The June/July issue of Military History Matters, the British military history magazine, is now out now.
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In this issue:
ON THE COVER:
The Battle of Berlin
Germany lost the war long before May 1945. But Hitler refused to surrender, instead dragging the country into the abyss. In our special this time, David Porter analyses Hitler’s last battle. He details the huge imbalance in force between Germans and Soviets, but lays stress on the notable German advantages in equipment, experience, and tactics. He then describes the battle itself, from the suburbs to the centre of the city, drawing out the key features of the Third Reich’s apocalyptic last stand.
The end of the long siesta: the Battle of Boyacá, 1819
Edmund West on Simón Bolívar’s victory over the Spanish Empire
The German naval race: Battlefleets and the coming of the Great War
Imperial Germany’s fleet expansion was a deadly mistake, says Marc DeSantis
Conflict Archaeology: Operation Hailstone
Rod Macdonald explores the underwater remains of a defeated Japanese fleet
Regiment: East Tyrone Brigade, Provisional Irish Republican Army
Patrick Mercer looks back at the Republican attack on Derryard Checkpoint, December 1989
Also in this issue:
Christopher Warner’s series on War Athletes, Behind the Image, War Culture, Book Reviews, Museum Review, Back to the Drawing Board, Digital Listings, Competitions, and more.
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From the editor
We focus on two linked anniversaries this year – the fall of Nazi Germany in May 1945, and the fall of Imperial Japan in August 1945.
Seventy-five years ago, these two regimes chose to the fight to the bitter end, long after it was clear the war was lost.
Traditionally, defeated powers sue for peace and negotiate a treaty which leaves them still intact. But the Nazi resistance continued until virtually the whole of Germany had been overrun and much of it destroyed by aerial bombing, that of the Japanese until threatened by nuclear devastation.
The irrationality of fascism, and the loss of control by mainstream political elites, seems to have been decisive in both cases: the Nazis and the Japanese militarists were deranged fanatics who preferred annihilation to surrender.
David Porter provides the in-depth analysis of the Battle of Berlin in our special this time. We also have Edmund West on Simon Bolívar and the Battle of Boyacá, the turning-point in the Latin American Wars of Independence, and Marc DeSantis on the consequences of the Anglo-German naval arms-race before the First World War.
Diver Rod Macdonald returns with a report on the underwater remains of the Japanese fleet destroyed at Truk in February 1944, and Patrick Mercer takes an unusual approach to his ‘Regiment’ series, with an article on an IRA unit’s dramatic attack on an Army checkpoint in 1989.
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