Germany
‘September Programme’
On 9 September 1914 Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg announced Germany’s ‘September Programme’ of war aims. Whether this statement of territorial demands and military and economic ambitions was a triumphant response to early victories, or a pragmatic recognition that the war would not be short, and that the German people had to be made aware of what they were fighting for in…
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SS Standartenführer Peiper and Götterdämmerung I
The new year of 1945 saw the racial war of mutual annihilation in the East reach a terrible climax. At Hitler’s personal order, the Leibstandarte and Kampfgruppe Peiper shuttled to the East for a desperate attack to liberate the Hungarian oil fields. As the Soviets gutted, raped, and pillaged their…
SS Standartenführer Peiper and Götterdämmerung II
Outside, the booming artillery filled the air like a roaring thunderstorm. Soon the entourage moved back down into the musty confines of the bunker for Hitler’s daily war conference. The usual situation map was present, with lots of ugly red lines outlining a penciled noose around the German capital. The…
Junkers Ju-86
It would be fair to say that the Junkers Ju 86 was already obsolescent at the beginning of World War 11, and was accepted rather grudgingly by the Luftwaffe, which preferred the Heinkel He 111. It is all the more surprising, therefore, that within two years the type was operating…
Battle of Bicocca, 27 April 1522
The Battle of Bicocca was fought on 27 April 1522, during the Italian War of 1521–26. A combined French and Venetian force under Odet de Foix, Vicomte de Lautrec, was decisively defeated by a Spanish-Imperial and Papal army under the overall command of Prospero Colonna. Lautrec then withdrew from Lombardy,…
Drehflügel – Cyclogyro
ROHRBACH CYCLOGYRO (1933) Circular wing aircraft design looked outwardly more straightforward than the Feuerball project, but while the advantages of circular-winged flight were clear – they included vertical take-off and aerodynamic efficiency – ultimate success was tantalizingly just out of reach. Alexander Lippisch was one of the engineers who took…
The Western Allies Advance into Germany II
Eisenhower had left the semi-mountainous, heavily wooded Ardennes region of Belgium and Luxembourg relatively undermanned. He cannot be wholly blamed for this, since he was receiving intelligence reports from Bradley stating that a German attack was ‘only a remote possibility’ and one from Montgomery on 15 December saying that the…