The October issue of Military History Matters, the British military history magazine, is now on sale.
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In this issue:
SPECIAL: The Ardennes, 1944
The Ardennes Offensive, also known as the Battle of the Bulge, was Hitler’s last push against the Allies at the end of the Second World War. Our special this issue anticipates the 75th anniversary of the Offensive. In the first of his features, MHM Editor Neil Faulkner assesses the planning of the Offensive. In his second, he analyses the execution of the plan, discussing how it accelerated the bitter end of one of history’s most brutal regimes.
ON THE COVER: Britain’s Finest Hour
Chris Bambery takes issue with Churchill’s claim that 1940 was ‘the finest hour’, arguing that the true moment of imperial greatness was during the Napoleonic Wars.
England’s Champion:
William Marshal at the Battle of Lincoln, 1217
Richard Brooks tells the little-known story of a stalwart defender of ‘the Sceptred Isle’.
Preparing for War?
German military planning before WWI
Wilson Blythe Jnr challenges head-on the argument that Germany was an aggressive military power in 1914.
Regiment: Peterloo, 1819
Patrick Mercer takes a look at the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, the regiment responsible for the infamous massacre of demonstrators at Peterloo in 1819.
Also in this issue:
War Reporters, Behind the Image, War Culture, Book Reviews, Museum Review, War on Film, Back to the Drawing Board, Listings, and more.
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From the editor
The Ardennes Offensive – or ‘the Battle of the Bulge’ – gets special treatment this issue. Like many other WWII battles whose 75th anniversaries are coming up, it has been the subject of new books, notably Antony Beevor’s Ardennes 1944: Hitler’s last gamble.
Our focus is largely on the degeneration of rational decision-making inside the Third Reich in the last year of the war – a consequence of the complete ‘Nazification’ of the German state as traditional elites became convinced that defeat was inevitable and lost confidence in the regime.
Our cover story, however, is Chris Bambery’s challenging argument that Britain’s ‘finest hour’ was not 1940, but 1815, the moment when global supremacy was established and what might be called ‘the British century’ began – a moment of rising greatness rather than imperial decline.
Also this issue, we have Richard Brooks’ account of the little-known Battle of Lincoln in 1217 – which was small in scale but huge in significance – Wilson Blythe’s forthright questioning of whether Imperial Germany was guilty of expansionism and aggression in 1914, and Patrick Mercer’s quirky choice of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry (of Peterloo notoriety) as this month’s regiment.
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