The January issue of Military History Monthly, the British military history magazine, is on sale today.
In the latest issue we cover:
Nelson, Navy, Nation – The secret of victory
MHM Editor Neil Faulkner analyses the Nelson legend as a major new exhibition opens at the National Maritime Museum.
Hitler’s Ferocious Stalemate – The Winter War for Holland
WWII veteran Patrick Delaforce draws on personal experience to describe the Battle for the Low Countries.
Japan’s Trafalgar – The Battle of Tsushima, 1905
Allan George studies the decisive naval con flict that ended Tsarist Russia and saw Japan emerge as a Great Power.
The Rock of Chickamauga – General George Thomas
Je ffrey James evaluates the career of the man he believes to have been the greatest general of the American Civil War.
‘Thou Peculiar Engine’ – The decline of the English longbow
Why was the longbow abandoned a er a quarter of a millennium of battlefield domination? Tim Candlish investigates.
Also in this issue: War Culture, Book Reviews, Back to the Drawing Board, WMD, Recommended Read, Your Military History, DVD Review, Competitions, and much more.
From the editor
Neil Faulkner, Editor
When Clausewitz, the great philosopher of war, attempted to define military genius, he stressed three things: a searching mind, a comprehensive one, and a cool head.
The implication is that military genius is not a matter of innate brilliance, but of dedicated application to the art of war. The great commander must search out the knowledge and understanding he requires; he must comprehend every military situation in all its multi-dimensional complexity; and he must make his decisions in the cold light of reason. The military genius is, above all, a processor of information.
Nelson is perhaps a supreme example. This is a central theme of the splendid new ‘Nelson, Navy, Nation’ gallery that opened at the National Maritime Museum on Trafalgar Day this year.
The gallery charts the history of the Navy and its relationship with the British people during ‘the long 18th century’ (1688-1815). It places Nelson firmly in the context of a long-evolving, increasingly refined British ‘way of war’ at sea.
It portrays him as a typical career officer from a middle-class background – ambitious, patriotic, conscientious, studious, hard-working, dedicated to his profession. This provides the essential platform for the paradigm-busting leap – from routine, indecisive, side-by-side battle to the ‘pell-mell’ (his word) close-quarters battle of annihilation.
Our Nelson cover story this month is neatly coupled with Allan George’s analysis of Tsushima, ‘Japan’s Trafalgar’, in our Road to War series. Also this time, Jeffrey James asks whether Union General George Thomas, ‘the Rock of Chickamauga’, was the American Civil War’s greatest commander; Tim Candlish investigates the decline of the longbow at the end of the Middle Ages; and WWII veteran Patrick Delaforce recalls Hitler’s ‘ferocious stalemate’ – the battle for Holland in the winter of 1944/1945.