On 5 September 1939 the German Führer, Adolf Hitler, paid a surprise visit to the corps which was in the forefront of his army's ferocious assault upon Poland. As they passed the remains of a smashed Polish artillery regiment, the corps commander, General Guderian, astonished Hitler by telling him that...

We can do all kinds of things with the past - examine it analytically, or question whether it ever existed, or churn it up inside ourselves until it turns into personal experience. We can dream it as we lounge amidst a heap of ruins, or petrify it into a museum;...

During the last century or so there has developed a new ‘public role’ for history: the past as personal history, a vital element in the nourishing of people in society. During the past decades a new perception of what history is has manifested itself on two levels: first a shift of...

This classic pamphlet takes you through the Paris Peace Conference and the 'German Question', Peacemaking and the Treaty of Versailles, Europe and the German question after Versailles.

Claire Hubbard-Hall takes us on a wartime journey across the Atlantic. On 30 June 1942, the Swedish-American liner SS Drottningholm docked in New York Harbour. As a diplomatic ship it had just completed its run from Lisbon (Portugal) to America. Standing at  538 feet long and 60 feet wide, painted white...

Fairy tale princesses and mysterious castles are just part of the way that historically story tellers have been connected to royalty. In this article some of the most famous story tellers are discussed with their royal patronage and experiences. Hans Christian Andersen couldn’t believe his luck. In 1854, he was...

Friendly societies were designed to help members to cope with the illness, death or unemployment of a household's breadwinner. Each month members, mostly men, paid into the society, often at a meeting in a pub and in return payments from the pooled funds were made to ill members and to...

To blame the failure of the denazification process in postwar Germany entirely on a vague and generalised concept such as apathy is simplistic and does not stand up to serious scrutiny. Denazification was one of the most ambitious attempts ever at provoking an artificial revolution; it is reasonable to assume...

My Favourite History Place: Tyne Cot Cemetery, near Ypres, Belgium  We can truly say that the whole circuit of the Earth is girdled with the graves of our dead. In the course of my pilgrimage, I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace...

Most can agree that the battle of Verdun started 100 years ago, on 21 February 1916, when the Germans began attacking French positions north and east of the old fortress town on the Meuse river. Few can agree on when it ended. The Germans might draw a line under it...

Dr Julian Jackson examines the position and treatment of Jews in Occupied France. When in 1945 France came to try those who had ‘collaborated’ during the war, the fate of the Jews was not central. It was even possible for Xavier Vallat, Vichy’s Commissioner for Jewish Affairs, to defend himself...

In the lead-up to the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, Dr Bob Morris joined the HA Virtual Branch in March 2022 to consider why the monarchy has survived in Europe.  Dr R. M. (Bob) Morris is a Senior Honorary Research Associate at the Constitution Unit, University College London. He was formerly a...

In our continuing Aspects of War series Hugh Gault reveals that the flu pandemic, which began during the First World War, presented another danger that challenged people’s lives and relationships. Wounded in the neck on the first day of the battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916, Arthur Conan Doyle’s son Kingsley...

Image: 'Pierce Egan celebrates the Boxiana touch as Napoleon is floored' David Snowdon examines the impact of the world of ‘pugilism' on the army during the Napoleonic Wars and looks at some famous boxers who perished in the battle. By 1815, one writer, and one sporting publication, had become synonymous with...

Wellington's Soldiers in the Napoleonic WarsThe war with France, which began in 1793, had moved to the Iberian Peninsula by 1808. This year is therefore the two-hundredth anniversary of the commencement of the Peninsular War campaigns. War on the Peninsula demanded huge resources of manpower in order to defeat Napoleon....

David Shipp analyses the state of socialism in the Soviet Union, from Brezhnev to Chernenko. ‘What is he thinking of? Reform, reform. Who needs it, and who can understand it? We need to work better, that is the only problem.’ These reported words of Leonid Brezhnev epitomise the view of the period...

Luke Rimmo Loyi Lego explores the role of women in the French Revolution, and how their challenges to traditional gender roles laid the foundations for the modern feminist movement.  The study of the French Revolution is often restricted to its impact on the Enlightenment ideas of influential men such as Rousseau,...

On the surface, the period 1914 to 1945 seems to have encompassed massive changes in the position of women in Europe, in response to the demands of war and revolution. Yet historians have questioned the extent of the transformation, since the acquisition of the vote, as well as improvements in...