Remembering (and Forgetting) Collective History
April 11, 2017
David Rieff— Lawrence Binyon’s poem “For the Fallen” was first published in the London Times on September 21, 1914, six weeks after the Great War had begun. It is sometimes… READ MORE
Category: Military History
The CIA’s Drone Policy Under Trump
April 10, 2017
Christopher J. Fuller— President Trump’s agenda has borrowed heavily from Reagan. Tax cuts, a military buildup, and even the slogan “Make America Great Again” were all signatures of the 1980… READ MORE
Looking Back at the First World War
April 6, 2017
Today marks the centennial of the United States’ entry into World War I. To commemorate the day, we sat down with Bruno Cabanes, author of August 1914: France, the Great… READ MORE
Allies in Africa: Strategy and Victory in World War II
December 16, 2016
Andrew Stewart— When the first shots were fired in the summer of 1940 along Sudanese and Kenyan borders, there was a great deal of interest across the British Empire in… READ MORE
The Spanish Monarchy in the Mediterranean Theater
December 2, 2016
Christopher Storrs— Between the peace of Utrecht that marked the end of the War of Spanish Succession in 1713 and the close of the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748, King… READ MORE
The Invention of the Modern Soldier
September 12, 2016
Libby Murphy— During the Great War, French soldiers struggled to make sense of their experience, both for themselves and for their compatriots. Soldier-writers used fiction to recalibrate civilians’ expectations about the… READ MORE
Frederick Barbarossa’s Bittersweet Ending
July 28, 2016
John Freed— On 22 June 1941, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa. Hitler’s personal decision to name the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union after Frederick Barbarossa (b. 1122, r. 1152-90) was… READ MORE
Happy Birthday, Louis Barthas!
July 14, 2016
Louis Barthas; Translated by Edward M. Strauss— Poilu author Louis Barthas was born on Bastille Day, July 14, 1879. In honor of his 137th birthday, here are two letters that… READ MORE
The Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Modern Middle East
June 16, 2016
Neil Faulkner— A hundred years on from Sykes-Picot, the Middle East is in turmoil. These two things are intimately related. Mark Sykes was a British diplomat, François Georges-Picot his French… READ MORE
A Volcano in Constant Eruption: Surviving the Hell of Verdun
May 12, 2016
One hundred years ago, in May 1916, the costliest, bloodiest battle of World War I’s Western Front – Verdun – had raged for three months without slackening. French and German… READ MORE
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