Second World War

Has Britain been de-industrialising since 1945? Robert Millward weighs up the evidence for and against - with some surprising conclusions.

Sir Alan Harris recalls the role of the artificial harbours in securing victory in Europe over the Nazis.

Were art and religion inevitable victims of war? David Colvin and Richard Hodges discuss the action and the issues it raised - including testimony from a surviving witness from the monastic community.

Hitler may have thought women were there for cooking, children and church, but recent research has shown that female attitudes to, and involvement in, the apparatus of the Third Reich was much more significant, argues Matthew Stibbe.

An insight into how the activities of Allied crews from the ill-fated PQ-17 Arctic convoy of 1942 to wartime Russia were viewed by one of Stalin's commissars. The article is part of an agreement with the Russian history magazine, Rodina, whereby History Today will have access to and publish in English, formerly top-secret documents now being released from the Soviet archives.

Raymond Postgate is well-known today as the founder of The Good Food Guide, but he was also a vivid eyewitness of events as a Londoner under siege from Hitler's bombs. We publish here for the first time, a selection from his wartime correspondence with the American publisher Alfred Knopf, introduced and edited by his son, John Postgate.

Why did Germany declare war on the US in December 1941? Nicholas Henderson considers motives and consequences in the days before and after Pearl Harbor.

Michael Burleigh on the origins of Volkswagen. 

Why did the whole of Marshal Petain's fleet go to the bottom of Toulon harbour in November 1942? Anthony Clayton uncovers a tale of amour propre in this 50th anniversary account.

The 1942 Allied raid on Nazi-occupied France and its lessons for D-Day.