An Army Without a Country: Prussia’s Cul...

In America’s first hundred years, the animal you were most likely to see was a passenger pigeon. And you saw a lot of them. Flocks were so numerous they literally blotted out the sun for days and their combined weight snapped the branches of entire forests where they roosted. Yet ... Show More

Europe's borders in the Middle Ages were created by one man, and he wasn't even born in the Middle Ages, nor was he Christian. It was Emperor Diocletian, who ruled Rome from 284 to 305. His reforms that chained tenant farmers to land created the blueprint for feudalism. He split ... Show More

Of the estimated 1,500 plays written in ancient Greece, only 33 complete works survive today—the rest were lost because medieval scribes deemed low-brow comedies and mass entertainment unworthy of expensive parchment during the transition from fragile papyrus to durable vellum, p ... Show More

<p><em>'In the years after World War I, the defeated and much-reduced German Army developed new clothing and personal equipment that drew upon the lessons learned in the trenches. In place of the wide variety of uniforms and insignia that had been worn by the Imperial German Army ... Show More

Roger Reese’s recent book, The Imperial Russian Army in Peace, War, and Revolution, 1856-1917 (University of Kansas, 2019), takes a deep dive into the internal workings of the Russian army. Focusing particularly on relations between officers and the rank and file, as well as on d ... Show More

<p>As some of you may know, I am also a First World War historian, and the academic history of the war can be very different from the public perspective, which dwells on the first two years of the war. </p> <p>Forgetting the victories of 1917 and 1918 is not new; it is something ... Show More

Greg Jenner is joined by special guests Stephen Fry and Dr Bodie Ashton as they travel back to 18th-century Prussia to meet Frederick the Great. Widely known for making Prussia a military power while modernising and liberalising culture, Frederick was a complicated character, sha ... Show More

Tarak Barkawi, a Reader in International Relations at the London School of Economics, has written an important book that will cause many of us to rethink the way we understand the relationships between armies and societies. In Soldiers of Empire: Indian and British Armies in Worl ... Show More

<p>The Waffen-SS was one of the most formidable German military formations of the Second World War. Feared for its tenacity and ruthlessness in battle, notorious for the atrocities it committed.</p> <p>As a distinct fighting force derived from the Nazi Party's SS organization, it ... Show More

<p>Mes chers camarades, bien le bonjour ! </p><p>Bienvenue dans ce nouvel entretien historique en compagnie de Michel Goya, sous-officier dans l’infanterie, officier des troupes de Marine, mais aussi historien spécialiste de l’innovation militaire dans les conflits modernes. Il n ... Show More

<p>Preußen war ein deutsches Land. Es bestand vom Mittelalter bis zum Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges. Die Länder, die Deutschland in diesem Krieg besiegt hatten, beschlossen damals Preußen aufzulösen. Seitdem ist das Gebiet auf viele Bundesländer aufgeteilt. Ein Teil der früher pre ... Show More

The First World War marked the end point of a process of German globalization that began in the 1870s, well before Germany acquired a colonial empire or extensive overseas commercial interests. Structured around the figures of five influential economists who shaped the German pol ... Show More

World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But Hitler was not in power when the conflict erupted in Asia—and he was certainly dead before it ended. His armies did not fight in multiple the ... Show More