With the Nazi Party growing in strength, 1933 would bring about book burnings on an unprecedented scale — The large-scale book burning ceremonies that swept through Germany in 1933, which began to ramp up soon after Hitler was appointed Chancellor in January, has in the post-war years become one of the defining acts of the Nazi regime. …

As war broke out in 1914, Britain began its race to destroy the Goeben and the Breslau — At the outbreak of the First World War in July-August 1914, the enormous scale of the coming conflict quickly became apparent. With great land armies massing in both Western and Eastern Europe, military preparations across the great European empires began to pick up at pace as the shadow of war…

Operation Typhoon and the Battle for Moscow — When Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, the threat to Moscow became almost immediately clear. Despite several warnings of an impending invasion, the German assault against the Soviet Union caught Stalin by surprise and the initial Soviet defensive effort was marred by scenes of chaos and disorder. …

As Germany faced total defeat in 1945, the besieged city of Königsberg would make its last stand. — As the Red Army began its advance towards Berlin at the beginning of 1945, it was clear that Germany’s war effort was approaching its final days. It would be in the east that Hitler’s plans of conquest would ultimately be defeated, with the Eastern Front accounting for by far the…

The Allied bombing of Hamburg during World War Two has been described as Germany’s Nagasaki — but what did it achieve? — From the many horrors experienced during the Second World War, the indiscriminate targeting of civilians from the air remains a particularly sinister aspect of the conflict. During the war, the bombing of civilian targets was experienced on a level never previously seen, with bustling cities flattened to the ground within…