‘The Scots have dealt very ill with me – very ill’ said Charles II, according to the diarist, Samuel Pepys. Once firmly ensconced on the English throne, Charles would take his revenge at leisure, ignoring the Scottish parliament, ruling there through commissioners. This royal rancour appears ungrateful, given that in... More
Lynching is the act of killing someone for an alleged offence without a legal trial. Although its most notorious manifestations in the US were by whites on blacks, it was never exclusively so. The worst mass lynching was of 11 Italian immigrants in New Orleans (1891); in the West and... More
By 1982, Lebanon was deep into a civil war waged by a bewildering array of political and sectarian militias, with the proxy involvement of regional powers, notably Syria, Iran and Israel. Prominent amongst these was the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which used southern Lebanon as a base for attacks on... More
In order to stop the growing power of the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Indian Ocean, a plan was drawn up for an invasion of Madagascar by Allied forces under Operation Ironclad. Intelligence suggested the Japanese were planning to occupy the deep water port at Diego Suarez on the northern... More
On 8 December 1941, shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack, Japanese landings began in northern Malaya and southern Thailand. As a major resource of tin and rubber, Malaya was a key target, along with the British jewel of Singapore. The Japanese advanced quickly down the east and west coasts of... More
Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September, still hoping for a peaceful settlement after the invasion of Poland two days earlier. Poland had been taken unawares by the brutal German strategy of Blitzkrieg, with both Luftwaffe attacks and land advances leaving a trail of devastation. By 6 September, Polish... More
On 1 September 1939, Nazi Germany, the Free City of Danzig, the Soviet Union and a small Slovak contingent invaded Poland in a surprise attack, using the devastatingly effective strategy of Blitzkrieg. While bombs fell on Warsaw, invasions were underway from both Prussia in the north (led by von Rundstedt)... More
Romania’s rationale for entering the war was, as with Italy, irredentist, to reclaim territories with Romanian-speaking populations from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. However, their invasion of Transylvania in pursuit of this end would reap the whirlwind. The invasion began on 19 August 1916, banking on the Central Powers’ distraction by both... More
As Allied forces moved inland, after securing beaches and small ports in southeast Sicily, one of their main objectives was to secure existing airfields, and build temporary ones to reduce response times for Allied aircraft, which had previously been flying mainly from Malta. Soon after the landings the Axis forces... More
The invasion of southern France under Operation Dragoon aimed to relieve the overwhelming pressure on the Allied logistical systems in the north by securing additional south coast ports and also creating another front to further divert German resources. Following preliminary commando operations and naval bombardment to weaken defences along the... More
After his recent Battle of Chancellorsville victory, General Robert E. Lee launched a second invasion of the North on 1 June 1863. Lee was confident as he had a huge army and knew that many enlisted soldiers had left the Union army. He left Fredericksburg and moved northwards towards the... More
Throughout much of the 9th and 10th centuries, Europe was raided and settled by a number of different societies on its periphery. Vikings launched raids across the sea from Scandinavia in the north, establishing settlements in Britain alongside the Anglo-Saxons in an area that became known as the Danelaw. They... More