Second World War

Irrational chauvinists or fearful protectionists? Gordon Daniels looks at the new research and arguments reshaping our view of Japan's rulers before and after Pearl Harbour.

Roy Macnab examines the ongoing debate on the two Frances of 1940 – epitomized on the one side by Petain and de Gaulle on the other – in the light of an heroic Cavalry stand against the German Blitzkrieg.

Jonathan Wright and Paul Stafford examine the origins and significance of the document which has been claimed as the Fuhrer's premeditated masterplan for European domination.

'A painful lesson in international politics' - Anglo-Australian relations in the Second World War revealed the rhetoric of Empire not matched by a British commitment to Australia's defence.

Scapegoat or quisling extraordinaire? Douglas Johnson probes the motives and actions of Vichy's chief minister to find insularity and gamesmanship his fatal flaws.

Michael Burleigh charts the career of one of the pillars of the German scholarly establishment under the Third Reich an invaluable middle-man in 're-educating' his pupils and massaging research to suit Nazi ideology.

Competing interests as much as ideology fuelled the functioning of the Third Reich, augmented by forced labour and the plunder of Occupied Europe.

A Satanic conspiracy designed from the beginning to eliminate European Jewry? Or ad hoc responses aimed at replenishing Nazi zeal and producing convenient scapegoats? A fresh look at one of the most hideous episodes in world history.

Franco's traditional image has been as a canny neutral in the struggle between the Allied and Axis powers. But in 1940 his aspirations for an African empire drew him to within an ace of war with Britain.

On 4th April 1944, Anne Frank wrote, 'I want to go on living even after my death!' Four months later, she and her family left for a concentration camp after capture by the Gestapo, and she died from typhus at Bergen-Belsen in March 1945, aged fifteen years.