Everyone is familiar with the story of D-Day and the triumphal liberation of France by the Allies: a barbaric enemy was defeated by Allied ingenuity, courage and overwhelming military force, helped by dreadful German command errors and the terrible state of Wehrmacht forces in the West – but is this all true? The Wehrmacht was hugely experienced, equipped with some of the best weaponry of the war and was holding its own in Italy and Russia at the time. Berlin knew the invasion was coming a...

Nazi Germany's assault on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, Operation Barbarossa, was the largest invasion in history. Almost 3.5 million men smashed into Stalin's Red Army, reaching the gates of Leningrad, Moscow and Sevastopol. But not all of this vast army was German; indeed, by the summer of 1942, over 500,000 were Romanians, Italians, Hungarians, Slovaks and Croatians – Hitler's Axis allies. As part of the German offensive that year, more than four allied armies...

The Nazis' dream of a world dominated by legions of Aryan 'supermen', forged in battle and absolutely loyal to Hitler, was epitomised by the Waffen-SS. Created as a supreme military élite, it grew to become Nazi Germany's 'second army', an immense force totalling almost one million men by the end of the War.An astonishing fact about the SS is that thousands of its members were not German. Men stepped forward from almost every nation in Europe — for many, sometimes c...

‘In Belfast the Provos were trying to make the 6 o’clock news, in East Tyrone they were trying to kill you.’With the advent of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the Provisional IRA (PIRA) became active in the towns and villages of East Tyrone, the volunteers forming the so-called East Tyrone Brigade and carrying out attacks on members of the security forces. Drawing volunteers from the region’s tight-knit Catholic communities, many with republican sympathies dating...

L’histoire de la 27ème Division SS de grenadiers volontaires « Langemarck »Pendant la guerre 1940-1945, 23.000 Flamands s’engagèrent dans la SS. 11.000 Wallons choisirent également de porter l’uniforme noir des troupes d’Himmler. Cette différence s’explique par la volonté des dirigeants des formations nationalistes flamandes de l’époque, VNV, Dinaso et De Vlag, de persuader un maximum de jeunes gens de s’enrôler aux côtés des Allemands, dans l’espoir que les occupa...

Five months, one week and three days of hell. The German offensive to capture Stalingrad began in August 1942, using Friedrich Paulus’s 6th Army and elements of the 4th Panzer Army. The attack was supported by intense bombing that reduced much of the city to rubble. The battle degenerated into house-to-house fighting, as both sides fought for the city on the Volga. By mid-November, the Germans were on the brink of victory as the Soviet defenders clung on to a final few slivers of land alon...

‘I was in the Army over thirty years and Derry was the most resentful place I ever served, even the dogs hated us.’When civil rights protests in the 1960s gave way to armed struggle, the Provisional IRA in Derry – both city and county – led the fight against the British security forces. In the city Martin McGuinness – a young butcher’s assistant from the Bogside – quickly rose through the ranks, launching a bombing campaign that reduced the city centre to rubble. In tandem, the IRA...

In 1939 and 1940 the Nazi blitzkrieg crushed Poland and the Low Countries and France. This was a new type of warfare with air and ground forces working hand-in-glove and sweeping away all resistance. On the ground the new panzer divisions symbolised this combat revolution, and in the air its symbol was the all-conquering Luftwaffe with its fleets of Stuka dive bombers. When Hitler looked further east in 1941, the Luftwaffe turned with him, spearheading the largest invasion in world history...

As the West finds itself embroiled in conflict with radical Islam at home and abroad it is fascinating to hear the echoes of militant Islam from the Second World War, and the Nazis attempt to preach 'Jihad' against the British Empire and Stalin. Hitler's Jihadis tells the story of the tens of thousands of Muslims, from as far away as India who volunteered to wear the SS double lightning flashes and serve alongside their erstwhile conquerors. Jonathan Trigg gives i...

Starting with leaflet drops in 1940, the aerial offensive against the Nazis’ homeland grew into a huge armada that pulverised much of Germany, seriously damaging her ability to make war and killing hundreds of thousands. By day, the Flying Fortresses of the Mighty Eighth US Airforce confronted the day fighters of Luftflotte Reich, and then it was the turn of Bomber Command’s Lancasters to fight off the deadly predators of the Nachtjagd (night hunters). The tactics and technology of Allied ...

The divisions of the Waffen-SS were among the elite of Hitler's armies in the Second World War. But alongside the Germans in the Waffen-SS fought an astonishingly high number of volunteers from other countries. By the end of the Second World War these foreign volunteers comprised half of all Hitler's Waffen-SS, and filled the ranks of over twenty-four of the nominal thirty-eight Waffen-SS divisions. So during the most brutal war that mankind has ever known, hundreds of tho...

Motivated by anti-communist zeal and a burning desire for Flemish self-rule, the men of the SS Langemarck answered Himmler's call to arms and earned a reputation for steadfastness in battle from friend and foe alike, right through to their eventual destruction by the Soviets in 1945. The exploits of key figures such as the famous Flemish Knight's Cross winner Remy Schrijnen are covered in detail. Written by a former captain in the British Army, this is the second in Spellm...