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Concentration of force and effort were not dominant characteristics of Hitler’s Reich. The Führer had initially reacted to Italy’s debacle in North Africa and its frustrated invasion of Greece with the amused malice the Germans call Schadenfreude. His interests in the Mediterranean involved encouraging support for Germany’s Atlantic ambitions on the part of Vichy France […]

Model’s salvaging of the Hagen Position in August 1943 had bought some temporary respite north of the former Kursk salient. The German armies south of it, however, were soon in peril. If the third battle of Kharkov was arguably Field Marshal von Manstein’s greatest victory, the much larger battle of the Ukraine that now unfolded […]

In early 1945, a month or two before he shot himself, Adolf Hitler tried to work out where it had all gone wrong. His thoughts turned back to the peak of his career, five years earlier. On 23 June 1940, having conquered Poland in twenty-one days, Norway in a month and France in six weeks, […]

The German team arrived at Algeciras on the Spanish coast on Wednesday 24 July 1940, accompanied by Spanish Minister of Air Juan Vigón, taking rooms at the Reina Cristina Hotel with its spectacular views across the bay to the Rock of Gibraltar. Canaris liked Algeciras, where his Madrid head of station Wilhelm Leissner (alias Gustav […]