30 (Hardback) Released: 8 May 2025 Written in an engaging and fluent style, Scorched Earth is as impressive as it is long. At over 600 pages, the engaging mixture of narrative, analysis, strategy and eye-witness testimony makes compelling and informative reading. This is a detailed survey of the origins and key events of a global conflict that shaped our modern world, and is rich with detail and insights. Chamberlin examines how 1919’s Treaty of Versailles, signed at the end of the ‘war to end all wars’, did not end the dying; in the new states and mandates formed by the division of territories once held by the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian Empires, over four million people died in civil and ethnic conflicts…

RETRIBUTION IN PILSEN 6 May 1945 The body of a German sniper lies at the feet of Czechoslovakian civilians as they celebrate the liberation of Pilsen. On 5 May, resistance fighters and civilians had risen against the German occupiers. The US Third Army reached the city at 8am on 6 May, facing sporadic resistance, particularly from snipers in the tower of the Cathedral of St Bartholomew. The German commander General Georg von Majewski surrendered at 2.15pm before killing himself. Pilsen has held the annual Pilsen Liberation Festival since 1990. CHAMPS-ELYSEES CELEBRATIONS 16 May 1945 Thousands of Parisians gather on the Champs-Elysees as a military aircraft flies over the Arc de Triomphe in the background. Parisians held this celebration for the festival of Joan of Arc, one of the patriotic events…

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Scud ballistic missiles were perhaps the most feared weapon in Saddam Hussein’s arsenal in 1991. ‘Scud’ became a generic term for the 1961-designed R-17 Short-Range Ballistic Missile (NATO reporting name: Scud-B) and the locally produced al-Husayn variant. To reach strategic targets in Iran during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88), the Iraqis doubled the Scud-B’s range by lightening the warhead to 1,102lb (500kg) and increasing the propellent chamber, although at the cost of accuracy. The resulting al-Husayn was specifically designed with a modified thruster profile to land a warhead anywhere within 400 miles (645km) of Iraq’s borders in just eight minutes of flight time – a radius that included Riyadh, Bahrain, Qatar and Tel Aviv. Equipped with conventional, chemical or biological warheads, Scud missiles became a fixation for the Coalition forces during…

Author: Tim Grady Publisher: Yale University Press Price: £25 (Hardback) Released: Out now In this frequently moving book, Tim Grady tells the story of a largely forgotten group of men: the British and German casualties who were buried on enemy soil during the two world wars. Initially, these combatants, usually prisoners of war and downed airmen, were buried in cemeteries close to where they died. As such, many were laid to rest in community cemeteries where their funerals were organised by parish authorities and their graves cared for by local people. In the immediate aftermaths of both wars, these cemeteries became, to borrow Grady’s phrase, zones of contact where Anglo-German relations could begin to be rebuilt. Places where, for the most part, grieving wives and mothers could come to lay…