Hitler's march into the demilitarised Rhineland heralded Churchill's 'gathering storm' – but could the Fuhrer's bluff have been called and the Second World War prevented? Sir Nicholas Hederson, who as Britain's ambassador in Washington during the Falklands crisis saw diplomatic poker eventually turn to war, offers a reassessment of the events of 1936.
Brian Dooley assesses the incident which brought the world perilously close to nuclear war.
The 1942 Allied raid on Nazi-occupied France and its lessons for D-Day.
Pictures worth a thousand words - William Coupe traces, via cartoons, the changes in attitudes and public opinion in the Kaiser's Germany towards the First World War.
Lawrence James looks at the melange of racial theory, economic interest and Boys' Own 'derring-do' that fuelled European ambitions for a 'place in the sun'.
Colin Richmond analyses the part played by the written (and spoken) word in shoring up popular allegiances to the rival dynasties
As discussion grows about defence post Cold War, Martin Dedman and Clive Fleay look at an abortive 1950s plan for a 'European Army'.
Andrew Ayton analyses why Englishmen went off to fight in France in the Hundred Years' War, and elsewhere.
What did Hirohito really think of Pearl Harbor? On the 50th anniversary of the Japanese attack that brought the US into the Second World War, Herbert Bix offers a provocative reassessment of the Showa Emperor's responsibility for the conflict, drawing on his translations from diaries and memoirs of Hirohito and his court circle.
Lions led by donkeys? Britain's most traumatic land offensive of the First World War drew to its conclusion in November 1916. Trevor Wilson and Robin Prior reassess the campaign, the wisdom of its strategy and tactics, and the reputation of its C-in-C, Douglas Haig.
