Austrian Victory at Custozza
Richard Cavendish marks the anniversary of an important victory for the Habsburg empire, on July 25th, 1848.
Military
Napoleon as General
Bonaparte has sometimes been acclaimed as the greatest military commander in history. In our final article in this series, David Gates reviews his contribution to the art and science of warfare.
Financing the SS
Milton Goldin explores Himmler’s ambitions to establish the SS as a ‘state within a state’, and highlights schemes the Nazis devised to finance the organisation through industrial enterprise and plundered Jewish assets.
Re-running Marathon
The Battle of Marathon has long been presented as the decisive moment at which Greeks led by the newly democratic Athenians gained the upper hand over the despotic Persians. Barry Baldwin reappraises the battle, and explains why it is still a byword for endurance.
Napoleon and German Identity
How Napoleon laid up trouble for future generations of Frenchmen by kick-starting Prussian and German domination of Eastern Europe.
Britain and the Origins of the First World War
Christopher Ray queries the accepted pictures of a reluctant victim of forces beyond her control.
Arms Dumps and the IRA, 1923-32
John Horgan examines the attempts by the new Irish Free State government to disarm the IRA at the end of the civil war in 1923 and the way in which the issue of the IRA arms dumps rumbled on in Irish politics for the next ten years.
Napoleon and Europe
The Spirit of the Age or The Scourge of Nations? Jeremy Black sets the scene for our major series on the impact of Napoleon on Europe.
Sakhalin: the Japanese Under Soviet Rule
Mariya Sevela gathers oral recollections from the people of Karafuto, a Japanese colony on the island of Sakhalin from 1905 until the arrival of the Soviet army forty years later.
Postwar Germany: Britain's Lost Opportunity
Ian Locke investigates an intriguing and little-known attempt to commandeer Third Reich assets as reparations - and its mixed results.