Operation Overlord was the largest amphibious military operation ever launched, with a vast armada transporting over 150,000 Allied soldiers across the Channel. Just after dawn on 6 June 1944, the Allied troops assaulted the beaches of the Cotentin peninsula against stiff German resistance. Coordinated with the amphibious landings were a number of aerial assaults that carried out crucial missions to take key areas, enable the vital link up between the beaches. Casualties during the invasion were horrendous, but the assaults were successful. This book looks in detail at the plans and build-up to the operation, and discusses the events of D-Day in each of the key areas of the operation.

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.

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 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.

The Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870 when Bismarck engineered a war with the French Second Empire under Napoleon III. This was part of his wider political strategy of uniting Prussia with the southern German states, excluding Austria. The war was an overwhelming Prussian victory, and King Wilhelm I was proclaimed Emperor of the new united Germany. The Second Empire collapsed and Napoleon III became an exile in Britain. In the peace settlement with the French Third Republic in 1871 Germany gained the eastern French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, areas that were to provide a bone of contention for years to come.

A fascinating new insight into the Falklands Conflict, covering every aspect of its origins and the political and diplomatic response to the Argentinean action as well as illuminating accounts of the military action to retake the islands, at every level of command. In June 2002, exactly twenty years after the cessation of hostilities between Britain and Argentina, many of the key participants came together at a major international conference. This conference, held at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst and organized jointly by RMA Sandhurst and her sister institution Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, aimed to re-examine the events of spring 1982 from the perspective that only twenty intervening years can bring. The Conference mixed those who had participated in the events of spring and early summer 1982, diplomats, politicians, civil servants, soldiers, sailors and airmen, with historians, political scientists and journalists. These accounts and interpretations of the conflict shed new light on one of the most interesting and controversial episodes in recent British history.

A fascinating new insight into the Falklands Conflict, covering every aspect of its origins and the political and diplomatic response to the Argentinean action as well as illuminating accounts of the military action to retake the islands, at every level of command. In June 2002, exactly twenty years after the cessation of hostilities between Britain and Argentina, many of the key participants came together at a major international conference. This conference, held at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst and organized jointly by RMA Sandhurst and her sister institution Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, aimed to re-examine the events of spring 1982 from the perspective that only twenty intervening years can bring. The Conference mixed those who had participated in the events of spring and early summer 1982, diplomats, politicians, civil servants, soldiers, sailors and airmen, with historians, political scientists and journalists. These accounts and interpretations of the conflict shed new light on one of the most interesting and controversial episodes in recent British history.

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.

'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’.

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.