Military Archives - The History Press

Blitz on Cheshire

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 04:01:29 +0000

The cities of Britain suffered during the Blitz, but what about the counties? This book presents a selection of photographs showing the result of bombing attacks on Cheshire as the county was back the 1940s (alarger area including such towns as Stockport, Birkenhead and parts of Greater Manchester, as covered by the Cheshire Constabulary.) This rare collection of photographs were taken by a Cheshire police photographer, and offer a fascinating insight into the damage sustained in this area during this time. In many instances, German bombs were randomly dropped when bombers were returning from the major cities. Some were intentionally dropped on sites of heavy industry, such as Crewe Railway Works. Chester City escaped most of the heavy bombing, possibly because the so-called German Baedeker raids were eventually discontinued. However, as shown in this book, many of Cheshire’s towns and villages did not escape, as painfully evidenced in these images.

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The Royal Navy Day by Day

Mon, 15 Sep 2025 04:01:22 +0000

The Royal Navy Day by Day, the splendid history of the Senior Service across 500 years, presented as a diary of daily events, has become a familiar and much-loved part of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines. It is the standard naval history reference book employed daily throughout the Fleet. Here are recorded not just great battles but also minor actions by small ships, and the service of men and women, sailors, Royal Marines, the WRNS, aircrew, submariners, and RFA and Merchant Navy personnel, down the generations. It is also the Royal Navy’s own story – what was done to it by the sea, the enemy and the Admiralty – and the traditions and customs, the quirks and eccentricities it has gathered around itself. This book is a tribute to the Royal Navy but it is not a company history; it records just a few of the Navy’s dropped catches and own goals which give added credibility to this very fine record. The Royal Navy Day by Day is highly regarded in the Royal Navy and it is issued to all HM ships and establishments. First published in 1979, this expanded fifth edition has been thoroughly revised and updated, and contains many fresh images.

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From Bouncing Bombs to Concorde

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 04:01:28 +0000

George Edwards’ name is synonymous with the Vickers Viscount, the world’s first turboprop airliner; the controversial TSR2 project and the legendary Anglo-French Concorde. During the Second World War, it was Edwards who made the Dam Busters’ bouncing bombs bounce.

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Warriors of the Dark Ages

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 04:01:54 +0000

Examines the barbarians from Europe and beyond who harassed, eroded and eventually caused the disintegration of the Roman Empire, including the Huns, Mongolian horsemen who swept into Europe to form a short-lived empire from the Urals to the Rhine; the Visigoths, or western Goths, who sacked Rome in 410 and ruled Spain from Toledo until the Moorish conquest in 711; the Ostrogoths, or eastern Goths, who ruled Italy from 493 until the Emperor Justinian drove them out in 534; the Franks, a group of Germanic tribes who came to rule France under the Merovingians; and the Vandals, fierce Arian Christians who invaded Gaul and Spain around 400 and sacked Rome in 455. As the authors show, some, such as the Vandals in North Africa, had shortlived periods of supremacy and relatively insignificant effect on the areas they settled; others, such as the Franks, adapted to Roman ways to create the strong foundations of medieval and later nations. Throughout the text, the authors reconstruct the volatile world of pitched battle and invasion.

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World War II: Book of Lists

Sun, 29 Jun 2025 04:01:21 +0000

Everything you ever wanted to know about the Second World War, from the highest-rated fighter aces to the most inventive escape equipment used to break out of Colditz; from army pay by rank to the largest battleships; from the most stirring speeches to the biggest tactical errors; from the strangest regimental mottoes to the plays most performed by ENSA; and from the dates each country joined the war to the most unlikely spies. All the major events and dates in the war are covered in detail, but equal emphasis is placed on the human experience of combat. Often poignant and always revealing, World War II: the Book of Lists offers a unique insight into the deadliest conflict in human history.

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Four Thousand Lives

Thu, 12 Jun 2025 04:01:53 +0000

In November 1938 about 30,000 German Jewish men were taken to concentration camps where they were subjected to torture, starvation and arbitrary death. In Four Thousand Lives, Clare Ungerson tells the remarkable story of how the grandees of Anglo-Jewry persuaded the British Government to allow them to establish a transit camp in Sandwich, East Kent, to which up to 4,000 men could be brought while they waited for permanent settlement overseas. The whole rescue was funded by the British Jewish community, with help from American Jewry. Most of the men had to leave their families behind. Would they get them out in time? And how would the people of Sandwich – a town the same size as the camp – react to so many German speaking Jewish foreigners? There was a well-organised branch of the British Union of Fascists in Sandwich. Lady Pearson, the BUF candidate for Canterbury, was President of the Sandwich Chamber of Commerce and Captain Gordon Canning, a prominent Fascist and close friend of Oswald Mosley, lived there and he and his grand friends used to meet there to play golf. This background adds to the drama of the race against time to save lives. Four Thousand Lives is not just a story of salvation, but also a revealing account of how a small English community reacted to the arrival of so many German Jews in their midst.

In November 1938 about 30,000 German Jewish men had been taken to concentration camps where they were subject to torture, starvation and arbitrary death. This book tells the remarkable story of how the grandees of Anglo Jewry persuaded the British Government to allow them to establish a transit camp in Sandwich, in East Kent, to which up to 4000 men could be brought while they waited for permanent settlement overseas – known as the Kitchener camp. The whole rescue was funded by the British Jewish community with help from American Jewry. Most of the men left their families behind. Would they get their families out in time? And how would the people of Sandwich – a town the same size as the camp – react to so many German speaking Jewish foreigners in their midst? There a well organized branch of the British Union of Fascists in Sandwich. Captain Robert Gordon Canning, a virulent anti-Semite, lived there. He and his grand friends from London (including the Prince of Wales before the abdication) used to meet there to play golf at Royal St George’s. (After the war, Canning purchased the bust of Hitler sold at the auction of goods from the German embassy and kept it in his house.) This background adds to the drama of the race against time to save lives.

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The War of Independence in East Cork

verity.brighton — Wed, 28 May 2025 04:01:35 +0000

East Cork was a very dangerous area during the Irish War of Independence. Several major and minor actions between the IRA and Crown Forces took place there during 1920 and 1921, including the first RIC Barracks to be captured and destroyed at Carrigtwohill. Other significant events include the capture of Castlemartyr and Cloyne RIC barracks, the ambush at Mile Bush near Midleton where a British Army bicycle patrol was relieved of their weapons, and the IRA ambush of an RIC foot patrol in Midleton. This period also saw the first official reprisals, the disastrous battle at Clonmult, the Cobh quarry attack, and the Bunker Hill ambush. This book includes all the major and minor engagements between the IRA and Crown Forces; the actions described have never before been so extensively researched and published in such a comprehensive and balanced fashion.

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Queen Boudicca’s Battle of Britain

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 04:01:44 +0000

Using the words of ancient Roman writers, this work offers an alternative perspective on many aspects of the events which took place during one of the most evocative periods in British history – from the time of the Roman invasion to the aftermath of Queen Boudicca’s rebellion.

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The Airlift

Tue, 02 Sep 2025 04:01:16 +0000

This fascinating new book tells the forgotten story of a group of airmen who had spent WW2 dropping bombs on Berlin, who risked their lives in 1948-9 instead dropping chocolate bars from the sky, and how a group of German citizens looked to the skies not with dread and hatred but with hope and admiration. Through this deeply human lens, Dr Pearson gives crucial historical insight into how lasting new battlelines were formed; the Berlin Airlift wrote the playbook of the Cold War and it still influences Western thinking and diplomacy with Russia to this day.

This is not a standard military history; The Airlift uses extensive archives and interviews to interweave everyday characters’ tales into an extraordinary story. They include an American pilot crashing in Soviet territory, a Jewish photographer struggling to reconcile with the Germans, the 17,000 women who built Tegel Airport, Cambridge University actors performing in the ruins for British intelligence, Hollywood star Montgomery Clift filming at Tempelhof airport, and a Berlin girl trying to outrun the boys reaching for chocolate.

By uncovering untapped sources in both German and Anglo-American archives, Dr Pearson gives a unique and textured portrait of a city during the Cold War’s first major conflict through the lives of real individuals.

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The Right of Passage

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 04:01:33 +0000

How much could the victims of the Holocaust have known of what awaited them? How much should they have known? The Right of Passage reveals how different members of a single German-Jewish family tried to flee the Nazi regime. The discovery of a cache of photographs leads the authors to hundreds of letters, on which the book is based. Newly translated from German, these exchanges among leading thinkers of the period vividly record an intellectual culture in flight, though none could grasp the nature of the evil that was coming. Most members of the family found safety in England, Ireland or America, some only just in time; the logician and philosopher Kurt Grelling, exiled in Belgium, was arrested when the Nazis invaded. Deported to France and interned by the Vichy regime, despite the efforts of friends, Grelling’s attempts to find passage to America ultimately came to nothing. But his letters speak across the decades, urging us to question our unconscious attitudes to the millions of victims of the worst mass atrocity in history.

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