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Why did a long time reluctant US President Wilson finally enter World War I on the side of the Allies in April 1917?In retaliation of the British naval blockade of Germany since August 1914, the German Admirals determined at the beginning of 1915 to create a counter-blockade of the British Isles with their submarines. The U-boat commanders got – without knowledge of the government - a secret order to sink Allied passenger liners. The British Admiralty discovered the hunt for passenger liners by deciphering W/T messages to the U-boats. The sinking of the Lusitania on May, 6th, 1915, was no coincidence – the Royal Navy knew about the intentions of the U-boats and, after doing everything to protect the passenger liners in the beginning, they simply left the Lusitania alone in in the first week of May, to create frictions between America and the German Empire. A diplomatic quarrel between US President Wilson and Germany about U-boat warfare commenced. In spring of 1916 the German Navy acted again against the instructions of the Kaiser and ordered secretly the sinking of allied and neutral vessels in the British Channel, thereby opening an unrestricted U-boat war. When the channel ferry Sussex was attacked, Wilson threatened to break off of diplomatic relations with Germany. Under massive diplomatic pressure the German government had to give in. Further on, their U-boats only conducted a “soft”, restricted warfare, following the internationally agreed maritime rules and tolerated by Wilson. In Germany a heated debate set in after the Sussex case. The Navy promised the quick defeat of England by unrestricted U-boat war, and the Army joined this campaign end of 1916. The intention of the “war party” was to rule out any possibility of a negotiated peace and to set the German Empire on a – risky - course for definitive victory. But the government doubted the Navy’s capability for all-out U-boat warfare and argued that the only definitive result would be an America siding the Allies, leading to ultimate defeat. In the last months of 1916 it sent out peace feelers to Wilson, warning him, that in the case of a failure of his peace mediation they would get under unbearable pressure of the “military opposition” to begin unrestricted U-boat war again. At this time Britain was – like Germany – economically with its back against the wall: it suffered terribly by the sinking of its merchant ships, the moral of its Admiralty in Anti-Submarine-Warfare had completely broken down. Collapse was threatening. But the British government got wind of the conflicts inside Germany by the deciphering of the diplomatic cables between Wilson and the Germans. The new Prime Minster, David Lloyd George, chose a risky strategy – by rebuffing all American peace efforts he wanted to encourage the radical party in Germany to enforce total U-boat war. Finally this British strategy payed out: German Navy and Army pressed the Kaiser to declare unrestricted U-boat war from 1st of February 1917 on, and Wilson broke off diplomatic relations. But he still bristled to enter the war on Allied side – as long as American ships would be treated correctly by the Germans, he wouldn’t come in, not even after the publication of the Zimmermann-telegram. The tipping point came in the middle of March, when U-boats torpedoed American vessels without warning. This forced the American Declaration of War against the German Empire on April 6, 1917.

Ewen Southby-Tailyour's lifetime involvement with small boats, both civilian and military, began with his unusual christening and lasted until he sold his final vessel on his 80th Birthday. In between these two landmarks he sailed extensively but not through 'warm water' cruising grounds rather than in colder, seldom-visited climates; most notably the Falkland Islands and among the un-surveyed fjords of north-west Iceland and northern Norway in winter. His love of the sea was instilled in him when, just four, he was taken trawling under sail. Soon, he was crewing in the classic pilot-cutter Olga in which, over 30 years of family ownership, he sailed every Easter and summer holidays, all the while learning navigation, seamanship and ships' husbandry. At the Nautical College Pangbourne he passed 'O' Level in celestial navigation, seamanship and signals then, despite being captain of sailing, he turned down an Olympic trial in preference for deep water cruising and exploring. He navigated, inter alia, six Fastnet Races and skippered six two-handed Round Britain races as well as a single-handed round Majorca and a two-handed Iceland race.. During deployments abroad he took every opportunity to sail in and to understand local vessels such as Arabian dhows, Chinese junks, Kenyan out-riggers and square-riggers. In the Falkland Islands he found that the charts had not altered since the 19th Century so he surveyed the coasts and beaches in his own time, a work that became the basis for the amphibious planning in 1982. Clearly his sailing life has not been without drama: he fell overboard twice, once when alone. Bad weather is a function of seafaring and, in his case included being caught off an Icelandic lee shore in a Force 11: an episode of survival that merited a chapter in the seminal text book Heavy Weather Sailing. AUTHOR: Ewen Southby-Tailyour is a retired Royal Marines officer who played a leading role in the Falklands campaign. From an early age he was involved in offshore sailing and inshore exploring. His involvement with small boats and the sea continued in the service when he specialised as a Landing Craft Officer often operating with other NATO amphibious forces. In the early 1960s he was attached to France's maritime Special Forces before being seconded to the Sultan of Oman's Armed Forces during the Dhofar War. In 1978 he commanded the Royal Marines' 'garrison' in the Falkland Islands when he was instructed to re-write the Standard Operating Procedures in case of an invasion. This study included the charting of much of the archipelago's coasts and beaches. Following his retirement in 1992 he was employed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the Dalmatian Coast of Croatia. On his return he established an Amphibious Consultancy to help industry design the latest generation of the Royal Navy's amphibious fleet. Later he was elected Yachtsman of the Year, established the Jester Challenge, single-handed ocean races to the USA, the Azores and the Republic of Ireland for yacht under 30 feet in length and sworn as a Younger Brother of Trinity House. Among his previously published works are Amphibious Warfare Post World War II, A Life Under Sail, Reasons in Writing, Amphibious Assault Falklands, Exocet Falklands, Blondie, the Life of Lieutenant-Colonel HG Hasler of Cockleshell Heroes fame and HMS Fearless (all with Pen and Sword). 23 colour, 33 b/w illustrations

On the night of 25 September 1829, the jewels of the Princess of Orange disappeared from her palace in Brussels. Suspicion quickly fell on her husband, Prince Willem of Orange, a Waterloo veteran known to be deeply in debt. But when the police failed to find any witnesses or leads, the investigation ground to a halt. In 1831, Anna Pavlovna’s jewels surfaced in New York in the hands of a former Napoleonic deserter named Constant Polari. Dutch officials scrambled to reclaim the jewels and extradite Polari, hoping a public trial would clear their prince’s name. But President Andrew Jackson’s customs collector preferred to confiscate the jewels, sell them, and pocket his share of the proceeds. When Polari’s lover dug up a buried portion of the gems and sailed for Europe, it triggered a race across the Atlantic, a kidnapping from Bellevue prison, and a sensational trial with a last-minute twist. True crime meets royal history in this long-forgotten caper that pitted the old world’s diplomacy against the new world’s self-determinism. Drawing on previously neglected case documents and sources in five languages, the tale of Anna Pavlovna’s stolen jewels unfolds against a backdrop of war, revolution, corruption, and betrayal.

This study reveals how the Household Division became the driving force behind Britain's special forces during the Second World War. Drawing on primary sources, Charles Trumpess traces the transformation from parade ground to battlefield, showing how Guards officers like Robert Laycock, David Stirling, and Frederick Browning leveraged social connections to create the Commandos, LRDG, SAS, and Parachute Regiment. Through character portraits, the book follows the evolution from No. 8 (Guards) Commando to modern G Squadron, 22 SAS. It reveals how Caterham's punishing training produced the self-reliance essential for special operations, how White's Club became an unofficial recruiting centre, and why the ‘old boys' network’ proved crucial to wartime innovation.

Maitland was the most able politician and diplomat during the lifetime of Mary Queen of Scots. It was he who master-minded the Scottish Reformation by breaking the ‘Auld Alliance’ with France, which presaged Scotland’s lasting union with England. Although he gained English support to defeat French troops defending Mary’s Scottish throne, he backed her return to Scotland, as the widowed Queen of France. His attempts to gain recognition for her as heir to the English crown were thwarted by her determined adherence to Catholicism. After her re-marriage, he spearheaded the plotting to bring down her objectionable husband, Lord Darnley, leading to his murder, after concluding that English and Scottish interests were best served by creating a Protestant regency for their son, Prince James. With encouragement from Cecil in England and the Protestant Lords in Scotland, he concocted evidence to implicate her in her husband’s murder, resulting in her imprisonment and deposition from the Scottish throne. Despite her escape to England, he remained personally loyal to her and attempted to conjure Scottish support for her restoration by backing her allies holding Edinburgh Castle on her behalf. When it fell in 1573, he resorted to suicide.

At dawn on 22 June 1941, along an 1,800-mile-long invasion front, three million German soldiers on the frontier of the Soviet Union unleashed the largest offensive in military history – Operation Barbarossa. Spearheading this titanic clash was Field Marshal Ritter von Leeb, commander of Army Group North. With 500,000 men at his disposal, comprising almost thirty divisions, six of them armoured and motorized, with 1,500 Panzers and 12,000 heavy weapons, plus an air fleet of nearly 1,000 planes, he was determined to strike through the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, straight towards their objective – Leningrad.Leeb’s offensive on Leningrad was rapid. Its armoured force was the backbone of the advance comprising of the 3rd and 4th Panzer Group with Field Marshal Erich von Manstein commanding the LVI Motorized Corps and General Rudolf Schmidt’s XXXIX Motorized Corps that included the 12th, 18th and 20th Panzer Divisions.Tanks and Armour at Leningrad 1941–1944 provides a powerful visual chronicle of how the Panzerwaffe attacked and supported the infantry that battled around the besieged city of Leningrad. With 150 rare and often unpublished images, this book provides a unique insight into German armour that operated around Leningrad from its early triumphant days in 1941 and 1943 to its slow and painful retreat in early 1944.

Why did the Soviet Union hide the facts surrounding the death of Adolf Hitler at the end of the Second World War? Australian documentary-producer Cyril Jones provides a fascinating insight into how one woman had the courage to take on the Soviet bureaucracy to get the truth to the West, and how his ground-breaking documentary on the Führer’s death enabled her to do it. Only slowly and reluctantly did the Soviets let the light in on the events which occurred in bunker of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin in 1945; it was Elena Rzhevskaya who prised open the archival vault. Rzhevskaya was a Russian military translator who was the first to speak with those still alive in the bunker within minutes of Soviet soldiers taking control of it. Her first words to them was: ‘Where is Hitler?’ Told that he was dead and his body set alight, she demanded to know where his body was. She then set about unravelling the mystery of the death of the Führer, but as soon as she discovered the whole story Soviet leader Josef Stalin instructed her to ‘keep her mouth shut’. He wanted to keep the secret to himself. Because of that the Western Allies were fed lies, it even being suggested that Hitler might still be alive. It took another twenty years of digging for the truth to come out. Rzhevskaya herself was responsible for that, having dedicated herself to lifting the veil of secrecy and ensuring the world knew of Stalin’s duplicity. In this book Cyril Jones reveals how he managed to get previously unseen film footage from the Soviet and Russian archives, material which helped reveal the facts. The author also details interviews with Elena Rzhevskaya which shows the paths she took to tell the real story. The Hunt for Hitler expands upon our understanding of those momentous days following the end of the Second World War and provides an absorbing insight into the background surrounding the fate of Hitler’s body as the chilling blast of the Cold War swept across Europe.

Tucked away in the vaults of Somerset House lies one of Britain’s most revealing and eccentric historical treasures: a vast archive of Last Wills and Testaments. These documents, often the final words of the dead, hold more than just legal instructions; they’re windows into the character of those gone before, into their conflicts and lives. From vengeful codicils and heartfelt farewells, to wills etched on eggshells or hidden in hollow bedposts, this book uncovers a trove of bizarre and entertaining bequests. Here are men and women who used their final words to settle scores, impose odd conditions, or deliver one last laugh — sometimes at the expense of expectant heirs. For family historians, these wills offer more than just names and dates. They reveal values, relationships, secrets, and social customs that breathe life into ancestral records. Whether you're tracing your ancestors or simply enjoy tales of posthumous mischief, this journey into the strange world of testamentary history proves that death doesn’t always mean silence.

Today you’ve probably benefited from something that women generations before gave time, money, their health, liberty and in some instances even their lives, for you to enjoy. From the vote, to safer working environments, reproductive rights, infant welfare and other NHS services, every day we benefit from the sacrifices they made. Yet there are no statues, and rarely any blue plaques to many of these women. Beyond a few big names, most aren’t even in the traditional history books. These were poor women, migrant women, queer women, disabled women; young women. Alone they didn’t have the power to create change, so they worked in unions, tenants associations and other solidarity movements. Together they took on Britain's most powerful institutions, and won. Following years of archival research and oral history interviews, we now have one of the most comprehensive retellings of how women’s rights in Britain were secured. Even those familiar with women’s history will find rare gems inside; names they’ve never come across before, with some stories being published for the very first time. For those new to it all, this is an accessible walk through how women have shaped the last 150 years. Whatever your level of knowledge, get ready to be inspired and so you can keep fighting for gender equality today.

Bridgerton Revisited is the first book to place the hugely successful Netflix production Bridgerton in its historical context, the Regency Period of English history which ran from around 17295 until 1837. This eagerly anticipated book is in three parts: Part One examines in detail the social history of the Regency, and is obviously the most recognizable to viewers of the series released so far by Netflix. As such it takes in all aspects of Regency society as enjoyed by the landowning and titled aristocracy in their opulent houses, with their lavish fashions and impeccably prescribed conduct and manners. We learn of the affairs, adultery, sport, leisure and the ardent pursuit of illicit sex in brothels, gambling houses and taverns, of Regency LGBTQ and the endless scramble for the best marriage match as played out in the extravagant balls and at the endless visits and soirées. Part Two takes a close look at the production itself and discusses its historical accuracy in relation to what we discovered in Part One, and the divergences from that history. Using first-hand evidence from the creators and writers of the production we explore the ‘alternate history’ underscoring the series, not least the controversial issue of racial diversity in the casting. Part Three looks at the other side of the coin: the plight of the vast majority living and just surviving in Regency England, amidst the routine squalor, poverty, vagrancy, prostitution and occupational disease, workhouses and domestic and sexual abuse navigated daily, particularly by the women of the day.

Pirates and Privateers of the Atlantic and the Caribbean is the most recent and broadest study of international privateering in the 18th and 19th centuries. It first examines ships themselves, which were privately financed and privately owned vessels designed, outfitted, and manned to locate, chase, capture, sink, or burn enemy ships under the auspices of a national or a local government. In addition to this, it also considers the officers and seamen aboard these ships, the investors who financed this legal trade, and the multi-racial makeup of some of their crews, as well as discussing the European and other women who played an indirect but nevertheless important role in privateering. Offering a worldwide sea-and-shore based coverage of the maritime, political, and economic reasons for privateering, it features privateers in the Revolutionary War between the United States and Great Britain; the vital role of France in this same war; privateers in the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain; privateers in the Carolinas and in the Caribbean; Latin American insurgent privateers; noted privateering figures; racial minorities and women associated with privateering; and naval gunnery in the age of sail.

The occupation of Europe by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy from 1939 met with resistance from all the peoples of Western, Central and Eastern Europe as well as the Balkans. This resistance took various forms from low level sabotage and intelligence gathering in some Western European countries to full scale Partisan resistance in other parts of Europe. In this first of two volumes on Partisans and Guerrillas between 1939 and 1945 the Partisans of Poland from 1939, the Soviet Union from 1941 and Czechoslovakia from 1939 are covered. Italian Partisans were active from the fall of Mussolini in 1943 and the French Resistance went from insurgency in 1940 until from 1942 til 1945 it developed into full scale partisan warfare in some remoter regions of the country. Using over 300 wartime photographs some of which have not been published before Philip Jowett retells the story of resistance, guerrilla and partisan warfare. This brutal chapter in World War Two annals was to greatly effect the situation at the front line while the populations of occupied countries suffered the wrath of the occupying armies. His second volume in this series will feature the occupied Balkans where some of the fiercest partisan fighting of the war took place.

Napoleon famously said that an army marches on its stomach, but it also marches in its boots and its uniforms, carrying or driving its weapons and other equipment, and all this material has to be ordered from headquarters, produced and delivered. Janet Macdonald's detailed and scholarly new study explains how this enormously complex task of organization and labour was carried out by the British army during the First World War. She describes the personnel who performed these tasks, from the government and military command in London to those who handled the items in the field. They were responsible for clothing, accommodation, medicine, transport, hand weapons, armament and communications – a vast logistical network that had evolved to keep millions of men in the field. This meticulously researched account of this important subject – one which has hitherto been neglected by military historians – will be essential reading and reference for anyone who is interested in the modern British army, in particular in its organization and performance in the First World War.

In a swift campaign the Third US Army conquered the Brittany peninsula in August 1944. The German forces in Brittany had been herded into Lorient, St Nazaire, and Brest, where they could only await American siege operations. Despite these achievements, the Brittany campaign had not yet secured the basic strategic objectives that had motivated it: the capture of harbours. St Malo was destroyed beyond hope of immediate repair and Nantes was demolished as well. At the end of the month, as the VIII Corps gathered its forces for a mighty effort to take Brest, the development of the breakout in Normandy and the pursuit beyond the Seine made the logistical planners start to look elsewhere for major ports of entry. The VIII Corps faced a dogged defence at Brest and it took six weeks of fighting to obtain the final surrender of Generalleutnant Ramcke on September 19. American casualties in the Battle of Brittany totalled 9,831; prisoners and the taken numbered 38,000, of whom more than 20,000 were combat troops. On September 13, after the extent of the reconstruction and works necessary to rehabilitate the harbour at Brest had been looked at, it was decided to abandon all repair work there. The serious Allied problem of port capacity persisted until November, when the Antwerp facilities became available. The charge was later made that the employment of three divisions and valuable transports and supplies to defeat the German garrison at Brest adversely affected pursuit operations beyond the Seine. However, it should be noted that the resources used at Brest were quite small compared to the main effort and could hardly have changed the development of the advance towards the Seine and beyond. Told through more than a hundred ‘Then and Now’ comparison photographs that bring history to life, this book tells the story of the long siege of Festung Brest. By pinpointing for the first time, the locations where so many photographs were taken, this book will allow the reader to walk in the footsteps of the heroes of this great moment in history.

Third volume of the critically-acclaimed series stressing maritime trade as the driver of world history, wealth-creation, technological inventiveness, art and literature. This book tackles the Maritime Enlightenment, which spurred economic liberalism and humanitarianism, unlike its continental version, breaking free from historic attitudes to slavery and serfdom, contextualising current debates on imperial history. The immediate cause of America’s War of Independence is revealed to be about illegal maritime trade. Jefferson and Madison never understood the latent wealth-creating power of US trade, misdirecting energies for some years. US north-south divisions were exacerbated by trade tariffs more than slavery. The failure of France’s Revolution and Germany’s 20th-century wars were also failures to appreciate its importance. The post 1945 rise of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, China and UAE were directly because of their encouragement of maritime trade and shipping. Britain’s decline was heralded by political indifference then hostility, contrasting with its previous encouragement; its greatest strength. Nick’s chapter on shipping’s efforts to achieve net-zero is a must read for anyone involved in the green debate. Written by someone at the heart of maritime trade since the 1970s, the series is an important counterweight to political history we are usually fed, a different way of thinking about the world, past and present.

The year 135 BC saw the outbreak of the so-called ‘First Servile War’, which proved to be just the first of a series of conflicts that ravaged the Roman Republic during the following century and changed forever the institutions of the Roman state. This bloody and violent period of civil wars and recurrent slave revolts (most famously that of Spartacus) saw the ascendancy of many famous generals who obtained great military victories, including: Marius, Sulla, Crassus, Pompey, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony and Octavian. They fought for complete dominance over Rome but, at the same time, conducted a series of imperialist campaigns that greatly expanded the territorial extension of the Roman Republic. In discussing these campaigns of conquest, the author shows how they were strongly linked with the civil conflicts and how the events that started in 135 BC progressively led to the birth of the Roman Empire under Octavian (Augustus). The author also describes the only civil war taking place during the Early Empire, i.e. that of AD 69 (‘The Year of the Four Emperors’) before providing a detailed description of the organization and equipment of the varied military forces that took part in the Roman civil wars during this crucial period, outlining crucial developments across the period. As usual for the Armies of the Past series, there are dozens of colour photos depicting replica arms, armour and dress in use.