History’s Greatest Nicknames
Reading time: 7 minutes
A browse through any military history book will no doubt bring up titles of famous officers, often bearing unusual, surprising, or sometimes downright hilarious nicknames. In many cases, it’s clear where the sobriquet originated, while other examples hold a less-obvious significance.
Lieutenant Martin Monti, the Only American Defector to the Waffen-SS
Reading time: 10 minutes
On May 8, 1945, a battered, broken Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allied armies which had crashed across its borders, fighting town by town to topple Hitler’s regime. Two days later, one of Germany’s strangest supporters surrendered, too.
Fake news was a thing long before Donald Trump — just ask the ancient Greeks
Reading time: 5 minutes
Thucydides and Plato lived through the crisis of Athenian democracy and, not unlike Trump, informed posterity that the fate of their beloved Athens resulted from the systematic misinformation and mis-education of the citizens.
Putin’s failure to learn from history has led to Russian quagmire in Ukraine
Reading time: 4 minutes
As the Russo-Ukraine conflict continues with no resolution in sight, we are painfully reminded of not only the horror of war, but also how often major powers’ interventionism, for whatever objective, hasn’t paid off. These powers have repeatedly failed to learn from the futility of their past adventures to avoid future ones. Counterproductivity has often become the hallmark of their efforts.
Ukraine war: how Gorbachev’s 1987 INF missile treaty has limited the arsenal available to Putin
Reading time: 4 minutes
Thanks to the final Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who has died aged 91, a disarmament treaty has denied Vladimir Putin thousands more missiles which he could have ordered to be used against Ukraine. Russian forces attacking Ukraine have not been able to use land-based missiles with ranges of between 500km and 5,500km because this entire category of weapons was scrapped under the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which the former Soviet leader was instrumental in establishing.
The End of History: Francis Fukuyama’s controversial idea explained
Reading time: 8 minutes
In 1989, a policy wonk in the US State Department wrote a paper for the right-leaning international relations magazine The National Interest entitled “The End of History?”. His name was Francis Fukuyama, and the paper stirred such interest – and caused such controversy – that he was soon contracted to expand his 18-page article into a book. He did so in 1992: The End of History and the Last Man. The rest, they say, is (the end of) history.
How the Coastwatchers Turned the Tide of the Pacific War
Australian Coastwatchers brought the tide of Japanese invasive successes to a shuddering halt when two coastwatchers spotted and reported an invasion fleet of 5,500 Japanese troops sailing south. The Coastwatchers’ observation was pivotal as it precipitated the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942 and thwarted the Japanese invasion of Port Moresby.