1. 1918: The German Offensives
In March 1918 the German Army launched a series of offensives that brought them very close to winning the war. Military photographers followed their advance and took many photographs of the operations as they progressed. This is the war seen from the German perspective, British and…
2. Armada 1588
The Spanish Armada campaign of 1588 is reconstructed as a sequence of naval decisions rather than as a single climactic battle. The account follows the Spanish fleet’s movement up the English Channel, English efforts to harass and contain it, the attempted junction with forces in the…
3. Attack on the Somme
The Battle of the Somme is examined through the experience of the British forces that attacked from July 1916 and then fought for months over a relatively narrow stretch of the Western Front. Rather than treating the campaign only as a symbol of futile slaughter, the…
4. Caesar’s Gallic Triumph
In 52 B.C., Julius Caesar pulled off one of the great feats of Roman arms in what is now Burgundy, France. His heavily outnumbered army utterly defeated the combined forces of the Gallic tribes led by Vercingetorix and completed the Roman conquest of Gaul. The Alesia…
5. Dunkirk and the Fall of France
Dunkirk and the Fall of France reconstructs the German offensive of May 1940, the collapse of Allied positions in Belgium and northern France, and the retreat of the British Expeditionary Force to the Channel coast. Operational decisions on both sides determined which formations escaped and which…
6. Gas Attack
The mist of poisonous gas that drifted across no man's land from the German trenches opposite the Ypres salient on 22 April 1915 caused ghastly casualties and suffering among the unprepared defenders, and it opened up a huge seven-mile gap in the defensive line. It also…
7. Malta Besieged, 1940–1942
The heroic defense of Malta against the Axis powers is one of the most famous episodes of the Second World War. For more than two years this tiny island was the critical to maintaining control of the Mediterranean and essential to the outcome of the North…
8. Napoleon’s Polish Gamble
Napoleon's 1807 campaign against the Russians came close to being his first defeat. At Eylau the Emperor was outnumbered by the army of the Russian commander Bennigsen, yet he accepted battle. His reputation was saved by the flamboyant Murat, who led one of the greatest cavalry…
9. Passchendaele
Passchendaele is one of the most evocative names associated with the Great War. For over 80 years, the battle has epitomized pointless slaughter on an unimaginable scale. The bare statistics are shocking in themselves - the British, French and German armies suffered over half a million…
10. Poland Betrayed
Hitler's attack on Poland in 1939 was the first brutal act in six years of world war, but the campaign is often overshadowed by the momentous struggle that followed across the rest of Europe. David Williamson, in this timely and thought-provoking study, reconstructs each stage of…
11. Salerno 1943
In September 1943, in the first weeks of the Allied campaign to liberate Italy, an Anglo-American invasion force of over 80,000 men was nearly beaten back into the sea by the German defenders in a ferocious ten-day battle at Salerno, south of Naples. This is the…
12. The Battle of Borodino
On 7 September 1812, Napoleon’s Grande Armée met Kutuzov’s Russian army near Borodino in the bloodiest single-day battle of the invasion of Russia. Repeated French assaults captured key positions but failed to destroy the Russian force, leaving Napoleon able to enter Moscow without securing the decisive…
13. The Battle of North Cape
In December 1943, the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst sailed to attack Arctic convoy JW 55B. British signals intelligence and naval planning allowed Admiral Bruce Fraser to concentrate cruisers and the battleship Duke of York around the convoy, drawing Scharnhorst into a battle fought in darkness, snow and…
14. The Battle of the Berezina
In November 1812, Napoleon’s retreating army reached the Berezina River while Russian forces attempted to close the remaining route west. A thaw had broken the ice, the existing bridge was destroyed and exhausted troops, civilians and stragglers crowded the banks as French engineers built emergency crossings…
15. The Battle of the River Plate
In December 1939 the German pocket battleship *Admiral Graf Spee* was intercepted off South America by the British cruisers *Exeter*, *Ajax* and *Achilles*. The engagement damaged all four ships, but British Commodore Henry Harwood’s squadron succeeded in driving the German vessel into neutral Montevideo, where diplomatic…
16. The Polish Underground, 1939–1947
The Polish partisan army famously fought with tenacity against the Wehrmacht during World War II. Yet the wider story of the Polish underground movement, which opposed both the Nazi and Soviet occupying powers, has rarely been told. In this concise and authoritative study, historian David Williamson…
17. The Viking Wars of Alfred the Great
The Viking Wars of Alfred the Great examines the Danish campaigns that threatened the survival of Wessex in the ninth century. It follows Alfred’s reverses, refuge at Athelney and recovery before the Battle of Edington in 878, when his victory over Guthrum created the basis for…
18. Victory at Poitiers
Over the centuries, the story of this against-the-odds English victory has, along with Crcy and Agincourt, become part of the legend of medieval warfare. And yet in recent times this classic battle has received less attention than the other celebrated battles of the period. The time…
19. War for the Throne
The opening years of the fifteenth century saw one of the most bitterly contested political and military convulsions in the history of the British Isles, a conflict that is too-often overlooked by military historians. Henry IV, who had overthrown and probably murdered his predecessor Richard II,…