second world war history
What did Britain really gain from the daring 1942 Bruneval raid?
The night-time dismantling of a German radar site in Normandy was a feat of skill, courage and imagination. But there was little improvement to Bomber Command casualties as a result
When Stalin was the lesser of two evils
Churchill detested Stalin, but Britain and the US needed his help against an even worse enemy. Giles Milton reveals the true nature of the Big Three’s dysfunctional relationship
The misery of the Kindertransport children
Wrenched from their parents and familiar surroundings, the young refugees found safety in Britain, but were tolerated rather than cherished, says Andrea Hammel
Passports out of hell
Roger Moorhouse describes how various diplomats stationed in Europe risked their positions to issue as many forged ‘tickets to safety’ to Jews as possible
The sheer tedium of life at Colditz
Given the prisoners’ histories, it’s not surprising there were so many attempted breakouts from Colditz, says Clare Mulley
The nondescript house that determined the outcome of the second world war
Sometimes the struggle for a single small strongpoint can tip the whole balance of a greater battle. One thinks of…
More stirring stories of little ships
‘I found this story by accident,’ begins Julia Jones’s Uncommon Courage, referring to documents belonging to her late father that…
Operation Chariot succeeded because it was unthinkable
Eighty years ago, just after midnight on 28 March 1942, the British destroyer HMS Campbeltown crept up the estuary of…
Has the role of resistance in the second world war been exaggerated?
When in 1941 Winston Churchill famously declared that the newly formed Special Operations Executive, set up to encourage resistance movements,…
Why did Britain lock up so many innocent refugees in 1940?
Despite prostrate Germany’s need for the return of its men, in Britain we didn’t release our prisoners of war until…
Father Christmas battles through the Blitz
When the shrill air raid sirens blared their familiar warning cries over the city at 6.01 p.m. on 29 December…
Spitfires of the sea: the secret exploits of the Royal Navy’s 15th Motor Gun Boat Flotilla
Fast boats and fast women have been the ruin of many a poor boy. But they can also prove a…
How a small Mediterranean island determined the outcome of the second world war
If you can tell the difference between Jack Hawkins and John Mills, and between a Stuka and a Sten gun,…
The road to firebombing Tokyo was paved with good intentions
In the 1930s, a group of American airmen had a dream. Air power, they believed, would do away with the…
Why did Hitler’s imperial dreams take Stalin by surprise?
The most extraordinary thing, still, about Operation Barbarossa is the complete surprise the Wehrmacht achieved. In the early hours of…
Stalin as puppet master: how Uncle Joe manipulated the West
Of the two dictators who began the second world war as allied partners in crime but ended it in combat…
Break-out and betrayal in Occupied Europe
Für dich, Tommy, ist der Krieg vorbei. However, many British servicemen, officers especially, didn’t want their war to be over.…
Monuments to the second world war are looking increasingly dodgy
Most monuments are literally set in stone — or cast in bronze to better survive the weather. Being enduring, they…
They took a lot of flak: the lives of the Lancaster bombers
Those of us who write occasionally about military aviation can only admire the compelling personal experience that John Nichol brings…
It’s still impossible for Horst Wächter to recognise his father as a Nazi war criminal
In 1926, while putting in place the repressive laws and decrees that would define his dictatorship, Mussolini appointed a new…
The nightmare of Okinawa made Truman decide to use the atom bomb
The US operation of 1945 to take the island of Okinawa was the largest battle of the Pacific during the…
The Far East Campaign of 1941-5 is the new focus of Daniel Todman’s comprehensive history
To begin not at the beginning but at the end of the beginning. Or rather, to begin at another beginning,…
For Jews in Occupied France, survival was a matter of luck
Late in his life, I asked my uncle René about his exploits in wartime France. What I knew was that…
Hiding from the Gestapo in plain sight in Berlin
Of the many bleak moments that have lodged in my mind since reading this extraordinary book the most unshakeable is…
The Pearl Harbor fiasco need never have happened
It is sometimes said that intelligence failures are often failures of assessment rather than collection. This is especially so when…
