A belated Anzac Day post. Here’s C. E. W. Bean, the official historian of Australia’s involvement in the First World War, on why the infamous Suvla landings on 6 August 1915 didn’t cut the Gallipoli peninsula and open the road to Constantinople: The reasons for the failure, which affected the fate of the Australian and […]
[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.] A random thought while sitting in a lecture today: if there is (or can be) such a thing as total war, does that imply that total peace is a meaningful concept? Firstly, what is total war? One definition, drawn from the ubiquitous set of conference proceedings edited by Stig Förster et al
Joseph Miranda. First Battle of Britain. Decision Games, 2009. A wargame, not a book, included with Strategy & Tactics 255. The German air offensive against Britain in 1917 and 1918. The German player raids British cities and tries to damage civilian morale; the British player tries to intercept the raiders and bomb their aerodromes. It’s
I’ve been reading a little about the Dardanelles campaign of 1915; not the famous landings in April but the failed naval campaign which preceded them in February and March. The basic idea was that British and French forces would sweep the Bosphorus clear of mines, knock out the Turkish naval guns on either side of
I’ve added another biography to the sidebar, that of devil-may-care flying fool Claude Grahame-White. He is probably most remembered today for his daring night flight in 1910 while attempting to win the Daily Mail London to Manchester prize. (His film career seems to have attracted somewhat less attention.) But for me Grahame-White’s main significance is
Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko. The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008. Talks a bit about the Baruch plan, which seems (perhaps naively) to me to be a close relative of the pre-war proposals for an international air force and the international control of
[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.] Recently, I followed Gavin Robinson’s lead and tried out the British Library’s EThOS beta. EThOS stands for Electronic Theses (dissertations) Online Service, and it’s just what you’d expect from that — an electronic thesis delivery service. There’s not too much new about that, but EThOS does have some very impressive features. First
The Tarrant Tabor, a prototype bomber designed and built in 1918-9. There were high hopes among strategic bombing advocates (including P. R. C. Groves) for this giant machine, but by the time it was ready for its maiden flight in May 1919, the war was over and its purpose now unclear. Not that this mattered
A few articles have been appearing in the British press over the last few days about Harry Grindell Matthews, who (among many other things) claimed in 1924 to have invented a death ray. There’s no actual news attached to these stories, as far as I can tell, other than the fact that a new biography
No. But let me explain … One of the nice things about tutoring is that you’re getting paid to learn things (unless you happen to know everything about whatever it is that you are tutoring already, which I don’t). And one thing I’ve learned recently is that the First World War started because French aircraft
