Sublime

Senior figures in the War Office and Admiralty decided that sinking German ships would be more cost-effective than building British ones.

Even when Russia became joined with the democracies to achieve the defeat of Nazism, Stalin pursued his quest for a Soviet empire, and the domination and oppression of hundreds of millions of people, with absolute single-mindedness and ultimate success.

Fighter Command lost a total of 544 men—about one in five of all British pilots who flew in the battle—while 801 Bomber Command airmen were killed and a further 200 taken prisoner; but the Luftwaffe lost a disastrous 2,698 highly skilled airmen.

In this testing environment, Major General Archibald Wavell, the soldier who lost an eye near Ypres and walked through the Jaffa Gate into Jerusalem with Lawrence in 1917, had been reviving Lawrence’s guerrilla tactics, using cunning, deception, mobility and tiny ‘mosquito columns’ against elephantine Italian forces. Wavell had been appointed Briti

An average of 27,000 people perished each day between September 1939 and August 1945 as a consequence of the global conflict.

Between June 1941 and May 1944, each month Germany suffered an average of 60,000 men killed in the east; though the enemy’s losses were far greater, this was a shocking statistic.

News of the invasion reached Whitehall within hours, causing outright panic. Clement Attlee, Leader of the Opposition, immediately called up the War Office file on Norway, only to find that it was completely empty. On the cover were the cryptic letters SFA. ‘I suppose it means Sweet Fanny Adams,’ he said to Winston Churchill when the two of them me

Lawrence

The Battle of the Bulge cost the Germans between 80,000 and 100,000 men, plus the bulk of Hitler’s armored reserve. The Wehrmacht might continue to fight a defensive war in the west, but it was no longer capable of offensive action.