Michael Baker
Hindsight's A Fine Thing But...
It's clear that the Allies did eventually defeat the Axis powers in WW2, but how and why this came about is still debated - and too...
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Unknown Warriors
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Michael Baker
Nov 12 min read
Lambs To The Slaughter?
The charge was made, during WW2 and afterwards, that the Jews put up only passive resistance to their fate, going like lambs to the...
50
Michael Baker
Oct 222 min read
Coke and Spearmint: How To Rule The World
As we contemplate a world in which the status quo is now fragmenting into adversarial power blocs, it's worth reflecting on the...
100
Michael Baker
Oct 142 min read
Bombers Not Fighters
By mid-October 1940 (84 years ago now), the so-called Battle of Britain had long morphed into what we have come to call the Blitz, a...
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Michael Baker
Oct 82 min read
The Great Escape
It was at the beginning of October 1943 that a drama played out in Denmark which had no parallel in any other German-occupied country in...
120
Michael Baker
Sep 132 min read
Death by Numbers
It's impossible to consider the Second World War without reaching for statistics. There are a multitude to choose from and the scale of...
140
Michael Baker
Aug 162 min read
The Big Killer of WW2: Starvation
One of the more startling statistics to come out of the Pacific War of 1941-45 is this: of the 1.7 million Japanese soldiers recorded as...
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Michael Baker
Jul 262 min read
The Double V Campaign
On this day in 1948 US President Harry Truman signed off Executive Order 9981, directing the American armed services to desegregate by...
180
Michael Baker
Jul 162 min read
Did a Japanese defeat lead to US entry into WW2?
Over the summer months of 1939, a Soviet army commanded by General Zhukov (famous later for becoming the captor of Berlin in 1945) fought...
170
Michael Baker
Jun 142 min read
Was Britain Really 'Alone' in WW2?
Britain was on the winning side in both world wars. Yet it remembers them very differently. Partly perhaps because WW1 failed to 'finish...
120
Michael Baker
Jun 51 min read
WW2's Violent Aftermath
In the immediate post-war years, people desperately wanted to return to some kind of normality. In keeping with this spirit, the popular...
120
Michael Baker
Jun 31 min read
America's 'Good War'
In the 1990s, at roughly the 50th anniversary point, American perceptions of the Second World War became highly nostalgic and...
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Michael Baker
May 281 min read
China's Forgotten WW2
Present-day China is unthinkable without the Second World War. In 1937, the Communists led by Mao Tse Tung were confined to an area in...
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Michael Baker
May 231 min read
The Soviet-German War
Today marks the 83rd anniversary of the launch of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The...
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Michael Baker
May 212 min read
War In The Pacific 1941-45
Exactly 80 years ago today, during June and July 1944, while the Allies in Europe struggled to take back Normandy after D-Day, American...
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Michael Baker
May 172 min read
Resistance
What we might call the 'underground war' - secret agents, resistance cells and partisan activity - has always been a popular field to...
110
Michael Baker
May 161 min read
The Real Holocaust
Today the Holocaust is misunderstood. At worst, it is simply equated with the death camp at Auschwitz, which actually killed only 1 in 6...
200
Michael Baker
May 142 min read
The Hunger Plan
It's now abundantly clear that more people died of starvation and malnutrition in the Second World War than perished in battle. It's one...
300
Michael Baker
May 91 min read
WW2: A World at War
It's obvious that the Second World War was a global conflict, even more so than WW1, yet we still tend to look at it from a national...
290
Michael Baker
May 82 min read
Revisiting World War Two (WW2)
VE Day (Victory in Europe) falls on 8 May, the date on which the Nazi regime formally and unconditionally surrendered to the Allies in...
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