Germany

The Indian Mutiny, Part I

On May 10th, 1857, while the bells of Meerut rang for divine service, the Sepoys of the Bengal Army rose in revolt against the rule of the British East India Company. That mutiny, Jon Manchip White writes, affords brilliant glimpses of a wilful generation.

Marshal Saxe, 1696-1750: Magnanimity Run Wild

Jon Manchip White introduces one of the greatest generals and strangest personalities of his age, Maurice de Saxe, who was “vain, childish, virile, hard-bitten, chivalrous when it suited him ...”

The Rhineland Republic: Part II

Julian Piggott, former British Commissioner in Cologne, tells the story, as he witnessed it, of the French attempt in 1923 to create a buffer state on their eastern frontier. The first part of this articles can be found here.

The Dambusters: Barnes Wallis and Bomber Command

The Dambusters Raid is one of the best known operations of the Second World War. But, as James Holland explains, the development of the ‘bouncing bomb’ took place against a background of bitter rivalry between the armed services.

The Kaiser in Exile

Exile to the Netherlands following the First World War chastened Kaiser Wilhelm II, but Robin Bruce Lockhart cannot believe that the former ruler of imperial Germany was ever either the mountebank, or the monster, which his biographers have tried to make him.

A Short History of the German Student Corporations

Elizabeth Wiskemann finds that the German students’ societies have played an unusual and a characteristic part in the history of modern Germany, and yet one which their mysterious rites and code of honour have obscured, even among their compatriots.