Second World War

The wartime government’s programme of deliberate smoke production was an attempt to protect Britain from the Luftwaffe; for the National Smoke Abatement Society, the decision was a disaster.

In the chaos unleashed by the October Revolution, Mikhail Bulgakov found a past become fragmented and confused, and history the domain of madmen and devils.

Court-martialled in absentia on 2 August 1940, the Vichy regime confiscated de Gaulle’s property and condemned him to death. 

A huge bestseller and undisputed guide to the Nazi worldview, did Germans actually read Mein Kampf?

The Alienation Effect: How Central European Émigrés Transformed the British Twentieth Century by Owen Hatherley follows in the footsteps of those who fled fascism.

Hitler’s Deserters: Breaking Ranks with the Wehrmacht by Douglas Carl Peifer surfaces the stories of those who sought to sit out the Second World War.

When VE Day finally came in May 1945 it was met with relief, exhaustion, and cynicism. Was the Second World War in Europe really over?

In April 1945 ten British politicians flew to Germany tasked with investigating the ‘truth’ about Buchenwald concentration camp.

On 5 March 1936 the prototype Spitfire made its maiden flight. Its creator R.J. Mitchell would not live to see its finest hour.