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Articles
When it was announced that Franz Ferdinand, the Heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, would visit Bosnia to attend manoeuvres in June 1914. It fell to General Oskar Potiorek, the military governor to organise the visit.This was a task Oskar Potiorek threw himself into with an extraordinary eye for detail. He over saw all arrangements, from ensuring that the Archduke’s wine would be served ...
Bosnia and Herzegovina was a hotly disputed territory in 1914. It had been annexed by the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1910 from the crumbling Ottoman Empire, but was also claimed by neighbouring Serbia and had a growing nationalist movement that wanted it to be part of a South Slav state. The decision to send the crown prince of Austro-Hungary into such an unstable region, to attend army ...
Who ordered the hit on Franz Ferdinand?There are two basic schools of thought about the origins of the plot to assassinate Franz Ferdinand. The first is that it was ordered by Colonel ‘Apis’ Dimitrijevic, the head of Serbian Intelligence, to stop Austro-Hungarian interference in the Balkans and allow Serbian expansion. The assassination was organised by his deputy Major Vojislav Tankosic;
The Gallipoli campaign was originally conceived as a naval operation that could be carried out without the use of troops, to clear the costal fortifications barring the Dardanelles Straits. The plan was to gradually reduce the Turkish defences through a systematic bombardment. The way to Russia’s warm water ports, Constantinople (Istanbul) and the backdoor the central powers would then be ...
The Dardanelles campaign in World War One was conceived as a ‘demonstration’ to relieve pressure on Russian troops, fighting in the Caucasus. It quickly developed into a means of opening the backdoor to the Central Powers and to supply the Russians through the Dardanelles, which had been closed when Turkey entered the war.The campaign was originally intended to be a naval operation. When ...
By the third year of the First World War, France was growing increasingly war weary. Over a million men had been killed, wounded or captured, with little to show for it. Russia had had a revolution and unrest was spreading through the French Army, fanned by turmoil at home, lack of leave and German propaganda. The failure of the Nivelle Offensive was the last straw and lead to what has become
By April 1917 the Allies and the Central Powers had been locked in the stalemate of trench warfare for nearly three years. Numerous offensives had failed to break through at a terrible cost in men. New tactical and technological innovations were developed with some success. General Robert Nivelle, the French commander in chief, was convinced that he’d developed the ‘formula’ to break the ...
Gallipoli ConspiracyCaptain Reginald ‘Blinker’ Hall, the Director of British Naval Intelligence, launched an operation to bribe members of the Ottoman Government into making peace during the First World War. Hall hoped that would open the Dardanelles Strait to the Allies, allowing them to supply Russia and bypass the stalemate on the Western front. It was, however, superseded by the ...
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was one of history’s greatest turning points, but it happened by accident. Everyone knows the story ends with the death of the Archduke and his wife, Sophie, putting into play the diplomatic crisis that led to the First World War. It is perhaps less well known that the events leading up to the assassination were a terrible comedy of errors that ...
Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor?Japan’s decision to attack Pearl Harbor has gone down in history as a short-term victory with catastrophic long-term consequences.The Japanese leadership, already bogged down in an unwinnable war in China, were aware that they were hopelessly out matched by the industrial might of the United States. However, they ...
How Decisive Was the Attack on Pearl Harbor?The Japanese surprise attack on Hawaii in 1941 achieved its initial goal of knocking out the US Pacific Fleet, but how decisive was it? Could the Pacific War have been ended before it even started?Japan’s objective behind the attack on Pearl Harbour was to secure their flank and prevent the USA from responding when they invaded Southeast ...
From Taranto to Pearl HarborI’ve always been captivated by the daring and skill of the Fleet Air Arm's attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto in 1940 and the much larger airstrike on Pearl Harbour, carried out a year later by the Japanese Navy. They were pioneering events that helped establish the supremacy of naval airpower over the battleship.The ...
Author Interview
Alan Bardos, what prompted you to choose the period that you wrote your first book in?My first book The Assassins is set just before the First World War and is about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. I chose that period because the events ...
Graham Hurley your new novel The Blood of Others, is a thriller about the disastrous raid on Dieppe in August 1942. What was it that drew you to the story?A while ago, as a documentary producer with ITV, I made a series of revisionist films to mark various WW2 anniversaries. The first of them, Comrades in ...
Alan, many congrats on embarking on your new novel, Rising Tide. We’re now in WW2, and Pearl Harbor after your earlier WW1 adventures. Why did you want to shift conflict?Thanks very much. In my previous First World War series I looked at how waging a quick decisive war was seen as an effective foreign policy for nations to ...
In your new book Every Spy a Traitor you move away from a World War II/Post War setting and focus purely on a ‘Cold War’ with the Soviet Union in the 1930s. What was it that attracted you to the period?I liked the idea of a series that covered a longer time span, because in the Second World War, particularly ...
Your book SAS Forged in Hell, tells the story of the part 1 SAS played in the Sicily and Italian campaigns of World War II. Could you start by telling us about the role they carried out under their commander Major Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne in those campaigns, which were very different to the operations they ...
John, congratulations on the publication of your new novel Target Arnhem. It’s a great World War II story, combining battlefield action with a nail biting espionage plot. Could you tell us a bit about the different storylines?
Thank you Alan. This is the second book in the ...