The German army’s training, discipline and Blitzkrieg tactics – directed by the supremely confident Führer – swept away Polish resistance in 1939. It took the shell-shocked Allies another three years to catch up, writes Andrew Roberts.
Richard Overy examines recent analyses of how Europe became embroiled in major conflict just two decades after the trauma of the Great War and we look at events and broadcasts commemorating September 1939.
With the trial of the former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic due to begin, Nick Hawton reflects on his time reporting in a region where history is still used to justify war.
In the 13th century a remarkable trading block was formed in northern Europe. The Hanseatic League prospered for 300 years before the rise of the nation-state led to its dissolution.
More than two decades ago, Adam Zamoyski wrote a history of the Poles and their culture. As a major revision of the work is published, he reflects on the nation’s change in fortune.
A subject and servant of Europe’s most cosmopolitan empire, the composer Joseph Haydn played an important role in the emergence of German cultural nationalism during the 18th and 19th centuries, writes Tim Blanning.
Simon Lemieux provides an overview of 16th-century Catholicism, focusing on the key issues often selected by examiners.
John Etty questions whether Serb nationalism was an irresistible force that helped unleash the First World War.
As an integrated system of politics, economy and religion evolved in Europe around the year 1000, the figure of the Virgin Mary – so central to the lives of monks and nuns – became the core of a widely shared, though highly varied, European identity, says Miri Rubin.
Mark Rathbone asks why the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia emerged in the 1850s as the likely unifier of Italy.
