First World War History

Sólo superada por su triste segunda versión, fue peor que cualquier otra guerra que haya conocido el mundo hasta entonces. Gracias a la aparición de tecnologías nunca antes conocidas, murieron más personas y se hizo más daño que nunca antes en un conflicto internacional. Iniciado en 1914 tras el asesinato del archiduque Francisco Fernando, el impacto de esta conflagración provocaría la alarma mundial.

Penguin presents The Birth of the RAF by Richard Overy, read by Jonathan Keeble. The dizzying pace of technological change in the early 20th century meant that it took only a little over 10 years from the first flight by the Wright Brothers to the clash of fighter planes in the Great War. A period of terrible, rapid experiment followed to gain a brief technological edge. By the end of the war the British had lost an extraordinary 36,000 aircraft and 16,600 airmen.

On January 24, 1915, a German naval force commanded by Admiral Franz von Hipper conducted a raid on British fishing fleets in the area of the Dogger Banks. The force was engaged by a British force, which had been alerted by a decoded radio intercept. The ensuing battle would prove to be the largest and longest surface engagement until the Battle of Jutland the following summer.

Is the West finished as a political idea? In recent years, observers have begun pointing to signs that this transatlantic community is eroding. When the European Union expanded, the classic European nation state was in decline. Now, nationalism is on the rise. Furthermore, nations within the EU are less willing to cooperate with the US on policies that require sacrifice and risks, such as using military force alongside the US.

The Battle of the Somme was a significant battle for all those who took part, but it was especially important for the British because it was the first time in World War One that they were forced to shoulder the main responsibility for an offensive, and they did not have enough time to fully prepare for the assault.

1776. The early days of the Revolutionary War. It supposedly began with Thomas Hickey, a private in the Continental Army, and New York governor William Tryon. In an astonishing power grab, they plotted to kill Hickey's boss: a man by the name of George Washington. In the end, Hickey was caught, brought to trial, and found guilty. It would seem he became the first person in the new nation to be executed for treason.

On September 15, 1944, the United States invaded the tiny Pacific island of Peleliu, located at the Southern end of the Palau Islands. Boasting a large airfield from which the Americans could mount bomber campaigns, Peleliu was a strategically essential part of Gen. MacArthur's long-awaited liberation of the Philippines. With the famed 1st Marine Division making the amphibious assault, Pacific High Command was confident that victory would be theirs in just a few days. They were drastically wrong.

On September 6, 1945, less than a month after the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, George Weller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, became the first free Westerner to enter the devastated city. Going into the hospitals and consulting the doctors of the bomb's victims, Weller was the first to document its unprecedented long-range medical effects. He also became the first to enter the nearby Allied POW camps, which rivaled those of the Nazis for cruelty and bested them for death count.

It doesn’t seem like Enver Pasha was a good man. His war crimes caused the deaths of millions of innocent citizens. Sure, during a war and a collapsing empire, you try to do what you can to stop losing, but I doubt anyone in their right mind can justify his actions, which included the slaughter of minorities in the Ottoman Empire during World War One, and even the Armenian Genocide. And to this day, the Turkish government is still somewhat reluctant to acknowledge the severity of that historical atrocity.

FNH Audio presents a complete and unabridged audio book of a book published in 1917 at the height of the First World War. The author, Jeffery Farnol, is better known for his works of romantic fiction, but in this departure, Jeffery recites the events observations and anecdotes of his tour of Great Britain's war effort.

Huge international companies and corporations are a normal part of our everyday lives today. For most, their unimaginable wealth and power, rivaling even some of the smaller countries of the world, is something we take for granted. And we see them as the living embodiment of the capitalist system, regardless if we take it as a good or a bad omen. However, this wasn’t always the case.

Luego de finalizada la I Guerra Mundial, quedó muy claro que el país más afectado fue Alemania. De este escenario se aprovecharía el jefe del partido Nazi Adolf Hitler, quien gracias a una prédica incendiaria, nacionalista, xenófoba y racista, buscaría iniciar una nueva guerra. Polonia, el débil país vecino del Este, sería su primer objetivo, iniciando así la II Guerra Mundial en 1939.

China-Burma-India is one of the most forgotten theaters of World War 2. As the United States entered the war after Pearl Harbor, it looked to China as a source of manpower as well as a base for bombers and a way to eventually invade Japan. The Japanese, British, Americans, and Chinese each had their own motivations and policies in the Pacific that would ultimately lead to the involvement of Burma in the Pacific War. The conflict in Burma was an intricate affair that may be best understood through the story of the first Yunnan Expedition into Burma.