MHM December 2018

Only the incompetence of the enemy prevented it from becoming a national disaster. Neil Faulkner revisits the British charge at the Alma during the Crimean War.

Did the British win the First World War for the Allies? Or was turmoil and revolution on the German home front the most important factor? To commemorate the centenary of the end of the Great War, our special this issue explores the Hundred Days Offensive, the last major campaign of the war. In our first feature, Chris Bambery argues that the German Army was never truly defeated in 1918. In our second, Edmund West looks at tank warfare during the offensive. Keith Robinson rounds off the analysis with a feature on the end-game in the air on the Western Front.

Brian English takes us to an epic Mediterranean clash between the Macedonians and the Romans, homing in on the battle that broke the military power of Ancient Greece.

It terrorised civilian populations and was critical to the initial German advance: Graham Goodlad profiles Nazi Germany’s legendary Junkers Ju 87 dive-bomber.

We mark the end of the centenary of the First World War with some controversy: flying in the face of ‘revisionist’ history, our special this issue argues that the Germans were defeated by mass and materiel, not by superior technique and tactics, during the Hundred Days Offensive of autumn 1918.

Equally controversial, perhaps, is that the Armistice – and then Versailles – settled nothing. Graham Goodlad’s piece on the Stuka – the ‘flying artillery’ of blitzkrieg – is an immediate reminder that 1918 to 1939 was no more than an armed truce. The struggle for global supremacy between Britain and Germany turned out to be a drama in two acts.

Our cover feature takes us back to an earlier great-power confrontation, this one mid 19th century, with Britain and France again allies, this time pitted against the Russian Bear. Our focus is what was, perhaps, the last great charge of the redcoats in the old style – a British version, in a sense, of Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg a decade later.

We complete the issue with a very different story from ancient military history. Brian English analyses the collision between Macedonian phalanx and Roman legion at Cynoscephalae in 197 BC.