They Fought With Extraordinary Bravery

In October 1813, the soldiers of one of Napoleon's staunchest Allies, Saxony, defected en masse in the midst of battle at Leipzig. Almost immediately III German Army Corps was formed with these same soldiers as its nucleus and augmented with returning former prisoners of war, volunteers and militia. Commanded by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar the Corps was sent to the Southern Netherlands to take part in the final defeat of Napoleon amidst of a constant changing command of control structure, in which the Swedish Crown Prince Bernadotte played a major and dubious role. Although for the greater part inexperienced and badly armed, fighting against the much superior French I Corps which even contained Imperial Guard units, III Corps struggled to prove that it could be trusted, paying a major role to protect the Netherlands against the French as these regions tried to regain their own identity after decades of French rule.

With a completely selfless indifference to enemy fire, the quiet heroes featured in this book faced danger and atrocity. With courage and audacity they fought for their lives - and they fought for ours. From the whistling of enemy shells and pounding of explosives come these inspiring stories of friendship, loyalty, determination, and bravery. Relive the events that influenced the outcome of World War II and meet the heroes who helped shape life as we know it today.

On War is a treatise about a military art which Prussian officer Carl Philipp Gottflib von Clausewitz had been working on for 15 years. It is commonly believed that Clausewitz’s treatise had a greater impact on military leaders of the late XIX and XX centuries than any other book. In reality, this book is an overturn in the war theory. The work is notable for its brightness, narration details as well as hard criticism of many war events. The author dedicates a special place in his work to politics, its influence on the war events, the dependence how the war finishes on powers and weaknesses of particular politicians and military leaders. There is a good reason why his famous phrase “the war is the continuation of the politics, but with other, strong arm methods” is still relevant.

The welcome given to refugees from fascist Europe is part of our fond nostalgia for Britain's role in the Second World War, nestling in our imagination next to images of evacuees clutching teddy bears, and milkmen picking their way through bomb rubble during the Blitz. But there is a darker side to this story. Then, as now, there was great suspicion, resentment and fear towards new arrivals, much of it kindled by the tabloid press. Then, as now, politicians dealt with a reluctance to accommodate refugees by hiding behind bureaucratic hurdles and obfuscation. Many of the 10,000 Kindertransport children who arrived here in the late 1930s have warm memories of the kindness they were shown, but half a million refugees were refused entry and most of them died as a result. And those who were accepted found their troubles far from over. While Britain fearfully awaited invasion in 1940, 30,000 Jews were interned as 'enemy aliens' and some were sent off to the colonies on dangerous and sometimes fatal voyages. Nor were Jews the only refugees clamouring for the thin gruel of public sympathy. Those fleeing fascism and civil war elsewhere in Europe found that whether they were met with kindness or hostility depended on the locals' political affiliations and newspapers of choice. Interweaving personal testimonies with historical sources, Paul Dowswell casts a fresh eye on the wartime era, painting a vivid picture of what life was really like for Britain's refugees.