Blog - Articles and Papers Index of articles
Mechanised Corps were the elite of Soviet armoured forces, kept fully up to strength, more tanks than a Tank Corps, twice the size of a Rifle Division. So what does the word 'Mechanised' mean, how many vehicles did they have, how mobile were these units in reailty?
The Zkn3 Zettelkasten programme has a setting in the preferences to use Markdown. This could be very useful when migrating to another zettelkasten type programme, as part as ones disaster planning. However its not clear what impact this feature has in Zkn3, so this post is a bit of a voage of exploration.
This part of the Zettelkasten Manual looks at methods to make the data in your Zkn3 Zettelkasten long-lasting and secure by making it transferable to other Zettelkasten type programmes, in this case Obsidian.
This blog records my experince with usng a zettelkasten for my MA dissertation.
The defeat of Germany in the Second World War has been a subject that has fascinated historians ever since the events occurred. The reasons behind this have been a hotly debated topic ever since, none more so than the balance between eastern and western theatres and the reasons behind the defeat in the Soviet Union.[1] However this picture has been obscured by two main issues, the extent of the…
The German-Soviet War was a Total War, with the German state seeking the total destruction of the Soviet state, and the killing or enslavement its inhabitants. Which leads to the question of why was this war so destructive towards the indigenous population when Germany was seeking to gain the maximum resources from the region?
Nationalist China played a major role in the Second World War by engaging the main body of the Japanese Army. This prevented the Japanese Army either attacking the Soviet Union in the rear or reinforcing its defensive island chain in the Pacific and so causing America heavy casualties. In terms of suffering and destruction, China endured 20 million dead, 45 million refugees. Yet the Soviet Union…
The Red Army’s ‘Combined-arms Armies’ were the most numerous unit in the operational army and so provide valuable insight into how Soviet forces achieved their mobility during the war. This paper shows that they lacked sufficient transport to both move and supply themselves simulateously and instead did this sequentially, conducting offensives of known duration and distance. Late war advances of…
The term ‘Righteous among the Nations’ or העולם אומות חסידי originates from a meeting on 31 December 1941 in Vilnius between some Jews in hiding and their rescuer, Feldwebel Anton Schmid, who was a member of the occupying German army. Although none of the participants survived, a record of the meeting was taken by a courier to Warsaw and was found after the war in the Oneg Shabbat archive.1 The…
The usual epithet applied to the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) is one of defeat as in the first six months of 1944 the Luftwaffe fighter defences were shot out of the skies over the Reich by American long-range fighters. By the time of the Normandy invasion, the Luftwaffe was unable to mount anything other than a token response to Allied air forces which had achieved air supremacy. The underlying…
Following on from my Zkn3 English User Manual, this blog will add in more advanced user methods and record my experience of using a Zettelkasten in research and turning the writing cycle.
The Zkn3 programme replicates Niklaus Luhmann’s original paper ‘Zettelkasten’ or Index Card Box. However the original programme was written in German and although both English and Spanish language version are available, ther eis not English language manual or documentation available. So by a system of trial and error I have written one. Any mistakes are mine alone, so please correct them in the…
Soviet tank armies used a form of logistics different from that of Western armies that specifically allowed them a high degree of mobility and the ability to operate deeply behind enemy lines without fear of interruption. The build-up for offensives was provided by railways, and the offensives themselves were time limited, awaiting the arrival of the field armies and restored railway connections.
In September 1944, a major argument broke out between the Allied commanders during the Normandy Campaign. The roots of this argument went back a long way, to the very concept used by the Allies to fight wars, the dysfunctional Allied command structure used in the Mediterranean Campaign, and the assumptions made by COSSAC in the early planing stages of Overlord. The actual arguments may have been…
This portable book stand is small and ligjt enough to be taken into libraries and archives, measuring only A4 in size, yet it can double as a photography stand to be used with my tablet to take hgh quality images without blurring or shadows.
This article sets out to examine the inner working of combined-arms armies logistics over the course of the war through the use of a series of seven reports contained within the ‘Collection of Materials on the Experience of War’ and comparing these assessments with statistics from archival documents on two actual operations, Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev in August 1943 and the Vistula-Oder…
Digital reference managers have the potential to be a powerful tool to aid your writing by automating the citation process. However clever use of their Folders, Notes, Tags and Links features can take this a step further and turn them into a proper digital research assistant.
As part of the ‘History Goes On’ seminar series, they have featured my delayed, seminar presentation. This was originally designed to be presented at the Second World War Group Conference in 2021 and to accompany the release of my article in the Journal of Slavic Military Studies Vol. 33 No. 4 due March 2021.
The aim of this blog piece is to outline the kind of research methodology that I use when doing a small project, say 10,000 words, a journal article, MA dissertation, something at that level. I will be using both libraries and archives for research, coupled with some online sources and some reference books.
Here is the advice I have gleaned over the last few years, about how early career historians can improve their research, promote it and build networks of contacts in their field. A lot of this applies to independent scholars hoping to get their work noticed.