Among the dramatic events that marked the start of the First World War, British political and military decisions and actions are particularly well documented and researched. These well-known events include the complex political balancing act conducted by Prime Minister Herbert Asquith in the crisis of July-August 1914, in his successful attempt to minimise resignations from his Cabinet and revolts within his Liberal Party, and to lead both Parliament and the country united into the war. They also include the creation before the war and the deployment in August 1914 of the British Army’s Expeditionary Force (re-designated the British Expeditionary Force or BEF before the end of the month, which is how it is usually known), and the confirmation of Field Marshal Sir John French as its Commander-in-Chief. Equally well-known is the appointment of Field Marshal Earl Kitchener to the post of Secretary of State for War on 5 August, his call for volunteers to create a new mass British Army, and the unexpectedly large popular response. Yet another well-known story is the BEF’s first battles at Mons and le Cateau, the successful retreat from Mons, and the decision to turn the BEF to participate in the decisive Battle of the Marne in September. Most accounts that follow the British military story that far (and many do not, preferring to stop with the first declarations for war), also acknowledge the importance of the Amiens Dispatch (sometimes called the Mons Dispatch), a sensational account of the battles of Mons and le Cateau published in a special Sunday edition of The Times newspaper on 30 August, which also features in most accounts of British propaganda in the war, and of the British Home Front. It is often stated as fact both that Kitchener’s personal call to arms was the principal motivator of British military volunteerism in 1914 (often if incorrectly called ‘the rush to the colours’), and that it was Kitchener’s personal animosity towards war reporters that largely determined British policy towards the national press’s reporting of the BEF’s actions in this period. It is the purpose of this present account to assemble a narrative chronology of these events, so revealing the critical interaction between politics and strategy, military operations and battles, social and cultural responses at home including volunteerism, and both the nature and apparatus of British propaganda.

The impetus of the one-hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War of 1914-18 has provided opportunities for the re-evaluation of both historical understanding of the war, and of its commemoration and remembrance. 1 With the deaths of the last war veterans, the war must be understood in terms of remembrance rather than of memory, as well as in terms of its history. As fresh findings have emerged from the investigation of historical evidence, so the history of the war has been greatly modified, and these new historical findings have begun to impact on the approach to the study of remembrance. The last decade (or so) of historical research has been characterised by a new openness and new approaches, as well as fresh controversies. These have included several recent publications on the war’s origins and outbreak, on its conduct in both military and social terms, and on its aftermath. In many areas of research, old assumptions and national or regional histories, and narrower methodological approaches, are being replaced by the beginnings of a real global history for what was truly a world war.

'Market Garden' was one of the most audacious, and ultimately controversial, operations of the Second World War - a joint penetration, by an armoured column and a large-scale airborne drop, to punch a decisive hole in the German defences. If it had succeeeded, the war could have ended in 1944. Yet the two-pronged attack failed in its objectives. This book details how, instead of being relieved after 48 hours as expected, British paratroopers were cut off for nine days. Facing two unexpected SS Panzer divisions the Allies were eventually evacuated across the Rhine after putting up an incredible fight: of the 10,000 men involved less than 2,000 survived. Campaigns 5, 24, 74 and 75 are also available in a single volume special edition as ‘Into the Reich’.

Among the important British Army reforms following the Boer War (1899-1902) was the introduction of a longer-range rifle for the cavalry instead of a carbine, and a tactical doctrine including dismounted fire. It remains the view of most historians that the cavalry learned dismounted tactics from their Boer opponents, and that postwar reform of the cavalry was imposed from outside. Senior cavalry officers of the period are viewed as reactionary, and their performance in the First World War judged accordingly. This view is based on a partisan interpretation of the Boer War and the cavalry's role in it, fostered by its contemporary institutional critics. In fact, a cavalry reform movement was introducing dismounted tactics before the Boer War, both sides in the war used mounted and dismounted tactics, and the cavalry's problems were largely those of supply and not of their own making. This has much wider implications for the assessment of British military doctrines up to the end of the First World War.

This key title in the acclaimed Battle Zone Normandy series explores the Allies' struggle to take Caen and its significance for the campaign. The city of Caen was perhaps the greatest major obstacle in the path of the Allied advance inland after their landings in Normandy, 6 June 1944. Consequently it was a key objective for 3rd British Division, landing on Sword Beach. The Allies were unable to capture the strategically important city on D-Day, however, in the teeth of armoured counter-attacks from 21st Panzer Division. Renewed attempts by 3rd Canadian Division on 7-8 June were foiled by 12th SS Panzer Division 'Hitlerjugend', as were 7th British Armoured Division's thrusts towards the city on 11-14 June. On 25 June Operation 'Epsom' was launched to take Caen. Preceded by RAF Bomber Command attacks, further British and Canadian assaults on 4 July stalled before the whole of the city could be taken. On 7 July Operation 'Charnwood' forced the Germans to withdraw from northern Caen. A much heavier bombardment opened Operation 'Goodwood' on 18 July, in the course of which the Canadians finally managed to liberate the rest of Caen, by now largely demolished after five weeks of intensive fighting.

This publication considers the lessons to be gained for Britain, the British armed forces, and for NATO as a whole, from the Yugoslav wars of dissolution (1991-1999), with particular emphasis on the Kosovo crisis. The papers come from a diverse and high quality mixture of analysts, practitioners and policy-makers. The issues developed here represent a significant advance in the emerging debate on the lessons to be learnt from the Balkan experience, which will shape thinking on defence and international security far into the new millennium.

Propaganda played an important part in the politics of the war, but was only successful as part of wider political and military strategies. For each belligerent, the most effective and important forms of propaganda were aimed at its own domestic population and based on consensus. As part of this, the Allies largely managed relations with their own newspapers and other media by negotiated agreement, backed by coercive powers that were seldom used. Germany had a more coercive and directive approach to propaganda and the media, eventually dominated by its military. Post-war views of wartime propaganda misunderstood the reasons for Allied propaganda success.

Unique among the D-Day landing beaches in its dangers, Utah Beach saw the US Army's greatest success, namely landing with the fewest casualties of any of the Allied invasion beaches The landing beach closest to Normandy’s largest port, Cherbourg, and regarded by the Germans as the most important Allied objective, Utah was isolated from the other D-Day beaches, meaning that that troops landing there would have to fight alone until a link-up could be achieved. Accordingly, the US First Army committed a powerful landing force, preceded by a night parachute and glider assault, part of the largest night drop ever mounted. Despite wide scattering, the airborne troops secured the critical communications centre of Ste Mere Eglise on D-Day, the first village in Normandy to be liberated. Supported by a devastating air and naval bombardment, although landing on the wrong beach in bad weather, 4th Infantry Division took only 197 casualties out of 23,000 troops that landed on D-Day, and by the early afternoon had begun to link up with the first of the paratroopers.

A detailed analysis of the strategy undertaken by the British Army during WWI. In this collection of essays of incomparable scholarship, Stephen Badsey explores in individual detail how the British Army fought in the First World War, how politics and strategy affected its battles and the decisions of senior commanders such as Douglas Haig, and how these issues were intimately intertwined with the mass media portrayal of the Army to itself and to the British people. Informative, provocative, and often entertaining, based on more than a quarter-century of research, these essays on the British Army in the First World War range through topics from a trench raid to modern television comedy. As a contribution to progressive military history, The British Army in Battle and Its Image 1914-1918 proves that the way the British Army fought and its portrayal through the media cannot be separated. It is one of a growing number of studies which show that, far from being in opposition to each other, cultural history and the history of battle must be combined for the First World War to be properly understood.

This book combines Campaign 5: ‘Ardennes 1944’, Campaign 24: ‘Arnhem 1944’, Campaign 74: ‘The Rhineland 1945’ and Campaign 75: ‘Lorraine 1944’. In the aftermath of the German collapse in the west in the summer of 1944, Allied armies rampaged across France and Belgium. A German counter-attack was crushed by General Patton in Lorraine, and Allied armies closed on the borders of the Reich. The Allied plan to end the war at a stroke ended in bloody failure at Arnhem, but a German offensive in the Ardennes, Hitler's last roll of the dice on the western front, proved equally futile. With German forces bled white, the Allies hurled themselves across the River Rhine to bring the crumbling edifice of Hitler's 1,000-year Reich crashing in ruin.