History of War Categories

Allied intelligence strategists during World War II began to plan the invasion of Europe toward the end of the North Africa campaign.  The first strategic initiative of this next big phase of the way was to neutralize the German defenses in the island of Sicily.  This was no small task because the island was difficult to approach the Germans were well entrenched on the island so it was well defended by land, sea and air.

The advances of technology had a major impact on the weapons deployed in World War I (1914 – 1918). It saw the earliest development and applications of new forms of weapons in aviation, navy and chemical warfare. World War I also saw the first widespread deployment machine guns, artillery and the introduction of the lumbering armored tank.

In every war, there are legendary spies who do great things for their side through clever or secretive means.  When we look back on a great war like World War II, we have to take a moment and notice that even our enemies had some legendary characters worth noting.  Even if they were sworn to our destruction, the fact that they were great spies who accomplished amazing things cannot be diminished.

On July 19, 1940, the branch of the British military that was devoted to clandestine operations, espionage and sabotage that was necessary to fight the Axis powers in World War II established the British Special Operations Executive or SOE for short.  Agents of the SOE were important in executing a wide variety of spy activity against the enemy including destruction of bridges and other important German military infrastructure and directing the destruction of factories and military installations needed to support the war for the Germans.

In the history of ground war strategies and the power of incredible skill, strength and courage against an overwhelming force, the legend of the 300 Spartans who held the vast Persian army in check in the pass called Thermopylae is such an amazing story that to this day we repeat it with awe.  Even in the last year, a movie about the battle of Thermopylae came out which only rekindled the interest in this battle and in the ground war they found to defend the Greeks.

Of the many top secret operations conducted by secret service agents in World War II, there is no doubt that the breaking of the German Enigma code was the one that gave the Allies the greatest strategic advantage in the war.  But the task of finally decoding this highly complex system was not without a lot of effort of the finest minds that could be put against the task.  It was a massive operation at times requiring the services of over 500 people all working in absolute secrecy at Bletchley Park in Great Britain.

Spanning the entire globe and involving more countries than any other war, World War II (1939 – 1945) was also the largest armed war in human history. With its roots in the First World War, it was not a surprise to see the fusion of man and machine to the extent that witnessed the Second. Never before had human seen such a dramatic and diverse flow of new scientific developments and new powerful weapons as World War II, culminating in the first use of nuclear weapons.

The reason behind the us entering the Vietnam War was a general attempt to prevent Communism. Communism although good in theory particular for the masses, doesn’t always work. Sadly it doesn’t work as it is human nature for people to be greedy, the leaders are generally better off and ordinary people don’t normally work harder without incentive.

Wars were common in ancient Greece. However, the ancient Greek wars known much about today thanks to the writing of Homer and Herodotus and Thucydides and Arrian are the Trojan War (sometime in 1250 BC but it may be a made-up story), the Persian Wars (490-480 BC), the Peloponnesian War (441-404 BC) and the campaigns of Alexander the Great (331-323 BC).