Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 150 i History of War

“IF WE DON’T WANT TO BE BULLIED, WE HAVE TO HAVE THIS THING”MAO ZEDONG 16 OCTOBER 1964 PROJECT 596 NUCLEAR TEST China successfully conducts its first nuclear weapons test, making it the world’s fifth nuclear power. “If we don’t want to be bullied, we have to have this thing,” explains Mao Zedong to prominent Chinese communists in 1956, kickstarting the atomic programme. China tests a further 44 nuclear bombs (1964-96), all at the Lop Nur Test Base. READ MORE ON PAGE 14 19 OCTOBER 1781 SURRENDER AT YORKTOWN The Continental Army, supported by French Army troops, wins the American Revolutionary War’s final battle. Following two days of negotiations, the belligerents hold a surrender ceremony. The British commander, Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis, and the British Army surrender and are captured, leading…

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The term ‘fifth column’, referring to a group of enemy sympathisers who work to undermine a nation from within, was originally coined in the late 1930s during the Spanish Civil War. Nationalist general Francisco Franco controlled four columns of troops that besieged Madrid, while it was said General Emilio Mola praised a ‘quinta columna’ of agents working from inside Madrid to bring about the surrender of the Spanish republicans. The term was still fresh in the minds of the Allies a few years later in the Second World War. This metaphor seemed especially appropriate for the dozens of Nazi sympathisers and agents inside British borders, who often fronted as anti-war British nationalists. When the Germans invaded France, Winston Churchill had to push the Treachery Act through Parliament; catching and convicting…

CLIVEDEN LITERARY FESTIVAL This literary gathering has much for military history enthusiasts to get their teeth into The Cliveden Literary Festival returns for its eighth year to the former literary salon frequented by Alexander Pope, Alfred Lord Tennyson, George Bernard Shaw, Jonathan Swift and Winston Churchill. The festival is renowned for its lively and thought-provoking discussions in a stunning setting. Its committee-Andrew Roberts, Natalie Livingstone, Catherine Ostler and Simon Sebag Montefiore - has put together a lineup with plenty for history and military history enthusiasts to enjoy. The British historian Helen Castor will be talking about her latest book, Blood and Roses: The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century. Her book draws from a trove of letters discovered in a stately home to tell the story of an ordinary farming…

Author: Michelle Young Publisher: HarperOne Price: £23.99(Hardback) On Sale: Out now The 1920s, when Rose Valland first came to Paris, were known as les années folles: the mad years. An exuberant raucousness pervaded the streets day and night, but it all came crashing down in June 1940 with the Nazi conquest of northern France and the capital. Valland, the daughter of a blacksmith from a village in southeastern France, dreamt of devoting her life to the study of art. Her ambition was to work as a curator at the Louvre, but at the time there were no females on staff. Little did she suspect, while working at the Jeu de Paume museum during the German occupation, that she was to risk her life tracking the Nazis’ systematic looting of artworks…

A viation defence analysts were stunned when, on 26 December 2024, images appeared across social media showing China test-flying a prototype sixth-generation fighter aircraft. Defence observers rushed to examine what seemed to be an aircraft with an unusually large tailless delta configuration for a fighter, flying in orbits over the Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group factory at Wenjiang Airport, where it had been assembled. It was later designated the J-36 in the West. A second sixth-generation aircraft emerged just hours later, seen in the air above the Shenyang Aircraft Design production facility. Smaller than the J-36, this second aircraft, dubbed the J-50, resembled a more conventional stealthy design but retained China’s new approach to pursuing tailless aircraft. As the test flights of both aircraft continue, and the details that have emerged…

The term ‘Battle of Britain’ was first coined by Winston Churchill in his ‘Finest Hour’ speech to the House of Commons on 18 June 1940: “What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin.” The official dates of that battle, however, (10 July to 31 October 1940) were set retrospectively by Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding. By his own account, they were dates that were “somewhat arbitrary” in establishing the parameters of the Battle of Britain. From the German perspective, they were dates that bore no relation to either the commencement of the battle, nor to its end. But then, as Luftwaffe fighter ace Adolf Galland expressed to me in 1986: “The victor always writes the narrative.”…

The Reich’s minister of propaganda was the architect of the mass consent that kept the regime afloat. A megalomaniacal narcissist, he was obsessed with public affection and his own genius. A messianic belief that he would be the one to unite Germany behind its Führer drove him. Throughout his diaries, Goebbels constantly exaggerates his skill as an orator and the rapturous response of his audience at every public appearance. In reality of course he was petulant and volatile. Although initially drawn to the Nazi Party by Hitler, Goebbels became active within a prominent, economically left-wing faction of the party. “I no longer fully believe in Hitler,” he wrote following Hitler’s rejection of the northern faction. Goebbels eventually capitulated in 1926 after reading Mein Kampf and deciding socialism was inherently Jewish.…

Author: Saul David Publisher: William Collins Price: £25 (Hardback) Released: Out now Historians have long hailed 1942 as the turning point of the Second World War, citing Stalingrad and Guadalcanal as the battles that changed the direction of the conflict. However, one critical Allied victory that year has remained overlooked – the Tunisian campaign. It’s an anomaly that has now been rectified thanks to this new book by Saul David. David sheds light on an epic offensive that brought about the Axis Powers’ expulsion from North Africa, ended their naval dominance in the Mediterranean, crippled their air forces and left a quarter-of-a-million of their troops in Allied hands. Although at the time it was dismissed, particularly by the Americans, as a ‘side show’, the scale of this defeat was not…

At 10.45pm on 11 February 1942, the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen steamed out of Brest, France. Since March 1941, RAF Bomber Command had been flying countless sorties against them and Adolf Hitler ordered a dash through the English Channel to safe German ports. After 12 hours, a Spitfire patrol observed them in the Strait of Dover and Naval Command hastily organised a Fairey Swordfish sortie. Chief Petty Officer (Air) Donald Arthur ‘Don’ Bunce, a telegraphist air gunner in 825 Naval Air Squadron and veteran of the Bismarck’s final battle, joined the attack aboard the Swordfish W5907. Piloted by Sub Lieutenant Pat Kingsmill, Bunce’s Swordfish rendezvoused with five others and an escort of ten Spitfires, not the planned five squadrons, joined them over Ramsgate.…

WADDY’S WAGON 1943-45 The crew of the B-29 Superfortress Waddy’s Wagon of the US 20th Air Force pose to duplicate their caricatures painted on the aircraft’s side. The B-29 took part in the first mission to bomb Tokyo from Saipan in November 1944 with the 869th Bomber Squadron. A sortie against the Nakajima Aircraft Factory near the capital followed. All 11 crewmen pictured died on 9 January 1945 after ditching in the Pacific. Waddy’s Wagon had been guiding a crippled B-29 back to safety when it came under attack from Japanese fighters, forcing pilot Captain Walter R ‘Waddy’ Young to attempt a water landing. A FRIENDLY BROADSIDE 1986 The Type 42 destroyer HMS Southampton relieves HMS York while the crew exchange a broadside of eggs, potatoes and water cannons during the…

Why has Iran dominated media channels in 2025? The world’s 17th-largest country, at one stage its empire under the Achaemenid dynasty (c.500 BCE) was huge, stretching from India to the Dardanelles. Later, it was Islamised in the 7th century CE, adopting the lonely path of Shia faith rather than the Sunni interpretation followed by 90 percent of the Islamic world. Today Iran is a highly developed nation home to 92 million people in over 100 cities, with 2,000 universities spread across 31 provinces. Sitting astride the Silk Route, Persia experienced several ‘golden ages’, rapidly absorbing and spreading innovations in philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, cuisine, medicine, weaving, writing, poetry and art, long before the Western world. This is how Iran has always seen itself – as the pre-eminent religious, military and cultural…

Oil has long been a key driver of the global economy, but today many oil-producing states have weaponised its production for diplomatic and political leverage. During the early 20th century, British oil imports were almost entirely transported by sea from the Middle East via the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. This lifeline, along with reliance on other vital seaborne imports, was considered important enough to establish a Royal Navy base of operations in the gulf under the command of Flag Officer Middle East. Situated in the Suez Canal Zone and administrated by Senior Naval Officer Persian Gulf, the base relocated from its original site in Persia to Bahrain in 1935. In accordance with the post-war political realignment of British interests, in what was termed the ‘general retreat from east…

General Robert E Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia was turned back during the Battle of Antietam, its first invasion of the North during the American Civil War (1861-65). General George B McClellan, commanding the Union Army of the Potomac, claimed victory but has been criticised for failing to win decisively. Still, Antietam was a turning point in the war. In its aftermath, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, support for recognition of the Confederacy and even direct intervention by Great Britain was quelled, and Lee’s wounded army retired to the safety of Virginia. How would a Confederate triumph at Antietam have impacted the Lincoln presidency and the course of the Civil War? How would a Confederate victory at the Battle of Antietam have affected the presidency of Abraham…

In the spring and summer of 1944, Hitler finally understood the need for total war. The Allies’ Normandy landings had opened up a new front in Western Europe, Rome had fallen and the enemy would soon be at the gates. Following the 20 July Plot, Keitel, Bormann and other leading Nazis switched to support for a drastically more radical war. The Führer Decree Concerning Total War came three days after the attempted assassination of Hitler, reshaping the Nazi hierarchy behind absolute mobilisation. Himmler gained new powers in his role leading Hitler’s relief army, Bormann became responsible for total war within the Nazi Party and Speer remained in charge of an accelerated armaments programme. Meanwhile, Goebbels became Reich plenipotentiary for Total War and claimed in his diary to have “received the…

The Bf 110 was designed to a 1934 requirement for a long-range heavy fighter. The concept was referred to by the Germans as a Zerstörer – a ‘destroyer’, meant to cleave a path through enemy fighters for bombers to follow. As development continued, the battlefield and tactical focus of the German Armed Forces come to the fore, and fighter performance was sacrificed in order to modify the type so it could also be used for reconnaissance or as a fighter-bomber. Twin-engined and twin-tailed, the Bf 110 was heavy and lacked manoeuvrability at medium and high altitudes. However, it was also very fast for its time, and (based partly on German propaganda) feared by the British at the outbreak of the war. Yet its reputation was overstated, and while it proved…