Clausewitz: ‘War is merely the continuation of policy by other means’. Attempts to reduce complex social phenomena to simple formulae have seldom been successful in human history. However apt they may be, they can never do more than express one aspect of reality. ‘L’état, c’est moi’, the famous sentence attributed to Louis XIV, the ‘Sun King’, expressed one aspect of absolutist reality in the eighteenth century. Clausewitz’s formula,...
War
This category contains everything on the topic war in general, all related to the Maier files series. Articles are short and relevant concerning war and warfare especially the two recent World Wars.
John P. Cafferky examines the origin of World War I, the seminal event of the Twentieth Century and the event that “made” the New World Order under the leadership of Lord Milner. Lord Milner was an international banker and he worked closely with J. P. Morgan in the USA and Lord Rothschild and other bankers in the City of London. The central thesis of “Lord Milner’s Second War”...
A former MI6 officer, one of the few to have risen to become ‘C’ or Chief of the Service, takes pleasure in recounting a story. Framed by a collection of John le Carré’s novels on the bookshelves behind him, he tells it with a boyish smile and a playful twinkle in the eye which suggests a mischievousness not entirely lost to age. The story concerns a young officer...
During the course of the Second World War, the German Wehrmacht formed a total of fifteen heavy tank battalions (schwere Panzer-Abteilung) equipped with Tiger or King Tiger heavy tanks – twelve for the Heer (Army) and three for the Waffen-SS. In the decades since the war, a number of excellent memoirs from former Tiger-tank crews have appeared, including Otto Carius’s Tigers in the Mud and Richard von Rosen’s Panzer Ace. Additionaly, several unit histories about the various...
After six years of war, the Rhineland-Westphalian 6th Infantry Division was no more, its members either scattered to the winds or marching the long trek to Siberia. Those who had availed themselves of the opportunity offered by their general to attempt to escape to the West soon questioned the wisdom of their choice. As they climbed over mountains, swam across rivers, and slithered through forests, they found themselves...
The SS-Panzerkorps battles … amazing detailed page turner books by Douglas E. Nash! While the activities of American and British staffs of World War II are well documented and preserved, at least in their own formal command histories or chronologies, the staff histories of the German Army of that period—the Wehrmacht—have a checkered past. Not only did Germany lose the war, but unlike previous wars that Germany had...
In the waning hours of New Year’s Eve 1944, the Wehrmacht launched Operation Nordwind, the last German offensive of World War II in the west. It was an attempt to exploit the disruptions caused by the Ardennes offensive further north in Belgium. When Patton’s Third Army shifted two of its corps to relieve Bastogne, the neighboring Seventh US Army was forced to extend its front lines. This presented the...
The true story of Dusko Popov. He knew he’d have to kill him. It was late July 1943. In a luxury villa salon on Portugal’s Riviera, British double agent Dusko Popov waited for his German controller, Major Ludovico von Karsthoff. By now his Abwehr minder had more than enough evidence to believe Dusko was doubling for the Allies. British Colonel Tar Robertson had warned him not to return....
Richard Sorge was a bad man who became a great spy – indeed one of the greatest spies who ever lived. The espionage network that he built in pre-war Tokyo put him at just one degree of separation from the highest echelons of power in Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union. Sorge’s best friend, employer and unwitting informant Eugen Ott, German ambassador to Japan, spoke regularly to Hitler....
Deception in War. Surprise is a Principle of War…It should primarily be directed at the mind of an enemy commander rather than at his force. The aim should be to paralyse the commander’s will.’ Surprise is the great ‘force multiplier’ – it makes one stronger than is physically the case. Surprise can be achieved by a variety of methods: by forgoing preparations that an enemy might expect one...
The first World war and its secret origins is a book written by Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor. What this book “HIDDEN HISTORY” sets out to prove is that unscrupulous men, whose roots and origins were in Britain, sought a war to crush Germany and orchestrated events in order to bring this about. 1914 is generally considered as the starting point for the disaster that followed, but the crucial...
Reinhard ‘Teddy’ Suhren fired more successful torpedo shots than any other man during the war, many before he even became a U-boat commander. He was also the U-boat service’s most irreverent and rebellious commander; his lack of a military bearing was a constant source of friction with higher authority. Valued for his good humour and ability to lead, his nickname was acquired because he marched like a teddy-bear....