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Briliant ! The fightin' Great Retreat of 1914 compared to the "Rope-a-dope" between Ali and Foreman in 1974 Zaïre.

The campaign chronicle is firmly grounded in an introduction to interwar Central European politics and the diverse evolution of the future antagonists' armed forces: while Stalin's purges had a dire effect on the Soviet build-up of its armored warfare theories, in Poland it was largely finances and a limited industrial infrastructure that kept its army infantry-based with a stagnant airforce.

Tim Travers' classic Donkey-bashing towards Haig remains academic, but Trevor & Wilson's observations that the Somme was planned at Chantilly in december 2015 rather than an emergency response to the Somme has entered the popular conscience.

Once Himmler guaranteed AK soldiers PoW status in a misguided attempt at anti-communist solidarity, the stage was set for the surrender. Afterwards, all remaining civilians were marked for resetlement in the impoverished Polish countryside, for slave labour under Allied bombing in Germany, or for Auschwitz. This left a few thousand people hiding and scavenging under the ruins until the Soviet entry in early '45.

The story comes to a virtual stadstill once the Karl mortars fall silent over the rubble of the Old Town, to look once more at the political games between the Anglo-American alliance, Stalin and the powerless Polish government in exile....

On 28 August 2012 a gigantic shell was found at a construction site at Warsaw. A large chuck of the city was evacuated as it was carefully made safe. It was the shell from a Karl mortar, a weapon which still has the power to terrorize 70 years on.

the slow reconquest ment life as usual went on in most of the city, reinforced by an AK information silence that sat ill with the Wola refugees' stories. The Germans meanwhile implemented a combined policy based upon their experiences in the concentration camp system; 1) executing men but deporting women and children as labourers to the Reich 2) mass corpse pyres, serviced by locally pressed Leichenkommandos.

the criminals of the Dirlewanger Brigade and unleashed an orgy of violence upon Wola district during their push for Old Town and the Vistula bridges. "The most terrible proof lies in the mosaleum in Sowinski Park in Wola, where 1120 kg of human ash are buried: all that remains of the more than 40.000 people killed in that area in the first week of August 1944"

Tasty testimonials before the Somme Trip

Caught off balance, the German garrison was able to protect vital infrastructures & maintain contact with the SS Panzerdivisions across the Vistula bridges in the first days of August, it lacked the strength to besiege the large parts of Warsaw liberated by the badly coördinated and understrength attacks of AK units , now demarcated by makeshift barricades. The Poles were equally unprepared to withstand a siege...

the Mythology of the Good War and the Greatest Generation vs Realpolitik : "Documents released by the National Archives in september 2012 show that Roosevelt knew that the Soviets had in fact committed the massacre at Katýn but ...his only real concern was to keep the issue secret from the millions of Polish-American voters until after the November 1944 presidential election."

The failed assassination attempt on Hitler of 20 july gave a new impetus to Stalin's overlord designs on Eastern Europe. The very next day, the Lublin Committee was proclaimed as the sole legitimate government of future Poland. While the Home Army fought amicably enough side by side with the frontoviks to purge German troops out of Walmo and Lvov, the NKVD soon arrived to unarm it and imprison its leaders.

Richie roots the horrors of the suppression firmly in the brutalisation of the Eastern Front in general, where chief figures such as Oskar Dirlewanger, Hermann Fegelein and Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski got experience in anti-partisan warfare through atrocities in Bellorussia, such as cavalry hunts in the Pripyat swamps.

Bloody "hurrah!"s echo across the Balkan & the Caucasus as the Continental Blockade tightens its grip... but this insightful exposition on the causalities of 1810-1811 fades inevitably into an impatient countdown towards that Barbarossa of the Napoleonic period, the War of 1812.

1809: the zenith of Napoleon because of a working alliance with Russia, stability in the satelite states & no enemy coalition ?

Solid diplomacy... but can each renewal of coalition warfare be traced back to Napoleon's insatiable ambitions ?

the big surprise: the Coalitions of Napoleonic wars weren't ideological; participants were prepared to let a Republican France exist, if the peace treaty satisfied their long-term territorial interests.

Summer was as deadly as the first day; but the British learnt to use the creeping barrage...unless they used the first Tanks (!) leaving the defenders intact.

Gains on the first day depended on wire-cutting, destroying MG positions, counter-battery fire & breath of no man's land. Until july 14, costly brigade-level attacks with exposed flanks did increase gained ground tenfold.

Contrary to popular image, the civilian government was firmly in control of the Somme planning since early 1916 ; the Verdun offensive did not initiate it. it.

the main points of WWII amphibious operations:
1) shipping was the warlong bottleneck of strategic logistics.
2) At 300 produced, there were certainly never amphibious cargo ships to spare (Landing Ship, Tank or LST).
3) the destroyers saved the day at Omaha.
4) adjust and get on with it. like bringing your own harbour with you.

"This Time, the Americans were ready for them" - the growing contribution of the U.S. shifts the strategic final say after North Africa.

8-20 june. A mobile attack by 3 historial invasion routes, one supported by strong naval artillery, rapidly turned the flanks of the static defence towards Damascus.

the origins of the Syrian campaign lie not only in the geostrategy towards the Suez Canal, but also De Gaulle's need for a territory to embody the Free France. Amidst Arab famine unrest, mass decomission by Vichy (45.000 out of 80.000) and the exodus of pro-British men (ca. 900), the Levant Army improvised a valuable Armoured Brigade out of Dodge truck chassis and set to improving its remaining units.

the British blockade of the Levant Fleet, epitomised by the sinking at Mers-El-Kebir, severely tested the allied loyalty of the Levant Army in the face of Vichy's capitulation order.