Beating the Invader is a revealing and disturbing exploration of the darker history of Nazis, spies and 'Fifth Columnist' saboteurs in Britain and the extensive top secret counter-measures taken before and during the real threat of invasion in 1940. The author's research describes the Nazi Party organisation in Britain and reveals the existence of the Gestapo headquarters in central London. The reader gains vivid insights into Nazi agents and terrorist cells, the Special Branch and MI5 teams who hunted them and investigated murders believed to have been committed by Third Reich agents on British soil. Accessing a host of recently de-classified files the book explores the highly classified measures taken for the protection of the Royal Family, national treasures and gold reserves. The British government made extensive plans for the continuation of government in the event of invasion including the creation of all-powerful Regional Commissioners, 'Black Lists' of suspected collaborators and a British resistance organisation. We also learn of the Nazis' own occupation measures for suborning the population and the infamous Sonderfahndungsliste G.B, the Nazi 'Special Wanted List'. The result is a fascinating insight into the measures and actions taken to ensure that Great Britain did not succumb to the gravest threat of enemy invasion and occupation for centuries.

This second volume of selections from Caroline Healey Dall's diary extends her story into the crucial period of her central role in the American women's movement and her position as a founder of the American Social Science Association. These entries convey the Civil War, the tragedy of Lincoln's assassination, and other national events from the viewpoint of a strongly partisan New Englander. Dall's text also reveals her personal experience as a single mother who emerges from the shock of her husband's departure to form a new identity as writer, lecturer, and reformer. An eloquent woman of sharp intelligence, positioned at the centre of New England cultural and political events, Dall provides us with an extraordinary perspective on the era in which she-this ""strangely gifted"" but flawed and emotionally vulnerable woman-lived. Distributed for the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The Dirlewanger Brigade was an anti-partisan unit of the Nazi army, reporting directly to Heinrich Himmler. The first members of the brigade were mostly poachers who were released from prisons and concentration camps and who were believed to have the skills necessary for hunting down and capturing partisan fighters in their camps in the forests of the Eastern Front. Their numbers were soon increased by others who were eager for a way out of imprisonment--including men who had been convicted of burglary, assault, murder, and rape.
Under the leadership of Oskar Dirlewanger, a convicted rapist and alcoholic, they could do as they pleased: there were no repercussions for even their worst behavior. This was the group used for its special "talents" to help put down the Jewish uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto, killing an estimated 35,000 men, women, and children in a single day. Even by Nazi standards, the brigade was considered unduly violent and an investigation of its activities was opened. The Nazi hierarchy was eager to distance itself from the behavior of the brigade and eventually exiled many of the members to Belarus. Based on the archives from Germany, Poland, and Russia, "The SS Dirlewanger Brigade" offers an unprecedented look at one of the darkest chapters of World War II.

The first comprehensive oral history of September 11, 2001—a panoramic narrative woven from the voices of Americans on the front lines of an unprecedented national trauma.

Over the past eighteen years, monumental literature has been published about 9/11, from Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower, which traced the rise of al-Qaeda, to The 9/11 Commission Report, the government’s definitive factual retrospective of the attacks. But one perspective has been missing up to this point—a 360-degree account of the day told through the voices of the people who experienced it.

Now, in The Only Plane in the Sky, award-winning journalist and bestselling historian Garrett Graff tells the story of the day as it was lived—in the words of those who lived it. Drawing on never-before-published transcripts, recently declassified documents, original interviews, and oral histories from nearly five hundred government officials, first responders, witnesses, survivors, friends, and family members, Graff paints the most vivid and human portrait of the September 11 attacks yet.

Beginning in the predawn hours of airports in the Northeast, we meet the ticket agents who unknowingly usher terrorists onto their flights, and the flight attendants inside the hijacked planes. In New York City, first responders confront a scene of unimaginable horror at the Twin Towers. From a secret bunker underneath the White House, officials watch for incoming planes on radar. Aboard the small number of unarmed fighter jets in the air, pilots make a pact to fly into a hijacked airliner if necessary to bring it down. In the skies above Pennsylvania, civilians aboard United Flight 93 make the ultimate sacrifice in their place. Then, as the day moves forward and flights are grounded nationwide, Air Force One circles the country alone, its passengers isolated and afraid.

More than simply a collection of eyewitness testimonies, The Only Plane in the Sky is the historic narrative of how ordinary people grappled with extraordinary events in real time: the father and son working in the North Tower, caught on different ends of the impact zone; the firefighter searching for his wife who works at the World Trade Center; the operator of in-flight telephone calls who promises to share a passenger’s last words with his family; the beloved FDNY chaplain who bravely performs last rites for the dying, losing his own life when the Towers collapse; and the generals at the Pentagon who break down and weep when they are barred from rushing into the burning building to try to rescue their colleagues.

At once a powerful tribute to the courage of everyday Americans and an essential addition to the literature of 9/11, The Only Plane in the Sky weaves together the unforgettable personal experiences of the men and women who found themselves caught at the center of an unprecedented human drama. The result is a unique, profound, and searing exploration of humanity on a day that changed the course of history, and all of our lives.

The Struggle for Iraq is a vivid personal account of the Iraqi people's fight for democracy and justice by an American political scientist. Thomas M. Renahan arrived in southern Iraq just three days before the capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003; later he worked in Baghdad through the dark days of the country's sectarian violence and then in Iraqi Kurdistan. One of the few Americans to serve in all three major regions of Iraq, he spearheaded projects to develop democratic institutions, promote democracy and elections, and fight corruption. With inside accounts of two USAID projects and of a Kurdish government ministry, this engrossing and cautionary story highlights efforts to turn Baathist Iraq into a democratic country. Renahan examines the challenges faced by the Iraqi people and international development staff during this turbulent time, revealing both their successes and frustrations. Drawing on his on-the-ground civilian perspective, Renahan recounts how expatriate staff handled the hardships and dangers as well as the elaborate security required to protect them, how Iraqi staff coped with the personal security risks of working for Coalition organizations, and the street-level mayhem and violence, including the assassinations of close Iraqi friends. Although Iraq remains in crisis, it has largely defeated the ISIS terrorists who seized much of the country in 2014. Renahan emphasizes, however, that reconciliation is still the end game in Iraq. In the concluding chapters he explains how the United States can support this process and help resolve the complex problems between the Iraqi government and the independence-minded Kurds, offering hope for the future.

Retaining well-loved features from the previous editions, Democracy and Nazism has been approved by AQA and matched to the 2015 specification. This textbook covers AS and A Level content together and explores in depth a period of German history during which a newly developed democratic form of government gave way to a dictatorial Nazi regime. It focuses on key ideas such as nationalism, radicalism, anti-Semitism and Social Darwinism, and covers events and developments with precision. Students can further develop vital skills such as historical interpretations and source analyses via specially selected sources and extracts. Practice questions and study tips provide additional support to help familiarize students with the new exam style questions, and help them achieve their best in the exam.

In the frightening and uncharted world of war, servicemen and women could count on the transport given by horses and mules, the protection offered by dogs, the communication delivered by pigeons, and the solace provided by mascots and pets.""- from Loyal Forces At a time when every American was called upon to contribute to the war effort- whether by enlisting, buying bonds, or collecting scrap metal- the use of American animals during World War II further demonstrates the resourcefulness of the U.S. Army and the many sacrifices that led to the Allies' victory. Through 160 photographs from the National World War II Museum collection, Loyal Forces captures the heroism, hard work, and innate skills of innumerable animals that aided the military as they fought to protect, transport, communicate, and sustain morale. From the last mounted cavalry charge of the U.S. Army to the 36,000 homing pigeons deployed overseas, service animals made a significant impact on military operations during World War II. Authors Toni M. Kiser and Lindsey F. Barnes deftly illustrate that every branch of the armed forces and every theater of the war utilized the instincts and dexterity of these dependable creatures, who though not always in the direct line of enemy fire, had their lives put at risk for the jobs they performed.

At Milliken's Bend, Louisiana, a Union force composed predominantly of former slaves met their Confederate adversaries in one of the bloodiest small engagements of the war. This important fight received some attention in the North and South but soon drifted into obscurity. In Milliken's Bend, Linda Barnickel uncovers the story of this long-forgotten and highly controversial battle. The fighting at Milliken's Bend occurred in June 1863, about fifteen miles north of Vicksburg on the west bank of the Mississippi River, where a brigade of Texas Confederates attacked a Federal outpost. Most of the Union defenders had been slaves less than two months before. The new African American recruits fought well, despite their minimal training, and Milliken's Bend helped prove to a skeptical northern public that black men were indeed fit for combat duty. Soon after the battle, accusations swirled that Confederates had executed some prisoners taken from the ""Colored Troops."" The charges eventually led to a congressional investigation and contributed to the suspension of prisoner exchanges between the North and South. Barnickel's compelling and comprehensive account of the battle illuminates not only the immense complexity of the events that transpired in northeastern Louisiana during the Vicksburg Campaign but also the implications of Milliken's Bend upon the war as a whole. The battle contributed to southerner's increasing fears of slave insurrection and heightened their anxieties about emancipation. In the North, it helped foster a commitment to allow free blacks and former slaves to take part in the war to end slavery. And for African Americans, both free and enslaved, Milliken's Bend symbolized their never-ending struggle for freedom.

No other special force in history has a mystique equal to that of ancient Rome's thoroughbred protection and counter-insurgency squadron--the renowned Praetorian Guard. Originally conceived as a personal army for the emperor, the Guard assumed a much greater role than simple bodyguard, taking over a wide range of powers in the city and operating for more than 300 years. Inseparable from the machinery of the Roman state, the Praetorians had the power to make or break individual emperors.In The Praetorian Guard, Sandra Bingham offers a comprehensive and timely history of this elite military unit, from its foundation by Augustus in 27 BCE to its disbandment by Constantine in 312 CE. Exploring the multifaceted nature of the Guard, she discusses and describes its arms and insignia, size and recruitment tactics, and command structure and individual duties, as well as Guard members' family and religious lives. Bingham provides readers with a unique view of how others in antiquity portrayed these special forces and includes detailed illustrations, maps, and plans to paint a clear picture of this politically mighty military institution.

A military operation unlike any other on American soil, Morgan's Raid was characterized by incredible speed, superhuman endurance and innovative tactics. One of the nation's most colorful leaders, Confederate general John Hunt Morgan, took his cavalry through enemy-occupied territory in three states in one of the longest offensives of the Civil War. The effort produced the only battles fought north of the Ohio River and reached farther north than any other regular Confederate force. With twenty-five maps and more than forty illustrations, Morgan's Raid historian David L. Mowery takes a new look at this unprecedented event in American history, one historians rank among the world's greatest land-based raids since Elizabethan times.

At the height of World War I, in the winter of 1917--1918, one of the Progressive era's most successful muckracking journalists, Ray Stannard Baker (1870--1946), set out on a special mission to Europe on behalf of the Wilson administration. While posing as a foreign correspondent for the New Republic and the New York World, Baker assessed public opinion in Europe about the war and postwar settlement. American officials in the White House and State Department held Baker's wide-ranging, trenchant reports in high regard. After the war, Baker remained in government service as the president's press secretary at the Paris Peace Conference, where the Allied victors dictated the peace terms to the defeated Central Powers. Baker's position gave him an extraordinary vantage point from which to view history in the making. He kept a voluminous diary of his service to the president, beginning with his voyage to Europe and lasting through his time as press secretary. Unlike Baker's published books about Wilson, leavened by much reflection, his diary allows modern readers unfiltered impressions of key moments in history by a thoughtful inside observer.

Published here for the first time, this long-neglected source includes an introduction by John Maxwell Hamilton and Robert Mann that places Baker and his diary into historical context.

The tragic news of the ISIS-inspired massacres in Europe and countless other locations throughout the Middle East, in conjunction with the failed political coup against Erdogan in Turkey, have raised the spectre of an ideological struggle that is more than a century old. As the West struggles with the consequences and implications of its 'War on Terror', parallels with this earlier jihad become manifest. The sprawling Ottoman Empire was at the point of dissolution by November 1914 when she declared a Holy War against the Allied Powers and threw in her lot with Germany. It was a disastrous decision that set in chain a series of cataclysmic events, which culminated in the demise of an ancient regime and the emergence of a modern, secular republic. The first jihad in the Arab world since the Crusades was to continue long after the Armistice of 1918, as the defeated empire faced a triumphalist Greece, supported by Britain, seeking to re-establish hegemony over Anatolia. This caused outrage throughout the Muslim world, threatened British paramountcy in India, and fractured diplomatic relations with close allies and the unity of her empire. Confronted with the indefatigable resistance of one man, Kemal Ataturk, Greek dreams ended in ashes, whilst the stubborn support of Lloyd George for Britain's ally resulted in his own political extinction. It is a warning from history, including as it does ethnic cleansing, pogroms, regime change and political hubris. It is a story of steely determination and dogged bravery in the face of brazen territorial expansionism. It is also the history of the first modern jihad.

Leonidas Polk is one of the most fascinating figures of the Civil War. Consecrated as a bishop of the Episcopal Church and commissioned as a general into the Confederate army, Polk's life in both spheres blended into a unique historical composite. Polk was a man with deep religious convictions but equally committed to the Confederate cause. He baptized soldiers on the eve of bloody battles, administered last rites and even presided over officers' weddings, all while leading his soldiers into battle. Historian Cheryl White examines the life of this soldier-saint and the legacy of a man who unquestionably brought the first viable and lively Protestant presence to Louisiana and yet represents the politics of one of the darkest periods in American history.

The Horse Soldiers is the true, dramatic account of a small band of Special Forces soldiers who entered Afghanistan immediately following September 11, 2001 and, riding to war on horses, defeated the Taliban. Heavily outnumbered, they nonetheless succeed in capturing the strategic Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif, where they are welcomed as liberators as they ride on horseback into the city, the streets thronged with Afghans overjoyed that the Taliban have been kicked out. The soldiers rest easy, as they feel they have accomplished their mission. Then the action takes a wholly unexpected turn. During a surrender of Taliban troops, the Horse Soldiers are ambushed by the would-be P.O.W.s and, still dangerously outnumbered, they must fight for their lives in the city's ancient fortress known as Qala-I Janghi, or the House of War...

Deep in the jungles of Vietnam, Alpha Troop, 1st Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry, the famed Blackhorse Regiment, was a specialized cavalry outfit equipped with tanks and armored assault vehicles. On the morning of March 26, 1970, they began hearing radio calls from an infantry unit four kilometres away that had stumbled into a hidden North Vietnamese Army stronghold. Outnumbered at least six to one, the ninety-man American company was quickly surrounded, pinned down, and fighting for its existence. Helicopters could not penetrate the dense jungle, and artillery and air support could not be targeted effectively. Captain John Poindexter, Alpha Troop's twenty-five-year-old commander, realized that his outfit was the only hope for the trapped company. It just might be possible that they could "bust" enough jungle by nightfall to reach them. With the courage and determination that makes legends out of ordinary men, they affected a daring rescue and fought a pitched battle - at considerable cost. Thirty years later, Poindexter was made aware that his award recommendations, and even the records of the battle, had somehow gone missing. Thus began a "battle" to ensure that his brave men's accomplishments would never be forgotten again. President Obama stepped to the podium on October 20, 2009, to award Alpha Troop with the Presidential Unit Citation: the highest combat award that can be given to a military unit.

During the Civil War, the Second Colorado Volunteer Regiment played a vital and often decisive role in the fight for the Union on the Great Plains - and in the westward expansion of the American empire. Christopher M. Rein's The Second Colorado Cavalry is the first in-depth history of this regiment operating at the nexus of the Civil War and the settlement of the American West. Composed largely of footloose '59ers who raced west to participate in the gold rush in Colorado, the troopers of the Second Colorado repelled Confederate invasions in New Mexico and Indian Territory before wading into the Burned District along the Kansas border, the bloodiest region of the guerilla war in Missouri. In 1865, the regiment moved back out onto the plains, applying what it had learned to peacekeeping operations along the Santa Fe Trail, thus definitively linking the Civil War and the military conquest of the American West in a single act of continental expansion. Emphasizing the cavalry units, whose mobility proved critical in suppressing both Confederate bushwhackers and Indian raiders, Rein tells the neglected tale of the ""fire brigade"" of the Trans-Mississippi Theater - a group of men, and a few women, who enabled the most significant environmental shift in the Great Plains' history: the displacement of Native Americans by Euro-American settlers, the swapping of bison herds for fenced cattle ranges, and the substitution of iron horses for those of flesh and bone. The Second Colorado Cavalry offers us a much-needed history of the ""guerilla hunters"" who helped suppress violence and keep the peace in contested border regions; it adds nuance and complexity to our understanding of the unlikely ""agents of empire"" who successfully transformed the Central Plains.

Mary Kaldor's New and Old Wars has fundamentally changed the way both scholars and policy-makers understand contemporary war and conflict. In the context of globalization, this path-breaking book has shown that what we think of as war - that is to say, war between states in which the aim is to inflict maximum violence - is becoming an anachronism. In its place is a new type of organized violence or 'new wars', which could be described as a mixture of war, organized crime and massive violations of human rights. The actors are both global and local, public and private. The wars are fought for particularistic political goals using tactics of terror and destabilization that are theoretically outlawed by the rules of modern warfare. Kaldor's analysis offers a basis for a cosmopolitan political response to these wars, in which the monopoly of legitimate organized violence is reconstructed on a transnational basis and international peacekeeping is reconceptualized as cosmopolitan law enforcement. This approach also has implications for the reconstruction of civil society, political institutions, and economic and social relations. This third edition has been fully revised and updated. Kaldor has added an afterword answering the critics of the New Wars argument and, in a new chapter, Kaldor shows how old war thinking in Afghanistan and Iraq greatly exacerbated what turned out to be, in many ways, archetypal new wars - characterised by identity politics, a criminalised war economy and civilians as the main victims. Like its predecessors, the third edition of New and Old Wars will be essential reading for students of international relations, politics and conflict studies as well as to all those interested in the changing nature and prospect of warfare.

Since the shocking news first broke in 1876 of the Seventh Cavalry's disastrous defeat at the Little Big Horn, fascination with the battle--and with Lieutenant George Armstrong Custer--has never ceased. Widespread interest in the subject has spawned a vast outpouring of literature, which only increases with time. This two-volume bibliography of Custer literature is the first to be published in some twenty-five years and the most complete ever assembled.
Drawing on years of research, Michael O'Keefe has compiled entries for roughly 3,000 books and 7,000 articles and pamphlets. Covering both nonfiction and fiction (but not juvenile literature), the bibliography focuses on events beginning with Custer's tenure at West Point during the 1850s and ending with the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. Included within this span are Custer's experiences in the Civil War and in Texas, the 1873 Yellowstone and 1874 Black Hills expeditions, the Great Sioux War of 1876-77, and the Seventh Cavalry's pursuit of the Nez Perces in 1877.
The literature on Custer, the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and the Seventh Cavalry touches the entire American saga of exploration, conflict, and settlement in the West, including virtually all Plains Indian tribes, the frontier army, railroading, mining, and trading. Hence this bibliography will be a valuable resource for a broad audience of historians, librarians, collectors, and Custer enthusiasts.

The Romans first set military foot on Greek soil in 229 BCE; only sixty or so years later it was all over, and shortly thereafter Greece became one of the first provinces of the emerging Roman Empire. It was an incredible journey - a swift, brutal, and determined conquest of the land to whose art, philosophy, and culture the Romans owed so much. Rome found the eastern Mediterranean divided, in an unstable balance of power, between three great kingdoms - the three Hellenistic kingdoms that had survived and flourished after the wars of Alexander the Great's Successors: Macedon, Egypt, and Syria. Internal troubles took Egypt more or less out of the picture, but the other two were reduced by Rome. Having established itself, by its defeat of Carthage, as the sole superpower in the western Mediterranean, Rome then systematically went about doing the same in the east, until the entire Mediterranean was under her control. Apart from the thrilling military action, the story of the Roman conquest of Greece is central to the story of Rome itself and the empire it created. As Robin Waterfield shows, the Romans developed a highly sophisticated method of dominance by remote control over the Greeks of the eastern Mediterranean - the cheap option of using authority and diplomacy to keep order rather than standing armies. And it is a story that raises a number of fascinating questions about Rome, her empire, and her civilization. For instance, to what extent was the Roman conquest a planned and deliberate policy? What was it about Roman culture that gave it such a will for conquest? And what was the effect on Roman intellectual and artistic culture, on their very identity, of their entanglement with an older Greek civilization, which the Romans themselves recognized as supreme?

The #1 testimony book that every Christian needs to read. As the Nazi madness swept across Europe, a quiet watchmaker's family in Holland risked everything for the sake of others, and for the love of Christ. Despite the danger and threat of discovery, the ten Boom family courageously offered shelter to persecuted Jews during the Nazi occupation of Holland. Then a trap brought about the family's arrest. Could God's love shine through, even in Ravensbruck?

Selection of more than 300 letters published by The Times newspaper between 1914 and 1918, as its readers and the nation alike endured the ordeal of the First World War. Much of the correspondence relates to the conflict - the news, or absence of news, from the trenches and the sacrifices being made on the Home Front. Celebrated politicians and the man on the Clapham omnibus both responded to the horrors of gas and the slaughter on the Somme. Yet it was at this time, too, that the newspaper's famous letters page began to take on its distinctive nature, finding room for off-beat or humorous topics and writers who held up a mirror to Britain's character and its changing moods. Among those who wrote to The Times during the war were many of the most notable figures of the era, such as Arthur Conan Doyle, HG Wells, Millicent Fawcett, Edith Wharton, Nancy Astor, Edith Cavell, David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill. With insights and opinion on diverse subjects such as; * the Russian Revolution * Women's suffrage * the first Zeppelin raids * the rearing of guinea fowl for shooting Great War Letters shines a light on the world of a century ago at the very moment in time that it was about to change forever.

On September 10, 1813, the hot, still air that hung over Lake Erie was broken by the sounds of sharp conflict. Led by Oliver Hazard Perry, the American fleet met the British, and though they sustained heavy losses, Perry and his men achieved one of the most stunning victories in the War of 1812. Author Walter Rybka traces the Lake Erie Campaign from the struggle to build the fleet in Erie, Pennsylvania, during the dead of winter and the conflict between rival egos of Perry and his second in command, Jesse Duncan Elliott, through the exceptionally bloody battle that was the first U.S. victory in a fleet action. With the singular perspective of having sailed the reconstructed U.S. brig Niagara for over twenty years, Rybka brings the knowledge of a shipmaster to the story of the Lake Erie Campaign and the culminating Battle of Lake Erie.

Marching with Sherman: Through Georgia and the Carolinas with the 154th New York presents an innovative and provocative study of the most notorious campaigns of the Civil War -- Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's devastating 1864 "March to the Sea" and the 1865 Carolinas Campaign. The book follows the 154th New York regiment through three states and chronicles 150 years, from the start of the campaigns to their impact today. Mark H. Dunkelman expands on the brief accounts of Sherman's marches found in regimental histories with an in-depth look at how one northern unit participated in the campaigns and how they remembered them decades later. Dunkelman also includes the often-overlooked perspective of southerners -- most of them women -- who encountered the soldiers of the 154th New York. In examining the postwar reminiscences of those staunch Confederate daughters, Dunkelman identifies the myths and legends that have flourished in the South for more than a century. Marching with Sherman concludes with Dunkelman's own trip along the 154th New York's route through Dixie -- echoing the accounts of previous travelers -- and examining the memories of the marches that linger today.

A Concise Account of All the Major Battles, Innovations, and Political Events of the First World War by an Important Military Analyst
Praise for the Original Edition: "With the lucidity and literary skill we have come to expect in his work, the author has written not only a concise history of the fighting on land and sea but a frank criticism of the 1914-18 military mind."--"New York Times"
"The best brief history of the war in both its political and military aspects. Well proportioned and well knit."--"Foreign Affairs "
"Liddell Hart's style is brilliant, and the whole narrative is fascinating even to one familiar with the whole dreadful story. Indeed, the sweep of the presentation may well be the envy of novelists."--"Nation"
An abridgement of the author's "History of the World War, 1914-1918," and first published in 1936, "World War I in Outline" is a compact but comprehensive history of the "war to end all wars." Divided into five parts representing each year of the war, Liddell Hart discusses the war on land, at sea, and in the air while skillfully incorporating the political events occurring at the same time. From his own experiences in the war and through studying the conflict in detail, the author developed and expressed his most important observation about military principles: direct attacks against an enemy firmly in position should not be attempted. He also put forth the notion that battles are more often decided by the commander's actions and not the armies themselves. A lively and engrossing read, "World War I in Outline" is an ideal overview in time for the centennial of one of the major wars in history.