Killing Time

The fate of Europe hung in the balance at Leipzig in October, 1813.  His invasion of Russia had ended in failure in December 1812, and Napoleon Bonaparte was now beset by defections of allied nations who had marched with him and pursued by a Russian army entering Germany intent on revenge.  Determined to maintain his dominance of continental Europe, Napoleon quickly assembled a new army - a quarter mi...

The United States was caught unprepared for a surprise Japanese air attack on December 7, 1941 and suffered its worst naval defeat in history.  With successive invasions and defeats in Guam and the Philippines, including the surrender of its remaining army at Corregidor, the United States was losing the war in the Pacificto Japan in June, 1942.  Yet there remained a flicker of hope, because the Americ...

On August 27, 1914, a bare three weeks into the First World War, the hopes and dreams of the French to liberate their lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine by beating the German Army were in ashes.  Hard and costly defeats had been inflicted on their army by a seemingly relentless grey tide of German soldiers backed by heavy artillery, the likes of which the world had never seen.  Worse still, an inco...

This pivotal battle of the four Italian Wars of Independence in the mid-19th century was, in its day, the greatest European battle fought since the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815.  The appalling carnage that resulted from three armies desperate struggle in suffocating summer heat in northern Italy shocked the civilized world.  Swiss businessman Henri Dunant, who visited the battlefield the day after, was so moved by the pitiful...

As Winston Churchill watched the French army march past on Bastille Day, 1939, amid the tensions of Europe, he exclaimed "Thank God for the French army ..." and with good reason.  France had the best equipped and largest army on the continent. Further bolstered by the virtually impregnable Maginot Line on its eastern border with Germany, a fleet second only to Britain's and a mighty air force, conventional thinking was that the Fra...