Second World War

London Burning

A fresh account of how Londoners responded to the impact of the Second World War.

The ‘Course Boys’ outside Ivyholme at Dulwich College. Sandy Wilson is fourth from left in the front row; Peter Parker is sixth from left.

Learning Japanese

Official secrecy and institutional rivalry obscured the achievements of two crash programmes hastily launched to teach Japanese during the Second World War.

Escape to the Country

An Essex farm built on religious and political ideals in a war-torn world.

The U.S. Navy battleship USS Maryland (BB-46) alongside the capsized USS Oklahoma (BB-37) at Pearl Harbor. The USS West Virginia (BB-48) is burning in the background.

Did the Attack on Pearl Harbor Cost the Axis Powers the War?

Four historians consider the consequences of the ‘Day of Infamy’ on 7 December 1941, and whether it was the ultimate reason for Germany, Italy and Japan’s defeat.

The 643rd GTE of Oradour-sur-Glane raising the colours on the corner of the Champ de foire (1941-42), the site of the 1944 round-up.

More than a Memory

Oradour-sur-Glane is now known as a memorial to a brutal massacre, but the lives of its inhabitants have been neglected.

Inside Outsider

The glittering career of Hella Pick, child refugee from Hitler’s Vienna and an exile in wartime Britain.

Co. C, 2nd Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division.

War is Hell

A visceral history of of American soldiers in Belgium, France and Italy, 1943-45.

Una Marson broadcasting to British troops in the West Indies from a London theatre, February 1942.

‘Manless Climbing’

Breaking into the masculine public sphere of the interwar years.

Staged photograph of a ‘milkman’ in a street devastated by a German bombing raid, Holborn, London, 10 September 1940.

Beneath the Bombs

Understanding the immediacy and confusion of the Blitz.

In October 1943 the Allies liberated the area around the infamous volcano in the Bay of Naples. Its sudden eruption in March 1944, as war in Italy raged, stretched the resources of the combined services to the limit. What followed was an exemplary emergency operation.