By 1917 a multi-national Allied force under French General Sarrail numbering 500,000 troops faced the Bulgarian Army and German, Austro-Hungarian and Turkish units, totalling 300,000 men. The front line stretched from Albania to the mouth of the River...
Collections in Context
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The Second World War was the most destructive conflict in history. It caused the deaths of over 70 million men, women and children, and its effects are still felt to this day. It began with the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, and ended...
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The opening months of the First World War caused profound shock due to the huge casualties caused by modern weapons. Losses on all fronts for the year 1914 topped five million, with a million men killed. This was a scale of violence unknown in any...
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Tobruk was the only deep water port in Eastern Libya, and as a consequence it had been heavily fortified by its former Italian garrison. The capture of Tobruk was essential for an advance on Alexandria and Suez. In April 1941, Rommel made its capture the...
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Born in 1886, Siegfried Sassoon studied history and law at Cambridge before enlisting in the ranks of the Sussex Yeomanry in August 1914. A poet of little note before the war, he became one of the best known – and most controversial – poets and novelists...
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When Italy declared war on 10 June 1940, the frontier in the Libyan desert posed a challenge to both sides. The difficult terrain included vast sand seas of giant dunes which made it impossible for large forces to penetrate inland. However, the Allies...
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Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a secret British Second World War organisation created in July 1940. Following the fall of France, Prime Minister Winston Churchill tasked Hugh Dalton with forming SOE with the instruction to 'set Europe ablaze', by...
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In 1945 George Orwell wrote that serious sport was 'war minus the shooting'. He argued that sport was not a means of promoting peace between nations but was more likely to cause tensions than solve them. Three years after Orwell’s article was published,...
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Stalingrad was one of the most decisive battles on the Eastern Front. The Soviet Union inflicted a catastrophic defeat on the German Army in and around this strategically important city on the Volga river, which bore the name of the Soviet dictator,...
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The First World War was 'total' in nature largely because of the huge demands placed upon entire populations in the pursuit of victory. State controls were increasingly deemed necessary. Compulsory military service was the most obvious form of state...
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Without any doubt the most popular song of the Second World War was 'Lili Marlene'. It was based on a poem written during the First World War by German soldier Hans Leip and was addressed to two of Leip’s girlfriends, Lili and Marlene. It was published...
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After the fall of France in 1940, Britain was in no position to take on the German Army in Europe. RAF Bomber Command offered the only way to hit back at the enemy, and it embarked on a long and costly campaign against German war industry. The early...
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Designed by R J Mitchell, the Supermarine Spitfire, a single-seat fighter aircraft, is arguably one of the most iconic aircraft in aviation history. The Spitfire entered service with No. 19 Squadron RAF at Duxford in August 1938 and famously played a...
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The concept of a vehicle to provide troops with both mobile protection and firepower was not a new one. But in the First World War, the increasing availability of the internal combustion engine, armour plate and the continuous track, as well as the...
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During the First World War, Britain had been the first combatant to use tanks on a mass scale. But by the Second World War, it was German forces that had more fully integrated tanks into their fighting methods. Armoured warfare was to be a vital part of...
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The Third Battle of Ypres is frequently known by the name of the village where it culminated: Passchendaele. In Britain it has come to symbolise the horrors associated with the war on the Western Front. The area surrounding the Belgian town of Ypres was...
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‘Trench art’ is a term that embraces a wide variety of objects made from the debris and by-products of modern warfare. These items are chiefly associated with the First World War, although similar items have been produced in many conflicts. Little, if...
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The evolving nature of trench warfare stimulated new patterns of fighting. The area of 'no man’s land' that separated the trench-lines was the principal arena, especially at night, for aggressive contact between opposing trench garrisons, as each sent...
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Soldiers had dug trenches in wars long before 1914, and they would continue to dig them in other wars after the armistice of 1918. However, the association with the Western Front has proved enduring; the image of men living in muddy trenches under...
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A successful strategy from the start of the First World War, Germany’s U-boat campaign against merchant shipping intensified over the course of the war, nearly bringing Britain to her knees in 1917. At first, U-boats obeyed 'prize rules', surfacing...
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The German V-weapons offensive was a desperate attempt to stave off defeat through new technology. In early 1944 Germany was facing defeat, while Allied bombers were able to destroy German cities at will. In response, Germany deployed advanced new...
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Civilians were regarded as legitimate targets during the First World War. Invading armies attacked civilians in their path as they forcibly overran territory. All over Europe, people were forced to flee and take refuge in safe, but often alien, territory...
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In December 1941 Japan, already at war with China, attacked British, Dutch and American territories in Asia and the Pacific. By June 1942, Japanese conquests encompassed a vast area of south-east Asia and the western Pacific. Under Japanese occupation,...
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The war art schemes developed by the British government during the First World War were an unprecedented act of government sponsorship of the arts. As the schemes evolved, they ultimately explored every aspect of conflict, from the violence of industrial...
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At the instigation of Sir Kenneth Clark, then Director of the National Gallery, the Ministry of Information established the War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC) in 1939. The WAAC met at the National Gallery once a month. Clark chaired the Committee,...
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After the end of the Second World War in Europe and the Far East, the Allied powers undertook to bring the leading civilian and military representatives of wartime Germany and Japan to trial on charges of war crimes, crimes against peace and crimes...
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British troops have been in Afghanistan since 2001. They originally deployed with an international coalition, led by the United States, which intervened in Afghanistan in October 2001 to find the leaders of the terrorist organisation al-Qaeda and to end...
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In 1940 Italy's fascist dictator Benito Mussolini wanted to expand his African Empire. His forces in Ethiopia attacked neighbouring British possessions, but in 1941 were expelled and comprehensively defeated. Incursions from Libya into Egypt also met...
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The Second World War in Europe engulfed the people of many countries. Appallingly destructive, the war witnessed devastating battles and an unprecedented industrial genocide. Its repercussions continue to be felt today. By 1941, German forces had...
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The First World War was the first conflict in which air power was used by combatant nations. Aerial reconnaissance photography became an essential tool in allowing those manning heavy guns on the ground to 'see' far beyond their immediate horizon and to...
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On 7 December 1941, Japan launched a surprise air attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The Philippines and Allied possessions in south-east Asia were also overrun. Japan hoped for a short war, seeking to quickly cripple US naval...
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As the scale and the duration of the First World War escalated, the priority for every combatant nation was to ensure that their armed forces had sufficient weaponry, supplies and equipment. In Britain, the newly-created Ministry of Munitions assumed...
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The British government mobilised civilians more effectively than any other combatant nation. By 1944 a third of the civilian population were engaged in war work, including over 7,000,000 women. Minister of Labour Ernest Bevin was responsible for Britain'...
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Over 16,000 men from the West Indies served in the First World War. West Indian soldiers already serving with the West India Regiment, an infantry unit in the regular British Army that had existed since 1795, were the first from the islands to join the...
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When Italy declared war on 10 June 1940, the Italian Army in Libya threatened the vital Suez Canal in British-occupied Egypt. The new battlefield was characterised by huge distances, difficult terrain and an inhospitable climate. Italian forces...
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The Western Front was the decisive battleground of the First World War. After the initial shock of 1914, the power of artillery forced both sides to seek shelter. Shallow scrapes in the ground evolved into complex trench systems protected with barbed...
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The British vision of the First World War is dominated by the Western Front, but the war was fought on a wider scale. On the Eastern Front, Russia fought Germany and Austria-Hungary, generally failing against the former, but fatally weakening the latter...
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Winston Churchill became Britain's prime minister on 10 May 1940. As he was later to write: 'I felt...that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial'. On the very day that Churchill fulfilled his life's ambition,...
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Women were conscripted in December 1941. They were given a choice of working in industry or joining one of the auxiliary services – the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) or the Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS...
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Pressure from women for their own uniformed service to assist the war effort began in August 1914. Many organisations sprang up, such as the Women’s Volunteer Reserve and Lady Londonderry’s Women’s Legion, which provided cooks for Army camps. The Women’s...